Farewell to Fresh Garlic

While our first WWOOF volunteers of the year were here, one of our indoor tasks was to process what remained of last year's garlic crop.  Preserving what remained involved peeling all those individual cloves, cutting them open to remove the sprouts (which are slightly bitter), slicing them finely, and dehydrating all the slices.  It's a rather mindless, tedious job - one that would have taken me all day in the kitchen if I'd had to do it entirely by myself.  Two extra people pitching in made the work go very quickly, and I was extremely grateful for the help.  Our volunteers genuinely seemed not to mind, and to be interested in the process of dehydrating foods.

We did better with last year's crop of garlic than with any previous harvest in terms of storage.  Some of it lasted until this month, though much of it was sprouty.  In late December of 2008 I was already processing that year's crop because it was at the end of its shelf life.  Mostly I think the improvement in shelf life is attributable to storing it in the cooler temperatures of the root cellar.

One tiny tip that I don't think I've shared here before is a way of repurposing what might otherwise end up as part of the waste stream into a convenient way of using up the dehydrated garlic chips.  Some spice companies are now selling whole peppercorns (including black and white organic peppercorns) in disposable jars that are also pepper mills.  These can be re-used as grinders for any spice of the right size, including dried garlic chips.  When all the pepper has been consumed, the lids of these mills can be screwed off and both the jar and the grinder-cap washed.  When both pieces are thoroughly dry, I fill the jar with my dried garlic flakes and keep it with my other pepper mills.  The rest of the chips will be stored in a cool and dark place until needed.

I rely on this dehydrated garlic much more heavily during the garlic drought months of the year - those months between processing the last of the garlic (now), and garlic harvest (early summer).  I use it in soups, pasta dishes, and have even been known to grind some directly onto a leftover roast chicken sandwich.  An especially nice winter use for the ground garlic is in a cup of hot chicken broth with a small dab of white miso stirred in.  Bone-warming goodness, that is.  The whole chips work well in some soups and stews too, as well as meatloaf, in which it rehydrates by absorbing and holding in the juices, and long cooking dishes such as polenta or risotto.

I sent our WWOOF volunteers on their way with our old, cheap dehydrator and many explanations as to its design faults and shortcomings. I suggested they bear with the crummy version for a season or two, to see if they would actually use a dehydrator.  If so, they could bite the bullet and purchase a good quality dehydrator, such as an Excalibur.   I asked them that either way - whether they upgraded to a good dehydrator, or decided it wasn't for them - they pass the dehydrator on to someone curious about this method of food preservation.  It's a nice thought to imagine our first el cheapo dehydrator out there in the world, helping people learn a skill and preserve homegrown food.  I vastly prefer giving a not-so-great appliance away with full disclosure and a pay-it-forward agreement to trying to sell it to someone while concealing its many flaws.

Now I've got a very short breather before our next WWOOF volunteer shows up tomorrow.  Good to have the extra help; it certainly keeps me on my toes!

The Virtues of Winter

This is one of the hardest periods of the year for me.  I've had my winter break from gardening duties, and it was very welcome.  Now I'm a bit antsy and definitely missing all the summer vegetables.  There is still a week or two to go before the earliest seed starting can begin, though I'm pushing that boundary with some experimental cold frame plantings.  I've done a few germination tests to make sure that the seeds I put into our personal seed vault came through the year in viable condition.  All looks well there, so my seed orders this year will be fairly limited.  We have snow on the ground still from two separate storms, and six-ten inches of mixed sleet and snow predicted for the next 24 hours.  As I write, fat flakes are coming down at a decent clip.  I'm trying to see the upside in winter.  Here's what I've come up with.

I used our recent -1 F (-18 C) temperature to go around the windows of our home feeling for air leaks.  At that temperature you don't need any fancy instruments to find them.  Bare fingers will do the trick, trust me.  I'd brought in a tube of silicone caulking from the garage to warm up in the house.  Then I went over all the leaks I could find, sealing them up.  It made a noticeable (but not huge) improvement in our downstairs bathroom, which has two exterior walls, both of which are only passably insulated.  Upgrading the insulation in these walls is on the list, but the expense will not be insignificant, so the project is not near the top of that list.  But hey, a reduction of those thin drafts of icy cold is all to the good.

I've also got a tiny tip today.  I call it iceboxing - turning our refrigerator into an icebox.  It's easy to do at this time of year, provided there's a little extra room on the top shelf.  I use empty plastic juice and soda containers, given to me by relatives.  The large squarish ones with the rectangular handles are really nice for this purpose. Just fill them with tap water, put them outside and let them freeze solid overnight.  In the morning, I put them in the fridge and put two more filled bottles outside so as to have swaps available when the first two thaw out.  Two large chunks of ice keep the refrigerator's compressor from running much at all.  I don't unplug the machine because I still want the light in there, but it certainly cuts down on our electrical usage.  Easy, free, saves money.  Seems like an obvious win to me.

