I defy you to not sing the theme from Attack of the Killer Tomatoes:
This is my tomato plant. Before the first frost, I pulled it out of our garden. Its roots had taken over half the garden space.
Apparently you’re supposed to prune them.
UPDATE: All these suggestions and dozens more are incorporated into the ultimate list of family costumes!
Now, I know I have the best and brightest readers out there. So since I’m stumped, I just know if I bring my problem to you, you’ll have the perfect solution.
We need a costume for Hallowe’en.
For the actual day, it’s fine if Hayden dresses up as, y’know, whatever. But we also have a Hallowe’en party that’s a tradition—and there are prizes. Of course, I don’t care about such things. I just want to rest secure in the knowledge that my children, husband and I have the most creative, best executed costumes in the known universe.
That sounds like a manageable assignment, don’t you think?
What do you suggest? Share your best family costume ideas here!
(A reminder: we have two adults, me and Ryan, and two kids, our two-year-old son, Hayden, and our two-month-old daughter, Rebecca.)
Yes, you read that headline right. I don’t play The Grocery Game. I know that a lot of bloggers will tell you how wonderful it is, and it’s true that you can save a lot of money. I did try the Grocery Game for 12 weeks and saved a lot of money—when it worked. But here are the reasons why it just didn’t work for us.
Local grocery store sales schedules don’t cooperate
For some reason, the major stores in my area (read: not the cheaper grocery stores, which aren’t included in the Grocery Game) run their sales from Wednesday to the following Tuesday. Teri’s List (The Grocery Game list of the best deals) comes out on Sunday around noon. I don’t shop on Sundays, so that leaves just two days that I can use the grocery list. To get deals, that means I absolutely have to go out on Monday or Tuesday. If I’m busy or sick, too bad.
By the time I could shop, the shelves were picked clean
That wouldn’t be quite as bad except for the fact that, when I finally did get to go out armed with the best coupon/deal/sale combinations, there was nothing left. No, I don’t mean “Oh, my favorite flavor of this is gone, so I’ll have to settle for my second favorite” gone.
I mean the shelves with the sale items were completely empty. The end-of-aisle displays and island displays were gone. There was no more stock in the back. And the next shipment wouldn’t be in for days—till after the sale ended. “Gone” gone. No rainchecks.
Granted, this only happened with the absolute best sales, but it usually happened by Friday night (sometimes as early as 9 PM on day one of the sale, though!). The premise behind the Grocery Game is that sales run in 12 week cycles. If they’re so predictable, why not time the new lists so I can go at the beginning of the sales, before everything is picked over? And, really, are there that many good coupons in the coming week that waiting until the next Sunday’s paper justifies missing most of the good sales?
I’m a terrible stockpiler
Actually, I’m a great stockpiler. Pack rat, even. But I’m not quite as good at remember to use the things I stockpiled. My freezer must be very efficient—it’s always full. (I haven’t been able to buy a substantial amount of frozen food in . . . probably two years.) I’m pretty good at using canned goods (thank you, FIFO organizer), but everything else either takes up space on the shelf, goes bad before I remember it or both.
Frankly, I don’t need this stuff
I saw Jurassic Park the other day for the first time (just the beginning; I can’t stand violence so I made Ryan change the channel). To paraphrase what’s probably the best line (philosophically, at least), the Grocery Game keeps you so preoccupied with whether or not you can, you didn’t stop to think if you should.
To put it another way: I’m a very frugal person. Okay, I’m cheap. I find excuses not to spend money. But give me the Grocery Game list and I’ll buy anything that looks remotely good. And related to the previous point, I don’t even manage to eat all of it. (I have food bought on the Grocery Game that expired more than a year ago. Sure, I saved money on it, but I never liked it and never ate it. So is that saving money?)
It’s just food
I know, I know, food is a little bit important in sustaining life. Right. But the things that coupons come for most of the time will not form part of a complete meal. For example, in this week’s paper, I found coupons for:
Actual meals in there? Breakfast, biscuits as a side with dinner, freezer pizza and canned spaghetti (which I don’t even like). Healthy.
It’s mostly just food—food I probably didn’t need anyway. Again, even if I can get $50 worth of snack food for $0.50, once again, it doesn’t mean I should. It’s $0.50 I don’t really need to spend (and it’s never just $0.50) and it’s probably 50 pounds I don’t need to gain.
Granted, the Grocery Game lists do note when there’s a good sale on fruit and meat, but I can figure that out myself.
I’m just not convinced
I know that it’s so easy to come home from the Grocery Game with a huge amount listed on the receipt as your “Amount Saved.” The rewards seem very tangible. But when I buy the store brand on sale instead of the name brand, my receipt doesn’t list that as part of my amount saved. While I could be saving just as much, the rewards are less tangible.
