From inside the expat suitcase - my US Goodwill frugal imports

On the recent US trip home, I mentioned about doing some shopping. First, for the expat food...

Here in the UK, we are not able to get so many options when it comes to Brownies or chocolate chip cookies. Even at the large Tesco supermarkets, there will usually only be one brownie mix (Betty Crocker, standard), and one type of chocolate chip for cookies in my corner of Essex.

If you've read me for a long while, you know that deserts are not my strong point; I don't really like sweets so I have a difficult time to put together something from scratch as I don't know how it's supposed to take at the end. I do know that my tolerance of sweet things is lower than most others, so something that I would enjoy at the end probably wouldn't generally be enjoyable to most. ;-)

New Friend Ian and I started a trend to take desert when we are invited to dinner. It's made even more special when the recipient finds out that the mix has been imported and is not available in the UK. As a result, we have the following from the supermarket:

I'm not much of a fan of eating our concoctions in the end, although I'll usually try them to have an idea of the taste. Therefore, I'm usually purchasing based on the photo on the box. Especially interesting to me are Betty's Supreme bars on the bottom right, sort of a combination of a chocolate chip cookie with a brownie.

On the top right are my Nature Valley Sweet and Salty Almond and Cashew bars. When I was in Dubai I tried these as I have never seen them before and found them to be quite pleasant. When I came back to the UK they were no where to be found. When I was last in the US I spotted them, however, and each time I bring back a few boxes. I find them useful to have in my backpack in the event that work unexpectedly goes late or I'm out and about.

And what caused all the weight in the suitcases?
--17 canning jars from Goodwill!
Those suckers are quite heavy. Last year, when I went to pickle my peppers, I was suprised by the lack of larger jars here in the UK. Then I figured out that the market is heavily geared toward smaller items like jams and chutneys. I had a few options such as importing them from France, but even used ones on ebay were pricey. Then I stumbled across the motherload at .49 and .99 US cents each, in America's heartland. Wrapped carefully in newspaper and clothing, every last one of them survived the journey. I also found lids at the Goodwill as well, but I'll need to get a few more of those next year. Now at least I'll have a good start for next year.

I also found this vintage American scale at Goodwill for a princely sum of 3.99. Slocombe insists on getting into most of my photos, here she is checking it out, along with some of the canning jars:


PS - to all the Germany bloggers enjoying the meetup in Cologne, hope it was a good trip.

More frugal eating: zucchini boats

In a quest to use the cheap zucchini, it ended up a a side one evening, in a thrown together recipe of zucchini boats:

Nothing fancy again...the sliced in half zucchinis went into the oven for a little, with a little olive oil on them. While that was happening, just a little chopped onion and garlic in a pot with some olive oil, and in when all the veg I had on hand: a few sliced mushrooms, some tomatoes, and a carrot. The boats then came out of the oven and were hollowed out.

Next, the filling that was hollowed out was added to the pot, along with some sage. That was then scooped into the boats, along with a little cheddar. It went back into the oven for around 7 min. At that point, some breadcrumbs were sprinkled on top, and back in the oven for another 5 min, enough to brown them.

Total meal cost:

.15 p each for 2 zucchini

I had already incorporated the other veg and cheese costs into the main meals where they were used, so let's add it all up to .10 p per zucchini, so a total cost of .25 p for this side serving pictured.

New friend Ian deemed this one a success and asked for a repeat performance.

Tonight's frugal dinner: Polish cauliflower with a twist

A long while back, I mentioned that I had made Polish cauliflower.
I like to eat as frugally yet healthily as possible, meaning, I want to eat well, but cheaply. ;-)

Here was tonight's modification to that original version:

It's one quarter of a cauliflower (from France) 4 mid-size carrots (from in the UK, East Anglia), 1 spring onion, olive oil-based butter, and bread crumbs.

Throw the carrots in a pot of almost boiling water for a few min, add in the cauliflower for another brief few min, and then separately melt the butter with the breadcrumbs and chopped up spring onion, which should be ready in under a minute. Put the cauli and carrots into a bowl and then pour the contents of the other pot on top.

The reason for the dish?
Tonight, I went to Essex Boot Camp, where I had a groupon offer from December. It's a might fun way to spend an hour on a Tuesday evening, traversing through the park and then doing push ups around a tree and other silly but generally varied tasks. After all that fitness, I thought it best to skip the pizza deals mentioned yesterday. ;-)

As well, I've been finding a lot of good deals on produce. The cauli, carrots and spring onion were all on the 'sell-by' mark down date. It's kinda silly, as the carrots look superb and have at least another week and half in them, but who am I to complain about cheap produce?

Costs?
the cauli: .75 p for the entire head, so maybe 20 p for this portion
carrots: the bag of 12 was .38 p and I used 4, so let's say 12 p
the spring opion was in a bunch of 10 that was down to .58 p, so 6 p for this one
I'll skip the butter and breadcrumbs cost as they's been costed out previously.
Desert was a marked down kiwi: .25 p

Overall cost then for the meal was around .53 p (.63 EUR/1.56 USD) and there were no leftovers. :-) Even if I would have purchased the produce at its original cost, it would have only doubled or tripled the meal cost, so still ok for the UK.

I did have a carb heavy lunch though in anticipation of working out, so this was only meant to be something lighter.

