Aprovechar

As many people have discovered after going gluten-free for a while, I have found that I don’t always miss bread, or crave bread, as much as I did when I first started eating this way.  I can go for a week without a bread-like product without feeling a bit grumpy, which often bewilders friends who don’t see me often or people I go to visit. “But is it okay if we make burgers since you didn’t bring a bun?” “Oh yeah, it’s fine.” I’m not by any means offended that they ask permission—it’s kind of them—but eating a burger (or whatever) on a bed of lettuce, with a smear of avocado and a dollop of ketchup—it’s just what I do at this point. It’s shruggable.  That’s not to say I, by any means, live a low-carb lifestyle:  I eat plenty of potatoes, rice, corn, sweet potatoes, quinoa, wild rice, grits, etc.  And of course I occasionally make quick breads—-muffins, cornbread, etc.  Bread, by which I really mean loaf bread, by virtue of requiring particular effort, is just not often my carb of choice.

But sometimes I do get a hankering for it, and sometimes I just have the desire to bake some real bread—and if I have the time (it’s not so much the energy, as the bread recipe I most often use is easy), I’ll have a go at it, and make a loaf or two.  When I make bread, for the first two days after it’s fresh from the oven, I eat sandwiches for lunch, and often for dinner,  and sometimes I make toast for breakfast, as well.  After two days, the bread—lacking the moisture-locking gluten—can go into the freezer to be thawed and toasted later, if I desire.  If I make two loaves in a batch, unless I have a rush of company coming, I will slice and freeze the second loaf.  But more often, I make one loaf, and when I get to Day 3, I put that bread to use as people have deliciously used stale bread throughout its history:  bread pudding, French toast, bread salad, or croutons.

Yesterday was Day 3 of my most recent loaf.  After I sliced off two pieces for a sandwich, I chopped the remainder of the loaf  into 1″ cubes, tossed the cubes in a bit of olive oil, salt, garlic, and herbs, and toasted them—at 300 degrees—on a jelly roll pan for 45 minutes, flipping them once in the middle. (Or at least, that’s what I usually do.  Yesterday, I actually flipped them, set a new timer, missed when the timer went off, remembered about twenty minutes later, exclaimed a word I won’t repeat here, rushed to the oven, and found . . . my croutons were just fine. Simply a bit more crunchy than I usually make them.  Hurray for a slow oven.) The croutons keep in a closed container on the counter or in the fridge for several days; I imagine that they’d keep for months in the freezer, but they never last that long here.

This morning, while I was at the coffee shop working, I started pondering what to make for lunch.  Then I remembered my croutons, and my idea developed rapidly from there. Mmmmm.

BLT Salad
Serves 1

2 cups of lettuce, preferably mixed types
8-10 grape tomatoes, sliced if desired
1/4 cup croutons
2 slices of crispy bacon, crumbled
Optional additions:
1/4 of an avocado, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon green onions, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons almonds

Dressing:
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons aged balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon honey

Layer salad ingredients on a plate. Combine dressing ingredients in a small jar with a lid. Shake well, and pour over the salad.  Consume with abandon.

A few other foods I want to try making soon:

Jamaican Veggie Patties
Falafel
Blue Corn Chickpea Tacos
Roasted Carrot Spread
Millet Hamburger Buns
Early Summer Vegetable Salad
Chocolate Buttermilk Layer Cake with Chocolate Pudding Frosting
Shrimp Tamale Casserole With Three Sisters Black Mole (only I probably won’t use shrimp since we only eat it when we’re at the coast)

Thinking about taking the plunge for the official No-Spend Month in July? Dan and I have decided to repeat the No-Spend Month again in July, but I refuse to be deprived of fun just because I’m saving my pennies.  Here are a few ideas of ways to have fun inexpensively:

Visit a friend’s or family member’s house on a lake, at the beach, in the mountains, in the dessert—anywhere that brings you peace.

Go to a community pool.  Swim laps or take toys or friends or children to play the pool games you played as a child.

