Children are Expensive

You have to cloth them, feed them, and take them to the doctor when they are sick. Yesterday, H spiked a fever just shy of 104 degrees. Now, I'm not a mom to panic and call the doctor over every little thing. But that seemed like a high fever and my normally uber talkative little girl told me she "really didn't want to talk right now."

Took her to the urgent care clinic after dosing her with children's tylenol and she just stayed curled in my arms, dozing on and off, for the 90 minutes we were there. So so so so sosososo unlike her. By the time I delivered her home, went back out to get a prescription filled and other sick child supplies and tucked her into bed, it was 9 pm.

Yesterday's ledger:

Doctor's visit - $30
Sick kid stuff (Medicine, foods, and doctor prescribed popsicles) $15.34
Internet bill - $19.10
Wedding present for cousin - $5.33

Don't worry, i'm not that cheap - the 5 buck wedding present is a picture frame to go along with some of my grandmother's handwritten recipes and some kitchen linens I intend to sew from my scrap stash.

Net Worth-less!

As part of our financial recovery, I'm using the book The Budget Kit: The Common Cents Money Management Workbook to help create a household budget. One of the first soul crushing exercises is to figure your net worth. This means, of course, that you subtract your total financial liabilities from your assets. Our assets are around 145K and our liabilities are 159K giving us a self-esteem boosting net worth of -15K. Yes, folks, we are in the red. I knew this already, but there's nothing quite like seeing it in black and white.

Yesterday's ledger:

Diapers - $6.40
Groceries - $34.16

Yes, more on groceries! Our cupboards were really bare. I did save $31.08 using the grocery game shopping list, so that's pretty cool.

Cost of Homemade Bread - Tasty and Frugal

A couple of months back, I came across the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking. It features a no-knead bread of the sort popularized by this New York Times article. But the bread recipe in the book requires even less work. You mix the ingredients in a 5 quart container and then throw it in the fridge for up to two weeks. Whenever you feel like a fresh loaf, you reach in, pull off a chunk, let it rise, pop it in the oven and ta-da! Fresh homemade bread!

Now there is a bit of a technique to shaping the loaves, but after seeing the authors' demonstration on youtube, I started churning out bread like a pro.

This book has some critics; probably serious bakers who have an advanced palate and can tell subtle differences in the texture, or "crumb" of the bread. But I find the bread to be wholly worthwhile and as good as the deli loaves I could pick up at my chain grocer.

But a picture is worth a thousand words. From this:

To this:

Cost of a loaf:
yeast - 8 cents
flour - 72 cents
salt - .007 cents, seriously! Total for one loaf of bread - 80 cents!

I buy store brand flour in 5 lb bags. To cut the cost of a loaf another 20 or 30 cents, you could buy flour in 25 lb bags from a warehouse club or restaurant supply store, both of which I have nearby.

Here is the master recipe for 5 minute bread:

1-1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast (about 1-1/2 packets)
1-1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
6-1/2 cups unbleached flour, plus extra for dusting dough
Cornmeal

In a large plastic resealable container, mix yeast and salt into 3 cups lukewarm (about 100 degrees) water. Using a large spoon, stir in flour, mixing until mixture is uniformly moist with no dry patches. Do not knead. Dough will be wet and loose enough to conform to shape of plastic container. Cover, but not with an airtight lid.

Let dough rise at room temperature, until dough begins to flatten on top or collapse, at least 2 hours and up to 5 hours. (At this point, dough can be refrigerated up to 2 weeks; refrigerated dough is easier to work with than room-temperature dough, so the authors recommend that first-time bakers refrigerate dough overnight or at least 3 hours.)

When ready to bake, sprinkle cornmeal on a pizza peel. Place a broiler pan on bottom rack of oven. Place baking stone on middle rack and preheat oven to 450 degrees, preheating baking stone for at least 20 minutes.

Sprinkle a little flour on dough and on your hands. Pull dough up and, using a serrated knife, cut off a grapefruit-size piece (about 1 pound). Working for 30 to 60 seconds (and adding flour as needed to prevent dough from sticking to hands; most dusting flour will fall off, it's not intended to be incorporated into dough), turn dough in hands, gently stretching surface of dough, rotating ball a quarter-turn as you go, creating a rounded top and a bunched bottom.

