Saving log - $0 tip box
Spending log - $15 brunch, coffee + $27 grocery1 + $7 grocery2

Two grocery stops today. Stop 1 at the Safeway was to stock up Odwalla bars, which I eat for breakfast. They went on sale just in time at $1/apiece. Also picked up a few tomatoes (my 3 plants won't be producing until July - August). The organic price was cheaper than the regular at $1.99/lb, which is rare. And I picked up ground beef at $1.64/lb. Meatloaf tonight and for the week.

Stop 2 was to Lenny's, a place that I've gotten out of the habit of going when my paycheck was higher; now I'd better get back into the habit. The prices are the cheapest I've seen - plenty in the under 1$ and 1$/lb. But its a place that you have to pick and paw, know your produce and look carefully at your item.

The other thing about Lenny's is that the cashiers are Russian or Chinese, with a lot immigrant shoppers. Hearing foreign languages while shopping tends to be a good frugal sign.

Picked up a red onion for .79$/lb, cherries for 1.99$/lb, peppers for 1.49$/lb

Saving log - $3 tip box
Spending log - $1.75 coffee + $10 lunch

3rd day of the closed deli where I buy my cheap coffee. R.I.P cheap decent coffee. Now its back to decent but slightly more expensive coffee slightly out of my way. Have to admit it was one of the more quiet business deaths I've seen...no 50% off sale, no lack of supplies (had a tuna sandwich there last week), no trying to avoid the ultimate, no tears. Just a failure to open the first Monday at the beginning of the month.

On a lighter note, remind me not to ask this furniture store about color schemes...

Felt a tad nauseated today and thought better of sharing that physically at work. So I stayed home and caught up on my newspaper reading.

Here's a nice little rant in the Seattle Times about hating the soon-to-be .20 tax on plastic bags from the grocery store.

Local stores, in response, have been selling more permanent bags costing anywhere from .98 cents to $4. We collected ours from various places and managed not to spend a cent on them.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2004411952_ram...

Frankly, changing your habits to incorporate bringing along a permanent bag and using it hasn't been that taxing on us. Here is my strategy:

1.) Fold a small cloth bag, put it in the bottom of your purse (man equivalent = backpack or messenger bag). Set your shopping on the conveyor, remember to set the bag on top of the stuff.

This is the bag you use for the little incidentals you pick up through the day. Frankly, 90% of my errands I would collect one plastic bag, so I've slowed the accumulation a lot just by doing this and remembering to pull the bag out.

The columnist above doesn't want to carry a cloth bag (too girly, apparently). Might I suggest that he take along a plastic bag (if YOU provide the bag, then no .20 fee), wad it up, then stick it in his pants? Gotta admit that would be the ultimate in win-win frugality: he has the plastic bag, and correct placement of the wadded bag in his pants should make him look more manly. Of course, no bagger's going to want to touch that bag...but you can't have everything.

2.) For serious grocery shopping, we have the bag of bags. I fold up 7-8 cloth bags (we got them all from free), and stick them in a small tote that we keep in the backseat of the car. Remembering to bring them into the grocery store is the hard part.

I have noticed two great things about bringing my own bags. First of all, most grocery stores will give you a .03 - .05 rebate for your bags. The cashiers who will give you that rebate for EACH bag are especially treasured. So far I figure I've made a $1-2 on the deal. Secondly, the baggers are starting to improve their bagging skills. Before, baggers would pack a couple of items per plastic bag - which made one feel like a dog-walker of a mass of plastic bags. Now, with the cloth bags, the baggers seem to try to get everything into your cloth bag. And that's good to see.

I won't go cold turkey with the plastic bags, I use them for garbage liners. I do shop outside the Seattle city limits and plan to pick up a few there.

One last story. I jokingly apologized to the cashier at the grocery store that I wasn't using their branded bag. The cashier smiled and said, "well, we don't care - you're shopping here!"

Saving log - $4 tip box
Spending log - $1.25 coffee + $12 lunch + $15 groceries

We had the third annual late April birthday lunch today, with two other co workers who had birthdays on the 27th, 29th (moi), and the 30th. We keep inviting the co worker that has the 28th birthday, but she always has to run an errand or something. .

The three of us were standing outside the office, debating about where to eat. I said, "okay, I have something that will help us decide," and I pulled out a two for one coupon. "Well that works for us," they said. Temper of the times - no one's embarrassed that they're deciding on a place by a coupon.