Gather together with friends or family, with each person bringng dvds of 5 movies he/she owns.  (Make sure each dvd has a sticker with the owner’s name on it.) Let each person pick dvds to borrow for a month.  Gather together again to re-exchange at the end of the month.

Create an adult version of a summer reading list.  Reserve the first two books at the library, and reserve half an hour each evening for your reading time.

Record yourself reading books aloud for the blind and dyslexic.  Get into it.  If it’s appropriate, use different voices for different characters.

Single and bored, or single and feeling lonely? Join match.com, and search within a reasonable radius of you for what you consider your ideal characteristics in a mate.  If any of the resulting people look interesting, wink at them, and give yourself the gift of possibility. (Hey, it’s exactly how I met my husband.)

Visit your local farmer’s market (many towns have them at least once a week—even the 2500-person town where I grew up!), and pick out foods for a fantastic dinner (or seven).

Take one of those board games off its dusty shelf, and remember why you always enjoyed it.

You know that park in town that you always mean to visit but never make it to? Or that nearby state park? Take a simple picnic and a tarp, and go have a great time.

Take up an esoteric activity you love. (Photographing abandoned houses is one of mine.  The initial costs of the camera, cards, Photoshop, etc., wasn’t insignificant, but the current cost is minimal with digital processing.  Of course, selling photos occasionally also helps me balance the costs!)

Use up some of the liquor in your cabinet by looking up mixed drinks you can make from ingredients you mostly already have.

Gather a couple of friends or relatives—people who love to be silly. Spread newspaper on a hard surface floor. Get printer paper (or other inexpensive paper) and a cheap set of Crayola paints and paintbrushes.  Paint whatever comes into your mind.  Label your paintings with deep psychological or mythological meaning, if you feel so inclined.  Put the paintings on the fridge after they dry.

Check out a yoga dvd from the library, and have a go at it on your living room floor.

Pull out your makeup, and make your face up entirely—nowhere to go, just for yourself. Or go somewhere, if you feel inclined.

Put on clothes you can get dirty. Slice up a watermelon.  Sit on the front porch or back deck and watch the fireflies while you munch on the watermelon and the juice runs down your arms.

Pick a cuisine you’ve never tried—Peruvian, South African, Moroccan.  Look up a recipe to make from that cuisine, and get to work in the kitchen. Relish the results.

Invite friends over for a tea party. Ask them to bring a bit of whatever special kind of tea leaves they happen to have at home.  Ask whoever is the baker in your circle to make a simple food to go with the tea.

Take a friend’s dog for a walk or hike.

Make dough for mini-pizzas.  Have each family member customize a personal pizza to his or her tastes.  Eat the pizza while watching a movie together.

Hold a purse swap with friends.

Ask around to see if any friends or family members own a karaoke machine.  Borrow it for a night of soulful, sometimes gleefully off-key singing.

Go hiking in a state park. (Wednesdays, even the parking is free in Georgia.)

Visit a you-pick farm, and get buckets of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, or blackberries for cheap.  Can or freeze the ones you can’t get to using right away. (It’s best to freeze berries before washing and just wash them when you want to use them.)

Invite a style-savvy friend over to suggest to you wardrobe combinations you haven’t yet considered.

Get a sitter to take your children to the park or pool.  Do nothing except lie on the couch with a stack of magazines beside you, reading or napping as you so choose.

Pull out your bike, dust it off (if needed), and go for a pleasure ride.  Or, if you don’t have one already, get a bike for free or cheap: ask for a bike on your local Freecycle, or search Craigslist in your area for someone selling a used one at a good price.

Make homemade playdough.   Create masterpieces with it.

Hand-write a letter to a friend telling her why she means so much to you.

Create a love jar for your significant other.  Take colorful strips of paper, write statements about why you love the person so much, and/or write things you’d like to do with or for your significant other.  Crumple up the strips.  Toss them in a jar with a lid, and present them to your honey.

Go tubing down a nearby river or stream.

Write stick-it love notes for your significant other, and tuck them in drawers, coat pockets, etc.

