Leftovers

Another area where we can reduce excess in our lives is leftovers.
I often cook more than we can eat at one meal. Sometimes this is because of following a recipe for four although there are only two (admittedly greedy) adults and one fussy-eater child in the family, or because said child won’t touch my offerings and Husband comes home so late from work that he’s already eaten out. Other times this is deliberate, what can be called ‘planned-overs’, especially with foods that take a long time to cook such as beans. Unfortunately my freezer is not big enough to allow me to store many leftovers so I have to use them up within a few days, or they could pose a health hazard and have to be thrown out (or fed to the stray cats that persist in living on my back balcony) and of course this is not helping the food budget.
I keep all leftovers on the same shelf in the fridge so I can keep tabs on them. Sometimes we have left-overs night when I just reheat several things, but whenever possible I try to revamp them into something new the second time I serve them. For example, left-over chicken meat from Sunday’s roast becomes a pie or curry or is added to stir-fried veg with a Chinese sauce, and the bones can be boiled for stock which is used as the tasty base for a soup. Planned-over bolognaise sauce for one day’s spaghetti can become a shepherd’s pie or moussaka. Extra chickpeas can be removed before serving the soup, and whizzed into a hummus or tossed with onion, parsley and olive oil for a substantial salad later in the week. I think you get the picture.
A friend on an intranet cookery conference I belong to kindly posted this link:
http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/ (sorry, I tried to insert their logo link but I don’t think I managed to)
There you can find lots more ideas for using up leftovers, and tips for saving on your food budget. In these difficult financial times it is foolish to throw out food, and more seriously, in view of global hunger, I think it’s unethical. I know that I cannot send my leftovers in a parcel to feed the starving children of the world, but if I save on my food budget I can afford to support a charity that will help.

Farmers’ Market

One of the things I like about living in Greece is the farmers’ markets which come once a week to a street in each suburb of Athens.  I love the vibrancy, the bright colours of the dewy produce, the smoke of packing crates being burn to give a little warmth, the goodnatured banter between competitors, the shouts as they praise of their wares: ‘suckling cauliflowers’ (meaning small, milky white ones), ‘morning fish’.

And I love the prices.  Not necessarily much cheaper than the supermarket, sometimes even a little more expensive, but in the supermarket I would be tempted to buy lots of other unnecessary things so the total would come to more, and the produce would not be so fresh.  Also, apart from bananas nearly everything is locally grown or at least grown in Greece, so it is in season and has more flavour and vitamins.  Some stallholders are merchants, but I prefer to buy produce from the farmers because I want all my money to go directly to them, not to middlemen or importers.

Today I spent about EUR40 and with that in addition to enough fruit (pears, mandarins, oranges, green and red apples) and vegetables (carrots, leeks, beetroots with their tops, greens, endive, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, onions) for three people for one week (or more, e.g. the onions) I got 1kg mackerel for tonight’s dinner (I expect enough leftovers for one or two lunches), 30 small eggs and a large pack of toilet paper which should last nearly two months.   Often on market day I make a vegetable soup, using any limp vegetables left from the previous week as well as the green tops of today’s leeks. 

My main problem is that my eyes are larger than our stomachs and I usually buy more than we can eat in a week.  I’m working on this, luckily I’m limited by the capacity of my shopping trolley and sometimes I deliberately leave the cart at home so that I have to stop buying when my hands start hurting.  But it’s not an extravagance, all nutritionists recommend eating  lots of veg and fruit and in our family we certainly get our ‘daily five’ portions, probably more because when I am dieting as now I often use veg to fill up.   Fruit and especially veg are one area where I am not afraid of excess.  While I wish he liked a greater variety I’m glad that Son (just turned seven) loves raw carrots and steamed broccoli, and helps himself to a green apple when he wants a snack.  Also, when he comes home from school I have a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice waiting for him. 

Abundant and affordable produce.  What a blessing!

Losing weight

All foreseeable social events are out of the way, including Son’s birthday party yesterday, so I am finally ready to focus on the second of my New Year’s resolutions: losing weight. 

Weight is another area of my life where I have identified excess.  According to my BMI (the Body Mass Index, or ratio between height and weight) I am currently overweight but not obese (though I have reached that level in the past).  Still, even a few excess kilos can add unnecessary strain to heart and joints, increase the risk of diabetes and other health problems.  I’m not medically qualified so I’ll say no more on that, your own doctor can best advise you if there is a medical condition that can be prevented or alleviated by weight loss.  But for most of us carrying a few excess kilos, the main motivation is aesthetic.  (I’ll discuss this further in another post.) 

Excess weight can lead to other excesses such as buying new clothes because the old ones no longer fit, or buying the latest diet fad books, or magazines just because of the word ‘diet’ on the cover, or  special “slimming foods” or dubious pills, creams or garments that promise to “melt fat away”.  I like to think that I’m intelligent enough not to fall for the promise of magic pills, but I’ve certainly got a huge collection of diet books, including some faddish ones, and I am still tempted by the occasional magazine.  So part of my pre-New Year’s binge on Amazon was a couple more diet books, and I’ve decided on one that is, I think, sensible and balanced.  I’ll post the link once I can work out how to do so.