Winter is also the time of year I most like to knit, and cold hands certainly provide motivation.  I've made myself two more pairs of fingerless gloves.  I finally have some that fit snugly around my wrists, like the ones I made for my husband a few years back.  A pair of these gloves is a quick project that suits my short knitting attention span.  They can be made fast enough to give me a quick sense of accomplishment, and that helps keep me going on other fronts. 

The cold season is a tough sell, but I wouldn't give it up for anything.  I've lived in places without a real winter and always felt slightly cheated.  I grew up with four seasons, so snow and sub-freezing temperatures feel right to me.  Winter has its austere beauty too.  As a gardener, I know the value of the frost heave that loosens up our heavy soils, making them spongy and easier to work.  The glory of spring in this area is part and parcel with the severity of our winter.  Where I live spring explodes out of frozen winter: dramatic, lavish, electrifying.  Other places have springs that sort of saunter onto the scene, a nearly seamless transition from tepid winter, or maybe even just a rainy season.  Not our springs.  So as I look out the window at a world drained of color, it's well to remember this.  I know that in a few short months we'll feast on asparagus and enjoy the succession of breathtaking tree blossoms. Meanwhile I muse on hoop house designs and hope that this time next year will see us harvesting abundant greens as the snows come down.

Have you been making good on winter weather lately?  Do tell.

Tiny Tip: Chitting Seed Potatoes

Just for the record, few of the tiny tips I share on this blog are of my own invention, and even those have probably been figured out before by many others. I discovered this one in The River Cottage Cookbook, by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who I believe has become a hero of mine in the last month or so. Hugh has done just about everything I am doing, everything I would like to do, and much more besides, in pursuit of food sovereignty. And he did it all at least a few years ago.

One of his little tricks is to take seed potatoes and set them up in empty egg cartons for the chitting (or pre-sprouting) before planting. This makes a lot of sense. The stability provided by the egg carton will allow all the sprouts to grow straight up, giving each potential plant a head start. Sprouts are fragile and liable to break off if the potatoes are allowed to do their chitting in a bag. Not only do seed potatoes in a bag get jostled on the way to the garden, but retrieving each piece from the bag presents difficulties with long sprouts, as I know from past experience. Having them stabilized and out in the open simplifies things considerably.

Hugh goes so far as to remove all but two of the sprouts so as to concentrate the vigor of each plant. I probably won't be quite so meticulous. Each potato can be cut into several seed pieces, so long as each one has a sprout on it. If you want to chit your potatoes (not everyone does), they like plenty of air, a moderate amount of light and moderate indoor temperatures.

I've got two and a half pounds each of four different potato varieties to plant this year. I'm abandoning the fingerling La Ratte which we grew the past two years, even though the flavor is superb. We simply don't enjoy scrubbing so many tiny potatoes to prepare our meal. I'm also giving up the ever reliable Kennebec, though probably only for this year. In their places I'm giving space to the Carola, which rumor says will produce additional clusters of tubers higher along the main stem if the plant is well hilled during growth. And we're going back to the All Blue potato we grew two years ago. It was an easy to harvest spud, and we found we missed its cheery purple color over the winter months. We'll continue on for a third year of growing the silken, creamy-textured Sangre, and our 2009 new trial, the German Butterball, which became an instant favorite with my husband.

I'll post about this year's potato bucket experiment just before planting time in my area. Stay tuned.

Are you planting potatoes this year? What varieties? Any special techniques?

Tiny Tip: Painting Beehives Efficiently

Here's a tip I picked up at a beginner beekeeping seminar. It came in handy for me, and so I pass it on to any of you who are starting bees in Langstroth hives, and desirous of saving a little money by painting them yourselves.

Rig up a couple pieces of lumber between a pair of sawhorses.* "Thread" the hive boxes onto the lumber, and you can easily prime and paint all four sides the boxes. Just rotate the boxes around the wooden support as you cover each side. Good air circulation helps the drying too, so that you can work as quickly as possible. I got two coats of primer and two coats of paint done in an afternoon using this method. Most of the painting is now done, though I'm waiting on replacement for some boxes that were damaged in shipping.

Next up on my list of beekeeping tasks is putting starter strips on each frame, then painting them in place with wax, which I hope will make the suggestion to the ladies: "draw your comb here, please." Once again, the Backwards Beekeepers have a tutorial. It explains both the how and why.




When the starter strips are done I need to think about where the hives will be situated, get that area ready, and figure out what the hives will rest on. I will probably need to build stands for them. Will keep you posted.