See if you can volunteer at a local festival that you’d like to attend for free. (It’s usually best to search out that info well in advance.)

Blare your stereo.  Jump around, jump around.  Or do pirouettes.

Download (or watch on YouTube) comedy routines by Bill Cosby, Ellen Degeneres, or any other comedian who gets you laughing.

Make icecream at home using whatever flavors of local fruit are at their best. (Coconut milk works great for a non-dairy version; agave syrup works well for a sweetening alternative.)

Take a nap.

A few other sources of ideas:

30 Ways to Get Happy for Free
20 Pocket-Change Date Night Ideas
Treat Yourself Without Breaking the Bank
100 (Mostly) Free Things to Do This Summer

What are some of your favorite ways to have inexpensive fun? Do you have a list on your blog that you want to share?

(For the record, we have $110 remaining for the rest of our No-Spend Month.  Go us! I’m so proud of us. It’s so cool to log in to our bank account and see all that money left for our savings account.)

I just made muffins.  I sorta followed a recipe, but the recipe wasn’t gluten-free or egg-free, so I kinda ran with it and did my own thing. How many times have I made muffins that have come out just fine without me following a recipe? But you know what? I didn’t really make muffins, because they didn’t really come out as muffins.  They were wayyyy too gooey even after nearly an hour of baking, even though they seemed the right consistency going into the oven.

This usually doesn’t faze me anymore.  I don’t usually cry over a failed recipe unless I have dinner company arriving in 10 minutes—and sometimes, not even then, anymore. There was The Great Chili Disaster of 2008: I forgot you can’t cook beans in acidic water, and I put the beans in the same time as the tomatoes.  I didn’t remember until I’d wasted a lot of ingredients (beans, meat, corn, tomatoes, gf beer, spices) and company was due any minute.  Company arrived—laughed, commiserated.  We discussed possible remedies.  We discarded them.  I threw away the chili, and we went out to eat.

I’ve accepted that being gluten-free and allergen-free means you have to roll with it. It means I waste some ingredients, yes, and it definitely means I waste some time.  But it’s also true that those wasted ingredients and that wasted time are, in another sense, not wasted at all, because they often lead me to new understanding.  Failure can either set us back or teach us, right? Certainly, it’s sometimes both. I prefer to try, to try, to think about the growth and not the setback.

That doesn’t mean I never get frustrated.  Last week, I wanted to make a hazelnut pear cake as one of my fall recipes.  I can’t tell you how many loaves and pans of pear cake I made  (the texture was all wrong, seemingly no matter what I did, and I tried a huge number of variations) before giving up and moving on to another idea.  The next morning, I knew the kind of pie crust I wanted to create for the magazine article.  I was a day behind after wasting a day on the pear cake with no usable result.  I proceeded to spend the next 14 hours making pie crust, sometimes baking it with a filling, and always throwing it away.  At 11 p.m., my back, arms, and legs ached; it was well beyond being fun anymore.  Fortunately, when the 11 p.m. iteration came out of the oven and I bit into it, I went, “This is it.” Finally.  My husband agreed.  Yesterday, when I used that same pie crust recipe for the groom’s ‘pi pies’ at the reception of a friend’s wedding, people were shocked to learn the pie was gluten-free, and they—truly—gobbled it up.  The 14 hours of experimentation was worth it just for that, not to mention for the tasty treats that that pie crust will offer my future.

Baking Feet

I’m spending much of my week creating five fall (yes, fall already in the magazine world!) dessert recipes (gluten-free, casein-free, egg-free, soy-free, with vegan options) for a magazine.  I need about five additional testers right now—people who can make one of the recipes as it’s written and report back the results to me by next Tuesday (the 16th).  Testers can’t share the recipe with anyone until I let them know it’s been published, but they will get to make some tasty food and help spread the good word that gf/allergen-free can be satisfying . . . all while doing me a favor, of course. If you’re interested, send me an email at sally dot parrott at gmail dot com by Wednesday at noon.  Let me know if you have further food restrictions in your email.