The plan is based on calories and emphasises low-GI (glycaemic index) and low-fat (5% max) foods.  It also uses standard measuring cups of varying volumes (1/3, 1/2, 1, 1 1/3) to simplify portion control.  The first fortnight is the strictest, 1,200 calories a day divided as follows: Breakfast 200, Lunch 300, Dinner 400, two snacks (mid-morning and mid-afternoon) for 100 calories total, and 450ml skimmed or semi-skimmed milk (can be 200 calories’ worth of soy or other plant milk) to be used in tea or coffee and with cereal.   After two weeks one or more 100 calorie treats can be added, according to how much weight one still has to lose. 

There is a daily menu plan but I am not following this slavishly because some foods are not seasonal or not available in Greece, or they are things I know the others in my family won’t eat–I don’t want to cook three different dinners.   This is not a problem because there are lists of alternatives to choose from, and so long as I stay within the calorie limits and observe low-GI/low-fat principles, I can make up my own meals.  But I realise this can make it easy for mistakes to creep in so I’ll stick to the book whenever I can. 

Today’s weigh-in: 75.5kg, BMI 28.1, body fat 35.8% which means 27.1kg fat.  I’m quite pleased with this because six months ago I was 83.8kg, and since mid-November when I stopped systematic dieting I’ve only regained about one kilo.  So one could say that my weight has sort of stabilised for two months, and it’s now time for a new fat attack. 

I’ve had my wake-up pot of tea with milk from the allowance, now I’m off to have breakfast:  1 cup cereal with milk from the allowance.

Please wish me success!

Cash

One of Maggie’s comments showed how useful credit card statements can be to help us see where our money is going.  This kind of analysis is a valuable first step in identifying areas where we need to be more careful or where it would be easy to reduce excessive spending without too much pain.

However, this does not always help us to stop spending the money in the first place.  I would like to propose another way: good old-fashioned hard cash.  You will recall I have decided to give myself EUR50.00 a month “pocket money”.  I’ve put this in a separate zippered compartment in my bag.  Every time I spend something on myself (including internet or other credit card purchases) I take it out of that compartment.  When it’s all gone I’ll have to wait until the 1st of the next month to get more.  It’s very tangible and the visual impact of the dwindling stash is sobering. 

In a way I’ve been doing the same thing with my credit card spending.  I have a standing order with my bank to pay off both my cards in full from my savings account (at the same bank) each month.  I check my balance from time to time and if it’s low I stop using my cards.  Full stop.  I’ve never paid a cent of interest on my cards, in fact they are totally free (no annual charges) and were offered to me by my bank as a promotion (they bear the emblems of football clubs). 

The principle of separate compartments for cash could also be extended to groceries and other household expenses.

Sunny

Penny wise, Pound foolish

The English language has several wise proverbs regarding money.  Yesterday I was making myself a hot drink to soothe my still-sore throat, honey with fresh ginger.  I’ve always hated waste, so as usual I rinsed the nearly empty honey tin with hot water to get the last drop of sweetness out of it.  Then it struck me how true this proverb is for me: penny wise, full of frugal tips, but pound foolish, how easily I threw away those $27.00.  Which brought to mind another proverb, most apt in my case, a fool and his (or her) money are soon parted. 

And here’s a Greek proverb that I’m going to try to live by.  I ftinia troy ton para.  (I’m trying to render pronunciation, not the spelling.)  It means that cheap things become expensive, either because we (I!) are tempted to buy more of them because they are “a bargain”, or because poor quality does not last and they need replacing soon.  And here’s another one, which confirms my Saving Coins post: fassouli fassouli yemizi o kubaras–bean by bean the piggybank gets filled, in other words, every small saving counts because it adds up in the long run.  Conversely,  every small expenditure also adds up, e.g. the bottle of water or snack when one is out, when it does not take much planning to pop a couple of supplies in one’s handbag before leaving the house.    As I said, I’m good on the penny wise front, this year I’ll have to work on my pound foolish  side.

Would you like to add some more proverbs related to money?  It would be particularly interesting to hear from other languages, as long as you can translate them into English so every reader can understand them.

First spending of the year

Yesterday I spent the first money of the year, without even leaving the house.  A friend came, bless her, to pick up my son and take him along with hers to an ice-skating rink.  Of course I gave her the EUR10.00 for the entrance ticket.  Well worth it as Son was getting bored cooped up indoors for days, and I managed to have a very long sleep in the afternoon, which helped the fever go down.

However, this morning I blew USD27.00  (EUR20.01 via Paypal) on easy downloads for some free ebooks and programmes, a “once only offer” which would be more expensive if I were to subscribe after opening the site.  Foolish waste because so far I’ve only found half a dozen items of interest, and I could have got those completely free by subscribing, then later unsubscribing, to their authors’ newsletters.  I got taken in by the promise of convenience but basically I was paying for a pig in a poke.  Lesson learnt, I hope.  (I won’t say the name of the site because the ebooks that I did print seem worthwhile, the promise of easy downloads was kept, and my needs are probably quite different from yours–somebody else may have found all or at least most of the items of interest.)

