the Waste-Not Blog

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 ...

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 ...

In case you haven't noticed, I am very phytic acid aware. If I'm going to be feeding a whole grain or a legume to my family, you can bet it's going to be soaked for a minimum of eight hours before I start cooking or baking. This is because I want my family to receive the full benefit of the good food I'm cooking, and phytic acid is an antinutrient that latches onto minerals in your diet and carries them right out the back door. It doesn't matter how much magnesium you eat if it all ends up in the toilet, and that's exactly what happens when you consume whole seeds, grains or legumes that haven't been soaked. So when I look at the bags of pelleted grain or ground, dry "mash" that people feed to their animals, I have to wonder: why would I feed uncooked, unsoaked, unaltered grain to my animals when I wouldn't feed them to my family? Beyond my desire to take good care of my animals, I'm paying for their feed, and if they aren't absorbing...

It's an age old question among home gardeners: how many tomato plants does an individual or family need? Clearly there are multiple factors at work in the search for an answer, including the number of people said tomatoes are intended to feed, chosen preservation and usage methods, and available space. Still, one family of four who intends to can tomatoes might plant eighteen plants, and another family of the same size with similar goals might plant sixty or more. Why the broad range of answers to a seemingly simple question? The Combatants On one side of the debate stand the restrained growers, with plants often numbering in multiples of six because that's how stores sell tomato plants. The vines are carefully spaced in their gardens, almost always caged if not staked. Virtually no tomatoes touch the ground, barring some awful accident like a freak windstorm or the neighbor's blundering dog; as a result their rodent problems and unnoticed rot problems are practically...

Spring has forgotten us, but the hens have not forgotten spring. We're getting between fourteen and twenty eggs every day, and even though we sell four dozen a week to our neighbors I just can't keep up. We're in the middle of moving (long story) so I'm not looking for new egg customers... what's a girl to do? Enter the ancient practices of egg preservation. There are many practices that have been used over the centuries to make the spring abundance last into the less generous times of year. early Americans packed eggs in salt (allegedly made them taste "salty") or sand (low rate of success, basically just helped shield them from temperature extremes) or isinglass (aka fish gelatin, obtained by boiling the swim bladders--if you try it let me know, but I'm not going to). In the Edwardian era of England they preserved them in a mixture of slaked lime and water (My main takeaway from the series "Edwardian Farm" is that the English of that er...