The Upside of Down, & Longterm Plan Musings

Well, things do not look at all encouraging in the markets or the economy as a whole. The one silver lining that I can find right now is that the price of oil has dropped to around $96 a barrel as I write this. How quickly we rejigger our ideas about "good" oil prices! Like many people in the northeastern US, we heat our home with oil. So right now feels like a "good" time to top off our fuel supply for the winter.

We're equipped with only one smallish oil tank, giving us just a 275 gallon capacity. Right now our one tank is at 3/8 full. Our delivery service hits us with an extra delivery charge if we don't have at least 175 gallons delivered. In other words, we have to get down to about 1/4 of a tank before we can dodge that extra fee, which of course we want to do. They never completely top off the tank when they deliver. I guess they don't want to risk overfilling and causing a spill. Even if we start the winter with a full tank, we'll almost certainly need another delivery to get us through 'til spring. Of course, I pull out the stops as far as frugal tricks go to save money on heating expenses (on which, more to come soon). All the same, at today's prices we're looking at a cost of at least $1200 to make it through the winter. Ouch.

Our backup heating system is a propane fireplace insert in the new addition of our home. It would do for us in a power loss of short duration, say five days at the outside. Our stovetop runs on propane from the same tank, so we can cook and heat part of our house at least for a little while without electricity. We're very close to a major hospital, and I'm pretty sure we're on the same electrical grid, because we've never lost power for more than a few seconds, when others not all that far away have gone without for several hours. So chances are that things would have to be very bad before we would go without electricity for any significant length of time. Still, our propane supply is in small tanks we have to refill ourselves, and propane is a fossil fuel, which means it too will be problematic in the years ahead.

Even if we get a "deal" on our heating fuel oil this month, I look ahead and know with certainty that we need to find some other way to keep ourselves warm through the many winters to come. Our home is not well situated for an outdoor wood furnace; the neighbor's houses are too close in most directions to easily meet code with one of these. We could put in an indoor wood stove, but we have no significant supply of our own wood. So that would mean buying wood, which I expect to go up in price through the years. And then we'd have the mess of an indoor fire. Regionally, we're in a marginal area for solar power, especially in winter, and our micro-region isn't all that great for wind either.


Given all these imperfect solutions, I'm thinking about the outdoor furnace for the long term. I've seen one of these at work in the home of an acquaintance, and they seem quite manageable for our current lifestyle of two healthy, reasonably active, youngish adults, with at least one person home most of the day. Getting one would involve some retrofitting of the house, which I know would not be cheap. In fact, I'm sure it would be downright expensive. And it would lock us in to buying our fuel no less than we need to buy oil. Perhaps most worrisome is that the furnace still needs some electricity to pump heated water to and from the house. In the very long view, I can imagine a world where that's a problem. But at least it offers the prospect of clean heat (both in terms of pollution and indoor mess) and a renewable fuel source. We could work on generating a little electricity with solar power, and sourcing cheap or free firewood too, though I imagine through the years that market will become much tighter. Another downside is that I'll never be able to cook on an outdoor furnace.

There just aren't any perfect options for us. Long term we'd like to build a home on our land. The plan is to build a masonry heater into the core of our home, as the house goes up. The advantages are several. Masonry heaters are incredibly clean and efficient, they can be built to include a cookstove, they don't need any electricity to run, and our land is very well situated to take advantage of plentiful hardwood to burn. Alas, we aren't in that house yet. And truthfully, with the way things are going, I'm not confident we ever will be in that house. But we can hope and plan.

What are your plans for your longterm energy needs?

Fall Gleaning

I'm really getting into this whole feed ourselves on the cheap thing. Last year we pressed cider from our own apples with a group of three other apple tree owners. It was a blast. This year our tree is bearing, but not quite as well as last year it seems. And at least one of the participants from last year is reporting that their tree is bearing very little this year - not enough to press for cider.