Farmer's market take, 1st week of June, 2009

The first week of the no-spend month has come and gone.  We spent more than I thought we would, yet I’m still pleased, because we’re on track for the month:

$31—groceries at the farmer’s market
$13—headlight bulb (plus a spare) for the car and a bag of chips
$21.50—eating out ($2 taco and $2 margarita night at a nearby restaurant—plus a generous tip; skimping on a tip is cheap in the bad way)
$7—a fresh-squeezed lemonade (for me) and ice cream/waffle sandwich (for Dan) at a summer festival
$15—gas (I didn’t fill our car up before the start of the month—but we don’t drive very far very often, so this half-tank should last us a while)

Total: $87.50

Thoughts during the first week:

• There are times that I buy essential clothing that ends up costing a pretty penny: I spend $50 (if I can find one on sale) to $80+ for a bra, because I wear an unusual size. The bras are worth the money because they keep my back from hurting, and they make me look much better in my clothes than ill-fitting bras do. I buy shoes infrequently, but if I’m going to wear them often, I will spend $80-$100 on a pair of shoes that will be comfortable and last for years. But there are plenty of times when I am tempted to look at clothes just because a catalog or ad or sale email catches my eye. And once I’m looking at the clothes, I’m easily sucked in to at least thinking (if not acting on) the idea that I should ‘update my wardrobe’ with a few new pieces. When you think back to what our society was like, say, 100 years ago, when many people owned two sets of clothes, if that, it’s amazing to think we can have closets full of clothes and still feel we need to buy more. I generally avoid the mall because, even though I have relatively nice clothes, going there makes me feel frumpy and makes me want to spend to fix that. The marketers do a damn good job of tapping into my psyche there. I don’t have tv at home, and since I have been without it several years, I notice how much it does the same thing when I catch glimpses of it in restaurants and waiting rooms. Ditto for some magazines—I’m particular about which magazines I read, because I want to feel I’m getting more from some articles than the ads and other articles are taking away from my sense of well-being. In the past week, I’ve noticed how much the internet is assiduously takes the place of the other marketing that I’m avoiding, though. I may not give in, but I’m tempted to. I’ve spent the last week deleting sales ads as soon as they come in—resisting the impulse to click through and see what’s there.
• It’s amazing how often my response to a stressful or dull day is to want to eat out at a restaurant.  We went out last week because of a particularly exasperating Wednesday that had me feeling fed up by dinner time.  And there’s nothing wrong with eating out occasionally, of course—it can be very pleasurable.  The trick is not to turn to it more often than one’s budget or waistline can allow—or to let that pleasure be a way to avoid dealing with other things in life that need to change.  Last night, after spending most of the day baking for recipe development for a magazine article, I had zero desire to cook dinner.  My husband finally arrived home from school around 8 p.m., and there I sat on the couch, sugared out from tastings and wanting to eat out instead of stepping foot in the kitchen again.  But my husband suggested that we hold off for $2 taco/margarita night if we’re going to eat out again, and he made us a simple meal of doctored, boxed (gluten-free, dairy-free) mac ‘n’ cheese with cut-up Applegate Farms Great Organic Hot Dogs (the only hot dogs I buy) and a side of swiss chard.  Gourmet? No. The hot dogs and chard were great, but it was the first box of that type of mac ‘n’ cheese that we’d bought (several months ago—eating from the pantry!), and I can’t say I loved it.   But it served its purpose: fueled us up for the next day, and kept us from going out to eat.
• It was fun wandering through the artisans’ booths at Summerfest (photography! quilts! paintings! jewelry!), but after a while, it hit me that ‘festival’ tends mean to ‘come and be tempted to buy lots of stuff you don’t need.’ They did have music and wine tastings at one (distant) end of the festival, and (overpriced but tasty) food booths at the other, but that was pretty much it.
• Every Saturday or Sunday, this season, I take local tomato and lettuce from the farmer’s market, combine it with local, pastured, and amazing Thompson Farms bacon, and make a BLT for lunch—sometimes plain, sometimes with avocado or honey mustard vinaigrette added.  Every week when I eat this meal, I chew my sandwich in silent, deep pleasure.  Often the most satisfying meals really are a few high-quality ingredients put together simply.
• This No-Spend month has me rerouting some neural and financial and other pathways that I take, but it’s not as hard as I thought it might be—yet, anyway. We’ll see what happens over the rest of the month!

