Gardening: Growing Your Own Food

The most obvious way to save money on groceries is to buy the cheapest stuff available. Around here, that means potatoes and flour for carbohydrates, cabbage for greens, carrots and turnips for roots, chicken scraps for meat, and milk for dairy. But who wants to eat that every day? Coupons and deals help, but you're at the mercy of the supermarket for those.

A cheap and easy way to get the fresh vegetables you want is to grow your own -

You can get a young tomato plant for $3, stick it in a hole in your yard, and get up to 20 pounds of vine-ripened tomatoes (currently going for $2.49 a pound at Wegmans) in a year... as long as you don't let it die.

Don't worry, gardening isn't as hard as it sounds. While it's a lot of work to maximize yield, it doesn't take too much to get productive plants. One easy way to get started is to grow plants in containers or bags. The cheapest way to get started this way is to buy a bag of topsoil and plant directly in the bag. All you have to do is lay the bag on its side in a place where it can get lots of sun outside, then cut holes or slits in the top side to plant your seedlings or seeds in (make sure you follow the instructions that came with your plants!), then poke holes along the bottom to let water drain. After that, just check your bag every day to make sure that the soil is damp without being muddy, and add water as needed. Don't worry about pesticides or fertilizer to start with - blemishes on vegetables and holes in your greens won't hurt you, and your bag of topsoil will have enough nutrients for one year. I don't use any chemicals in my garden, so I'm getting homegrown organic produce for bargain prices! Yum!

Do beware of larger pests like rabbits, groundhogs, and deer. While insects won't eat everything (unless it's a swarm of locusts), these evil mammals can eat entire plants in one go. If these guys show up, you can either move the container to a sunny porch (and hope that they aren't so daring as to come right up to your front door!) or you can put in a fence. Throwing rocks work if you catch them in the act too.

So what should you grow? Whatever you want to eat, of course! Some vegetables are harder to grow than others, but you can figure it out just by reading the instructions that come with the plants. Common garden vegetables that are recommended for beginners with containers are tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, squash, bush beans, and peas. Other plants like leaf lettuce and radishes are also good growers, but I don't recommend them because they're already so cheap from the market anyway. Google is your friend for ideas here.

Recipe: Meat and Vegetable Stew

Here's the recipe for the chicken and vegetable stew that I mentioned back in January (chicken 'cause it's cheap!).

Meat and Vegetable Stew (serves a lot - this batch lasted me 3 days)

Ingredients: small variations in amounts are acceptable - this isn't rocket science!
- 1.25 lbs potatoes or other starchy vegetable (I've used winter squash before)
- 1.5 lbs vegetables (I used 8 oz carrots and 16 oz canned string beans in this photo, but I've also used bags of mixed frozen veggies)
- 1.25 lbs chicken or other meat (Be cheap - chicken thighs and drumsticks are great in stew)
- Salt to taste (I never use any for myself, but my wife likes salt in her food)

Tools:
- 1 slow cooker that can hold everything. If this recipe doesn't fit yours, reduce the amounts until it does!

Preparation:
1 - Wash the potatoes or any fresh veggies.
2 - Chop up all the vegetables until they're all in bite-sized chunks or smaller. Set aside.
3 - Wash your meat and set it aside.

Cooking:
1 - Put your heavy starched veggies in the bottom of the slow cooker.
2 - Put your meat in the middle.
3 - Put the rest of your veggies on top. Add salt and other seasonings now if you want any!
4 - Fill the pot with water.
5 - Set the slow cooker on "Low" and wait 8 hours.

6 - Turn off the slow cooker, ladle out the food, and serve!

Change In Plans

Has it been almost 3 months? Ouch.

I've been thinking on what to do with this blog. In January, it became obvious that eating "healthy and cheap" was actually very easy - buy the cheapest groceries in each category, measure everything out, cook it, and eat.

The problem is that it isn't very fun.

Surprisingly, it's not the food itself that is depressing - it actually tastes pretty good. The annoying thing of it all is having to precisely measure and record how much you're putting in to everything, especially when the recipe itself is flexible (like for stews and soups). I was spending more time measuring and recording everything than I was actually preparing the food.

Another problem was the repetition. When you buy the cheapest groceries all the time, you end up working with the same ingredients every day, and you end up just making the same dishes over and over...

...oh, that's why my mom always served the same Chinese dishes every week! (blogger has a Duh! moment)

Anyway, making the same stuff over and over does not make for an interesting blogging experience, both for the writer and the readers.

So I've been thinking on how to change things up. I'm going to start by relaxing the restrictions on food amounts and quantities - as long as I get the MINIMUMS, I'm not going to worry too much about the maximums. I'm also not going to worry about exact weights and quantities anymore either.