Some relatives of mine, however, told me that their neighbors have apple and pear trees from which they do not collect the fruit, and that the neighbors say the fruit is up for grabs. I stopped by their place yesterday morning with just a little time to spare before I had to start a full baking day. Ambitiously, I'd brought a 5-gallon bucket, but I wasn't even able to fill that much. I'll need to return with a ladder to get to the bulk of the apples, which are very high up. Still, I got about 4.5 pounds of apples and - even better - 3.5 pounds of bosc pears for about 10 minutes of "work." That was all I could easily reach with a small stepstool. It boggles my mind that the neighbors don't want these fruits. I suppose it's all to my benefit, and it's nice that they don't spray their trees.

It's true that the fruits have bruises and worm holes and even some pecks from birds. The fruit will need to be washed and the spoiled parts cut out. I guess I'm just not that fussy when it comes to free, local, unsprayed food. It makes me sad to think how many people would spurn this food just because it's not "perfect." Americans have a curiously inverted squeamishness about the food they eat. Apples with sooty mold (which is harmless and washes off easily) or worm holes are to be rejected. But meat from factory farms (sick, stressed animals in literally shitty environments) and high speed meat packing plants (dangerous, unhygienic conditions) is A-okay. I doubt I'll save these until we gather our own apples, which won't come in for at least another three weeks. Guess I'll have to figure out something yummy to make with them. I've had French apple gallette on the brain for a while. We'll see...

The apples from the top of that neighbor's tree will nicely supplement the crop from our one old apple tree. My relatives also have an old hickory tree. If I find the time I'll go poke around and see if the squirrels have overlooked any of the nuts. I might see if a post on craigslist will turn up more conveniently located gleaning opportunities. Can't hurt to ask.

I didn't really intend for this to be a frugal food blog. But I suppose, given my nearly pathological obsession with food, it shouldn't surprise me that it's going that way. I will try to work in a few posts that aren't directly related to eating, even though that's nearly always what's on my mind. It's about 6:30 in the morning as I write this and I'm acutely aware that I haven't yet decided what to have for dinner. Having so much food in a chest freezer does that to me. (I need lead time for thawing.)

Have a great weekend!

Salvaged Food = Chocolate Cake

I took two short trips away from home this month. When I got home from the second one on Monday, I found that the better part of half a gallon of milk was right on the edge of drinkability. It was starting to go sour. It's important to remember that just because old milk tastes off, it's not dangerous - so long as we're talking about pasteurized milk. My milk was pasteurized, and it had been in the fridge for a few weeks. There's nothing in pasteurized milk that has soured which can make you sick. It's a great ingredient to cook with.

Aside from the milk, I've had the last two oversized zucchini from the garden sitting in my kitchen for about a month now. They're sufficiently large that they stabilized enough to behave like winter squash, meaning that they won't rot anytime too soon. But they're also tender enough that there's no reason the flesh couldn't be used for baking. I think you see where this is going, right?

I'd heard about chocolate zucchini cake before, and I recently stumbled upon a recipe for chocolate buttermilk cake. Being the foolhardy baker that I am, I saw no reason not to combine and substitute as my supplies indicated. So I whipped up two chocolate cakes in tube pans on Tuesday night. And boy did they turn out well. Here's what I did.

Chocolate-Zucchini-Sour Milk Cake

Ingredients

2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa, plus extra for dusting
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups sour milk (or buttermilk)
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups sugar
6 oz. (1 1/2 sticks, or 3/4 cup) butter or shortening, at room temperature.
3 eggs
2-3 cups shredded zucchini

Method

Grease two 9" cake pans or one tube pan and dust with unsweetened cocoa. Arrange a rack in the middle of your oven and preheat it to 350 degrees F.

Combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl. Whisk together the sour milk and the vanilla extract in a small bowl. In yet another large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter, then beat the mixture for 3 minutes at high speed until it is light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl after each addition. Add the two other mixtures into the butter mixture alternately and in stages, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients and blending well between each addition. Mix in the shredded zucchini by hand.

Pour the batter into the cake pans or tube pan and bake for 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out mostly clean, with a few moist crumbs clinging to it. The tube pan will require at least 55 minutes of baking. Cool the cake or cakes for ten minutes in their pans. Remove them from the pans and cool on racks for at least one hour for cakes or two hours for the tube cake. Dust with powdered sugar or frost as desired. The cakes can be wrapped with plastic wrap when thoroughly cooled and frozen for up to three months.