Tonight was the last night to use the coupons to celebrate the remodeling of the Safeway. I'm a little sheepish using their card and coupons, because I still think they jack their prices up to make the card a better looking deal. But I used the coupons tactically - only the food I normally buy, only items that can keep well, relatively healthy food, and a real deal versus a fake deal. For instance, I had a coupon for butter - but even with the coupon, the price wasn't good enough. I have enough butter in the freezer to last until November when the butter deals occur.

The other fiscal, non-coupon project that I'm doing is to move the money I inherited from grandma's trust in Ameriprise into my Vanguard account. Today the money showed in Vanguard, but didn't show as having left Ameriprise. Ah, the excitement of double booking.

Saving log - $3 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee + $3 yogurt + $6 teriyaki dinner

Put my tip box squeezings for this month into savings - $45. I've been eating the footlong sub over two days, so I didn't spend money on lunch.

DH and I went to a one-woman show at the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) tonight, so I ate a small frozen yogurt while I waited and we had a teriyaki dinner. The dinner was enough for two, so it was eating half and putting half in the box for dinner tomorrow night.

The show was wonderful - about food and nutrition. If you can imagine Anna Devere Smith doing a multiple perspective show about food, you have the gist of it. Our tickets got us into a raffle for a CSA share or $100 worth of organic meat. Lost on both counts ... not surprising. But there was a guy who was selling broccoli, chard, and pea starts. Actually he couldn't sell them outside of MOHAI, so he gave them away. We got four starts of chard and four of broccoli.

Saving log - $3 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee + $8 lunch

I ate a little bento box lunch at the food court of Uwajimaya. I sat down, as I picked at my food with my chopsticks the middle aged woman next to me promptly said, "What is that? You handle chopsticks like a Korean!" (She was Korean.)

Her daughter, sitting across from me smiled and said, "don't mind her, she's always amazed when she sees a Westerner handle chopsticks well."

I laughed. "I first learned to use chopsticks to keep me from eating so fast. It didn't work, I just learned how to eat fast with chopsticks." Then I told them how I impressed my french MIL in Paris by deboning a fish using chopsticks.

We talked a bit more. Mother lives in Tacoma, daughter lives in Lynnwood, so Uwajimaya in south downtown Seattle is midway. There's a Korean spa just south of the Alderwood Mall that will let you in for free on your birthday. (gotta file that one away - its my birthday in two weeks.). And I told them about the kimchi bar on 155th and Aurora - cabbage, radish, squid, anchovy, dandelion green, etc, all arranged in a bulk food/salad bar setting complete with sneeze guard.

Hit the Safeway this evening. Last night I saw a very good price for tomato sauce - 10 for $6. Can of chopped tomato were at an okay (for these days) price - 10 for $10. Bags of pasta again 10 for $10. Odwalla bars for 10 for $10.

The strategy here was that I had a 10$ off coupon for $50 or more purchase. Tough to try to keep at $50 (which would make it a 20% off coupon). We ended at $55. Next time we set the Odwalla bars for last. When it gets to $50, no more.

Saving log - $0 tip box
Spending log - $15 brunch, coffee + $10 produce.

Finally, reasonable produce prices. Boy, you know you've been hit by inflation when you're happy that prices/lb went under .99.

We got apples for .99/lb, bananas for .59/lb, onions for .33/lb, red potatoes for .49/lb, tomatoes for .99/lb (not fantastically ripe, but what can you do?), oranges for .59/lb.

Friday, March 28th
Saving log - $1 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee + $8 lunch + $77 groceries

Saturday, March 29th
Saving log - $0 tip box
Spending log - $15 brunch + $84 GI Joes

Last night the local Safeway had their grand re-opening from their renovation. Armed with a 10% off coupon, I have to say I splurged. Lately we've been eating out of our freezer. Last night I bought a number of things that I don't ordinarily buy at Safeway - salmon and cod, stilton cheese - and items that I do buy - peanut butter, pot roast, produce, ham, box of salad. I could have done a bit better, but I went for the treats. I was careful and bought on sale with the coupon, so I saved $35 dollars. I didn't regret the purchases, but I did regret going overboard a bit when I had to lug four plastic bags home, by hand, up the hill.

This week I noticed that my gym shoes huff a bit when I walk - they are about 2.5 yrs old, and I've used 3-4x/week. They're still okay for kicking around in as long as it's not raining, but its definitely time for a new pair. I'm lucky that they lasted so long. So today I bought new gym shoes, a pair of running tights, and a new fanny pack. I've enjoyed the 60-70 block mega weekend walks these last couple of months so I treated myself with the tights and the fanny pack. I broke the shoes, the tights and the pack this afternoon. Breaking in shoes is problematic for me - its always my heels that take the worst of it.