Three of my girlfriends (Amarinthia, Amanda, and Terri) and I try to get together about weekly for a Girls’ Night Out or In.  We generally sip fruity drinks and eat tasty food while we share what’s going on in our lives and the lives of those we all care about.  As we’ve all been under a bit of extra stress lately, last night, we pooled our resources to create an inexpensive Spa Night at my house—one focused on our feet.

First we sat down for a lighter dinner—spa fare, as it were.  I had pulled the meat off a roasted chicken.  I combined it with apple chunks, raisins, and pecan pieces (all left over from a church event we’d hosted here) and tossed it all with poppy seed dressing.  We ate it over marvelous local lettuce.  We also had pomegranate limeade with tequila in it as our drink of choice—kinda like a more casual version of a pomegranate margarita.

Then we juiced a whole bunch of lemons to kick off a three-part foot treatment my roommates and I used to do in college.  First, we sat on the edge of the tub and soaked our feet in lemon juice—using about five lemons a person.

After five minutes of soaking, we turned around so that our feet went into hot water in the tub, and we exfoliated with salt and sugar scrubs, brushes, and pumice stones.  It was lovely except for the moments when Terri was slipping from her oily feet and nearly falling in the tub while none of us could help her.  Those moments were just hilarious, instead.

We were supposed to moisturize our feet next, but our feet and legs were well-oiled from the scrubs, so I don’t know if any of us remembered to do that. (If the night were stopping here, I would’ve moisturized my feet well and then worn cotton socks to bed to lock in the moisture. That was the college routine.)

We pulled on sandals and tromped out to the front porch to paint each other’s toenails and munch on sweet watermelon slices while we chatted some more. When my husband called to say he was coming home from school, we realized it was 10:30; time had slipped by much more quickly than we’d realized.  The other girls had to rush home. But we all agreed that we felt much more relaxed for having taken on the spa activities together, and we all love our newly prettified feet!

It was one of those nights that prove that companionship is far more important than money when it comes to having a good time.

Next week, we decided, we’re getting together to create avocado face masks and olive oil hair treatments.

A few days ago, my husband tweeted, “If loving cookies is wrong, I don’t want to be right.”

That man is a cookie fiend, but the cookies he was eating when he wrote that are especially delicious.  They are made from a recipe I created by altering a recipe I’d already created.  The first recipe calls for sorghum, teff, buckwheat, and mesquite flours.  One day, maybe six months ago, when I had a craving for the unique and marvelous taste of mesquite, I began pulling out my flours to make the original cookies . . . but  I discovered I was out of buckwheat.  Then I noticed a package of Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free flour mix that had been opened but barely used.  I decided to try the recipe using Bob’s in lieu of the teff, buckwheat, and sorghum.  And honestly? Even though the batter itself didn’t taste as good as the first version (Bob’s has the tin-like beany taste in the flour), when the cookies were baked, the beany flavor evaporated, and I thought the finished product was better than the original.

After I made the new variety, I ate a couple and put the rest in the freezer—an action that I usually take with cookies to avoid the on-the-counter incessant munching phenomenon.  When I popped by a friend’s apartment a few days later, I took her a couple of the frozen cookies, which she adored.  Ever since then, she’s mentioned those cookies whenever I have prepared other foods around her.  So when she had surgery a few days ago, I bought a bag of Bob’s Red Mill, pulled out a pack of mesquite flour, and got to work.

She ate a couple of cookies with her pain pills.  They certainly don’t make it all better, but every little bit helps.

