Savvy Saving Bytes

It’s summer. It’s hot. It’s time to kiss the heat in your kitchen adios. So ta-ta to hot coffee. See you again in September.

And hello to refreshing iced coffee. This summer, thanks to a few changes, my cold-brewed iced coffee tastes better than ever.

Ingredients for 4 tall glasses of Iced Coffee:

3 cups cold water
2/3 cup ground coffee (most recipes call for coarse-ground. I prefer the full-bodied taste of expresso ground)
Sugar (to taste)
Milk (whole milk wins hands down) 

 Fill a pitcher or jar with the water. Add the coffee and Give it a good stir.  I use quart Mason jars so I can just pop the lid on and let the brew sit at room temp overnight or for at least 12 hours. (You may play around with other ratios in this simple recipe, EXCEPT the 12 hours of time necessary for the coffee steeping).

 The next day, I take a second Mason jar, balance a fine, steel mesh, coffee sieve (reusable – as always Miss Thrifty) on top and pour in the coffee. A new purchase, this triangular sieve specifically made for coffee machines has a much finer screen than the one I was previously using and filters out almost all the grounds, producing coffee with a smoother texture and richer flavor. In place of that, you could also use coffee filters or a fine screened sieve.

 After a few hours chilling time in the fridge (or none if I’m antsy to get to the coffee) I fill about a third of a glass with the coffee concentrate. Another third is filled with a combo of water and milk. What probably makes the biggest improvement to my iced coffee this year is the switch from skim milk to whole milk, which tastes like creamy half and half in comparison to the thin watery, low fat stuff I’ve been swilling. And Dr Weill approves too, I’ll have you know. Ice cubes take up the last third of the glass. Now sit back and enjoy.

So far the coffee has fared well up to three days in the fridge.

So stow away your wallets at Starbucks. Get out those Mason jars and cool off with your own easy, delicious, cold-brewed iced coffee.

 More on the Easy Summertime Life:

• Salad Niçoise – Thrifty Jewel of a Summer Meal
• Breezy Grilled Meals Easy on the Wallet
• Picnic in NYC with a King and a Guitar
• 103 Recipes to Spark up Packable Lunches
• Cape Cod Memories in a Dollar Jar
• A Splurge Feeds the Soul
• Super Cool, Healthy Summer Drinks

If the vision of Soylent’s founder is shared by the world, we will soon happily drink a glass of his company’s powdered nutrients whisked into water for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  And why would we willingly chug down glasses of  colorless, tasteless slush three times a day instead of enjoying plates of colorful, flavor-packed, satisfying foods? According to Rob Rhinehart, Soylent’s CEO, many people are way too busy these days to bother with mundane tasks like food shopping, cooking, eating and cleaning up. These people prefer to spend time on more enjoyable activities. And they are willing to pay for that freedom, having already shelled out over $500,000 to Soylent by ordering weekly and monthly supplies of the product. Composed of at least 14 dry ingredients including carbs, proteins, essential vitamins and minerals and packaged into single meals, the orders are projected to start shipping in August.

Rhinehart also claims the $65.00 weekly cost of Soylent per person is cheaper than the cost of consuming regular groceries. Not in this apartment. Mostly a vegetarian, I spend little on meat and lots on fresh foods, which totals far less than $65.00 a week.

Soylent’s expense also tops the American Department of Agriculture’s recent calculation for the weekly cost of a family’s healthy, home-cooked meals, which average $36.50 per person for a family of four. In the unimpressed opinion of Adam Drewnowski, director of the Centre for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington, “Soylent is an expensive glass of milk,”

Another interesting price comparison reported in the Economist is a stir and drink food product that provides emergency nutrition for malnourished children, which costs less than $10.00 a week. With a peanut butter base, this French product has a great name – Plumpy’Nut. This name perfectly says what it is, invoking “good health and nutrition, restoration and yumminess” all in one.

Soylent’s name on the other hand, doesn’t reverberate with this duo mind and mouth appeal. I can’t imagine which definition of “lent” the founders had in mind when they tacked it on to “Soy”. In my case I first associated the Easter “lent” with their name, not a positive connection with its suggestion of deprivation, fasting and glum austerity. Also the first five letters of Soylent spell “soyle” which hints at “soil,” which is not an optimum association for high quality food.

Can you see yourself shaking up packets of Soylent powder and water for your major food intake?

More on the Food Beat:

• Kid Foodie Blog Banned in Scotland
• What in Tarnation are They doing to Bread?
• What the Heck is Melamine Doing in Plates?
• Is Your Steak Cemented together with Meat Glue? 
• Cheap Rich Proteins
• Thanks Mom and Dad for Not Making Me Fat

Credit: Daily News

Just when I thought major cities were never going to build affordable housing again — boom — along comes an article in Reuters telling us YES, micro apartments are now part of a hot new trend. Located in happening neighborhoods, these hostel-style apartments may be super cozy space-wise, often less than 200 square feet, but they come with private bathrooms, prime locations and that rarity these days — affordable rent.