Paid DH for my share of the rent. This month, rent's going up by $30/month. It hadn't gone up for 5 years - sign of the times.

Saving log - $0 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee + $8 lunch + $17 groceries

Went to my 403B administrator in HR to get the form to change my 403B withholding.

"You're early," she said.
"But its for a change of April 1," I said...

Usually HR canvasses for changes the week before, I guess. I tried to explain why I was changing it and that it will look weird, but she would have none of it...she didn't want to know. Filled out the form, so I pulled the trigger. It puts my take home pay at what I was at 4 years ago; it'll be something to get used to.

And I have to remember to back it down for next year.

Picked up some plums and apples for $1.48/lb/each, received grapefruit from Harry & David. We are awash in fruit.

Saving log - $0 tip box
Spending log - $3.29 bagel, coffee + $9 groceries, coffee, biscotti

In case I hadn't mentioned it, I made my monthly tip box deposit on Friday. I'm about 3 months away from depositing $2K from the tip box at work, but it has taken a couple of years. Speed isn't the point with the tip box - more like mindfulness with saving. For me saving seems to work best if I'm just involved enough to do it nearly daily, but not so involved that I get bummed because it happens so slowly.

My gym trainer told me on Thursday that the gym will be replacing all the cardio equipment Sunday afternoon, so I decided to do a mega-walk today instead of going through the hassle of bussing, finding a cardio machine that isn't being moved, and bussing back. This walk was truly mega - over 4 miles, through parts of Fremont that I hadn't seen up close.

No pictures, unfortunately, but on 44th and Fremont a TV repair store lost its lease. At least 30 analog TVs, all free, were lined up on the street. One even looked like the one that we replaced this Christmas. There were even a couple of early 90s analog projection systems out there. Once upon a time they were all wanted, craved even. Not today.

Got a couple of good grocery deals across the street from the free TVs - .99 romaine, .87/lb broccoli, mixed hot peppers for $1.50/lb. Made two meatloaves studded with corn, peppers, onions, sun dried tomatoes - got the idea from a cafe in Tucson that did the same thing and called it the Gila Monster.

(perhaps an entry would be helpful)

Missed the caucus this weekend - we just didn't get out and about from Saturday breakfast, coffee, paper. And our caucus was 50 blocks away. Yeah, I know, excuses excuses. So much for being a decent citizen. I much prefer primaries vs caucuses and totally wish they were open (you didn't have to declare a party before voting). 20 years ago, Washington state voting took on a fun dimension - sometimes you sacrificed your vote by voting for the other party's nutball.

Mid afternoon, we hit Trader Joes' picking up a month's worth of .99 clif bars, two bags of salad, two pounds of pasta, which .79/lb.

I walked about 1.75 miles along Greenwood Ave and back, on errands and small purchases. Dropped off a CD at the library, did a little window shopping (debating about whether to get that Hillary Clinton nutcracker for my sister), bought a 1 lb of fun pasta and while there got advice on how to use some very concentrated and salty sheep cheese (lasts forever - grate some into warm pasta, put into sauce, use it along with yogurt to bake in filo dough), bought a book on the history of Greenwood (love the pics), chocolates for Valentine's, and bubble bath for me.

Sunday was a gym day and another walk day - and I bought some walnuts (for beet walnut salad and waldorf salad), grapes (still terrible price at $2.50/lb, but better than I've seen anywhere else, blue cheese, and rye bread.

Even those the prices are terrible compared to my price book, I've got to lighten up a bit and not worry so much about spending a little. I have about $150 from this paycheck and I get paid this Friday.

Saturday
Spending log - $13 brunch and coffee + $46 Trader Joe's + $7 pasta + $19.95 book + $33 chocolates + $4.50 bubble bath (2 bottles)

Sunday
Spending log - $1 apple + $1.55 decaf coffee + $16 groceries.

Saving log - $2 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee + $6 lunch

Over ate during the Super Bowl as we hosted the Duvall friends. Another anchovy pizza lover is so, so very rare, so when a medium arrived with anchovies, I went whole hog.