For example, I took a look at my grocery receipt for last week and compared prices on a few things that you just can’t use coupons on: store-brand milk, store-brand juice, meat (London broil), cucumbers, tomatoes and nectarines. I chose these because they happened to be on sale at both the discount store and my old Grocery Game store this week. Some were better deals
What did I discover? I was overcharged for my nectarines! I want my $1.47 back! (Why you should always check your receipt, as mentioned in a good post on grocery shopping on Get Rich Slowly.)
Erm, um. . . . In the amounts that I bought of these six things, the discount store was cheaper by more than $5 for one week’s worth of groceries. But if I really wanted to compare prices, one thing I’d have to take into account: I bought 2.23 lbs of meat, and the sale price at the other store (already $1/lb more) only applied to “Super Value Packs,” which would probably be at least twice as much meat. (And then I’d have to figure out a place to store it…)
Taking into account what I’d really have to spend to get that price, assuming I could find a small Super Value Pack (5 lbs, or two London broils), the difference grew to $13.63. On six things. That’s a lot of coupons.
What Works for Me
I still clip and use coupons (when I remember and feel like it). When I was on top of couponing, I review my stock of coupons before looking at the cheaper grocery store’s fliers. That was until the Sunday-only rate for the newspaper went up threefold (Ryan says that it went up sixfold; even worse). We unsubscribed.
Then I look at the fliers and plan the week’s meals around what’s on sale. Then I write down anything else that’s a good deal that we normally eat and check my shelves to see if we’re low. Finally, I see if I have a coupon for anything in the flier and decide whether I really want it.
My favorite shopping trick: Local stores periodically offer “case lot sales,” where canned goods (usually store brand) are marked down considerably—usually less than $0.40 a can. I stockpile canned goods during these sales. We use a FIFO organizer (first in, first out) and I’ve never run out of canned goods since we started really stockpiling during these sales.
The Grocery Game can work for you. But I prefer shopping when and where I want, bringing less junk food into my house, and bringing home meals and food we’ll actually eat. To me, that’s the most cost effective way to get our grocery shopping done. I’m sure that many passionate Grocery Gamers will vociferously disagree with the points I’ve made here, but it doesn’t change the fact that this has been my experience.
Once upon a time, I was part of something great. Though I knew it was important at the time, looking back as I recently had the chance to do, I realize even more what a unique and important opportunity I had now that it’s gone.
For two years while I was in college, I was a teaching assistant for a 100-level required GE course. Now, for most courses, TAs mostly grade papers and do other grunt work. While we did that in this course, we also had the opportunity to actually teach as well: under the direction of the professor, we taught the third hour of the course each week. (The course was structured with two hours of 1000-student lectures on Mondays and Wednesdays, and the students’ third hour was in a 30-student “lab,” of which I taught 3 to 4 each week.)
But teaching was not the thing that made this job so important. It was the course that we taught. The course, as far as we know, is unlike any other college course. It was called American Heritage and the material was, basically, a touch of political science, the history of the creation of and the evolution of Constitution, and the basic economics and the economic founding principles in the US.
But the course material doesn’t begin to express what was so important about this course. It wasn’t about “America first” or “America best”; it was about the efforts that real people made to create a unique beginning for a country.
From the beginning of time, civilization has struggled between two extremes—tyranny and the control and stability that it brings, and anarchy and the overriding freedom (and insecurity) that it brings. The cycle between these forms of governing ourselves is called the Human Predicament.
Many societies have made an effort to escape the human predicament, but most solutions have devolved into the same vicious cycle. During the formative years of this country, there was no guarantee that this country would be any different.
With great concerted effort, the founders of this country established what they hoped would be a good start, the framework and guidelines that could provide both stability and freedom for the people. It was a great experiment, really, since this form of government hadn’t been tried in quite this way before.
And, so far, it’s held up pretty well. Almost 220 years later, we’ve only required 27 official additions, changes or clarifications to that framework. A lot of the changes to the system have become matters of tradition rather than codification.
It’s so easy to look back at history and think that the way it happened was inevitable. But there really isn’t anything that guaranteed that this country would succeed other than the determined study and efforts and compromises.
And there’s no guarantee that it will continue to succeed in escaping tyranny and anarchy without the determined study and efforts of our citizens today.
I helped with that. I taught hundreds of college freshmen (mostly) about this—about our heritage and our responsibility to this country. Not all of them, and probably very few of them, fully caught this spirit at the time, but if and when they do, they will have the understanding of the country’s founding principles that should best be able to guide them in how to lead the country today.