* I made those saw horses with scrap wood pulled from dumpsters on home construction sites.

Tiny Tip: Test Your Pressure Canner

Did you know that if you live in the US and use a pressure canner, you can probably have the accuracy of the pressure gauge tested for free? Neither did I until I read Sharon Astyk's latest work, Independence Days: A Guide to Sustainable Food Storage & Preservation. Like her earlier works, this one is excellent and contains tons of useful information for those who preserve their own foods. That's how I found out there's another way I can make good use of the state taxes we pay. The Cooperative Extension offices in most counties of the US will have someone on staff with the equipment and know-how to test a pressure canner. And they'll do this for you for free.

I got my pressure canners for free through craigslist, and they are obviously old and well used. Though I replaced some of the rubber parts that came with the canners, I had no way of testing how accurate the pressure gauges were for myself. Having now had them tested, I know that both of them read a little high around the 10 and 15 pound mark. That means I've been canning my foods at pressures that are slightly lower than recommended.

The woman who tested the canner gauges for me said that if I followed all other canning instructions to the T, I'm probably fine eating those foods. My gauges were only off by one half to one pound. (I know that with almost every canning batch I've had trouble not overshooting the recommended pressure at some point during the canning process anyway.) She said it's fine to keep using the pressure canners so long as I correct for the slightly faulty readings on my gauges.

It's good to know this about my pressure canners. If you use a pressure canner to store food for your family, I recommend you take advantage of this free testing service. After all, there's no point in preserving your own food if you can't be confident you can do so safely. With the gardening season mostly done for the year, this would be a good time have the testing done. Just so you know, you probably only need to take the lid to the Extension office, not the entire canner. But check with the person who does the testing to make sure.

More tiny tips.

Fall Compost Trick

We live where green lawns are not capital crimes against nature. Rainfall can be relied upon year-round, at least in "normal" years. If you can say the same for your area, and you have lawn plus deciduous trees on your property or nearby, then I have a composting trick to recommend to you. Sadly, it may be too late for you to use it this year. If so, apologies, but keep it in mind for next year.

In late summer or early fall, stop mowing your grass. Let it grow out for at least three weeks, (preferably more) before the autumn leaves start falling. The grass probably won't grow rampantly in this late season. Let all or most of your leaves fall on the long grass. Don't rake them. Wait for a day when the leaves are as dry as possible, at least a few days after any rainfall. Cut the lawn using a lawnmower with a bag, running right over the fallen leaves so that they get chopped up, mixed with grass and saved in the bag. Dump this mixture in your garden, compost bin, or anywhere you'd like a new bed for the spring.

I've always been a lazy composter, and this tendency only got worse after we got hens and a worm bin, which took care of more than half the material that would otherwise be composted. So I've never fussed over the temperature of my compost pile, nor bothered with watering and turning the pile. Compost chez nous happens in its own time, which is to say, very slowly.

But the neat thing about the fall leaves and grass trick is not that it saves a good deal of leaf raking. No, the coolest thing is that dried leaves (carbon, or "brown" matter) and green grass (nitrogen, or "green" matter) are pretty close to the perfect combination of materials needed to make your compost pile decompose rather quickly. A pile of leaves alone will hardly decompose at all over a year's time. (Ask me how I know this some time.) The shredding action of the lawnmower blade helps break down some of the leaves, at least, into smaller pieces, further speeding decomposition. This mixture is ideal for the compost layer in a new bed that you plan to lasagna mulch (aka sheet mulch).

We keep a portion of our property in lawn for the benefit of our laying hens. All through the summer we cut that lawn without bagging the clippings. They sit on the ground to replenish the soil. But the manure from our chickens is also enriching the lawn month after month. A once-per-year harvest of that high-nitrogen content grass in the interest of the garden proper seems a good practice to me. While I'm sure that some of the nitrogen from the hens' manure can make its way from the grassy surround of the garden into the garden soil itself, it doesn't hurt to facilitate that transfer once in a while either.

We have only a very small bag on our push mower, so this is a tiring and time consuming task at a busy time of year. Even when I dump the contents into the wheelbarrow to make fewer trips, the wheelbarrow fills up very quickly. In all honesty, if I remember it in time, I may look to barter next year for a one-time lawn cutting with someone who owns a large mower with a bag, preferably one of those fancy mowers that practically pulverizes the clippings. However it gets done, adding all that organic matter to our garden is worth it.

Today I made the third of such piles in our garden. I stuck my hand into the middle of the one I made two days ago. It was too hot to comfortably leave my hand in there very long!