Usually the anchovy pizza is a covert, solitary pleasure - when DH is on the road, often I will order an anchovy pizza to nosh on for days - because during pizza ordering all it will take is just one "ick" and nix on the anchovies. "Ick" it will be because no one is middle of the road with anchovies. Sure we do have the anchovy posers who pick off the 'chovies and eat the rest, but really the best use of anchovies, other than their delicious saltiness, is the place holder feature: the area around the anchovy is inedible to anchovy haters.

Darn useful for marking pizza. In a mixed crowd, ever notice that the vegetarian pizza gets snarfed up before the meat pizza? Strategy! The meat eaters can eat the veg pizza, the veg eaters can't eat the meat pizza, so of course the competitive eaters figure that if the first piece is the veg, they can always get a meat pizza slice later, at their leisure. Add anchovies and the balance of power changes. We can eat whatever pizza we want. Bwahhhahhh!

One last anchovy pizza story. When I was a TA in grad school, I taught labs and graded tests along with 4-5 other grad students. Grading tests was a chore, so to make it a bit better we would order pizza and make a party out of it. The first test, for our pizza order we conferred using the "what do you hate-we'll leave it off" technique. One of our brethren just for laughs, said, "you know, I really like anchovies." We all looked at each other and said slowly, "we like anchovies, too." What are the odds of finding fellow anchovy pizza lovers? We ordered anchovy pizza for the entire quarter.

Since its Super Bowl Sunday tomorrow, and we are hosting, nope, I won't make it to the gym that day. Instead, I walked down Greenwood Ave today for 25 blocks, then walked back up.

I passed the Oroweat Bakery Outlet. Open. I have been curious for sometime what's in it, who comes, what's available, and most importantly - how much?

Bread, of course, on the right as you walk in...but also Entenmann's pastries and donuts on the left. Also other items like soups, some canned goods, crackers. Not too excited about that today but its something to keep in mind for future use. Anything with a lot of sugar in it appears at least $1 more. Fresher items on that side, explained the cashier.

Picked up a bag of dinner rolls for $1.19, and 6 pack plastic sleeve of Thomas "everything" bagels for $1.25. (Now I can have Zen bagels whenever I'd like - everything with nothing). Each of those items were almost $1.50 off the regular sale price at the grocery. Stuck them in the freezer when I got back.

At the checkout, I had a nice chat with the cashier - Saturday's really the only time I could get there, but it didn't stop me from accepting a punch card. Ten purchases of at least $2 a pop entitles me to a freebie.

Saving log - $0 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee +$17 lunch

So much for the 3 free lunches. I just caught up on this one.

Yesterday I discovered that I had no tomato sauce for the pasta sauce, so I made do last night with chopped tomatoes, tomato paste, and a bit of vinegar and water. Every so often, though, I need tomato sauce.

Here's where the price book gets depressing - the best price I saw was .95/14 oz can. Back in 2004 sauce was .33 - .44/can.

Then I checked out the pasta
2008 - $2.38/16 oz bag
mid 2007 - $1.50/16 oz bag
2005 - .69/16 oz bag
2004 - .67/16 oz bag

Saving log - $7 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee + $13 stamps

Third free lunch of the week. I pay now for the next two days.

Put what was in the tip box into savings. $46. Not too bad this month. Payday yesterday, so I could move another $100 from checking into ING. I needed to pick up some stamps, just in case, so I got a sheet of Forever stamps along with a sheet of regular ones.

Made a quick dinner, but had a bit of a scare - a jar of crushed garlic broke in my hands. Luckily I didn't get cut, but the sauce got a lot more garlic than it should have. I rescued the rest of the garlic, checking for shards, by putting it in a plastic container with a bit of olive oil on top.

Found a dime in between our couch cushions.

Saving log - $0 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee

Yesterday I bought a sandwich from the winnings of the Packer game. I bought large enough so that yesterday I got free lunch, today I got free lunch, and tomorrow our little department is hosting a free lunch as a thank you for the temp staff. 3 free lunches this week.

I had 10$ leftover from Sunday and I won't have to hit the ATM until Thursday. Yay. Slow the velocity of money so that it leaves my wallet at a crawl.

Was a serious icebowl commute this morning. I live on a ridge, so its an icy downhill no matter where I go. Still have my Yaktrax. They work like a dream and get comments about them when I stand at the bus stop. And stand I did; the bus came late making me 45 minutes late.

Saving log - $5 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee + $7 lunch

Lunch. Yes I know, eating lunch out is not frugal, and probably not great for the health either, but it is one of my few vices and if you work in a basement, you'd pay good money to see sunshine...making the food a bonus. Not only do I keep track of how much I spend on the meal, I keep a food diary of what and how much I eat. So I've noticed a sign-of-the-times thing with a Korean lunch today.