Place shaped dough on prepared pizza peel and let rest, uncovered, for 40 minutes. Repeat with remaining dough or refrigerate it in lidded container. (Even one day's storage improves flavor and texture of bread. Dough can also be frozen in 1-pound portions in airtight containers and defrosted overnight in refrigerator prior to baking day.) Dust dough with flour.

Using a serrated knife, slash top of dough in three parallel, 1/4-inch deep cuts (or in a tic-tac-toe pattern). Slide dough onto preheated baking stone. Pour 1 cup hot tap water into broiler pan and quickly close oven door to trap steam. Bake until crust is well-browned and firm to the touch, about 30 minutes. Remove from oven to a wire rack and cool completely.

Today's ledger:

Grocery Game - $1

Sunday paper - $1

Eating Me out of House and Home

Let's talk about groceries. Today, after dumping my kids...er, taking them to visit my parents, I went to the supermarket and spent another $69.05 on food. I am spending money like a Rockefeller and not the pauper I am. So in an effort to save money, I have joined The Grocery Game. This is a website that tracks sales at stores and gives you a weekly list of the best deals. It does involve clipping coupons which is tedious, but they offer a four week trial for $1.

I was a member over a year ago and I think I did save money, but I was shopping 3 different stores which became a burdon. This time I'm going to stick to the two grocers I always go to and see what happens.

As for the questionable kitchen stuff I bought yesterday, I'm feeling a little better about it. I bought a candy thermometer for $3 which I absolutely need to make yogurt. I also spent $8 on a meat thermometer because I ruined a pound of chicken on the grill the other night. In addition, I bought oil and vinegar cruets for $6. I recently had a houseguest, and though she probably never gave it a thought, I felt a little embarrassed when I thumped my ecomonical half gallon of olive oil and quart of balsamic vinegar on the counter and instructed her to dress her salad.

Today's ledger

groceries - $69.05

Preschooler Pushes Mother to the Brink

Yesterday, I woke up on the couch, where I sought refuge from the noise wafting through the paper thin wall that separates me from my children at night. Tossing, turning, coughs, sneezing, a thin sleepy cry: all of these things keep me in a state of maternal alertness. After I got up and sucked down some coffee, I cleaned for a while, got dressed and headed to work. Seven hours later, I arrive home at 7 pm, a.k.a. bedtime. Though my husband has made a valient effort to get the house cleaned up, the children have not eaten dinner and are nowhere near ready for bed. I felt my spirits sinking, but they absolutely went into free fall when he asked me what's for dinner.

I slapped together two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a hard boiled egg. H1, the three year old, ate half a sandwich and declared the egg inedible due to the hazy green ring around the yolk. H2, the one year old, ate only the jelly half of the sandwich and fed the rest to the dog. Husband, sensing my frustration, began to cook pasta even though, when I suggested it earlier, he claimed to have eaten that for lunch.

H1 spent copious amounts of time brushing her teeth only to come out and say she had to finish her sandwich. Bedtime is a tiresom thing. H1 cannot go to bed without water, teddy, Maisy, care bear, snake, jaguar and, of course, cow. Nor csn she sleep without the blanket laid in a perfect square and a nice pile of books nearby should she get bored. Of course, we have to read one book and tell a story and if this is not all done perfectly she is mad.

This is why I can't stand kids; they are mad all. of. the. time. Can I eat this? No. That’s a bug. Mad. Can I play with this? No. That's a knife. Mad. Can you help me do this? No. You are dipping your books in the toilet. Mad. Never do I hear, Good job getting that red hot out of my nose, Mommy, I was so stupid to put it in there. Instead I get “you’re hurting meeeee!”

Being a mother is the least rewarding thing I've ever done. People with children don't tell you this before you have kids. They want you to have kids because if you don't have kids and they are forced to witness you living a pleasant, unfettered, routine life free of clingy, drueling parasites, they will not like you anymore.