Tiny Tip: More Sunlight in Your Garden

Okay, this is an old familiar gardening trick. But as with all old familiar things, it's bound to be new to someone. Sunlight, water, and good soil are the fundamentals of growing productive and healthy plants. A few people are blessed with just the right amount of all of these. Others have to struggle a bit to get enough or to moderate an abundance of one or the other. If you're trying to grow in an area that gets less sun than is ideal, here's an easy partial fix.

Take those automobile sunshades that were all the rage a few years back, and put them at the end of your garden that faces the sun. This will reflect whatever light you do get back to your garden, so the plants have two chances to make use of any sunlight that comes their way. If you're in the northern hemisphere, position the screen at the north end of your garden, with the reflector facing south. In the southern hemisphere, put it at the south end of your garden, facing north.

These things were turning up at yardsales for next to nothing for a while there. Not sure if they are anymore. If you can't turn one up for a few cents, you could always make your own reflector with aluminum foil and a few pieces of cardboard. Be sure to leave the shinier side of the foil facing out if you do so. And if you happen to have any large unwanted mirrors hanging out in the garage, those would work best of all. Tomato plants, incidentally, love these things. I suspect tomatoes would actually be happiest growing in a tanning bed that was turned on 24/7.

Got any oldie but goodie garden tips? Share them in the comments, please!

Tiny Tip: Parboil Your Pasta

I've been trying out an energy saving cooking technique lately, and it's been working great for us. It consists of boiling our dried pasta for only a fraction of the recommended cooking time, and then turning off the heat and letting the pasta "coast" to doneness. It works well when I bring the water back to a boil after the pasta is added and give it a few good stirs to make sure the noodles won't stick to each other. This takes just about three minutes and then the burner is turned off. I find that the noodles generally need one more minute to cook than they would if the pot were kept boiling.

For instance, last night I made a batch of my pumpkin-sage pasta (with dehydrated pumpkin from last year's garden). I brought the water to a boil, added the fusilli, stirred well, and set the timer for three minutes. Just before those three minutes were up, I gave everything another good stir while it was boiling. At three minutes I killed the gas, and covered the pot with a towel. The package said the pasta needed nine minutes of cooking time altogether, so I set the timer for seven additional minutes of coasting. The pasta came out perfectly cooked to our taste.

I'm pretty sure I heard of this cooking method from several different sources before I tried it. The English have a dish called "crimped shrimp" in which shrimp are added to hot liquid and then the pot is covered and removed from the heat. I believe the method is specifically mentioned for pasta in the highly enjoyable Depression Cooking with Clara series. If you haven't seen any of the episodes with this 93-year-old home cook yet, it's well worth checking out for some seriously frugal cooking suggestions. There are probably other dishes that could cook by coasting too.

I'm not sure how much of the total energy is saved by this method, but I would guess it's somewhere in the neighborhood of one-quarter. Obviously, the most energy is used to get the water up to boiling in the first place. Keeping it boiling after adding the pasta is probably relatively cheap. Still, this technique saves me six minutes of running the burner, so that's something. It's also less likely that the pot will boil over, which means less cleanup. And it only takes one additional minute to cook everything. This is an especially useful trick now that the weather is warming up and the house is hot in the evenings. Less heat added to the house in the process of cooking dinner. Try it and see what you think!


More tiny tips: More Sunlight in Your Garden, Repurpose Your Credit Card, Make the Most of Old Man Winter, Broccoli Stalk, Scallions

Tiny Tip: Repurpose Your Credit Card

I thought it would be appropriate to mention this tiny tip this month, since February's Alternative Action Item is to bake bread. And many people out there are getting rid of credit cards or having the accounts close on them. That little piece of plastic may have been the bane of your existence, a temptation as potent as a drug, that has gotten you into a financial mess. It's a good thing to retire a credit card or two. But that doesn't mean the card itself is worthless to you. It need not end up in a landfill.

Instead, you can repurpose that stiff little piece of plastic into a baking tool. Bakers often need something to scrape dough off a wooden work surface, or off the inside of a container. The tool is called, appropriately enough, a dough scraper. Baker's supply catalogs will sell you specially made ones with extra features for $10. But really, all that's needed is a stiff, but somewhat flexible piece of plastic, curved on one side and straight on the other. The ones you can buy are bigger than a credit card, but there's no reason you can't work with a smaller version that fits neatly in your hand. And because you can make as many as you want from old membership cards and credit cards, it's possible to have a very large supply of them for baking day. An ordinary but sharp pair of scissors is all that's needed to make these hacked scrapers.

Using a homemade dough scraper made from retired spending enablers to bake your own bread is a great way to triple up your savings while increasing your self-sufficiency. It's a nice feeling to know that I can be a proficient baker without needing to spend money on specialized equipment. And it's feels good to keep another piece of plastic out of the landfill too.