Lunches are staying the same price, but they are getting decidedly smaller. The styrofoam takeout container of bi bim bap (Korean BBQ with vegetables) is filled similarily, but the next size smaller. Call it the candy bar effect. Anybody else notice this with their lunch?

The frugal side of me felt a pang, but the diet side of me said yippee.

Speaking of lunch, I rarely eat here. He's very close to work, and I'm decisive orderer, but I got into a fight with him once about Fresca. Why order a side of bile?

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/346742_needle10.html

Not much else financial happened. It was a day of missing making contacts. Telephone tag with the friend who is a financial planner. (His voice mail said he was a vice-president - yipes!). Email tag with the Ameriprise guy (grandma's trust dollars are in Ameriprise).

Caught up with most of what I was behind on, but I spent a great deal of time answering not-so bright emails.

Didn't even find any pennies to pick up on the sidewalk.

Wednesday
Saving log - $30 monthly interest in small accounts
Spending log - $3 bagel, coffee + $14 drugstore + $11 groceries

Stayed at home to greet the plumber. Plumbing got fixed at about 3pm, but I just was not feeling it to go into work for an hour. So I bought some groceries - we had no fresh vegetables in the house, so I picked up the cheap three: carrots, celery, onions.

While I was waiting for the plumber to come, I got a number of financial and gym tasks done: I set up my 2008 Roth ($5K is the maximum this year), I checked out my online Ameriprise account (grandma's trust is in Ameriprise, they've made an account in my name to move it from her to me), transferred $5K into the farmette account, and I put gym routines as little date journals into my PDA. Throughout the year, my trainer wrote out the exercises of the routines that we did on a small pad of paper. This pad of paper is nearly full. When we transfer to a new pad of paper I know the old one will disappear.

Yesterday, sister was online so we did some IMing. She sent the Excel spreadsheet that I made for her in October. I should have remembered to get it while I there, but I didn't so I taught sister how to send attachments.

I suggested she go through her checkbook and bank statements coming from the joint account for the farmette and IM me the transactions so I can update. Turns out we were $350 in the black for 2007 after taxes, electrical upgrade, solar panels, propane, new front door, redoing the milkhouse and foundation. Whew!

But not so whew - at least for sister - is that she hadn't done any of her paperwork to get grandma's trust transferred to her. Still in a serious, serious snit with the cousin, thinking somehow that he's stolen something or is hiding something. Its so bizarre to me why she's stamping her feet. Frankly, she's hurting herself - I've looked at the trust that has been transferred over into my account. Its a little more than what the cousin estimated it would be.

As it is, I now have to at least ask a CPA for advice on my tax situation for 2007. My ship has come in, but my moorage for it is not nearly adequate.

Saturday
Saving log - $0
Spending log - $13 brunch + $51 groceries

Sunday
Saving log - $0
Spending log - $3 bagel, coffee + $30 groceries

I've picked up the holiday grocery shopping pace, first by getting ingredients to make the sides, but also to come up with pre-Thanksgiving meals. I tend to not want to make and eat a lot of poultry the week before so that the thanksgiving dinner's extra tasty.

The Saturday grocery shopping was a bit fraught - the express lane was not busy, so I was waved in even with a shopping cart and a lot more than 10 items. The cashier asked me if could find everything. Well, no, I said, I couldn't find sauerkraut. Aisle 20 in the freezer section - shall I get it? Sure - two jars. The cashier ran off for a minute, and his line filled up. Semi-dirty looks all around. What do you say?...the cashier waved me in!

This grocery is a double decker, with an entrance/parking on the second floor. It also has a cart escalator that moves your cart in tandem with you. Word to the wise with these things - seriously front load the shopping cart. I back loaded the shopping cart, so the front "axel" slipped the chain a bit and the cart began to stutter and chatter. My escalator outran the cart escalator, so I waited until the cart got up eventually.

The ramifications came when DH unpacked. Uh oh - the 6 pack of eggs were destroyed. One egg survived - kinda makes me wonder what that chicken ate! I handed DH the receipt and he got new eggs, not many questions asked.

Last night's supper was pork and sauerkraut in the crockpot - the recipe

Crockpot Pork & Sauerkraut

2 piece pork rib
1 jar sauerkraut

Open jar & open packet of pork (hah hah), put in 1/2 jar of sauerkraut at bottom of crockpot, lay the pork on top, finish by adding rest of sauerkraut. Cover with crockpot lid, set to high if you're going to be there, low if you aren't. Done in about 4 hrs if set on high. Done when you get home if set on low.