Question now is, do I deduct that payment from my EUR50.00 monthly allowance?  I guess I should, since this was personal expenditure.  Gulp, that’s nearly half my month’s allowance gone then.  But I’ll count Son’s ice-skating ticket as part of household expenses.

I’ve got a diary in which I’ve started to record all the money I spend.  Only the two above entries so far.  Bonus, there’s a recipe on every four-day spread. 

I think I’ve used up all my energy, I’ll rest a bit on the sofa.

Let me know if you want any recipes.

Sunny

Saving Coins

My son was born one week after the Euro was introduced. 

As soon as coins from other Eurozone countries started appearing in Greece (where we live), I suggested to Husband that we start collecting these in a piggy-bank.  Son had been given a very large piggy bank in the shape of a baby bottle, which contained brush and comb, rattle etc., so we used that.  It took nearly four years to fill it but we were amazed to find we had collected nearly Eur 1,500!  All quite effortless, every time we get change we look at it and if it is from another country we put it in a different pocket or compartment in my handbag, and straight into the piggy bank when we get home.  I opened a joint account in Son’s name and deposited the money there.  Now I empty the piggy bank more regularly, , every time it reaches a few hundred Euros, because it’s easier to dispose of smaller amounts of coins (the bank won’t accept them and I have to go to supermarkets to exchange them for notes). 

If you don’t live in Europe you could still apply this principle by choosing a coin of a particular denomination, e.g. 50 cents/pence, or all coins from 20cents/pence and below, and consistently putting them aside every time you get one in change.  I think you’ll be surprised, as I was, by how much it all adds up to without really trying. 

I’ll keep today’s post short because I’ve got tonsillitis and am running a fever.

Thank you to everybody who visited my new blog yesterday, and I hope you continue to visit.

Warmest wishes

Sunny

New Year’s Resolutions

Here’s wishing a very happy New Year to everybody in the world, with–as we say in Greek–’oti pothite’–whatever you desire.      

I’ve started this blog to help me stick to my New Year’s Resolutions by making them public, so I’ll be accountable to my readers.  I am hoping for your support and encouragement, and if any of you share similar concerns, I hope that in turn I–and the other readers here–can support you.

This year I’ve decided to work on these three areas:

Less excess in shopping.

Less excess in weight.

Less excess in clutter.

I think that these three areas are at least to some extent interconnected, so I am starting out with all three in the same blog.  I realise that each blog should have a clear focus, so let me explain why.  Excessive shopping leads to excessive clutter.  It can also lead to excessive eating and drinking, hence excess weight, which is the second area I need to work on.  Excess weight can lead to excessive shopping for new clothes because the old ones don’t fit, or because excessive clutter means I cannot find old clothes that may still fit.  Excessive shopping also means that I can’t even remember some of the things I have, or find them in the clutter, so I go out and buy new ones, adding to the clutter.  Vicious circles that need to be broken.

Frequent news of the recession and various financial crises in 2008 have made me realise that I need to reconsider my consumer lifestyle.  I’ve never been in debt, I pay off my credit cards in full at the end of each month.  But I don’t have much in the way of savings.  I have been content with a part-time job because it means I can be home for my son.  My income’s been just enough to put food on our table and indulge my shopping habit, but nothing is left over.  If I want to save I must either find a new job or other source of additional income, or curb my shopping, or both.  The easiest at this stage appears to be to limit my shopping.
Or is it the easiest? I’ve been doing some reading as well as serious introspecting on this issue. From one book I read (I’ll post links once I learn how) I figured out that I am the bargain hunter type. I’m a real sucker for the freebies, the little gifts which the companies offer when one buys two or three of their products, the gifts attached to products, or the ‘two for the price of one’ offers.  And I find solace in shopping, it fills an emotional void.   More on that in another post.

So today I’ll start by focussing on the shopaholic in me.  As a first step I’ve decided to give myself an allowance of EUR50.00 cash a month, to cover all my expenses such as bus tickets or refreshments when I’m out of the house.  Only if anything is left over at the end of the month can I either spend it on something for myself, or save it towards something bigger the following month.  I’m also going to limit food shopping to perishables until the freezer and pantry cupboard are empty.

My biggest foreseeable challenge in the next two months is that the sales are coming up.  I will allow myself to buy some clothes for my son,  but that’s all.  The truth is that in anticipation of this New Year’s Resolution I’ve been on a very serious Amazon spree.   The British Pound has slipped to near-parity withthe Euro so these were bargains, of course!  Yesterday I went to the mall with a friend and our children, and bought myself the last makeup for one year (guess what, they were giving away a cute purse with several products). 

Well, I’d better go off and cook the goose, we’re having lunch at my in-laws today and that’s my contribution to the meal.

Please wish me luck and the fortitude to resist the numerous temptations I’m sure to encounter over this coming year. 

And my very best wishes to you in keeping your own New Year’s Resolutions.

 Sunny