Monogrammed Dishtowel

One of the bad things about not having the same last name as your spouse is that it's difficult to monogram things because you have different initials. Fortunately for me, M is one of my initials and W is one of Chuk's. I found a great font (Algerian) that looks good both as a W and as an M, depending on how it's turned.

I'm practicing the satin stitch by monogramming a set of dishtowels. This is my first time using the technique; normally, I back stitch everything. Clearly, I need a lot of practice, but I have several more to do, so hopefully by the final one I'll get the hang of it. I also want to add more detail so it's more like the original font, which is partially outlined.

What did you do this weekend?

Membership has Its Privileges

One of the difficulties, I find, of living frugally, is finding ways to have fun without spending a lot of money. One way to cut activity costs, support a good cause, and have fun all at once is by becoming a member of certain tourist places. Typically membership costs a fee equal to approximately two visits and grants you unlimited access to the site for one year, a discount in the gift shop, perhaps a gift (like a calendar) or an invitation to a members-only event, and is often at least partially tax deductable.

Currently Chuk and I have year-long memberships to Mt. Vernon and Shenandoah National Park. Because we often have guests from out of town who want to visit us and see all the sites around the nation’s capital, we go to these sites on a regular basis. We’ve found our memberships to be an excellent value because every visit after the first two are essentially free. For years, my mom, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, has alternated between having a membership to the Legion of Honor and SFMOMA. Because she changes her membership each year, she never gets fatigued of one museum.

If you’re on a budget but still looking for a way to still get out and do things and support a local non-profit, consider becoming a member of a park, museum or historical site in your area. It’s a win-win and it works for me.

Healthy Taco Salad

For once this season a blizzard hitting the east coast missed us, but we’re still having wind storms like you wouldn’t believe. Yet again, I’ve turned to colorful, comforting food to cheer us up when the weather is cold and gray.

Taco Salad

For taco meat:
1 lb. lean ground beef or turkey
3 tsp. chili powder
2 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. garlic powder
2 small-medium onions or 1 large onion, chopped

For salad:
1 head romaine lettuce, washed and chopped
1 bell pepper, diced
1 can corn, drained
½ can kidney beans or black beans (I used garbanzo because that’s what I had)
4 green onions, diced
½ can black olives (whole, sliced, chopped, it doesn’t matter)
Salsa
Sour cream

Throw all the taco meat ingredients into a pan over medium high heat, breaking up the meat and incorporating the spices. Cook until browned.

Layer salad ingredients on your plates and top with a few spoonfuls of cooked taco mixture. Serves 4 generously.

This is a healthy and filling meal. If you’ve given up meat for Lent, you can still make this by leaving out the meat and adding more beans. Season the beans as you would the taco meat, but only using about half the amount of each spice.

Negotiating for Lower Bills

I have two words to say to you: negotiation works. On our most recent statement, our cable bill went up, from $139.41 to $169.28 with taxes and fees and all that jazz for our TV and internet. That’s more than a 20% increase on a bill I already thought was too high.

We were both ready to cut back to basic cable and shop around for a cheaper internet service provider, but we wanted to explore the path of least resistance first. (The TV and internet bill is basically our whole entertainment budget since we are homebodies.) I read this great post from The Saved Quarter about negotiating your bills. I am a formidable negotiator in the marketplaces of developing countries, but I had never thought to negotiate with my service providers.

This was right up my alley. Unfortunately, the cable bill is in Chuk’s name so I would not be able to do the haggling. Now, my husband has many wonderful qualities, among them is that he is extremely laid-back; this is great 99% of the time but the other 1% of the time, like when I want him to get us lower rates on our bills, it’s not so great.

I emailed him the link to the Penny Saver’s post and, with much doubt in his abilities, left him to do the dirty work. To my surprise and delight, he was successful! He negotiated the rate down to $130 per month which is locked in for 12 months and they added Showtime, Cinemax, TMC and faster internet connection to our package. We’re getting more for less and all it cost us was one 10 minute phone call. I’m so proud of him. He’ll be ready for the souks any day now.

Storing Homemade Bread

Fortunately, my bread baking experiments have improved since my first disastrous attempt. (Remember this?) I think the keys have been 1) Ignoring the recommended 4 hour rise time and letting it rise for 36 hours instead, and 2) Making it in a loaf pan rather than a free-formed boule.

