the Waste-Not Blog

Oh, my goodness, can it be that time of year again? I'm afraid so, everybody! I've got almost a dozen flats of planted seeds, the very first pepper plants are poking up their shy cotyledons, and pretty soon I'll be planting my flat on onion seeds as well! (I usually end up planting some sets but my goal is to be able to rely on seeds entirely one of these years... given that it's March, this won't be the year either, but a girl can dream!) Seed shopping might be the most fun part of gardening. I know very few people who would put up a determined resistance to that assertion. I mean, sure, eating what you planted is fun too, but that fun is spread across the growing season and interspersed with a ton of hard work; but seed shopping? looking at dozens of pretty pictures, reading dozens of cute and interesting descriptions, drawing garden layout sheets with your favorite pens on your favorite graph paper? That wins. Hands down. Now if you've been blessed with ...

White, all-purpose flour.  It's inexpensive, readily available, and foundational to a whole host of delicious foods. It's far from deeply nourishing, even with the trace amounts of nutrition the factory adds, but can a case be made for using more of it? I believe so, and I intend to make it. Think of the foods that you buy most frequently. Not raw ingredients, mind, but finished foods. What comes to mind? For many, item one on that list would have to be bread. This includes sliced bread, hotdog and hamburger rolls, and Italian bread for spaghetti nights. Speaking of spaghetti nights, pasta is easily a close second to bread as far as regularly purchased staples of Americans. Including macaroni and cheese, egg noodles for soup, and of course spaghetti, pasta is a crucial part of even the most frugal of American diets (not to mention special occasion stuffed pastas like ravioli, pierogies and tortellini). We can't forget biscuits or their close relatives, scones and American...

What makes you want to reduce waste? There are loads of valid reasons to choose a lifestyle that utilizes all resources well. Maybe your rationale is an awareness of earth's limited resources or of endangered species threatened by human refuse or habitat loss. Maybe you have financial goals that just aren't being reached, and you want to plug the holes in your revenue stream, spending less and saving more. Maybe you want to be more self reliant and resilient, able to handle the disappearance of a few paychecks into the auto mechanic's pocket or a disruption of SNAP funds due to government shut down. Maybe your friends like to brag about how they saved money and you find the concept inspiring. Whatever your reason for reducing waste in your household, I am on board with it 100%! There's absolutely no possible bad reason for a Waste-Not Life! But, just as an investment advisor will tell you not to put all your financial eggs in one basket, I'm here to say that in ...

How Things Are Here in America and the west, cash is king. Your consumption is expressed in terms of dollars, your budget is discussed in terms of dollars, your worth is measured in terms of dollars. If you spend less than a given amount for groceries each week, you're thrifty, good with money, possibly a skin-flint; if you spend more than a given amount, you may be careless, hoyty-toyty, or maybe discerning regarding the quality of the food you're willing to consume. The strength of your principles is measured by whether you put your money where your mouth is. Here in America and the west, the vast majority of the idle are poor. Those who have the least disposable income also have the most disposable time . They also eat the unhealthiest food (because corn and soy are the most heavily subsidized agricultural products on the market) and raise the most children , meaning more people going into distressed school systems, with habits of eating nutritionless food and expect...

When I thought of the title for this blog post I had this little thrill, like, "Wow, if I can come up with something like financial fire drill, I must be really cut out for this blogging thing!" I started planning what I would do with the money when sponsors started paying to advertise on my site, and made a note that I really need to at least outline my planned cookbook. And then I googled financial fire drill and found out that literally every financial blogger talks about them, and so do most of the frugality bloggers. Oh well. What most people mean when they talk about a financial fire drill (outside the investment world) is to write down a plan of how to pare back expenses if you lose your job or have a major expense that suddenly arises. Things like having a list of non-essential monthly services that you need to cancel (like Netflix and your YMCA membership), knowing in advance how to apply for student loan deferment, and having some idea of what your minimum gro...

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."--Rahm Emanuel Don't worry. The above is the first time I have, and the only time I will, open a blog post with a quote from a left wing terrorist! And this post is not a manifesto regarding the use of tragic current events to further one's own political ends. No, the crises that I'm focusing on today are personal and specifically financial in nature. How can a crisis go to waste. you may ask? After all, for most people a crisis is something that happens , and must simply be survived. Your bread winner loses his/her job. The car needs a transmission. The power goes out for 36 hours. These things can and do happen through no fault of your own, and present major challenges that have to be overcome to the best of your ability; it can feel at the time as though anything beyond mere survival is asking too much. Furnace broken? You'll just have to fork over that $450 and live on old Rice-a-Roni and tuna fish for ...

For us, the Waste-Not Plan is a blueprint to arrive at our ultimate goal of total independence in terms of food (for us and our animals), energy (at least in terms of heat and cooking, and using the grid only for luxuries that can easily be dispensed with) and money (we want to be able to have both me and Ben at home or at least working very minimally, so what land we have needs to at least pay for its own taxes and hopefully a bit extra). For others it might just be a matter of becoming progressively more self reliant: having enough food to know that a couple weeks without buying groceries won't reduce you to eating expired spaghetti-Os from the back of the cupboard, being able to pay down debt and add to a nest egg, reducing your carbon footprint and plugging your particular holes in the waste stream. That's why I call these "levels" instead of "steps," because even if you never get past "level one" or "level two," you're here. You...

15 grams of protein. 6-12 grams of insoluble fiber. 4-5 g of soluble fiber. Plus vitamins and minerals, particularly potassium. These all come from a one cup serving of cooked dry beans. The amounts of different nutrients vary based on the type of beans under discussion: black beans and kidney beans are very rich in iron, while lentils are a very good source of molybdenum and folate. But we all knew this, right? Beans are healthy, beans are cheap, we should all eat more beans. Clearly nobody needs to hear any of this information again. Remind me why I thought this post was a good idea? Oh. This is why. On average, a given American eats less than six pounds of beans in a year . That's about forty cups of beans annually, significantly less than a cup per week. We're all concerned about the burgeoning problems with cardiovascular disease, obesity, living wage, you name it--and we eat maybe a cup of beans in a week? Nonsense, I say! Balderdash, I proclaim! We can all do bet...