Got any other tool hacks or repurposing stories you'd like to share?

More tiny tips: More Sunlight in Your Garden, Parboil Your Pasta, Make the Most of Old Man Winter, Broccoli Stalk, Scallions

Tiny Tip: Make the Most of Old Man Winter

Winter is a tough time for frugalites. We're cooped up inside a lot. We pay to warm our houses and there's not much opportunity for most of us to garden or take advantage of other outdoor money-saving activities. Still, there are a few ways we can take advantage of winter's chill.

My first suggestion has to do with your freezer, particularly if you have a chest freezer. I've already posted about winter being a good time to defrost your freezer, since your frozen food is less likely to thaw while you tackle the defrosting. But here's another suggestion. If you're like us, your freezer stores are probably dwindling about now, as you eat through food produced during the warm months. That means extra room in your freezer. If you leave those empty spaces, your freezer will end up working a little harder to cool itself after every time you open it. Why not fill the space with free ice?

Containers of ice can take up the extra space in your freezer to act as cold storage. And while the temperatures are below freezing, you can produce ice essentially for free. Just fill some empty plastic bottles or jugs with water, leaving a decent gap at the top for the water to expand as it freezes. Put the bottles outside in freezing weather, with the caps off or only on loosely. When the water freezes, put the bottles in your chest freezer or kitchen freezer.

Over the summer, as you need the space in your freezer for storing more food, just remove the bottles to make room. If you move them into your refrigerator, that appliance will need less electricity to keep the food in there cool for a few days. Set the bottles of ice on the top shelf for most effective cooling of the entire compartment. The frozen bottles can also be used in coolers to keep food chilled for a picnic. Set the bottles aside to be refrozen and re-used come winter.

My second suggestion runs along very similar lines. When you make a nice hearty, warming dinner for yourself, use the cold outdoors to chill the leftovers before you put them in the fridge. Since the outdoors is frequently colder than a refrigerator in winter, this will cool your food faster, ensuring better food safety. It will also prevent your refrigerator from heating up and having to work harder, and the food in the fridge from warming up and spoiling more quickly. Be sure you cover your food well before chilling it outside. And exercise caution if your leftover food will tempt wild animals into undesirable behaviors.

These tiny tips will save you small amounts of electricity. Every little bit helps, especially in this economy!

More tiny tips: More Sunlight in Your Garden, Parboil Your Pasta, Repurpose Your Credit Card, Broccoli Stalk, Scallions

Tiny Tips: Broccoli Stalks

For the Christmas dinner we hosted for family, we finally gave in and bought a few vegetables at the grocery store. By and large, we had been subsisting on vegetables from our own garden that we either canned, froze or left to overwinter in the beds. But something fresh and green, other than our own leeks, seemed reasonable for Christmas dinner. So I bought a large head of organic broccoli.

Broccoli was one of our favorite vegetables before we began growing Tuscan kale. We haven't missed it at all since this kale became a staple of our diet. But undeniably, broccoli has its virtues too. One thing that few people realize about broccoli is that the stalk is also edible, or at least the core of the stalk is. The tough green skin covering the stalk will cause gas, but it's easy enough to peel.

Broccoli stalk is less flavorful than the florets, and its nutritional profile is slightly different, being notably higher in calcium and Vitamin C, but lower in other key nutrients. It has a nice, slightly watery crunch that's good in a stir-fry. I think it resembles a water chestnut more than anything else. It can be added in with the florets in pretty much any recipe that calls for them. I've also seen the stalk cut into neat batons and pickled. If pickled, the stalk will provide a healthy dose of fiber, but not much in the way of nutrition. In any case, broccoli stalk should be considered edible and not wasted. You should be able to get at least one extra serving of vegetable by including the stalk.


You can peel the stalk using a vegetable peeler. But I find it faster to pare it with a chef's knife. After removing the florets, trim the bottom and stand the stalk upright on your cutting board. Beginning in the middle of the stalk, cut downwards to remove the skin, cutting in just deeply enough to remove the outer and inner layers of peel. When the lower half is completely peeled, turn it upside down and peel the top half in the same way. The edible center will taper significantly at the end where the florets formed.


I'm particularly fond of broccoli stalk in a traditional Italian dish from the region of Puglia. Orecchiette con broccoletti is a dish of "little ears" pasta dressed with a garlicky olive oil-based sauce, and anchovies, hot pepper flakes, and broccoli rabe. It works fine with regular broccoli too, and I've prepared it several times for people who claim not to like anchovies. No one has ever complained. When cut up into small pieces, the stalk complements the dish nicely, falling into the bowl-shaped pasta pieces. And it fits in perfectly with the Italian abhorrence of waste in the kitchen.