More on my frugal grandparents

I mentioned my frugal Polish grandparents before. Last night on the way home from class I stopped in Tesco at the 11th hour just before they shut; it's the best time to get the markdown bargains. While wandering around the store a long forgotten memory outed itself, so I thought I'd share it with you.

As the youngest, I only remember my grandparents as retired. They came of retirement age when Social Security solvency issues weren't on the horizon and companies still provided pensions. Still, they planned carefully and grew vegetables all summer and shopped at the supermarket on senior citizen day to maximize their purchasing power.

In addition, there was a large regular flea market located nearby which was open on Mondays. It was a super place, open year round, mainly outdoors with a small indoor building for the antiques dealers and some food stalls. You could buy anything at this flea market which was casually known around town as 'The Sale'. You could get a table as a regular trader and sell new or used items, or you could get a special table for a week or two if you had a big house clean-out. In addition, there were regular weekly auctions.

Pretty much everything was sold as The Sale. Furniture, books (my first Nancy Drew books came from there), vegetables and flowers from the local Amish communities, clothing, sports items, old postcards, whatever. It was a fun mix of anything and everything.

On public holidays we had to get up and out of the house at the crack of dawn to be there before 7 AM as the parking lot would fill up with all the 'non-regulars'. Winter was an interesting time as well, as there were few buyers we had to go for the bargains, all bundled up at the crack of dawn. We would walk around for an hour or so, and then I would have french fries around 8 AM, my reward for the foolishness of the activities.

During the rest of the year, The Sale was frequented by people who didn't work--people on disability or mothers with small children, or the core community: senior citizens, particularly males, my grandfather included. Usually they'd show up and have a wander around the outside tables and then meet up for a coffee and talk. Many of them showed up with a list of things for buy for the ladies, particularly the vegetable bargains like crates of tomatos or peaches which could be had for a song. I think it was more for the camaraderie than anything else, that they got out of the house with a mission and a chance to meet and mingle without the women-folk.

Many of them would attend the auctions which were an interesting affair. There were a few actions running simultaneously, usually each area had a theme. One was furniture, another was glassware, another was books, another was random things, and on and on. During the busiest periods there would be quite a few, during off periods, perhaps they'd be down to one or two. The auctions started at 07.00 sharp, although things would be existing on the tables in advance with lot numbers, that you could examine the goods before they were up for buying. These were really casually affairs which took place next to the building, under the vast awning but still outdoors.

Then, you could flit between them based on the lot number, or you could try your luck at the random one. As the day went on they heated up, but around lunchtime sellers would start to pack up and go home and people would too. That was when the best bargains would come up however, because they had orders to move all of the goods. So if something didn't move it would get thrown into a box. Then, boxes would start to get combined (usually by like areas) and would start at 50 cents and go up from there. Sometimes you had no idea of what was in the box exactly, except that it was a box of books, for example.

I still remember a very good school friend, his German born mother would go to the auctions. One day she bid on a box of 'carrying things'--a suitcase, a few backpacks, some purses, etc. She ended up paying 1.50 for the lot. Later, she found over 2 USD in the various pockets of the items, so she made a profit on her purchase. This was what The Sale was all about.

Now that you have the background setting, here comes the real story:
My cousin and I were at our grandparents house, with Grandmom. Grandad had gone early to The Sale. He came home with a gleam in his eyes.

Grandad: You'll never guess what I got today!?!

Grandmom: It had better be seeds like I asked you to get.

Grandad: Yes, yes, I got those, but guess what I got at the auction? (Noticeably pleased with himself.)

(Grandmom already steeling herself for the worst. While she was frugal, she did not put up with clutter in 'her' house. He could store as much as he wanted in his basement lair, however.)
Grandmom: Yes?

Grandad: (whipping out a pair of burgandy colored trousers from behind his back) Look!
(They were boys knee-length trousers like here, called knickerbockers)

Grandmom: Stanley! What is heaven's name is the point of this?

Grandad: Aren't they great!?!

Grandmom: Stanley!!! Our parents left Poland for a reason. What are you possibly going to do with those as they certainly won't fit You, and I doubt your grandson would want to be seen wearing those!

(My cousin looks up now from where we were playing)
My cousin: Boys don't wear pink!

Grandad: They're burgandy. Or maroon. AND THEY WERE FREE! (Grandad beside himself with glee.) And I got over 40 pairs. Can you believe they were throwing them out, that no one would buy them at the auctions?

Grandmom: Yes, actually, I can imagine that no one would want to buy a World War 1 era pair of pants. And what are you going to do with those, exactly?

Grandad: Well....I was thinking....Father Cranky-pants was mentioning that we need to give to the Catholic Charities clothing drive for East Europe. (This was before the fall of Communism in Poland in 89.)

Sidenote: We had three Catholic priests at the time in our church: Father Cranky-pants predicted doomsday destruction for everyone. 'The new priest' was a nice guy who I think was brought in to stem the tide of departing Catholics due to Cranky-pants. And Father Brown was the retired priest who still lived with the others. They would bring him out when the others would go on vacation. He would forget where he was in the service so we would either sit through a repeat of sections of the mass, or an alter boy would direct him forward and we'd then miss parts.

Grandmom: Stan-ley!! The children don't need to be picking up that name from you!

My cousin: That's ok Grandmom, we already know this name.

Grandmom: (under her breath) Heaven help me.