I like this recipe because it feels like I made something yummy and even mildly healthy out of materials that might otherwise have been thrown away. The sourness of the milk vanished into the moist luxury of this cake. If anything it just contributed a slight tang to the overall flavor. I'm not partial to frosting, so I just enjoyed the cake as is. It did suggest to me that it would really go nicely with a scoop of vanilla ice cream though. I put in only two cups of zucchini in my recipe, and I couldn't even detect the zucchini in the cake. I will definitely increase it to 3 cups per batch next time. This is a sneaky way of using up this notoriously prolific vegetable, and also of getting finicky eaters to consume a little vegetable. My guess is they'd never even notice if you didn't say anything.

I still have some more sour milk that needs to be used up. I'm reminded of the blini that I enjoyed in people's homes in Russia. Over there they deliberately let the milk go sour so that they can use it in the blini recipe. Then they eat them with berries and honey or smetana, a heavy product similar to creme fraiche. I'm going to find a blini recipe soon and then see how well they freeze!

Related post:
Sour Milk Potato Biscuit-Muffins

Gardening Notes

This has been our second year gardening in our new home. I'm still figuring out what will work here and what won't. This year we cleared and planted the largest garden bed I have ever worked. And consequently, we've eaten much more homegrown produce than we ever have before. Some things have worked out great, and others not so much. Mostly this is due to my own mistakes, inexperience, and inattention. I overstocked the garden with too many plants; I didn't know exactly how many hours of sunlight each part of our new garden bed would get; and I definitely didn't do enough proactive weed control.

I keep telling myself that I need to sit down and make some garden records so that I'll have them handy in mid-winter when it's time to plan next year's garden. But summer is such a busy time for a gardener in my part of the world that I keep putting it off with the best of intentions. So I'll take a stab at outlining some notes right here:

Onions. We need to plant them next year. A lot of them. Onions are one of the very few fresh foods we're still buying from the farmers' market and the grocery store. We use them constantly in our cooking. I need them to prepare my tomato sauce for canning. If we had our own supply, I'm not sure we'd go to the store more than once a month. I've resisted onions until now because I've had mysteriously poor results with root crops. Everyone tells me they're easy to grow. It just seems like I have no natural affinity for things that grow under the earth. I need to work on that.

Tomatoes. I overplanted this year. Our tomato plants were like overgrown, surly teenagers with in-your-face attitudes. They're obstructionist. They took over the neighborhoods of other plants, and they didn't take the hint from all the pruning I've done. Next year, I really need to rein it in on the number I plant. I'm going to say 4-5 paste tomatoes for sauce; 4-5 beefsteaks for eating and sauce supplementation; and two cherry tomato plants. They also need to be moved into a more central part of the garden to give them more sun. Most importantly, I'll space them all at least five feet apart in every direction.

Squash and melons. These suckers just take up an enormous amount of real estate in the garden. We're enjoying the sugar pumpkins, but given that they don't keep as well as most winter squash, we've really got too many of them. Also, I need to start them later so that they mature when the weather is starting to turn cool. Summer temperatures shorten their keeping time. So a late May or even June planting for next year. The jack-o-lantern pumpkins did just fine. But we could do more with the amount of space they hogged up. The melons produced very little and should probably get the ax, even though we're fond of them. Next year I'll probably cut it back to two sugar pumpkin plants and leave it at that. I'll be strongly tempted to plant a few watermelons though, so that's something I'll have to struggle with.

Beans. Yes, these were remarkably easy to grow, even if they did take some insect damage. I don't care for green beans, so we grew Cherokee Trail of Tears beans for soup. I plan to save some of the harvest to re-plant next year. Unless we hate the beans when we turn them into soup, of course. But how could a bean be bad? Also, I'm going to add another heirloom bean to the line up: the Hutterite Soup bean, which is plump and white. Both varieties will be given taller supports to grow up so they get all the sun and space they want. It's nice to be able to allot more space to a plant that doesn't mean a bigger footprint in the garden. The beans will get more vertical space, and provide a light sunscreen to the lettuces.