Just starting out on an engineering career, A young Seattle resident, for instance, pays $737 a month for his mini apartment which typically ranges from $500 to $1000. By comparison, average rent for a one bedroom apartment in his city would set him back $1,223. Having no problem with close quarters, lack of storage space and sharing a communal kitchen with 7 neighbors, he in fact enjoys the togetherness aspect and sociability of his living arrangements. Another plus is living in a sought-after neighborhood, an area bustling with restaurants, bars and shops.

Not everyone in Seattle applauds the new trend. Residents worry about over-crowded neighborhoods, over taxed infra structures, traffic congestion and ever more scarce parking spots. Carl Winter, founder of Reasonable Density Seattle calls these micro apartments “boarding houses on steroids.”  But the trend is definitely gathering steam. Since 2006 forty-one micro housing projects have come through the Seattle Department of Planning and Development.

 One valid criticism is their lack of design oversight. Because the micro units don’t include kitchens, developers have been able to skirt environmental reviews and the regulatory process usually applied to the construction of conventional apartments.

Geared for small-scale living, these micro apartments are especially welcome news for students, recent college grads, retirees and service workers, a group long ignored by real estate developers in our leading cities.

Not one to be outdone by forward-thinking fellow mayors, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg launched a design competition last year to develop a building composed of micro-units. It was won by a plan calling for 55 units ranging from 250 to 370 square feet made of prefab modules.  Shooting for a finish date of September 2015, the amenities will include a deck, laundry room, bike storage, cafe, fitness room and a rooftop garden. Not bad. Where do I sign up for a lease?

More on Affordable Housing:

• The Man who Built himself a House for Peanuts
• 20 Lowest Property Taxes in USA
• 5 Reasons I’ll Never Buy a Home
• The Day Burglars Broke my Apartment Door in Half
• Tiny Houses – Streamlined, Slick and Smart
• Top 10 US Cities for Renters

This theft happened years ago. It was not the first time I stole something, but it was the first time I misappropriated something from a client (let’s call her BJ), a person with whom I had a long, pleasant and fruitful relationship.

Every season BJ’s PR agency conducted a New York show where all the latest fashion trends in footwear were presented to industry insiders. I was hired to draw all these hot fashion shoes. I drew them beforehand on a long roll of acetate, which was then placed backstage on a projector. There, unseen by the audience, someone would slap various colored magic markers in my hand as I speedily added finishing touches to the drawings while a projectionist rolled the acetate along accompanying BJ’s commentary. All the audience could see was BJ speaking in front of a large screen with shoe drawings taking form as if by magic. Backstage we had to rehearse the presentation repeatedly to get the overall timing correct.

There was a lot to remember — which colors went where, which shoes needed  additional details or sketches. And I was feeling none too sharp that day. In the shaky, early stage of tobacco withdrawal, I had just “stopped smoking” for maybe the tenth time. By mid morning I was feeling edgy and cranky and working hard to conceal it. By lunchtime I needed a cigarette. And needed it badly.

I couldn’t just desert my post to go out and buy a pack. The only person among us who smoked was BJ and I could have asked her for a cigarette except she was in the front of the house, busy with snuffing out all the little fires that always flared up before the big show. Plus her handbag containing the yearned-for cigarettes was not within easy reach for her. It was backstage. With us. Only a few feet away, I stared at it.  Everyone around me had suddenly disappeared. Should I do it? COULD I do it? WOULD I do it? Yes. I did it.  Feeling like a safe-cracker — the contents of a women’s handbag are as deeply private, as unseen by public eyes and untouchable by foreign hands as a personal diary locked in a safe — I snapped open her handbag, grabbed her cigarette pack, shook a cig out and flipped her purse shut. 

For years this theft has bothered me. It was penny ante stuff. Like the pack of gum I pilfered when I was a young kid, gum that I never enjoyed, a stolen object that made me feel bad, that told me at an early age I’d never make it as a competent thief.

After our recent housing bubble and financial meltdown I wondered about all those bankers who had stolen billions from their own clients without a shred of guilt, selling them products they themselves were frantically shorting. I thought too about the shyster mortgage lenders from big name banks who had coolly stripped innocent mortgage borrowers of their homes, life savings and hopes for a better future.

Like many, I wondered how it was that petty criminals in this country were arrested left and right and not one of those bankers who stole billions has been hauled off to prison or spent a single day behind bars.