But this time I used the broccoli stalk in a simple dish of stir-fried rice.


Broccoli leaves are highly edible and absolutely delicious when small (under 6" long). I once frequented a farmer's market where one vendor sold the baby broccoli leaves as cooking greens. They were highly addictive.

Do not save broccoli stalk or any other member of the cabbage family for use in making stock. The sulferous cabbage family becomes notoriously fartacious when cooked too long. Most other vegetable trimmings and peelings are good for making stock. Compost any non-edible parts of broccoli and its relatives.

More tiny tips: More Sunlight in Your Garden, Parboil Your Pasta, Repurpose Your Credit Card, Make the Most of Old Man Winter, Scallions

Tiny Tip: Scallions

It's a rainy day, and I've been slaving away over 16 batches of bread lined up to bake today. Since I'm hanging out so much in the kitchen, and since the flour will pretty much cover half the horizontal surfaces of the kitchen anyway, I've got a little treat lined up for between oven loadings and unloadings. But first I'm going to write a little on the primary ingredient of said treat: scallions.

I didn't grow any onions this year, so the various forms of onions are among the few items I've been buying from the store all along. Scallions are some of my favorite cooking ingredients, though they are quite pricey as produce goes. So I thought I would share a few tips concerning them.

Storage: I think most readers will have heard the tip about wrapping the bunch of scallions in a paper towel and then wetting it down before storing in a plastic bag in the fridge. This is a good tip, provided that the paper towel isn't soaking wet. Damp but not drenched will do better by the scallions. This will let the scallions keep for about three days in the produce bin, but they deteriorate rapidly no matter what you do. Have a specific plan to use them up before you buy scallions, or pull them from your garden.

Black belt frugality move: When you're ready to use up the last of the scallions, there's no need to throw away the paper towel. It never really got dirty, right? Hang it up to dry somewhere and later on you can use it to wipe up a spill.

Using them up: Lots of recipes call for either the white part or the green part of the scallion. And plenty of other recipes use whole scallions, but not an entire bunch. So what to do with the extras? There are lots of good things to do with them. The green parts make excellent garnishes for many dishes, especially those with eggs or potatoes. One of my favorite things to do with leftover scallion whites is to trim off the roots, cut the whites in half lengthwise, and then turn them into a gourmet salad ingredient. I separate the long layers of the whites and toss them in a skillet with a little bit of cooking oil. Over very low heat, I let them slowly caramelize until they are well browned and have transformed into crispy, oniony decadence. Put these in a green salad and watch as people fight to get more than their fair share in their salad serving!

So here's where the treat comes into play: scallion pancakes!

There are lots of versions of scallion pancakes. Some are leavened, some have egg, some are flat and greasy. The version I make is the flat and greasy type, and I gild the lily by loading them up with ginger and garlic as well. Here's what I do.

Start with a quantity of all purpose flour. I usually use 1 1/2 cups. Measure out however much flour you want to use and place it in a bowl with a generous pinch of salt. Add half a measure of boiling water. So, in my case, I add 3/4 cup boiling water. Stir the flour and water around with a spoon. Avoid the temptation to start working the dough with your hands as you will probably burn yourself. The dough will look odd and lumpy and rough and uneven. That's okay, just make sure all the flour is absorbed into the dough. Take the dough out of the bowl, pour in a small dollop of cooking oil, and put the dough back in the bowl. Turn the dough to coat it with oil on all sides. Cover the bowl with a plastic bag or plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2-24 hours.

Take the chilled dough out of the refrigerator. Finely slice a quantity of scallion greens. Mince a large clove of garlic very fine, and peel a 1" cube of ginger. Mince or grate the ginger cube. (The America's Test Kitchen has found that grating releases more flavor than mincing from an equal quantity of ginger.) Set each of these ingredients aside in separate containers.


Dust a board or countertop generously with flour. Roll out the dough to form a large circle, between 1/8" and 1/4" thick. Brush the dough lightly with cooking oil so that the entire surface is coated. Scatter in turn the minced garlic, the ginger, and the sliced scallions evenly over the surface of the dough.

Starting at the edge of the dough nearest to you, roll the dough and the seasoning ingredients up like a jelly roll. Then, beginning at one end of the log, roll it up like a spiral snail shell. Put this package back in the oiled bowl, turning it again to coat on all sides. Refrigerate the dough again for at least 1 hour.


Dust the board generously with flour again. Take out the dough and knead it gently for a few minutes, to distribute the ingredients and obliterate the layers. Form a roughly cylindrical log, about 2" in diameter, with the dough and let it rest for 5 minutes. Cut off a coin-shaped slice of the log and roll this out in a thin pancake, about 4"-5" in diameter.