Lettuce. I allotted too many square feet to lettuce and really didn't do anything at all about planting a late summer/early fall crop this year. Next year, I will try to summon the will to plant a fall crop. And the only space I'll give the lettuces will be under the bean poles. It should be enough. I'll probably stick with the many seed varieties I already have. I like a very diverse bowl of greens, and the darker the better, for my tastes.

Potatoes. I've been very happy with this year's potato crop, my first ever. Now I just need to figure out how exactly I should store my seed potatoes for next year. (Any hints, readers?) I'm going to try the suggestion of planting my potatoes in buckets next year. I'm collecting 5-gallon buckets when we dumpster dive, though we aren't finding as many as last year. And I've also asked friends and family that keep indoor cats to save me the buckets that their kitty litter comes in. The upside of this will be that the potatoes will be much, much easier to mound so that they produce better - just add more dirt to the bucket. And their greens won't trail all over the garden quite so much. Harvesting will also be a cinch: simply dump out the bucket. The downside is more watering than this year, since the potatoes won't be able to sink roots into the earth.

Kale & Chard. We sure do loves us some kale. And we like our chard too. But next year some refinements are definitely in order. First off, the two plants will be well separated, so that I can liberally dose the kale with my homemade bug spray. This year it's been a struggle to keep the spray off the interplanted kale, which just shrivels up whenever it gets hit with this spray. Also, I've found it very much a hassle to clean the chard. It really takes quite a bit of doing. The kale takes a lot less work to clean, and we prefer it to chard. So probably less chard will be planted next year.

Leeks. We've barely harvested any leeks yet. They are a very long season crop and they've done very well. We may cut back slightly on the number we plant if we'll also have onions. But we'll definitely still plant them. They're fantastic in soups and they can stay in the ground a long time.

Garlic. I've already taken steps to plant more bulbs this fall (ack! just a couple weeks from now!) than I did last year, by setting aside a larger number of cloves from this year's harvest. We've been eating our garlic since early in the summer, and we have at least a few more months' supply laid in. But clearly we need more. The plan is to increase our yields and our re-planting stock over the next few years until we have as much as we can eat before it starts to sprout.

Ground Cherries. These plants volunteered so enthusiastically in our garden that we're strongly considering planting a few of them deliberately next year. Given how well they did with no help at all from me, I imagine they'd be very productive if we gave them their own bit of earth. I also like the fact that they are still producing in mid to late September.

Bush zucchini. Too many plants this year. Next year no more than three, and that's probably too many. And I now have a hot tip on fighting the powdery mildew that attacks the leaves of all my squash plants: well diluted milk, sprayed directly on the leaves, and reapplied after rains.

Asparagus, Rhubarb & Jerusalem Artichokes. I've procrastinated and procrastinated about starting an asparagus bed for so many years. Partly it was because we were never settled long enough in any one place for me to expect to see a return on my efforts. (Asparagus plants take three years to produce in good quantities.) Also, we had a cat who loved asparagus and would not take no for an answer.So I figured he'd devour any early asparagus shoots that came up the first or second year, thereby damaging the young plant. Sadly, he died at the age of seventeen earlier this year. (He's still alive in this picture, if you can't tell.) The silver lining of his death is that it may finally be time to start my long dreamt of bed. Rhubarb is another perennial vegetable, and I'm very much in the mode of work once, reap many times. I would need to make an effort to find ways of enjoying rhubarb, because thus far it has not been one of our favorites. But I'm willing to give any perennial vegetable a fair shake, given the potential returns. Jerusalem artichokes are another perennial vegetable that I'd like to try. I'm pretty sure I've eaten them before, and like them.

Peppers. We need a lot more poblano/ancho peppers. And we need to pick them earlier next year to encourage better production. The peppers, I'm afraid, got ignored for a while there simply because they could be. Other squeaky wheel garden residents demanded our attention. But we really like these peppers, especially when we smoke them with our apple wood chips, or roast them and stuff them, and we should have more than three plants next year.