I wanted to mention that there is no added water in this recipe. The jar of sauerkraut has water, which you should put in. Also, there's no need to fill the crockpot. This recipe only fills my welcome-to-the-70s ancient crockpot halfway.


And when its done. Cooked pork and sauerkraut over heat makes lots of juice. Apologies that this picture makes the crockpot look different - I needed the flash for the picture.

Saving log - $3 tip box
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk + $7 lunch + $7.49 groceries

Emailed the trustee administrator about the niece slip and asked whether I could edit what was written - change niece to granddaughter then initial the change. Received a reply - it would be fine if I did the edit. I did so, then signed where highlighted, and mailed the paperwork off, then emailed the trustee that I had done so. I cc:ed sister on the whole thing so she can do the same.

Lunch was exactly 7$. As I was flumbling through my ones the cashier asked, "How did you know I needed ones?"

I said, "Are you kidding? You're in the lunch rush. All it would take is five people with 20s! You'll always need ones."

DJ friend has been battling with the IRS over Microsoft software given out after useability studies. Are they gratuities, or are they income? And how much would they really be worth - what Mr. Softy says they are worth retail, or what successful resellers are getting on craigslist or ebay? Helped him a bit by making a table of his data and helped with some of the letter. Hope my luck with arguing with the IRS rubs off on him.

The chiropractor is moving his office downtown. "Need boxes?" I asked. His eyes lit up. We'll see him tomorrow at our office. This time of year we have an empty box pile 15 ft high with hundreds of different box types. We'll see if we can get a free adjustment to the supply guy, who would need it about this time.

So being helpful is not a direct way to save money, but being helpful often means you have a larger social network with something to share, which means you have favors to barter and the network of folks to barter with.

Saving log - $0 tip box
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk + $13 chirashi lunch

Saturday was high holy day for the shopping of grocery staples. 49 cent cans of chicken stock, 48 cent canned tomatoes, $1.98/lb butter, $.99/lb frozen peas and frozen green beans, 69 cent cans tuna, 33 cent/lb pasta. If DH had been around, I could have given him a little teaching moment about steel cut oats at .79/lb. All because of Thanksgiving at the end of the month. None of these prices were fantastically rock bottom low, but compared to what they were like a month or two, well, you curse the fact that the dip is not as low as you'd like, or you stock up, figuring that inflation will make things even worse in a few weeks. Now if only the produce would even approach a good value. Nothing much for under a $1/lb except for unbagged carrots, yellow onions, and bananas.

I sent off the email to the trustee administrator for grandmas account. Got word from sister that the trustees really want to close this out by the end of the year. Sister also told me how much we've inherited - it was large enough that she quieted down a bit. She told me that it wasn't about the money - I'm thinking that by her actions that it actually kinda was.

There is a tiny pocket park run by the City of Seattle right in back of our little duplex. The Japanese maple at its focal point starts to put on its show right about now.


Sitting on the bench at the foot of the tree is also another sign of the season...

And no, I never did learn how to identify mushrooms - I love mushrooms, and if I learned to identify them, I'd be tempted to try them. There are old mushroom hunters and there are bold mushroom hunters, but there are no old bold mushroom hunters.

Not much has happened in the last two days. Played poker and lost. The company's fun, but not for every weekend, just once in awhile.

Lawyer friend and I are planning his lunch. I promised him lunch as payment for informal lawyerly help during dad's probate. Now that the second property has been sold, lawyer friend got hungry.

A wind and rainstorm hit, and now only green and brown leaves are left on the trees.

Today I bought a few groceries, keeping an eye on the register. "Wait a minute, I thought that..." I said. It turns out that some linguine I bought had been mistakenly set up as an end cap display, so mistakenly set as 50%. I got the mistaken price, but it gets one to thinking ... what is the most dollar-saving thing you've said?

"Wait a minute, I thought that," politely said, is mine.

The Denny's that we ate at for the last year or so for a late Saturday breakfast is no more. That leaves us again with a quandary - where to go for a Saturday breakfast?

You see, on Saturday Seattle has far fewer breakfast spots than breakfast lovers - everywhere there is a line, places are packed. Its an annoying mystery - come on, we all can afford breakfasts - that flares up as a crisis. When the big windstorm hit on December and many folks living in hotels or in cold houses, one could literally drive all around Seattle to look for a place to eat that wasn't going to be an hour wait.