Now that we have figured out the mechanics of baking, we’ve had to figure out how to store the bread to retain all of its freshness. After some experimenting, the method works best for me is wrapping the loaf in a sheet of parchment paper and letting it sit out on the counter. The parchment paper prevents staleness, but doesn’t make the crust go soft the way a plastic bag does.

How do you store your bread?

Weekend in New York

This week, for friend makin’ Monday, Amber wants to know what we did this weekend. I’m so glad she asked. I went to New York City this weekend!

Some friends of mine from China (by which I mean they lived across the hall from me when I lived in China; they aren’t Chinese; Christine is Australian and John is from South Carolina) are visiting New York this week so Chuk and I went up to see them.

We took the bus from DC to New York early Saturday morning and got arrived around 11:00 am. We checked into our fantastic hotel, which was a steal at $119 for a four star hotel in Midtown Manhattan. The hotel is totally in the art deco style and we had a corner room on the 26th floor with windows on two sides and a view to the south and west.

Chuk and I walked around downtown seeing Ground Zero, Wall Street, the Old Federal Building, and Chinatown. It was the perfect time to visit Chinatown since it is Spring Festival and everyone was celebrating. We chanced upon parades and people setting off confetti bombs in the street. I treated Chuk to his first bubble tea, which he liked.

Then we met up with my friends, who had never met Chuk. We all walked around Little Italy and then went back up to Midtown to see Grand Central Station, Bryant Park, the public library, Times Square, the Ed Sullivan Theater and the Hello Deli, and finally had dinner at the Carnegie Deli. The deli was expensive, but the sandwiches were as big as they are rumored to be. It was certainly an experience.

Chuk's pastrami on rye.

We said goodnight to my friends, who were staying with another friend of theirs’ in Brooklyn, and Chuk and I headed back to our hotel. Our room had a big, deep, old fashioned bathtub, and I took a nice, long soak after all that walking.

Sunday morning, Chuk went out and got us authentic New York bagels and then we met up with John and Christine again to do some more walking. We saw the Empire State building, the Chrysler building, the UN headquarters, Rockefeller Plaza, Radio City Music Hall, had lunch at an Italian restaurant where Chuk and I split a pizza, and then we went to Central Park.

Chuk and I had to catch our bus back to DC, so we said goodbye to John and Christine, which was sad, but I’m sure we’ll see them again soon. We went back to our hotel to pick up our bags, stopped by Gray’s Papaya to get some hotdogs and papaya drink for the bus and then caught the bus back home.

We had so much fun. I’ve been to New York lots of times before, but this was Chuk and my friend Christine’s first time really being there, so it was great to sightsee through their eyes. Everything was exciting for them, which made it exciting for me too. We did a lot of walking and eating junk food, but it was great.

Free DIY Air Freshener

I’m one of those people who are really sensitive to smells. My olfactory sense is overwhelmed by most artificial scents and as a result I don’t like plug-in air fresheners, reed diffusers, room sprays, those cardboard car air fresheners, strongly scented candles, fabric softeners, etc.

In my home, this is not really an issue. I open my windows to air my apartment out all the time. It’s a natural air freshener and as a result my home smells like nothing most of the time which I think it great because then yummy cooking smells and the smell of fresh flowers (if I have them) aren’t masked.

In my car, I’ve noticed more of a problem. I think it was the more than 4,500 miles of driving we did in a month last fall as we took road trip after road trip after road trip. The car doesn’t smell bad; it just smells kind of stuffy, like a room that’s been closed up for too long. I rarely drive, so the car does get closed up for long periods of time.

The frugal way I’ve found to combat this is to use those little perfume and cologne samples that come in magazines. I just rip the advertisement out of the magazine, open the little flap and then shove it under the seat of the car. It doesn’t really matter what the scent is because you can’t really smell it per se, the car just smells good. One keeps the car smelling fresh for a couple of weeks.

I only use one at a time because I don’t want a strong smell, but if you like stronger odors, you could use more than one. If you don’t get any magazines or catalogs with perfume samples, I bet you could use those little cardboard scent sticks that you get at perfume counters for the same effect.

This same idea also works well in drawers in place of potpourri sachets.