Pan fry the pancake in cooking oil in a well seasoned skillet over medium to medium-high heat. Allow about 2 minutes per side. If the pancake domes up with steam underneath, poke a hole in the middle to let it escape so that the whole pancake cooks, rather than just the edges. Drain on pages torn from an old phone book. If you like your snacks very salty shake some salt on the pancake just as it comes from the pan, or if you prefer, dip in soy sauce. Serve whole or cut into wedges.


These are absolutely irresistible! One batch will make quite a few pancakes. The dough will keep in the fridge for two days. After that it begins to discolor, though there's nothing spoiled about it at that point. Better to keep any dough you don't plan to use up in the freezer though. You can cut it into chunks for quicker freezing if you plan to only make a few at a time. That makes this recipe a good way of salvaging food that would otherwise go to waste.

More tiny tips: More Sunlight in Your Garden, Parboil Your Pasta, Repurpose Your Credit Card, Make the Most of Old Man Winter, Broccoli Stalk,

Kill the Catalogs

Today's frugal tip is a simple one: get yourself off those catalog mailing lists! Do it for any or all of these reasons:

• You don't need anything they're selling. Really.
• Reduce your garbage bill/need to recycle/landfill contributions
• Lower your level of covetousness
• Prevent impulse spending
• Conserve natural resources
  

Frugality is easier when there are fewer temptations. And guess what? If you never see the stuff in those catalogs, you'll never talk yourself into buying any of it. And you won't miss any of it either. What the eye doesn't see, the heart never mourns.

Did you know that 60 million trees are cut down annually in the US just to create the junk mail catalogs that inundate our mailboxes? Scandalous! And that says nothing about the oil that is wasted moving that timber, that paper, and the finished catalogs around until they wind up in said landfill.

So tackle that pile of unwanted and wasteful catalogs a little bit at a time. Call a few each evening for a week. And here's a few tips. Once you get a representative on the line, be sure to ask if they maintain the mailing list for any other catalogs, other than the one you're calling about. If so, ask them to remove you from all the distribution lists they service. You'll save a call. And speaking of saving calls, don't keep calling back if you get the same catalogs two weeks after your initial call. Give it three months between fits of anti-marketing opt-out calling. It takes a while for you to be dropped from some mailing lists. So don't duplicate your efforts unless it's really necessary.

Stop Wasting That Heat!

I posted last week on ways to keep yourself warm in cool temperatures. Today I want to talk about ways of warming the house without cranking up the heat. There are lots of little things that generate heat around our homes. Frugality dictates that we capture these incidental and free sources of heat, so as to reduce expenses, and conserve the heat we generate where we will get the most benefit from it.

I've divided these tips into short-term and long-term situations. The short-term tips can be used by renters or homeowners, with little to no financial outlay. The long-term tips will be of more interest to those who own a home and are likely to remain in it for several years at least.

Short-term options

Hot water This will fall into the category of tiny tips for most people. All the more so if you have a very large home. Both heat and moisture are welcome additions to many homes in cold weather. When you heat water for any reason, think twice before you dump it straight down your drain, effectively throwing away good heat. Whether you're boiling water for pasta or some other food, consider letting that hot water cool to room temperature before discarding it. This may take a little creativity when it comes to getting pasta out of a pot of boiling water, but some chefs actually recommend using a pasta spoon, tongs, or a hand-held strainer to do just that. It's a little easier to scoop out boiled potatoes or eggs. I usually dump the water I use to preheat my tea mug into any dish that needs washing or soaking. The same goes for baths. If you indulge in a bath during cold weather, let the bath water sit in the tub to gently heat and humidify the air. Hot water is stored heat, and you've paid for that heat. So you might as well get the maximum benefit out of it. Remember to have faith in the little things.

The oven Winter is a great time for baking. There are several good ways to optimize the use of the oven. First, bake a lot at one time. Overloading your oven is not a good idea, because it can affect the way in which things bake and the time it takes to bake them. But you can fire up the oven once and then bake a couple of dishes together and/or several items sequentially. This takes some planning, as you need to get things ready to go in the oven one after another.

Potatoes are also good to add to the oven when it's hot, because they don't take up much space. So sneaking in a few at a time won't throw off the other items in the oven. They also aren't too picky about what temperature they're cooked at. They can be stored in the fridge for a few days before you use them, and they make great hash browns or soup.

When you're done using the oven, open it up so the hot air comes into the room. Most ovens are backed up to a wall, often an external wall. No sense letting some of the heat slowly leak outside that way. And if your oven door will stay slightly cracked, you can drape any damp kitchen towels on the inner part of the door. Drying your hands with a warmed towel is luxurious in winter.