Grandad: (knowing he had her hooked, now just to reel her in.) Since it's for the church, I throught that would be ok. Besides, they had just set them by the garbage bin. They would have gone to the dump. This is good material.

Grandmom: (examining it closely now, she was a seamstress in her career.) yes, this is quality cloth, even if the color is objectionable for a boy.

Grandad: And you know Poland, good quality clothing would be nice to have. If the style is a little off, they can tailor it or make it into something else.

Grandmom: grrrrr. Ok, but they do not come into this house, these moth-bitten clothes. They stay in the trunk of the car. And you need to sneak them into the donation box, I do not want to be associated with these shenanigans.

What I learned from such experiences with my grandparents, was to be generous when you found a bargain, especially when it required little effort from you to make a bigger positive impact to someone else. And to go after bargains with an intent, when you knew they would benefit someone else. And the other main point which always came up with this generation--something usable should never be send to the garbage! Ultimately, I think this was what won over my grandmother...

British humor and frugal eggs

Or should that be 'humour'? Can you imagine this cartoon egg making the same statement in an American supermarket?

I rarely buy full price eggs anymore. I had purchased these on Feb 2nd in the morning and they were down to half price. If one waits longer, they'll go to 75 or 90% off. My only requirement is that I only do free range eggs anymore. These have the added bonus of being produced in Suffolk, a neighboring area near to Essex.

When I get a great egg deal I usually fry and then freeze them on the day of purchase, although others put them raw in an ice cube tray and freeze. Then I carry on with my egg stock when the deals aren't coming.

Frugal dinner for the cat (or people!) in the UK

When I moved back to the UK, one of the things I liked here was that food in the supermarkets is marked down as it gets closer to its 'best buy' date. Where I lived in Germany, food was never marked down, although it would perhaps be on a weekly sale. I find that to be a difference between the UK and Germany: Germany won't have any food to mark down, because they'll under order potentially and the customer might not get what they want (at full price) because its all been sold, while in the UK they will over order and have to mark things down because they have too much but the customer will never be left without their items.

Slocombe the cat has a healthy appetite and during her month at the 'House of Treats' she came to appreciate eating a meal a day of actual meat rather than the '4-8% meat content' cat food which she enjoys from the mid-range cat food section. In addition, she absolutely love variety in her meals. Serving the same rotation of cat food breeds discontent. What to do?

Enter Tesco's markdown section, stage left. Each day the Tesco which is a 10 minute walk from me will mark down meat, bread, veg, cakes, etc. which is reaching the sell by in the next day or so. The starting markdown is 25% off. As it nears closing time on the expiration day, the markdowns increase to 50% off, then 75% and finally 90% off in the last hour or two. This Tesco is on my way to/from places, so easy to pop round.

Slocombe isn't so particular, she adores poultry and isn't so fond of lamb, anything else in between is acceptable. Tesco uses these opaque bags for fish and items from the meat counter so you can't really see what you're buying...it's like a surprise in a Cracker Jack box. So what do we have here? Salmon with lemon cracked black pepper, originally priced at 8.00 GBP, down to .50 p on a mid-afternoon Sunday when they close at 5 PM. I give all purchases a sniff test in the store, but beyond that, it's anybody's guess:


Upon getting it home...not looking too bad, four servings of salmon. It's really a nice meal for a person actually rather than a cat. Too bad I'm a vegetarian, so on with the example:

As Slocombe gets easily bored with repeating meals, I separate and bag the pieces, so that she can have a meal or two out of each section before moving on to a different item and coming back to another piece from the freezer at a later date.

All wrapped and bagged and into the freezer they go, 12.5 p per bag, which I estimate 2 meals from each bag, so 6 p per meal:

My tips on the above:

• Give everything the sniff test and eyeball or feel for weight as much as possible. It's being marked down as it nears the sell by date, but often it's perfectly useable.
• Freeze right away if you're not eating that night.
• It's not much of a bargain if you don't like it. There was a super deal on lamb but SC could care less so I skipped it.
• SC isn't brand specific or coming to the food bowl with any pre-set notions, she gets whatever is on sale and fresh enough and she seems happy enough by this concept.

I am lucky in that Slocombe's chefs (from the House of Treats and New Friend Ian) take care of all meat cooking for me, so I only need to de-thaw and serve. That being said, I will avoid whole fish and having to take out the bones due to the extra work (SC doesn't have much patience to wait!)

The homemade Christams gifts - knitted items

I mentioned a little while back that it would be locally sourced, handmade and secondhand Christmas. I've been pleased with my corner of Essex, when there are street parties or the like, a local charity will often put up a booth with homemade items. Chief among these is handknitted items like sweathers, socks and mittens, and the prices are extremely affordable, for less than what you'd pay at a discount retailer like Walmart even. (I guess as the materials and labor are donated efforts, anything they make for the charity is therefore pure profit.)

So when I had the chance to pick up these two items for less than 10 USD together, I did, especially as I can't knit myself. :-)

The frugal Christmas decorations - part 1

While living in Europe, I never saw a huge point of doing a lot of decorating for the holidays because I'm always in the US for most of the period. Therefore, I went very minimal with just a string of lights in Germany.

Similar to yesterday's topic of a secondhand Christmas, rather than buying one more 'made in China' thing which would clutter up a landfill someday, I decided to buy my holiday decorations from the charity shops here in my corner of Essex.

OK, so there are five of them so I have plenty of choices, and plus, the profits are going to the charity rather than some big non-local corporation.