Mesquite Chocolate Chip Cookies, Take II

Gluten-free, Egg-free, Casein-free, Vegan

6 Tbsp. hot water
3 Tbsp. ground flax seeds
1 tsp. oil

2 1/4 c. Bob’s Red Mill GF baking flour mix
3/4 c. mesquite flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt (use a bit more if you don’t use salted nuts or seeds in your version)
1 c. Spectrum shortening or ghee
1 c. turbinado sugar
1 c. dark brown sugar, packed
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
2 c. dairy-free chocolate chips
1 c. roasted, salted pecans (or salted sunflower seeds, for a non-nut option)
possibly 1-3 tablespoons of water

Put the oven racks in the top half of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together the flax meal, hot water, and oil in a small bowl (I use a ramekin for this). Allow to gel while you perform the next steps.

If you’ve never used mesquite flour before, open the package and put your nose to it so that you can inhale it malty, nutty, chocolaty aroma.  Combine the flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a medium-sized bowl. Cream the shortening/ghee with the sugars and vanilla until well-mixed. Add the flax egg replacer, and mix well.  Add the flour in three or four doses, mixing between each dose. Fold in the remaining ingredients. The batter should be mildly crumbly but should be easy to press or roll into small balls of dough. If you think the batter is too crumbly, add 1 tablespoon of water, mix the batter thoroughly, and test it again. Repeat if necessary.

Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or Silpats. Scoop or press about two tablespoons of dough into a ball or somewhat flattened ball. (The cookies seem to spread more if they’re made with shortening rather than ghee.) Place the cookies about two inches apart on the pans.

Bake 15-20 minutes, or until cookies are fairly firm. (They will firm up more while they cool.) The cookies will be a bit darker than traditional chocolate chip cookies due to the flours in them. Remove the cookies from the oven, and transfer to a wire cooling rack after a couple of minutes.

(You may refrigerate the dough, covered, for a day before shaping and baking the cookies.  Sometimes I think they even come out better that way.)

Makes a lot of cookies. My batch made about 36.

What a gorgeous bounty of food.

Yesterday morning, my husband and I made our way to the park to join the wandering masses making their way through farmers’ booths, bakery stands, and stalls of homemade goods.

I picked out most of the produce we will eat this week.  We already had an avocado, red potatoes, limes, lemons, squash, sweet potatoes, a bit of lettuce, and a tomato at home. As you can see above, I purchased lavender, peaches, cabbage, leeks, lettuce (oh my goodness, one of the best local purchases you can make), asparagus, radishes, broccoli, blueberries, beets, carrots, cucumbers, and blackberries. I also bought a cup of cool mint tea to sip as we shopped, a wedge of cheese for our next wine party (each person contributes money to attend), and four cilantro plants. The total came to $59.

One of the farmers was late to the market; he said it was because they’d only finished picking the vegetables an hour earlier.  Another had blackberry stains on her fingers from just plucking the berries we purchased from her.  One of the farmers’ teenage sons, who was running his family’s booth, gave us a discount “because you’re here every week.”  I had a conversation with another farmer about how I’d taken to roasting radishes, which mellows their pungency with sweetness.  He asked for details on my process so that he could go home and try it.  When I complimented one of the farmers on how well the hydrangea he’d given us the previous week had held up and suggested that he tell potential customers I’d said so, he insisted I take more hydrangeas home this week as a gift.

How long were we there? I couldn’t tell you. Thirty minutes? An hour? It was so pleasant shopping under the shade of the breeze-tickled trees, warm sun peeking through at intervals, babies napping in strollers or watching the many leashed dogs trotting through beside their owners.  I had no desire to hurry it up, to try to be efficient as I often do making my way through the grocery store, hugging myself to keep warm.

When we got home, I sat down and ate half the blueberries while chatting with my husband. The berries were so ripe and lovely, giving way in my mouth with each sweet bite.  When I stop to think about it, I am so amazed at the beauty and diversity of what air, soil, water, sunlight, and a little seed can create—often with the hard work of a farmer, of course, especially a farmer who isn’t using chemical fertilizers or pesticides to keep the plants healthy. But just the sheer variety of what edible plants exist on this planet, or even in my area—it’s wondrous.