Also, instead of posting entire meals, I'm going to focus on individual dishes and recipes. I also plan on doing the "Theme Weeks" that I had mentioned in the sidebar.

Feedback will be GREATLY appreciated!

Meal Planning Exercise

I'm recovering from a bout of stomach flu, so I couldn't eat anything other than rice porridge all week.

In lieu of posting what I bought this week for groceries, I am posting what I plan to eat this week, how much it will cost, and how I plan on cooking everything for the week.

Here is the allotment for a male adult:

From this, I plan on the following (prices from Wegmans):
Total: 40.0 lbs = $29.98
   Grains: 4.9 lbs = $6.79
      Whole Grain: Brown Rice - 2.4 lbs @ $1.20 per lb = $2.88
      Whole Grain Cereal: Honey and Nut Toasted Oats - 0.9 lbs @ $2.59 per lb = $2.33
      Non-Whole Grain: White Rice - 1.6 lbs @ $0.99 per lb = $1.58
   Vegetables: 9.0 lbs = $7.36
      Potatoes: Whole White Potatoes - 2.5 lbs @ $0.40 per lb = $1.00
      Dark-Green Vegetables: Bulk Spinach - 1.25 lbs @ $1.69 per lb = $2.11
      Orange Vegetables: Baby Cut Carrots - 1 lbs @ $0.99 per lb = $0.99
      Canned Beans: Cut Green Beans - (2) 14.5 oz can (1.8 lbs) @ $0.39 per can = $0.78
      Other Vegetables: Turnips - 2.5 lbs @ $0.99 per lb = $2.48
   Fruits: 8.75 lbs = $5.43
      Whole Fruits: Oranges - 7 lbs @ $0.62 per lb = $4.34
      Fruit Juices: Orange Juice - 1.75 lbs @ $0.62 per lb = $1.09
   Milk Products: 11.4 lbs = $2.51
      Low Fat Milk: 1% Lowfat Milk - 11.4 lbs @ $0.22 per lb = $2.51
   Meat and Beans: 4.0 lbs = $4.39
      Pork: Boneless Center Cut Pork Chops - 0.5 lbs @ $2.69 per lb = $1.35
      Chicken: Chicken Quarters - 2.5 lbs @ $0.49 per lb = $1.23
      Fish: Frozen Whiting Fillets - 0.25 lbs @ $2.50 per lb = $0.63
      Nuts: Honey Roasted Peanuts - 0.25 lbs @ $2.99 per lb = $0.75
      Eggs: Large Eggs - 0.5 lbs @ $0.86 per lb = $0.43
   Other: up to 2 lbs = up to $3.50
      Table Oils: Wegmans Vegetable Oil - up to 1 lbs @ $0.80 per lb = up to $0.80
      Sauces: Kikkoman Soy Sauce - up to 1 lbs @ $2.70 per lb = up to $2.70
      Seasonings: Sugar, Salt, etc sparingly

Weekly Meal Plan:
   Bowl of Cereal w/ Milk (x7)
   Sunny-Side-Up Egg (x5)
   Chicken and Vegetables (2 batches)
   Greens and Stir-Fried Pork (1 batch)
   Pan-Fried Whiting Fillet (1 batch)
   Turnip Soup (1 pot)
   Mugs of Milk as required
   Oranges as required
   Cups of Orange Juice as required
   Nuts as required

I will post recipes throughout the week. Look forward to them!

Geek-Out: DIY Hoverman TV Antenna

I now have HDTV at my house. I made an antenna for $5 worth of parts and 1 hour of work, and it gets all 17 local stations on the air, even though my TV and antenna are buried in my basement. This has to be the best $5 I've spent so far this year.

Here it is:

This design is called the Hoverman antenna, as detailed in US Patent #2918672. All I did was sketch out the pattern on a piece of posterboard, tape down the two lengths of wire down on the board in the right pattern, then hook up the 4:1 balun to the feedpoints in the center with two bolts and plug it into my TV. The posterboard stands up by itself, so I just put it on the ground next to my TV, pointed it in the right direction, turned on the TV, and voila! HDTV goodness.

So how did I get here?

The January 2011 of Popular Mechanics has a DIY "Digital TV Antenna" project on Page 84. I read the article, but the antenna design left out some key information: the PM article does not specify the distance between the dipoles, which is an important parameter for the antenna.

*GEEKSPEAK START*
The PM antenna design works by stacking (4) broadband "bow-tie" dipoles on top of each other, with each dipole in-phase with each other in order to "flatten out" the antenna's radiation pattern top to bottom, increasing the antenna's gain in all other directions, with the best gain being in the "broadsides" directions.