Behold, my first purchase:

Yes, that's an actual Weihnachtspyramide (Christmas pyramid) from Germany. It was in a German box, no wonder no one here in the UK bought it, it probably looks like the oddest thing if you haven't seen one before. For a mere 3.95 GBP it was mine, complete with the candles (looking a little worse for the wear, but with a price tag in DM!).

The garland was also a recent purchase there. For 2.50 GBP I picked up a gigantic catch-all back of various garlands and strings of tinsel in all sorts of colors and sizes.

I wasn't sure what the cat would thing about the pyramid, or the tinsel for that matter, so it's safely resting on top of the bookshelf being ignored. :-)

The frugal holidays - homemade and secondhand

The thing I like least about the holidays is all of the stress that goes along with them. Of course, it's always nice to come back to the US for two weeks and enjoy time off and the traditions of my childhood...

I've been informed from home that due to economic conditions, Christmas is being scaled back and gift giving should be minimal. Something similar happened last year as well. Having spent my student years doing retail stints, I've been forever since turned off of mass produced gifts which sprout like mushrooms in all the aisles of the mall and Target. In the past few years I've attempted to make an effort in what I buy or make to make it meaningful rather than costly. On the receiving side, I've made a request in the past few years for nothing much as I have limited ability to carry it all back, but instead to receive gifts like 'pick Heather up at the airport rather than jetlagged having to take the train home'.

So how did it work last year?

It was quite a mixed bag in the end.

-A few people couldn't deal with the change and at the last minute bought last-minute gifts.

-My self-professed shopaholic aunt had been on a decluttering spree so she went 'shopping' in her stash of treasures. She had a different goal of 'spend no money and get rid of excess stuff' so that was acceptable.

-Some re-gifting was being done, of gifts received from work or the like. This was deemed acceptable as the giver wasn't spending any money.

-I shop throughout the year so this edict came too late for me. As I tend to buy secondhand or homemade items, I skirted in under the wire of acceptability.

Overall, I was very pleased with the experiment. Anticipating something similar this year I followed a similar tactic. As I'm starting to set things aside as I begin to pack for the trip home in December, I'll make a few postings in the coming days about what one can buy homemade or secondhand in Europe for the curious frugal out there.

The *somewhat* frugal beach holiday in Portugal

A few months back, new friend Ian and I went to Portugal. Portugal has been an elusive one for me for a few years. Back in 2003 when I first arrived in Europe, there were a lot of cheap flights and travel, but over the years it seemed to dry up. Portugal was never a cheap flight from my corner of Germany though, so I was pleased to finally go.

The flight and transport:
Living (relatively) near Stansted means that we're somewhat limited in our flight selection. Love them or hate them, Ryanair runs the show over there, so you're hard pressed to find a cheaper flight option, unless it's a country specific one like AirBerlin to Germany.
-I had a few requirements--I wanted to go to the beach.
-Ian had a few requirements--he didn't want to go on (another) 6 AM Ryanair flight, he wanted a more civilized time.

We were somewhat lucky in that we were both flexible on when we could go. We held off until September (the beginning of school sessions), and prices dropped.

I found three cheap Ryanair flights--2 in Spain, 1 in Portugal. We ended up with Stansted to Faro for 83 GBP each, which included all their silly taxes and baggage fees, and a civilized flight take-off time of 09.25.

We skipped parking at the airport because the airport bus is easy to take and parking is expensive. Ten GBP gets you a roundtrip ticket on the nice, direct bus and it leaves you 2 minutes walk from the check-in desks.

On the arriving end, I had pre-booked a reputable transport company [Algarve-365 Airport Transfers (transfers@algarve-365.com)] to take us to and from the Airport to our hotel in Albufiera. They are staffed by UK folks living in Portugal, so our driver was a great source of info on the local area. We didn't want to deal with the hassle of renting a car, or a never-ending shuttle bus run to multiple hotels. So we paid 60 Euros for the roundtrip transport. With two or more people, it's a great way to go.

The Hotel

Now that Easyjet and Ryanair have come to Faro, the surrounding beaches are overrun with Brits. In addition, the market is mainly filled with the gigantic, all-inclusive hotels. We were looking for something a little smaller and quieter.

We ended up choosing the Albufeira area due to its reputation for nice beaches. I searched far and wide for a hotel. I searched through the Spanish sites in addition to see what I could find.

We went with Residencial Mar a Vista, a smaller hotel of five floors located at the top of one of the winding hills. The area is very hilly. It was only 150 metres away from Peneco beach, but it was pure treading uphill at the end of the day. We liked the exercise, so it was great. Five nights came in at 173 Euros total (excluded breakfast) and we didn't see a single Brit there. It was a smaller, cozy hotel set a distance from the loud discos and such. The steep walk ensured that it attracted more of a Portuguese crowd, or some other healthy Europeans.

There was an option to get breakfast for an additional 5 EUR per day, we tried it one day. The difficulty on this point is that I am not a breakfast person, only coffee, so I'm always peeved at the thought of overpaying for coffee only. Ian isn't a huge breakfast person, so we tended to pick him up a sandwich on the way.

If you did happen to be going to this hotel--the site where breakfast is located is beautiful, if you can get the two outside tables overlooking the ocean, but the sun glare off of it is immense. It's nothing fancy for breakfast--bread rolls, cheese, salami, and a choice of cereals.