The dishwasher Even if you aren't using the heated drying cycle, there's a lot of heat in a dishwasher when it finishes cleaning. The dishes themselves are quite hot, and obviously they're damp too. So I try to catch the end of the wash cycle so that I can open up the machine and let the humidity and heat into the kitchen. Otherwise, the heat seeps into the under-counter cabinets on either side of the dishwasher. I'd rather warm those parts of the kitchen I walk around in.

Partitioning your home and the heat If you're able to heat just part of your home at a time, there are several things you can do to conserve the heat you're paying for. Closing off extra rooms that aren't much used is the first, obvious step. If the rooms have doors, close them. If there's no door, hang a blanket or a sheet in the doorway. If you have a door to the attic, check for air leaks around the door. Remember that heat rises, so the air you've paid to heat is trying to get up into your attic and escape. You might want to hang a sheet or a curtain over such a door for the winter months. If there's a whole section of your home that's not used much in winter, think about what you might do to isolate it from the part of your home you use on a daily basis. The old towel at the bottom of the door trick isn't an aesthetic wonder, but it works. If you don't have the money or motivation to get a better sealing door, you can at least work on keeping the cold air in the cold room, and the warm air in the warm room.

A caveat: Don't go overboard with this idea. You want to maintain a safety margin with a temperature of at least 45F in any any room with water pipes in the walls. One burst water pipe could cost you much more than you could possibly save by trimming your heating bill. Also, I haven't been able to find a reliable source for this claim, but conventional wisdom says that paint on walls can crack and flake if temperatures fall too low. I don't know if this is an old wives' tale, or whether newer paints have eliminated this problem. Readers? Any definite information on this issue?

Wall outlets When you've dealt with the major heat leaks around your home, it's time to consider the minor ones. Take a screw driver and remove the face plate from a few light switches and electrical outlets on external walls of your home. What do you see under there? If you live in a cold climate, you should see an insulating foam pad that fits neatly under the face plate, without obstructing the outlet or the switch itself. If you don't see one, you're looking at a small but steady heat leak. Fortunately, these pads are sold very cheaply at hardware stores. If you plan to be in your current home for even one more winter, you'll probably break even on the cost of adding these to your outlets and switches. Count up the number of each on your external walls, and head to the hardware store to buy as many as you need. It'll take you probably no more than an hour to install the pads, and your savings begin immediately.

Solar energy You don't need an expensive PV panel to use solar energy. Sunlight is free warmth. Any windows with good exposure to sunlight during the winter months should be clean and uncovered. All others should have curtains that help keep the heat in and the cold out. If some of your windows get sunlight for only a few hours each day, then open the curtains during those hours and close them as soon as the sunlight has shifted away from them.

I have heard of people taking the passive solar energy thing further. Dark colored bricks will soak up the heat if they get hours of sunlight each day, and release that heat slowly when it gets dark. If you happen to have some dark bricks, they can be placed on sunny window sills or even on the floor if it's sunny enough. You might want to protect your flooring with a piece of cardboard if you wish to try this.

Long-term options
If you own your home and don't plan to resell it soon, consider the return on investment for some of these options. Remember that return on investment can come in the form of savings to you, or in a higher value for your home if you plan to sell eventually.

Insulation Almost every house could use more of it, especially older homes. Yes, it'll cost you some money, some hassle, and possibly create a mess. But insulation is the single best return on investment when it comes to conserving heat. Find out how much insulation you have in your attic, roof and walls. Consider adding at least as much as required to meet the Department of Energy recommendations on insulation and R-values.

Better windows After the attic and roof, windows are the biggest heat leaks in the average home, and they're expensive to replace. As fuel prices rise, however, window replacement becomes a more and more attractive option to conserve heat and money. If replacing windows would put a strain on your budget, then prioritize the windows in those rooms where you spend the most time during the day. If you're building a new home, or even an addition to your existing home, buy the best insulated windows you can afford. The return on your investment will be substantial over the life of the building.

Trees can help shade a house, or screen it from strong prevailing winds. Deciduous trees (those that lose their leaves in winter) are a good choice for planting relatively close to a house to shade it during the hot months. When the leaves are shed in the winter such a tree will shade the house very little. On the other hand, evergreen trees shouldn't be planted close to a house unless you live where it is hot all year. They provide shade all the time, whether you want it or not. But they can serve as excellent windscreens if you have strong winds during winter. Plant staggered rows of fir or pine trees far enough from the house so that they will not shade the house even when full grown. Traditionally, mature trees have raised property values. Given the current slump in real estate prices, this may now be less reliable. But in any case, a healthy, mature shade tree will certainly not hurt the value of any property.


Please add your heat conservation tips in the comments!


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