My thought is that most Seattle-ites grab a coffee and danish somewhere during the weekday, which means very few weekday full breakfasts which means that few breakfast spots are profitable during the week. Apparently we have the amount of breakfast sites that we deserve.

We went to the Library Cafe this morning. Nice enough and we got right in.

Payday next Friday - and none too soon.

I wrote a 400$ check for one of my DRPs. It was one in my stock portfolio trading at the low end of its price range. I'm confident that its not a "value trap" so I'm buying on the dip.

It does mean that as we are heading toward the last turn of the month I'm in a rare position - I'm feeling the frugal burn and counting my pennies with the possibility that I'm going to have to transfer some money from brick and mortar savings.

Because of the frugal burn, its a bit of a bummer that the Greek Festival is this weekend. DH and I did the wine tasting - the wines were a lot better than in years past, but still a bit pricey. I weakened and bought Greek olive oil, grape leaves, feta, sheep cheese, capers, taramasalata, sea salt, cracked green olives, and variety pack of Greek cookies. $70.50, and I put it on the credit card. Blegh. On the plus side, we get 70.50$ worth of pleasure out of what we bought.

I also encouraged DH to take the bus out to the festival. Even at $2.50 for the trip that's a lot nicer to do than to drive then drive around for very limited parking. And we are maintaining our habit that we bring our cloth bags. We'll figure it out yet.

I finished Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. It was about a commitment to eat off the garden or very, very locally for one year. Of course, such a thing is possible if you live on a bit more than a postage stamp lawn and in a state with well balanced agriculture.

I've also been reading and hearing about others making a commitment to eat food grown within 100 miles of one's locale. Local-voring, its called. I like the idea, but I've always had problems with such rigid rules. A bit expensive and a bit pretentious. At the very least, local-voring within the greater Seattle area will give you a massive caffeine withdrawl headache. (No coffee trees within 100 miles of Seattle). Bananas are good for you. Standing around the meat case tempting yourself with either the New Zealand or the Oregon beef means annoying other shoppers who just want to get in and get out. Nope, I want an easy rule to avoid total deprivation and at least not do the completely wrong thing. So I've come up with my own semi-local-frugal-vore rule, short and sweet.

Eat what and from where your great-grandpa would eat.

Now I know I have a definite advantage here. My great-grandpa on my mother's side was a grocer during the Great Depression. (FYI, great-grandpa was still alive when I left for college.) The grocers' kids ate okay, however they ate what wouldn't sell, a frugal but possibly disgusting and frightening prospect in the Depression.

Still, coffee was not unheard of, neither were bananas. Fruit and produce, however, were sold in season from either North or Central America. Fresh food coming from places much further was prohibitively expensive, so great-grandpa wouldn't eat it. Sugar was just granulated, and also expensive, so it was a once in awhile thing. He was also, as you might have guessed, darn frugal. He also ate home cooked meals, no junk food, and only in his much later years ate things with a lot of strange preservatives. Except he had that unfortunate taste for Spam.

The great-grandpa rule isn't perfect, but it has to be better than having to bring a mental GPS unit when going to the grocery store.

Saving log - $4 tip box
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk + $10 lunch

Enough was enough. I packed up my half finished library book in my bag to return to the library. I filled out a 3 book list for the adult summer reading program to turn in to the library. For my trouble, I got a $5 starbucks gift card. Lucky that WA state has a law that the card can't expire or fees taken out of it.

Too bad it means that I'll have to drink Starbucks coffee.

So Duvall friends told me they had no ripe blueberries...


And they swore they had no ripe huckleberries...Cripes, this is the most huckleberries ever I've seen on a bush. I must not get out all that often, I guess.


The Duvall friends were interested in doing pickles and marmalade. Are you crazy! I told them that berry jam is easy with no botulism potential. And the quick pickle steps usually had the "put in salted ice water for hours" step, which means canning the next day. The only problem with the jam is what couple can really go through a quart of jam in a reasonable time and without an insulin shot?

So we picked up some pint jars in addition to the quarts we got from the other friend. They'll use the quarts in the next few weeks. I showed them what you look for when you go through jars. We got one bad cracked one, one with a rough spot on the rim (I use those, but that one gets opened and put in the refrigerator after canning), and one mayo jar. No mayo jars as a canning jar for me.