A much better option--which we did--was to stop at the neighborhood supermarket on our way down the hill. It had all the basic provisions like bottled water, cookies, etc. at a fraction of the cost of the beach stores.

The Food:
When in Rome...the dish of the region was chicken piri piri, which Ian enjoyed multiple times. At many places it was advertised for 5 Euros for the plate which offered a choice of fries or some or some other potatoes:

For the vegetarians in the party (heheh), options were a little more limited. However, virtually every place offered salads and omelets. I'm not a huge fan of omelets, but they did mushroom ones pretty well:

A lot of places did lunchtime specials. The vacationing Portuguese (and us) were smart enough to get out of the sun from 1130-14.00. The sun was really strong still in September and temps were high 20's. The Brits stayed on the beach and fried to a pink crisp.

The result was that most restaurants offered great lunchtime offers to get people in. Often our best meal of the day would be lunch.

Along the way I noticed that everyone was using those floaty things not for paddling around in the water, but for sleeping on the beach:

And there were plenty of places selling them, plus umbrellas, hats, sunblock, etc. all at exorbitant beach prices:

One day, the clouds came overhead ominously and it began to spit rain. There was an exodus from the beach as everyone headed back to their hotels. On the way, beachgoers who were obviously on their way out that night or tomorrow morning started depositing their floating things, umbrellas, etc. next to the trash bins on the beach.

Ian was fully embarassed by me picking up two rafts which looked like new, as well as an umbrella. He wasn't so embarassed however, not to use the raft the next day for his ancient back, once i rinsed it off in the ocean. Talk about a consumer society...the items looked new, like they would bought in the past day or two. So we got a good couple of days out of the two rafts and umbrella, and then donated them on our way out to the charity shop for pets who were selling all sorts of that stuff and who gladly accepted them.

Heather's thought for the future-->check the local charity shops in advance for beach things and general souvenir stuff, if there is one relatively close to our location. Portugal is known for cork, so had I wanted to pick up any of those little gifts for anyone like cork coasters or Portugal spoons or plates, the charity shop was oozing with that stuff, for a fraction of the cost of the main shops.

One thing we did enjoy...coffee in Portugal reminds me of coffee in Spain--it's strong and it's cheap. We ferreted out a place near the beach, but off of the beaten path, which seems to be frequented by locals. I sent Ian in, but the woman only spoke Portuguese (score!). I went in and spoke Spanish with her (I was a little hesitant to do this, my Spanish colleagues have given me quite an education about the historical role of Spain in Portugal's history), however, it seemed better than English in this case.

I was able to get my strong expresso and Ian's frilly Latte at a lower price than any of the cafes where the menu was in English:

Could we have done it cheaper?

Well sure. We could have done couchsurfing to save the hotel costs (Ian not so fond of that idea and had already vetoed camping). Or we could have stayed at a closer beach to Faro (Heather not fond of that idea since we were there for five nights, maybe if it was only a weekend.) Or we could have gone with a self-cathering flat and done lunch at home. We had asked the shuttle driver how business had been, she said the numbers have been down, and those that were coming were saving pennies. She noticed a big increase to trips to self-catering flats in the past year over previous years to full-service hotels. In addition, she mentioned that people who own properties there and usually rent them out were coming to use them for personal use--a cheap holiday for the owner while the place was unrented.

Would I do Portugal again?

Yes, definitely. The little we saw of it I liked. However, seeing the dry landscape in September, I'd be careful to avoid the summer months. In addition, my work colleague went during August and told me how the beaches were packed, so September was really the way to go, even though the sun was setting behind the mountains as of 18.30 each day.

keeping it moving

Now that I've been in the new flat for almost three months, I'm starting to get some ideas of how I want it to look. I've been living with the very minimal included furnishings (bed and sofa), and slowly putting together the rest during the evenings and weekends (a new mirror, a shoe rack etc.) while I try to figure out logically how the space should function based on how I'm using it each day.

One of the 'missing' things has been bookshelves. I couldn't bring myself to battle the crowds at the nearest Ikea (45 min away), and nothing at nearby Homebase really appealed. I've been keeping an eye on ebay, but a critical limitation is that 1. it needs to be a few shelves tall to maximize space here in the tiny flat, but it would need to then fit into my car so it cannot be so tall--a catch 22.

Until I happened to see some Habitat stackable cube shelves, gently used, on ebay. I managed to get lucky and win it so off I went to disassemble the shelves, fit everything into the car, bring it back, carry it up four flights of stairs and New friend Ian and I spent the afternoon resassembling it. I'm pleased as they are only very slightly used and as they were habitat they were hella expensive new and seem to be of good quality. In addition, the stackable function gives me a lot of flexibility to completely change up my tiny living room on a whim. :-)

Finally, my books which I started to pack up in December in Germany, which stayed boxed since my arrival here in February are getting to come out and play. I've missed them terribly, but didn't want to create a further mess of clutter here with uncontrollable books out and about, so thus they were kept boxed up. The camera cord is currently on vacation, but when it returns I'll get a photo up...

Vegan day 9 - Fresh Saturday

Were you wondering what happened with the food from the Saturday market?

Everything looked so great and fresh, so I went extremely basic on the cooking--minimal spices and low, short cooking.

Here is a third of the carrot bunch. The were sliced in half and given a short fry in olive oil.