Eggplant. Though we both like eggplant, we didn't grow any this year. My husband wants to grow some, and they should do well in our area, which features very hot summers. We plan to try a long, thin Asian variety and one of the Italian "graffiti" types as well, two plants of each sort so that we can see how they do.

Beets & Parsnips. We need more of both of these root vegetables, and I really want to work on two separate crops of the former. We love beets, in borsch, salads, and pyttipanna, and they are mostly trouble free crops. They'll store well too if we have an abundant fall crop. We enjoy parsnips, and I simply adore the fact that they can be ignored until the frost sets in, when everything else in the garden is done. Definitely we need more of both of these next year.

Culinary Herbs. I added a couple of perennial herbs to the garden this year: thyme and oregano. We already had sage, and I transplanted chunks of our chives to new locations. I would love to find a tasty variety of rosemary that is hardy for zone 6. We've had no luck at all with bringing rosemary inside and keeping it alive through the winter. Of course I will continue to grow basil next year, and I will plant more of the purple varieties which did so well for me this year.

Fruit Trees. Even though we eventually plan to build a home on a separate piece of land, we're looking ahead with serious jitters, given the economy these days. So we're considering hedging our bets and replacing some of the non-edible landscaping on our property with dwarf fruit trees. We have a black cherry tree (no edible fruit), an old white lilac, and a star magnolia that could all be cut down and replaced with cherry or pear trees. It would be a shame about the old white lilac, but it only flowers briefly each year and it occupies a prime location as far as sun exposure goes. The black cherry is tall, shades much of the yard, and if it comes down in a storm it'll damage the garage. So it's a prime candidate for cutting. The star magnolia gets only so-so sun in its location, but we could trim another tree to give it more exposure. I like the idea of having cherries and pears because the fruit will come in either before or after the bulk of the garden produce.

In general, I'm looking to spread the effort of harvesting out a little more in time. August was a bit too frantic for my taste, with trying to keep up with the harvest. I'd also like to get more serious about keeping a record of how much I harvest of each crop, which goes against my wing-it tendencies. Further, I would like to put more thought and effort into root cellaring or some other long term storage that requires little energy input. I would like to be able to feed ourselves with homegrown produce over the winter months so far as possible. A small hoop house may also be a consideration for next year. The ultimate goal is to grow what we eat and eat what we grow.

-Well, there are my late summertime thoughts on next year's garden. We'll see where my head's at around the middle of February when cabin fever is at its worst.

The Finer Points of Pizza

I had some questions about my homemade pizza, so here's an outline on it that will probably end up being rather lengthy. I do tend to go on and on about food, as anyone who knows me will attest. I'm not going to lay claim to any kind of expertise on making pizza, and I won't touch the word "authentic" with a ten-foot pole in this post. But I do make pizza quite often and we know what we like. We think it turns out pretty well this way.

Thin crust, light toppings, high heat. These three principles pretty much sum up the way we cook our pizza. Let's start with the crust.

I make my own dough at home, using a recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart, though I used to buy it pre-made (not pre-baked). I tried the doughs of several grocery store chains, but I thought that Trader Joe's had the best pizza dough. At the time it was a buck a bag, and I could get four single-serving, thin crust pizzas out of that, which meant a pretty sweet 25 cent per serving cost. Just about any pizza dough will freeze beautifully. Google for a basic recipe, or turn to the library for recipes that might come from "an expert." You should plan ahead so that frozen dough thaws gently and has time to come up to room temperature before you begin to work it. In a pinch, you can speed up thawing in cool to tepid water. Don't use warm or hot water as this will mess with the yeast in the dough. Letting it thaw in the fridge is far preferable though. If you buy or make your own dough, consider portioning it into 4-6 ounce pieces (about the size of a small orange) so that you can thaw it quickly and use just as much as you want at any given time. Premade dough will keep in the fridge for three days or the freezer for three months. Anytime you make your own pizza dough at home, I recommend you double or triple the recipe and freeze the extra, provided you've got enough freezer space.