We picked berries for a couple of hours, doing grizzly bear style picking - stripping the berries, rather than picking each one. For the huckleberries it still meant a lot of stripping for a small volume and it meant a lot of cleaning of leaves, berry stems, bugs, overdone fruit. My advice: use a fair amount of water. Leaves float, and the overripe stuff tends to sink and dissolve. Still it took about an hour to clean and pick.

The first step is to measure, which is a bit of a craft, because if you pack them down, you change the volume. This is 4 cups of blackberries, 7 cups of blueberries, 2 cups of huckleberries.


We made two batches of jam - 6 pints of a blueberry huckleberry lemon combo with added pectin, and 6 pints of a straight cooked-down blackberry blueberry number with sugar. The Duvall friends took lots of notes, but they did fade in and out, something you can't do during canning. Something about hot boiling water and hot boiling sugar that keeps you on task.

Here's the waterbath canner in action, steam surrounding it.


The batches of jam. Blackberry on the left, huckleberry/blueberry on the right.


Turns out that the added pectin number did something strange. It passed my fork test for jam, which means that it would jam up, but it seems jammy at the top and syrupy at the bottom. Tastes fantastic though. The cooked jam number took forever and ever to cook - it never really fully passed the fork test - but it jammed up nicely in the jar. Tastes great, but blackberry is always stronger than blueberry in my book.

Saving log - $5 tip box
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk + $25 lunch

We took lawyer friend out on his birthday, so that's why the lunch $ were freakishly high. We went to the all-you-can eat Brazilian restaurant that we took DH's family to last summer. "Meat fest" we called it. It did throw a loop out of my simple strategy for handling all you can eat places:

Avoid the brown and white foods, eat as much as you want of the brightly colored ones.

I got one plate of bright colored stuff - and then it was dark brown beef and white pork all the way.

Tomorrow I'm off, but not quite off. I'll be helping a co worker out of the office for an hour or so. Right now its just waiting, waiting, waiting for what the new paycheck will hold - its the first one with the 4.5% raise.

This weekend DH and I will be sleeping over at our friend's place in Duvall for the tractor fair, market, and all you can eat breakfast. Again, the simple strategy is not going to work. Hash browns, sausage, bacon, pancakes, syrup, eggs ... all brown or white.

We'll go to the fair for a little bit, and then I'll hold class on waterbath canning. The blackberries are not ready, so we'll be making pickles and marmalade. Not in the same jar!

Saving log - $3 tip box
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk + $5.50 lunch + $2.73 grocery

My WA bank completed the test "Bill Pay" transaction to the WI bank, from my end, on Friday. I expect that in the next couple of days that sister will see it from her end as a deposit. I'll call her tomorrow and ask. She'll have to tell me that she's seeing it before I send the rest - I just don't want to send tons of money without a little practice.

Picked up some produce - peaches at $1/lb and bananas at .50/lb. I used the HT cloth grocery bag at Safeway. Safeway deducts .03 if you bring a cloth bag, Greenwood Market deducts .05. Big grocery irony - HT, the kung fu grocery where I got the cloth bag deducts 0! C'mon man - if you are going to promote your cloth bag, make it worth our while!

Took a snap of a dustmop wearing a sweater.

Saving log - $1 tip box (yesterday)
Spending log - $3.28 coffee, bagel + $28 Walgreens + $2 parking + $5.50 produce stand

Today and tomorrow I have the day off. It was a relaxing day, mostly, but I got a lot of work done.

I drove DH's car today, hitting my errands. Ordinarily, who would mention it? It was the first time I've driven any car in 2 years, so it was fun because the novelty of it was very high.

I picked up 3 dozen canning jars from my friend, who works at the Burke Museum. Apparently he alerted reception, so she knew me right away and led me behind the exhibits to the staff and curator quarters. I love going back behind museums. Its such a secret world full of cabinets, where most of the good intellectual stuff is stored. The back often makes the front exhibitions just that - exhibitions, a facade. Kennewick Man, for instance, is stored in the back of the Burke. (I didn't pay him a visit.) Unfortunately, it was just the jars, say hi and a thank you to the friend, and then off.

It did cost me 2$, though.

Then on the way back I hit a produce stand - .59$ grapefruit, $1.09 peaches, .59$ tomatoes. Who could resist?

Then gym and the only snafu of the day. I forgot gym pants! Here's a milestone - I got into and used my trainer's M/M gym pants. They were a bit big on her and they will be even bigger because I stretched them out a bit. But just the fact that I could actually wear them, well, that's a cause for celebration.