Here are potatoes, fresh from the roof terrace garden:

The broad beans were in the '1 pound' markdown area, so I knew they needed to be used Saturday or Sunday. They had gone for about three minutes into boiling water and then were rinsed in cold water. Right after that they were shelled. Here new friend Ian is demonstrating the appropriate shelling technique.

The cooked potatoes and beans were then combined together. I had some ideas from http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/content/recipes/, I like their photos, as well as that their recipes are not too complex. They were suggesting mint as the appropriate spice, but I wanted to leave out anything heavy as I wanted to truly taste the potatos.

Aug 1 - vegan eating day 1

Saturday started off with a long 'to do' list of things to do in town and tasks at home. As I've been living in this flat for almost two months, I'm starting to get more ideas about how I want to use the space in some areas.

Breakfast - coffee at home.

Lunch - since we were out and about in town, we went to Nosh+Coffee. The one in the center of my corner of Essex is relatively new...

On the plus side:

-they are less expensive than their coffee counterparts Costa or Starbucks

-their food selection is more expansive--salads, sandwiches, containers of fresh fruit for 1.50 GBP

-they have a vegan option - salad with beans, hummus, and falafel for 3.50 GBP (which I had), as well as plenty of decent veg options like a feta cheese salad or egg and mayo sandwich.

On the negative side:

-I suspect the people management is lacking at this particular one, or maybe they're all this this, it's the only one I've been to. When you go to the main Costa in my corner of Essex, it's staffed by friendly Eastern Europeans or Spaniards, the Costa above the bookstore is staffed by friendly students, the Coffee+Nosh people are always sour faced, or complaining to one another about their work hours. But anyway...the salad is quite nice...

Dinner: We start with fresh peppers from the garden...

I'm not a fan of eating peppers, but I enjoy growing them for my guests...

I did a stir-fry--it's broccoli from the Saturday market, zuchinni from my garden and tofu, which later had Sharwood's Kung Po sauce added:

The final results....

At 12 o'clock on the table is a fresh salad with lettuce, tomatos, and olive oil.

1 PM is a homemade dipping sauce: tamari sauce, olive oil, water, dried chilli pepers.

3 PM is homemade vegan spring rolls that oversprung

The bottom are our two plates in action

center of the table is the fresh peppers chopped up.

The fancy table setting is a giant cardboard moving box which gets a new round of paper to cover it weekly. I still haven't decided upon a dining room table or coffee table yet, so I'm making due with this one until I figure out how I want the layout of the flat to be.

Frugal clothes drying - the roof terrace clothesline

One of the things which caused me to fall in love with this flat is the outside roof terrace space, although primarily I was thinking of the gardening and bbq prospects...

Here in Europe I've lived in various temporary accomodation over the past six plus years, or visited the places of colleagues. As most have been flats and not houses and most have been older places, seeing a clothes dryer has been a rare sight. My first UK company provided place had a combination washer/dryer, but it didn't dry so well...

I had one place in Germany with a dryer-it was in the shared cellar and I was on the top floor so washing clothes and then trekking down to put them into the dryer and then remembering to get them before they sat too long and wrinkled was a hassle. Although I couldn't complain--my two colleagues in company provided housing had shared dryers; one had allocated days/times in which it could be used, the other shared with four other washing machines so one had to move their clothes quickly from this one dryer lest someone either complain or take it upon themselves to fold your clothes.

My new place came with the existing washing machine included (in the kitchen). I like having the washing machine here in the flat as opposed to the German option of in the shared cellar. It is a perfectly fine machine which should last a few more years, but it is a washing machine only, not a combination washer/dryer. (I don't have a dishwasher either, but that is a separate post!) I must say, I do like the UK standard of white goods staying in the flat, as opposed to the German norm where they tend to move with you.

As I moved into the new place and was looking at the space, I pondered whether or not a clothesline would possibly work, mainly because I was spacing out my outlay of cash (the trashpicked German drying rack didn't make the move), as well as that I figured that line drying outside would allow the clothes to dry faster.

I gave it a spin on the corner of the back terrace, the one which gets afternoon and evening sun:

Here is the view from that corner. The neighbors below have a great outside area which they rarely use:

This direction is actually stores: two hair salons, a dentist, a pizza place, a pet store, etc, so I don't feel that I'm influencing the view as this back space is never used.

While standing in the corner, here is the view of the rest of the terrace (before the garden was established):

The verdict after 1,5 months:

-so far so good, but it's summertime. I like the freshness of clothes drying outside, and I do get a good breeze up here, so I think in general they dry faster than they would inside.

-I'm definitely saving any electricity costs associated with a dryer, which is a good thing, as well as any envirnomental costs, nevermind the cost of the machine itself.

The negatives?

-It is the UK, so it tends to rain a lot, and often unexpectedly. So my clothes could dry while I'm in the office during the day but by the time I get home and there's a sudden rainfall I'm stuck to give them time to dry again. Doing the one set of bedding involves excessive planning and weather watching. ;-)

Would I change to a washer/dryer if I could once this washer wears out?

Eh, maybe. I wasn't so impressed with the only UK washer/dryer I used, and air drying seems to be more gentle on my clothes and more a habit now, (similar to how having a dryer is a standard habit in the US).