For thin crust pizza, I use a rolling pin, though the experts would recoil in horror at this idea. I don't care. It works for me. If I'm baking on a baking stone (recommended), I roll the dough out in a circle. If I'm cooking on a baking sheet (decent), I roll out two pieces of dough into long rectangles so that two pizzas fit on the sheet side by side. In each case, it works best to give the dough a basic shaping with my fingers. Don't knead the dough at all just before you shape it. Just hold it in your fingers and gently work it and squeeze it into a roughly round or rectangular shape. From there, use the rolling pin to thin the crust.

Once the crust is shaped, you need to put it on either the baking sheet or a pizza paddle (peel) that will let you slide it onto your baking stone. In both cases, you want cornmeal underneath it. The cornmeal will keep the crust just off the baking sheet so that it doesn't burn. And it will act like little ball bearings on the peel so that it can slide easily onto the stone. So scatter some cornmeal over whatever surface is appropriate. If your crust is a rectangle, it should be pretty easy to pick it up with both hands and arrange it on the sheet. If it's round, fold it in half and then in quarters. Pick it up gently, lay it on your cornmeal dusted peel, and unfold it so that it lays flat. By the way, my frugal solution to the need for a pizza peel is simply to cut a large piece of corrugated cardboard so that one edge is rounded, roughly matching the curve of the baking stone. It works fine and stores with my large baking sheets.

Toppings. I like to give my pizza a good foundation by brushing a layer of seasoned olive oil over the crust before anything else goes on. I coarsely chop garlic and heat it gently in about 1/3 cup of olive oil along with a pinch of chili pepper flakes. It only takes a couple of minutes, and then the garlic chunks become toppings in their own right. Brush the olive oil over the crust, moving the brush from the center of your crust outward towards the edges. If you brush the other way, the brush will tend to pull the springy dough inward so that it contracts and gets smaller. The oil gives flavor and forms a partial moisture barrier between the dough and the wet toppings.

Top your pizza with whatever you like, but use a light hand. Thin crust pizzas simply cannot stand up to a lot of wet sauce or cheese. Less is more. Let that be your mantra, within reason. Because I bake in a very hot oven, I try to make sure my toppings reach the very edge of the crust. This helps keep the outer edge from burning before the cheese gets bubbly and browned.

We've tried lots of wacky stuff and it's all good. Thinly shaved potato or zucchini rounds, blanched bacon cut into lardons, pesto, fresh herbs, blanched cooking greens or cabbage, cherry tomatoes, squash flowers - you name it. I particularly like arugula thrown on the hot pizza just as it comes out of the oven. The greens wilt slightly without shriveling too much. I'm also very fond of sage on a pizza. A very wide variety of cheeses will work too. We're partial to mixing cheeses and like to include a smoked cheddar or smoked mozzarella in the lineup. Trader Joe's has a quatro formaggio mix that works very well indeed. Experiment to see what you like. For best frugal practices, buy your cheese in bulk and shred it. You can freeze shredded cheese and it will be perfectly fine in any preparation where it will be melted before being served.

High heat. I bake my pizza at about 510-525F. This seems very high to a lot of people. The ovens in professional pizzerias in Italy are frequently fired up to 650 degrees or higher. A lightly topped thin crust pizza will cook in 10 minutes or less at such temperatures, producing a wonderfully crisp crust. Besides, who wants to wait any longer than necessary for great pizza? Cooking directly on a pre-heated baking stone will mean a cooking time of about 5-7 minutes depending on how thin the crust is and how heavy the toppings. Cooking on a large baking sheet will take a few minutes longer, all other things being equal.

In any case, you'll want to keep a close eye on your pizza, which is easier to do if your oven has a window in the door and an oven light. If you're uncertain, check the pizza after five minutes using the professional quick peek method: open the door for only a second and close it immediately. Get a good look during that moment when the door is open, but think about what you saw after you close the door. That way you don't let all the heat escape from the oven while you mull your decision. You can get into the habit of this pretty easily if you practice. After pulling out your first pizza, let the oven and the baking stone come back up to temperature before putting in another pizza. I recommend you cook a few extra pizzas while you've got the oven heated up. When they cool, put them in the fridge either whole or in slices. They make great leftovers. Most of the time I'll happily eat it cold the next day. But if you want it hot, slices will heat up nicely on the stove top in a preheated cast iron skillet. If you've left the pizza whole, you may want to put the hot skillet into a hot oven after placing the pizza in the skillet and sprinkling it with a little water.