I had the opportunity to remember this experience and these principles recently as dozens of professors, teaching assistants and administrative staff for this course gathered to honor the two founding professors of the course at their retirement. It was a very emotional experience, having worked with one of the professors, and having to realize just how important what we did was—and that I’ll probably never be involved in that again.
But I can hope that I’ll be able to feel this way about raising my own children. It’s probably not something you can appreciate fully at the time. It is a lot of work. It is a lot of effort. And after months and months of the same lessons, the same principles, still they just don’t get it.
But one day they will get it. One day what I’ve done here, like what I did there, will make a difference.
Happy Fourth of July!
One of my friends is a couple months away from having her first, and was looking for suggestions for her hospital bag. I tried to pare down my packing list for the hospital before going, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to pack lighter this time. If you’re wondering what to take to the hospital, here’s my list, with “BTDT” comments (“been there, done that”) in square brackets.
For L&D
Add to the list: any birthing/coaching materials you need, insurance card (duh).
Toiletries
You know, the bathroom supplies you’d take anywhere else.
Going home
Now, for a lot of these things, the hospital provided (lots of) them. This will, of course, vary, and yes, I suppose I did eventually pay for most of them in one way or another. However, I did look at my hospital bills and they didn’t charge me per baby wipe and sanitary napkin—but some hospitals do nitpick like that.
So, what could you not live without in the hospital?
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My sister-in-law brought by an Amish friendship bread starter the other day. Reading over the instructions, I decided to tweak the instructions just a little. Enjoy!
Don’t use metal spoons or bowls for mixing. Don’t refrigerate the starter unless you’re lazy or forgetful. Then you can refrigerate it. Just mush it when you remember it. It’s supposed to bubble and ferment, but be sure to let the air out of the bag; it might pop.
Day 1: Accept the starter. Say thank you. Put it on the counter. Glance at the instructions, pretending to be interested. Begin plotting who you’ll foist this on next week.
Day 2: Mush the bag.
Day 3: Squish the bag. Think about who would actually accept this.
Day 4: Let your toddler mush the bag.
Day 5: Add 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar and 1 cup milk. Oh and guess what? Mush the bag.
Day 6: If you forgot to add that stuff yesterday, do it today. And mush the bag.
Day 7: Squeeze the bag repeatedly.
Day 8: Remember that you only have two days to figure out who to give the starters to. Panic. Beat the bag to vent your aggressions.
Day 9: Mash the bag. Make a list of all your friends within driving distance. Call two of them to ask if they’d like friendship bread. Sense their hesitation. Decide not to call anyone else and just drop in bearing ‘gifts.’ Go get gallon zipper bags if you’re running low and photocopy the instructions.
Day 10: Mix and divide the starter. Pour the contents of the bag into a bowl (remember non metal) adding 1.5 c flour, 1.5 c sugar and 1.5 c milk. Mix (though, if you’re on a roll, you could certainly try pouring all these into the bag and . . . you know, mushing it). Measure out 4 separate batters of 1 cup each into 4 gallon zipper bags. Write the date on the bags. Look at your list of friends again. Pick the three or four you can afford to lose if necessary. Give them the bags later. Heck, you could even ease their ‘burden’ by giving them the bags on day four. Or five. Or nine. Don’t forget to include the instructions.
With the remaining batter in the bowl, make bread. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Add
3 eggs
1 c oil (or 0.5 c oil and 0.5 c applesauce)
0.5 c milk
1 c sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
0.5 tsp vanilla
1.5 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp baking soda
1.75 to 2 c flour
1 large box instant pudding mix (any flavor. Very Amish, yes?)
Grease 2 large loaf pans and divide mixture. Bake 55-60 minutes. Sprinkle cinnamon/sugar over the top before or after baking.
If you keep a starter bag for yourself, you must be a glutton for punishment. Or you need the stress relief of four seconds of squishing a somewhat viscous liquid. Maybe you should get a bag of honey instead. But, hey, you could have fresh Amish bread every 10 days. And continue forcing the starters on your friends. Until you run out of friends.
Only the Amish know how to create a starter bag, but apparently they got on Allrecipes. If you give away all your starters, you’ll have to wait until someone gives you one back. But I’m sure your friends would be eager to return the favor if you’d like one.
Experiment with bananas, raisins, nuts and other mix-ins (I saw a comment on Allrecipes that said they added crushed pineapple and coconut) and other flavors of pudding mix.
After the stress of baking and probably losing your daily four seconds of stress relief, it’s probably time to sit down with your loaves of Amish bread and eat them both in a single sitting.
It can’t be fattening if it’s Amish, right?
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