The minimal lifestyle

Living in my Heather-sized flat in Essex, I have the opportunity to stay minimalized in possessions. Coming over from Germany, I took the chance to cull out anything which did not please me or no longer fit my lifestyle--clothing, dishes, books, etc. with the idea that I would replace anything I eventually missed. Now, being in a smaller space, there's no chance to purchase anything new unless something is outgoing. It's somewhat of a pleasant, de-cluttered feeling.

The week so far - to the library! to the farm!

Monday - Was feeling a bit under the weather. I'm blaming it on the rapid temperature change between Sunday and Monday, causing a bit of Foehnkrankheit. Most interesting--one of my colleagues called out on Monday due to the same. I preferred to muddle through with an Advil.

Tuesday - Very exciting, I went my local branch of the Essex Library System and picked up a library card. I had already signed up online. Most interesting to me-they did not ask for proof of residence in Essex, or any identification for that matter.

For the record--I love the library! I am strongly entrenched in the American ideal that education is the great equalizer. It's something that I missed while living in Germany. (Yes, there are libraries in Germany.) But in Germany:
A) You need to pay to join. That one goes against the very core of a library's purpose to me.
B) The dollhouse-sized library in Tiny town of B had only 20 books in English--classics and Grisham.
C) For me to read a book in German, I need to be able to note things in the margin, so that knocked out the rest of the library.

But I digress...so my new Essex local library is a little on the small size considering it's a town of over 100k people, or maybe it's reflecting the local reading style demographics.

I always check out a few sections to be able to compare bookshops or libraries, and one of them is the foreign language section. A little disappointing on this point--they have a lot of audio language learning sets--basically from 1950-1980--on cassettes. Who still has a cassette player anymore?? In particular, I had looked at the Polish and Czech sections--nary a single cd. Big German and French language sections, and a handful of Esperanto books in addition.

What did I end up checking out? Only four books to start, including The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. Yeah, it overlaps into the WW2 genre. The past few weeks, someone has had the history channel on at night and someone else has gotten sucked into watching way too many WW2 documententaries. We've watched Rommel in North Africa, Gurnsey being evacuated, Warsaw uprising and at least a dozen more including two hours on Churchill's wartime strategy.

Wednesday - the great weather returned and I was back at the farm for another three hours after work. Current sunrise/sunset times are 05.21/20.20, so I'm in early at the office, out at a decent time to be able to fit in a few more hours at the farm which is 11 minutes away from the office. Today I trimmed chopped and trimmed bushes and hacked away at brambles.

What else? A very long to do list of small details which I won't bore you with any further. :-)

Cheeseman and frugal mushrooms

After work I took advantage of my carless state this week and the warm weather and walked into town. Friday afternoons and Saturdays there is a market in the downtown area and I wanted to buy more of that goat's cheese I had bought last time I was there, as well as to stop in at Oxfam and look at the books.

After book shopping, I stopped by to have a chat with the cheeseman. He remembered me from before, even before I opened my mouth (well played cheeseman!). I was expecting to be remembered only after he heard the accent. (Am finding not so many Americans in this immediate area.) He had sold out of the one I bought last time, so I went with a different, but similar, goat's cheese. Last time he had mentioned, he could bring me other varieties of goat's cheese if requested in advance, he just doesn't usually bring so many to this market as it's not his biggest seller. So next Friday he'll be bringing a herb-crusted goat's cheese and keeping it under the counter for me. Super, I have a 'local dealer'. ;-)

After that, I stopped by the main veg stand. I've bought a few things there, they are a better value than the supermarket, but they are still not completely local. At the end of the stall, they have the '1 Pound' bowls. It's a collection of things they'll sell off for a pound--things that are reaching the end of their sellable life, or maybe the last of the box of something they're selling, etc.

As it was nearing closing time, it was a great time to visit, as they were dropping the prices on things to clear them out. Stopping by the 1 Pound area, I was pleased as punch to find a super deal on mushrooms (tough to see these are about 2-3 inches across), 2 Pounds for a very large box:

They're looking a little worse for the wear from a long trip home, but overall they are divine.

How many mushrooms did I get for 2 Pounds (2.26 EUR/2.97 USD)?

-->46!

To give you some perspective, a package of three to five of these runs just under one Pound at Asda.

Here, my cost per mushroom is about 4 pence GBP/5 cents EUR/6 cents USD, nevermind the fact that I love mushrooms.

6 of them were sliced and given a quick boil to go over tonight's fresh pasta. Now only 40 more to figure out. I'll be looking into some freezable recipe options by Sunday night lest I turn into a mushroom myself from unadulterated consumption this weekend. :-)

If this post appears

It means that the weather is great here in Essex on a Monday and I'm working in the garden on the side hustle. I spent 6 hours inside there on Saturday, because the weather was too wet to work outside.

My latest conclusions from this gig:
- You couldn't pay me enough to own a farmhouse. It was raining buckets on Saturday and the water flooded the floor of the laundry room area. In addition the gutter was clogged so it was dripping through a wall seam into the kitchen.

- Big space requires major upkeep to look nice. 6 bedrooms plus 3 bathrooms and a full living room, dining room etc. requires a lot of work plus a lot of heating costs, in particular with the lack of double glazing. Just to maintain it weekly once it's cleaned up will require hours in vacuuming alone. Not that I can complain--more work for me. :-)

More frugalness: my new side hustle

"Good things come to those who wait, only the things left by those who hustle."

I'm a big fan of the side hustle (a little side job), always have been. One of my favorite frugal writers talks more about the concept here.