The food is put away now.  Dan is outside potting the cilantro as I type. The hydrangea are tucked in a cobalt blue glass on the table.  The peaches sit in the windowsill, where they’ll finish ripening.  I just need to plan our meals for the week now, to make grateful, celebratory, and health-giving use of this abundance of local foods.

I try to post, y’all. I really do. I’ve started several and then stopped.  The truth is, there’s an elephant in the room having to do with what we’ll be doing and where we’ll be living in a few months.  And I can’t say anything about that elephant right now, but when I try to write on here, my thoughts are all concerned with trunks and tusks and giant ears.  I thought I’d have a big announcement about it all today, but this stuff drags out forever.  Foreeeeeeeeeverrrrrrrrrrrr.  And I have realized that a) I am an extremely impatient woman at times, and b) I am someone who is uncomfortable with liminal zones. Yet there’s been little I can do except obsess over what may or may not be coming; I can control little of it.  Truth be told, once I gave myself permission to obsess instead of feeling bad about obsessing, I felt a lot better.  For a while, it helped me actually not obsess as much.  And when my obsession returned, I gave over to it and just let it exist.  Still, I can’t share any news about that yet. Monday? I sure hope it will be Monday. In fact, it kinda has to be Monday due to particular circumstances. So say a little prayer for me and Dan, okay? Or send us warm thoughts, if that’s more your style. And hopefully I’ll pull this duct tape off my mouth on Monday.

Photo by Kiki Follettosa

What I can tell you is that whichever way the wind blows, it looks like we’ll be making a big transition and a big move.  Under the best of circumstances, big moves mean expenses that you can anticipate and some that you cannot.  Both kinds require money, of course, and money is what we—and many of you, I know, as well—don’t have quite as much of as we would wish right now. We have our savings, but we’d prefer to save that for emergencies. We have our investments, but cashing out now would mean cashing out at half the value of when we invested.  So even though I tend to be a moderation kind of gal, we’re going to take a plunge in June and do a No-Spend Month.  Really, we’re going to do a Spend-Little Month, but I didn’t come up with the concept, and Rachel, who writes brilliantly at Small Notebook, named it the No-Spend Month.  I’ll stick with Rachel’s name—it’s got a ring to it that’s worth repeating over the course of the month.  Rachel holds her No-Spend month annually in July, and some readers join her then, but I’m bumping mine up to June.

As we’re looking at a big and fairly imminent move, my N0-Spend month is intended to boost our savings by restricting our spending for a month.  But it’s also intended to use up much of the excess food we have accumulated in our pantry, fridge, and freezer. (I can’t be the only one with 6 kinds of open jelly, 4 open jars of salsa, 5 large jars of various kinds of rice, 7 bags of dried beans, and assorted cuts of ‘hey, it’s a good deal’ frozen meats, can I? That’s not even considering my liquor cabinet, either. We just don’t toss that stuff back like we used to.) I’m not planning to move any of those goods, so we better eat them up (well, maybe not all the liquor).  And cut our grocery bill along the way . . . while also having some simpler, less expensive fun (okay, so maybe all the liquor) . . . and also just escaping the consumerist culture a bit for a while. Who knows? Maybe we’ll dig it so much we try to extend it into July. I can’t tell you yet how it will go.

Rachel’s goal in previous years has been to spend a maximum of $250 (beyond required bills and charitable gifts).  Now that she and her husband, Doug, and daughter, Lane, are dealing with some food restrictions, I don’t know if she’ll decide to give them a bit more spending money to cover extra food costs.  I do know that I feel like $250 to cover everything just isn’t enough for us.  I buy local foods; I buy nearly entirely organic; I buy gluten-free; I buy pastured and cage-free.  I unapologetically spend a higher percentage of our income on food than most Americans do; I am certain I get a higher value (in health, environmental impact, taste, relationships) from what I spend than many people do.  I don’t plan to shop at different locations than I usually do during this month, and I don’t plan to change my values.  Nonetheless, as I mentioned, I want to eat up what we already have.  We’ll be eating vegetarian very often. We’ll be eating simpler meals with fewer flourishes than the ones I often make now. At this point in the bounteous Georgia growing season, I can walk to the farmer’s market on Saturday morning and come home with an enormous variety and amount of vegetables and fruits piled in my groaning basket for $50 a week, sometimes as little as $30. (Keep in mind we typically eat 2-3 veggies at both lunch and dinner, every day.)  Add the foods we have here, herbs from the pots outside and my spice rack, $20 a week for miscellaneous stuff from the grocery store, and that should put us at $280 (or less) for food.  Add $95 more for miscellaneous expenses for the month, and we should be able to keep our spending at $375.  That’s far less than what we usually manage to find our way through over the course of a month. . . .