The flattening effect is best when the dipoles are about one-half wavelength from each other, since this cancels out the most radiation top and bottom.
*GEEKSPEAK END*

Finally, the PM design requires (10) separate lengths of wire, with (8) connections between those wires, as well as (2) connections for the feedline. That's a lot of connections that can break, get loose, or otherwise messed up.

Since I wasn't happy with the PM antenna, I looked around the Internet for other DIY designs. I eventually found a website that had a link to the Hoverman patent. After finding its gain characteristics, studying it, and realizing that it has better gain than the PM antenna, even with the corrected feed lines, I decided to build one. The Hoverman antenna also only has (2) separate lengths of wire, with only the (2) connections for the feedline. That makes it a lot easier to make.

So I built it, hooked it up to my TV, and the rest is history.

Addendum: Some enthusiasts have continued to develop and refine the Hoverman antenna, resulting in some impressive designs. Of course, the more powerful the design, the more precise the engineering and manufacturing needs to be. The original Hoverman is very tolerant of deviations to its design measurements, but the new ones require much greater precision in order to realize the higher gains promised by their designs. While I was interested in these designs, I decided to make the original Hoverman because it was so much easier to put together and have it work well, and I did not need the extra gain of the improved designs.

Off-Kilter: Heaping Hot Pot Potluck

Today isn't a TFP day. We (the missus and I) had a going-away party for one of our coworkers, and the meal of choice was Chinese hot pot potluck at our house. Needless to say, everyone gorged themselves on strips of meat, fish tofu, blanched bok choy, and other foodstuffs that only get eaten when it's hot pot time. I'm not even sure how many pounds of anything I ate today.

Since this was potluck, everyone brought something, and everyone brought too much. All the leftovers are now in my fridge. I'm pretty sure that the food consumed that we contributed is worth less than all the leftovers that everyone else left at our house, so we came out fiscally ahead. Awesome!

Regular blogging will resume after we finish eating our hot pot potluck spoils.

Coca-Cola Chicken Catastrophe

I TRIED to make Coca-Cola Chicken today. The problem was that what I had in mind wasn't what my wife was thinking of when she wrote the recipe; when I asked my wife for some advice, she took one look at my pending culinary catastrophe and took her kitchen back before I could do any more damage.

I also nuked something called "delicata squash" in the microwave (it came with microwave instructions on a sticker), scooped it all out of its skin, threw it into the pan with 3 cans of beans and peas, and just stirred it around until it was hot. I'm not sure what to call it, and my wife's opinion was "if you can't say anything polite, then don't say anything at all - so I'm not saying anything". I thought it was decent - the squash was naturally sweet, and everything was naturally soft after being nuked and/or swimming in a can.

Unit cost notes: I ran out of milk, so I bought another jug from Tops. Tops milk is more expensive than Wegmans ($2.19 vs $1.79 per gallon), so my unit cost for milk went up.

No pictures today. I'm too ashamed...

Breakfast:

Cereal in milk: 2 oz cereal, 13 oz milk (cost - $0.49)

Lunch:

Crab fried rice: 2.4 oz brown rice, 1.6 oz white rice, 1.4 oz carrots, 0.8 oz Bok Choy, 0.8 oz spinach, 2.2 oz crab, 1.1 oz egg, 0.6 oz oil (cost - $1.45)

Roasted vegetables: 4.4 oz squash, 2.9 oz potatoes, 1.5 oz onions, 0.2 oz olive oil (cost - $0.43)

Dinner:

Rice: 2.4 oz brown rice, 1.6 oz white rice (cost - $0.28)

Coca-Cola chicken: 4 oz chicken (cost - $0.18) (I deboned 6 oz of chicken leg quarters to get 4 oz of meat), trace amounts of Cola-Cola, soy sauce, and oil.

Mixed veggie mash: 2.5 oz squash, 4.9 oz beans, 2.5 oz peas (cost - $0.47)

Fruits:

Apples: 15 oz (cost - $1.87)

Orange juice: 4 oz (cost - $0.12)

Milk: 13 oz (cost - $0.21)

Summary:

Total cost of food: $5.50

Total eaten / Total daily allowance:  84.8 oz / 91.1 oz

Grains eaten / Grains daily allowance: 10 oz / 10.4 oz

Vegetables eaten / Vegetable daily allowance: 21.7 oz / 21.2 oz

Fruits eaten / Fruits daily allowance: 19 oz / 19.2 oz

Milk Products eaten / Milk Products daily allowance: 26 oz / 26 oz

Meat and Beans eaten / Meat and Beans daily allowance: 7.3 oz / 9.1 oz

Other eaten / Other daily allowance: 0.8 oz / 5.2 oz

Lessons learned:

- Re-read the recipe BEFORE you try to make it.
- Nuked squash is surprisingly tasty.
- Location matters when you buy groceries.