Side hustles I've done over the past few years:
-English tutor
-Spanish tutor
-Algebra tutor
-Statistics for non-math majors tutor
-Flower delivery person
-Babysitter for a couple who were starting up a restaurant
-Lawn mower

When I first arrived in the UK, I didn't have so much to do, not yet knowing anyone. In addition, I started working earlier hours to avoid the traffic thus ending up with even more free time.

In addition, I feel all my energy and creativity which has been dormant in Germany coming back. I find a side hustle a great way to learn about something outside of my normal work world.
For fun, I put an ad up on gumtree (more popular here than craigslist), offering to do odd jobs on an occasional basis, just to see what would appear. I have a varied set of 'Girl Friday' skills: gardening, cleaning, organizing, packing, grandma driver, babysitter, whatever.

A woman called me, she had a farmhouse which she had been renting, and she wanted help to put it back into tiptop shape after the last tenants (four young men). We spoke and then I popped over to see the place earlier in the week.

It's a 200 year farmhouse, with a large backyard, pool, overlooking rural land. It's beautiful, with all of the old woodwork, a solid structure which just needs a heck of a lot of work to put it back in order. It's the type of place that when populated by a family really needs a regular gardener, cook, nanny, etc. She's decided not to rent it again, but instead to get it in order to sell it sometime in the summer.

I was over there tonight for 3,5 hours and we spent the majority of time on the kitchen. The gentlemen didn't really do regular cleaning, it seems, as there was a layer of grease on everything. They spilled sugar in the cabinet and it melded to the shelf, they spilled rice in the back of another cabinet, left a large amount of useless crap to throw out, and on and on. After both of us working together for 2,5 hours, it now looks like a farmhouse kitchen which you'd see in a magazine. We scoured from the top of the cabinets to the floor. The pure beauty of the place is underneath all of the months of disuse. In addition, she bought some flowers and plants so that as it goes in order she's adding the staging bits to get it ready to show, so it really looks super.

I spent the last hour getting stains off the carpets, handprints off the walls, and scouring windowsills. These old windows aren't doubleglazed and it seems no one dusted for at least a year so there was a layer of grime on the windows and all of the woodwork.

I've been asked back for 8 hours on Saturday, to get the flower beds ready for spring and to tackle the other rooms which we didn't touch. Her brother has been up to do the heavy yardwork already, but it has a lot of flower beds to re-establish.

I've been asked to become the regular temporary caretaker for the next few months. It's only 12 minutes from benevolent company J and she doesn't live in this area. So she'd like someone to stop by regularly and check on the mail, water the plants, take care of mowing the grass and adding the weekly pool chemicals.

This one appeals to me for a few reasons:

-I'm considering longer term, to buy a property expressly for the purposes of renting it out. I was 50/50 on whether that should be a house or a flat. I'm now 100% feeling that it should be a flat, without a yard, having had this limited experience on the topic. I think there are more points here for me to learn regarding property renting based on this experience, so I'm here to learn them.

-The place is absolutely gorgeous. I imagine once it's fully back in order and only in maintenance mode, it will be divine to attend to.

-She hopes to have it on the market early in the summer, to use it on some weekends during the summer while it's still not sold, and then finally sold by the end of the summer. This schedule aligns perfectly with my (hopefully!) LSE October start (more on that soon--two more weeks to decide).

-The hours are flexible and not so many after this initial clean-up effort. For now, I could use the extra cash (and that's a whole other blog post still to come!)

-My lazy self likes a bit of physical activity after sitting 8 hours in the office.

-She paid me in exact change tonight, as well as offered me tea, coffee, etc.

When my Polish frugal grandparents did spend money

Growing up on that side, I was the youngest of three grandchildren. Gifts were modest, but they were well-thought out and carefully arranged. In addition to birthdays and the December holidays there were always little things for other days like Valentine's day or St. Patrick's day.

When I was in my high school years, my grandmother has passed away and my cousin was getting close to graduating from the university. As she neared graduation, my grandfather got it into his head that to honor my grandmother's memory--as well as to be practical--he would give my cousin 500 USD for interview clothing. Here she was coming out of a four year degree program, maxed to the gills financially--although well-educated--and he was sure that she's be OK once she got a paycheck or two, but she needed to look her best to get that job.

My cousin and I were younger, but not to be forgotten. While my eldest cousin got the immediate cash, my grandfather searched around at local banks for find the one offering the best rates on 5 year cds, as both the middle cousin and I were more than five years aways from graduating from any university, so our equivalent 500 dollar gifts were deposited into cds for us to gain interest.

Upon receiving the gift, the background of the reason (my cousin's graduation) was explained. And the additional footnote I received with mine was: this is in honor of your grandmother, you're to save it until you graduate from the university, use it to buy interview clothes to get that job, as she'd want you to look nice. The five years will be up on this while you are in university, so you can use it for books or fees if you have to, but the best thing would be to put it into a 2 year cd so that it's ready for you as you finish.

It's probably imporant to note that my Polish grandparents were the first-born children of Poles who had recently emigrated to America. They grew up in North Philly speaking only Polish at home back when it was a Polish part of Philly and went immediately to work in manual jobs upon graduating high school. (I found their SSN applications in my genealogy research). Their entire working lives were factory situations, so the thought that went into this gift cannot be underestimated. It wasn't a matter of not spending money, it was a matter of knowing when one should spend money, and to plan it wisely.