Dyssonance

So some hae remarked that I’ve gotten a little odd of late, since I’m writing about strange stuff.

Well, get over it.  I write what’s on my mind, and to be frank I’m trying to write at least one “fluff” bit each day and one more serious piece each day.

So those who’ve been following me know that I made pickles recently.  I made two jars of them, using regular cucumbers and a recipe that I developed on my own for them.

Tuesday night, my roomies and I had a pickle tasting event, and one of them hadn’t had a homemade pickle either, and the other tends to favor sweet pickles.

They pickles were awesome.

It’s been just shy of a week, and last night I got home and checked the second jar, having a hankering, and it hadn’t been touched, so it’s been a good week in there just waiting to be tested.  And so here’s the result of the judging after a week:

First off, there’s no real difference between 48 hours and and a week in terms of flavor.  It’s pretty much the same.

I used way much dill, and I should have used my mortar on it and some of the other spices.

I did not use enough garlic.  But then, I like seriously garlic pickles.

There’s an aftertaste that’s very strong in the vinegar department, so in researching what is involved in all of that, I determined that my water content was too low.

There’s a slightly sweet taste to them, as well — that’s not all that bad, really, and is rather surprising.  I suspect that’s due to the cucumbers I used (basic simple cucs), but I in this new recipe I’ll adjust for that.

Next up is a batch of four jars of pickles.  That’s four quarts, and price wise it works out to be around the same amount as 1 quart from the store. This is one of those things that comes about from careful shopping.

I’ll put up the new recipe later today, and while there may be one more down the road, I suspect that this new recipe will be the final one and all that’s left is to come up with a name for them.

A regular commenter here likes to tease me at times about priorities, as well.  The underlying point is that if you want surgery enough, you will do what you need to do to get it.

My monthly food expenses to feed three people (and I do feed three people, as that’s pretty much the other two thirds of my rent each month) as well as creating food for two support groups a month and the occasional specialty dinner is 235 dollars a month.  Total.

That food creates three meals a day for each of the people that live here, at least one of which is a “big meal” — usually dinner. It involves meat, two vegetables, bread, and something to drink at the least with seconds available for the man of the house (which I do on purpose).

The 35 dollars is usually overage that is part of the food I prepare for the group meetings, which average about 85 dollars of the total, and feed not only those of us here, but anywhere from 4 to 14 other people. With leftovers, inevitably.

Part of the way I do that is by careful shopping.  I buy relatively few name brands.  I scour the grocery store ads every week. I’m not so much a coupon cutter, although I probably should do that a bit more, except that usually its not as great a savings since I don’t buy the name brands as much.

I do have a rule: life is too short to eat bad food.  It’s so firm a rule with me that if I screw up a meal I’m cooking, I’ll trash the whole damn thing and not feel bad about it (inclusive of starving children in Los Angeles, who I generally worry more about ’cause I’m just terribly insensitive that way).

Food is by biggest personal splurge.  And a splurge it is — I’ll buy two pounds of 16-20 shrimp and make it last a month (only four to six shrimp per serving, and I cook by portions).

I do a lot of “freezable” cookng, as well — I’ll make something and wrap it and drop it in a freezer in portion sized chunks, and if I’m not up for ooking, that’s what they eat — they grab a side dish bag and a main dish bag and another and toss ‘em in the microwave for a few minutes and presto, instant food.

I also buy carefully — I’ll spend a chunk this month of meats, for example, and likely not a lot on other stuff.  But I’ll buy enough meat for the next two months because my average portion for meat is about 4 ounces per person.  Sometimes 6.  Dong that seriously stretches the budget — 16 ounces (a pound) of ground beef feeds four people that way.  More if I use it in something like a goulash or I make meatloaf.

The rest of my spending is related to that. The one thing I am really bad about is on my list to take care of this year (smoking — it costs me a lot), but otherwise, my personal living expenses are very, very small overall.

Its a trick I learned from my mom, who was a bookkeeper for much of her life, and who went back to school full time in her early 40′s with two teenage food vacuums to clothe, feed, and shelter.  And she did it without ever breaking her budget of 12K a year.

I spent a bit more than a semester of college living under a bush on campus. I know ways of cutting costs that often scare people, and yet I also believe that if you can’t enjoy life when its hard, what the hell are you making sacrifices for?  Without a personal release, something you enjoy, to help make things better — without entertainment — you won’t achieve your goals because you will be too damned miserable to see when you get there.

So for those who think that I waste my money, let’s see you hang tight on 400 bucks a month.

The new recipe later.  Right now I have to sorta pretend like I’m housecleaning…

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