All things considered, homemade pizza is tastier and cheaper than anything I can get my hands on from a restaurant in my area. It's a frugal meal, and one that works well when trying to serve a meatless meal to carnivores.

So, what are your favorite pizza toppings? Do you favor thin or thick crust pizza? Do tell!

Wearing It Out & Making It Do: Simple Repairs

Frugality is a many faceted approach to life. It can include a huge variety of activities - from clipping coupons, to shopping around for the best deals on major purchases, and from doing it yourself, to digging yourself out of consumer debt. A lot of the time it's not glamorous, and it nearly always goes against the grain of consumerism in a culture that urges us to spend, spend, spend!

One of the lesser aspects of frugality that I was slow to embrace was the practice of really wearing out material goods, and making them do for longer than the expected useful life. I suppose this practice just isn't as thrilling as getting a good deal when it's time to spend money, or knocking an extra chunk off the principle of a mortgage. After all, it's a little bit like doing nothing: it's just finding a way not to spend any money, while making do with what we've already got.

But having come around to it, I now really see the value in making things last through small repair jobs. For instance, this is our hand-me-down wheelbarrow. There was nothing seriously wrong with it. But it had a crack about two or three inches long on the front end of the basin. I looked at the crack carefully and decided that it would be a fairly easy fix, using a basic sewing technique. I carefully burned pairs of holes on either side of the plastic, then ran lengths of small gauge wire through each pair of holes and twisted them tightly together underneath, creating a kind of suture. The twisted ends of the wires were sharp, and located just where someone would be likely to grab the rim of the basin. So I thought about how to remedy that for a while. I decided that a little bit of hot glue melted over the sharp wires would provide sufficient protection and stay in place. I got out the hot glue gun and covered each sharp point with a dollop of melted glue. Even without that simple repair, which probably took no more than 45 minutes of my time, we would have had a pretty good wheel barrow for free. The repair cost only pennies in materials, and it has kept the crack from progressing any further during the two years we've had it. I see no reason to believe we won't be able to use it for many more years.

Here's our teapot, which gets daily use year round, except for summer time when I brew sun tea in a big glass jar. Sometime last year the lid fell off as I was draining the last of the tea from it, and broke on our countertop. There was a time when I would have just gone shopping for a new teapot. Teapots do wear out eventually, I can assure you. But this one still has years of use in it. So we glued the pieces of the lid back together. It may not be as good as new, but it'll serve just fine until the thermal stress from daily hot water baths takes its toll on the body of the pot.

My husband is a handy sort. He fixes all kinds of things that would intimidate me too much to even tinker with. Things with gears, and valves, and circuits. I'm really grateful to have this skill set in my mate. It's not one that I would be eager to pursue on my own. His attitude is: it's already busted, so why not try messing with it? As a philosophy, this is pretty unassailable. More often than not, when something breaks he'll eventually get around to taking it apart and trying to fix it. It might take him a while, and the first attempt might not succeed. But usually, in his own good time, he can fix things. Recently he's fixed my leaking garden hose spray nozzle, our busted paper shredder, and an alarm clock that went on the fritz. Handsome is as handsome does, wouldn't you say?

Repairing things is one of the ways that creativity and ingenuity come into living a frugal life in a big way. Too often there's little advice available to those who want to repair things. Our disposable culture is at least partly to blame for this. "Throw it out and get a new one" has become the lamentable standard practice. It's well to remember that it wasn't always thus. Those who want to try fixing things instead of throwing them away have to summon a little gumption, and gather their wits about them. The results may not always be aesthetically pleasing. But I've found that the satisfaction of accomplishment and thrift from repairing things is its own reward. That fondness for repaired objects more than compensates for the imperfect appearance.