Of course, as with Rachel’s No-Spend Month, there are bills that have to be paid.  There would be no sense in accumulating late fees or having to double up payments in July just to make a point (and a dent in my credit rating) in June.  These expenses are separate from the No-Spend Month:

• Utility bills (gas, electric, water, phones)
• Gifts (With the exception of the contribution to a friend’s wedding, I’ll be doing homemade gifts in June.
• Work expenses (After thinking about it and talking about it with my husband, I’m including in ‘work expenses’ the one cup of coffee or tea I have each time I visit a local coffee/wine bar to do my work there. With my husband working 10-12 hours a day on his thesis, I need the camaraderie of the morning regulars at the coffee bar, who encourage my writing and provide some companionship during the day. And going there without buying anything is just rude.)
• Health expenses for us or the kitties
• Rent would also not be included, but as we’re house-sitting, we don’t pay rent right now. (I know, I know. I can just hear you weeping for me.)
• Anything we buy with coupons or gift certificates, though we have not been hoarding any of those for this occasion, and we’re going to aim to avoid malls and stores and tempting online catalogs.
• Anything else we’ve already bought—the primary thing being a pair of inexpensive concert tickets my husband purchased as a gift for me a while back

So what is included? Well, lots of stuff:

• The aforementioned groceries
• Restaurant meals
• Cleaning supplies (Fortunately, white vinegar and baking soda are cheap.)
• Cat food and toys
• Gasoline
• Clothing
• Household ‘needs’ (which we really don’t need to buy with a move coming up anyway)
• Entertainment
• Whatever else may not fall in the category of routine bills or emergencies

I know myself. I know there will be temptation to spend beyond the limit when it happens to be convenient.  So I intend to take $375 in cash out of our bank account Sunday night and put it in an envelope.  Whatever I spend, other than the items in the not-counting list, will come from that cash. (Don’t worry—I won’t carry it around all at once.) And when it’s gone, it’s gone.

What we do in this month, I’ll be relating to you. What we learn about ourselves, we’ll see.  What we gain, I hope, will be a cleaner pantry and a beefed-up savings account!

If you’ve been missing my writing, I’ve got a rather large spread in the Summer 2009 Delight Gluten-Free magazine (a new gf mag) this month.  It’s a cover article called “Weight Loss Without Willpower” about some of the same topics I’ve covered here–and some I haven’t gotten to on here, as well.  It includes a two-week gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, soy-free meal plan with all the recipes (with omnivore and vegetarian options—though veggie not soy-free, and I did accidentally leave out a veggie option for one salmon meal) and photos I took of some of the foods. (The photo of the cardamom berry crumble on page 82 makes my mouth water, if I do say so myself.) I hate when magazine meal plans have boring food, so I carefully prepared the meal plan to fulfill readers’ taste buds while offering great nutrients and reasonable calories.  All the recipes were taste-tested by several preparers, and a Registered Dietitian double-checked my work.  If you’re interested in checking it out, I’d be honored if you would find a copy in a store or request one from the website . . . or if you would ask a store near you that carries gluten-free products to stock it.  Of course, if you want to email the editor and tell her I’m a jewel, that you’re thrilled I’m writing for her, and that I should be paid $100 a word, I won’t complain about that, either.

I was hoping there’d be more info about this issue on the website already, but that’s not up yet. C’est la vie! I’m just happy my copy came in.