 More on Pilferage and Plunder:

•  A Pickpocket Picks the Wrong Pocket
• My Cousin Mark Mugged in Manila
• Two-headed Trout and Selenium in Yellowstone
• Are You Eating Rice Harvested in a Cancer Village?
• Tales of Big Apple Shoplifters
• Sham Weight-loss Products Biggest Scam of All
• The Day Burglars Broke My Apartment Door in Half

Whitney Cranshaw, Colorado State University, Bugwood.org

In passed summers I have lost countless battles with budworms as they happily gorged themselves silly on my geraniums and petunias.  As tiny, newborn worms, they stealthily bored into tender, young flower buds and ate their way out, speedily decimating every bud in flowerpots. Fatter and feistier, they then feasted on every blossom in sight. And when THOSE were chomped up, it was on to the leaves, which they carved up into clumps of dried out, Swiss cheese. (Budworm info in detail.)

 Along the way, I tried every Internet remedy to fight the voracious little monsters except poisonous insecticides. (These can be tricky. The budworms have to actually lap up the newly sprayed stuff, a toughie when you’re deeply concealed in thickly wrapped flower buds). Instead I sprayed the petunias and geraniums with soapsuds, coated them with vegetable oil, sprinkled them with onion powder, peppered them with chilies, planted smelly garlic in their soil and offered them beer and tobacco juice. All of which gave them a big laugh as they went on their merry rounds  destroying all my flowers.

Last summer I finally admitted defeat and forever banished petunias and geraniums from my garden. After scrubbing my flowerpots clean of the previous year’s soil, I gave some dahlias a whirl. For awhile they flourished. In fact for more than a while. But late in the summer, guess what appeared on my dahlia leaves? Yep. The budworms were back. (A master gardener writes about bad bug, budworms.)

So this year dahlias too were out. Yesterday I hit the downtown farmer’s market.  Extremely busy lately with a large project, I only had time for some fast web research prior to my flower selection. Not surprisingly, many of the market people who sold the flowers acted as though they have never even HEARD of budworms.  Others claimed their plants NEVER attracted budworms. And still others were as mystified as I about what plant species to try next.

Looking over some lovely verbena plants, about which I knew exactly zero, I noted they had very tiny flower buds, skimpy pickings, it seemed to me, for budworm’s fierce appetites. Deciding that verbena’s small delicate blooms would be far less appealing to budworms than chubbier petunia, geranium and dahlia blooms; I purchased some cheery pink verbena plants.

When I got home, I then made the mistake of searching for “verbena budworms” on the web. Almost instantly, the woeful picture you see above popped up. Are no flowers safe from this crawly scourge?

And so my quest for budworm-free flowers continues…

 More Summer Tidings:

• Murder Among the Geraniums
• Goodbye to Budworms and Geraniums! Hello Dahlias 
• Salad Niçoise – Thrifty Jewel of a Summer Meal
• Picnic in NYC with a King and a Guitar
• Super cool, Healthy Summer Drinks
• Tiptoe through the Tulips
• Breezy Grilled Meals Easy on the Wallet

Bathing suit time is thundering up the road. After a year comfortably concealed under roomy, forgiving, cold weather duds, is your body ready? If not and you’re considering purchasing a weight-loss product that claims dramatic results in a remarkably short time, you might want to take a look at a recent survey by the Federal Trade Commission. According to this report, in 2011 more than 5.1 million consumers purchased weight-loss products including skin patches, creams, wraps, earrings, appetite- suppressing eyeglasses, dietary supplements and non-prescription drugs that promised buyers they could easily lose excess poundage without diet or exercise.  These claims turned out to be dust in the wind for 2.1 percent of Americans. If you do the math and multiply that number by the pricey (sometimes-exorbitant) cost of those products, a lot of big bucks are also being thrown to the wind.

This report detailed 17 different kinds of scams, but the bogus weight-loss products were by far the biggest, more than double the amount in any other category.

The Internet roped in most scam victims. Forty percent of overall fraudulent product purchases were made online after product pitches by email and on social media, auction sites and classified ads.

Print advertising  (apparently it’s still alive), television and radio advertising were the next most popular mediums through which consumers learned about offers that turned out to be phony baloney.

Now that bikini weather is on the horizon, advertisers in the weight-loss biz will be working overtime, zeroing in on consumer’s dread of exposing their bodies in breezy, all-revealing summer clothes. At their most vulnerable, consumers will be tempted to solve their poundage problems with whiz-bang, magic bullets. So watch your wallets, lest you become a statistic in the FTC’s next survey on weight-loss product scams.

More on Problem Poundage: 

• Rich, Ridiculously Cheap Diet Vegetable Soup
• McDonald’s, Calories and the Road to Fatland
• Drop Pounds & Save Pesos Plus
• 20 Low Cost Slimming Snacks
• Thanks Mom and Dad for Not Making Me Fat
• Cheap Rich Proteins