Now, before you call child protective services on me, I will say that I love my kids more than I have ever loved anything. I don't regret a day of my life since I've had them. But I miss, I really really miss my old life where I was responsible for just me and I could go days, weeks really, without someone being mad at me.

The flip side, maybe, is that children don't hold grudges. H1 disowns me several times a day just to return five minutes later with unprompted declarations of love. I'm not sure why it has to be this way, but it probably has something to do with a child's need to test boundries and their lack of a fully developed brain. It is also key to maternal brain drain, the condition whereby a woman's brain shrinks due to lack of use and she may do things like refer to herself as mommy in a room full of adults.

Yesterday's ledger

$20.96 on kitchen supplies of questionable necessity
$11.72 on a 6 pack of Guiness and Coke

What is your weird comfort food?

Hot and sour soup is mine. I'm spooning a big bowl from the third pot I've cooked up in the last month. I judge every Chinese restaurant I visit by the quality of their hot and sour soup. Unfortunately, it is often lacking in hot, spicewise (and temperature too), so many years ago I began the quest to find a great recipe to make at home.

To preface, today I had two wild kids who didn't sleep well last night. By 6pm, when I started my soup, they were hyped up, overtired masses of energy dancing to the Lightening Seeds as if they were right there with me in the early 90's witnessing the birth of indie emo. The truth is, I'm a naturally quiet person who enjoys peace (a.k.a. silence) who has given birth to naturally loud and obnoxious offspring. I turned on Itunes to drown out the howls, screams and, sadly, even their bubbly little laughs. The shuffle sent song after long forgotten song over the speakers, The Indigo Girls, Morrissey, Rusted Root, Cowboy Junkies. I got a little wistful, lost in the past, then I started daydreaming about a distant future, my own grown girls home for the weekend from college. The present moment was totally lost on me until the girls were tucked into bed and it was, of course, no longer the present moment. Another piece of my history, my girls laughing and dancing while I soaked in the fragrance of my very favorite soup simmering on the stove - comfort indeed.

Here is a link to the Hot and Sour Soup recipe I have adopted as my own: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/hot-and-sour-soup-recipe/index.html.

I never have dried Chinese mushrooms on hand, so I've always left them out. I'm sure they add something special, so one of these days, I will drop the cash on them. I will have to do my price breakdown another day since I cooked this from my cupboard. The biggest expense in this recipe is the chicken broth. I have never gotten good at making my own stock, so I always buy it. I am estimating about $6 worth of ingredients (if you are using leftover meat) for 4-6 servings. A buck a serving, not bad, and I left out the meat altogether tonight and it is still delicious.

Today's ledger:

Postage: $4.80

Homemade Mac and Cheese - How much does it cost?

It's what we had for dinner, along with a salad. Sure, I keep a box of Kraft mac and cheese in the cabinet, I do have small children. (My 3 year old calls herself the "executive chef" when I let her stir in the dayglo orange powder.) But yesterday, I stopped in the library and came across the book Cooking for Comfort : More Than 100 Wonderful Recipes That Are as Satisfying to Cook as They Are to Eat

Cover shot mac and cheese equals instant desire. I drooled over the photo and recipe last night as I made an ill-fated attempt to grill chicken, like, with charcoal and jerk sauce and everything.

Here is the breakdown.

1/2 yellow onion from a 3 lb. bag - 14 cents
2 tbsp unsalted butter - 16 cents
2 tbsp unbleached all purpose flour - 1 cent (seriously, I figured this out)
2 cups low fat milk - 36 cents
1 tbsp dijon mustard - 10 cents
12 ounces extra sharp cheddar cheese (on sale)- $3.28
salt and white pepper to taste
8 oz pasta elbows - 74 cents
2 tbsp parmesan cheese - 30 centsish
nutmeg and hot sauce to taste - guessing 3 cents

That's a grand total of $5.12 for delicious homemade baked mac and cheese that will last 2 meals. Here is the whole recipe http://www.ocregister.com/articles/style-font-weight-1885934-bold-span.

Today's ledger:

Groceries - 43.02
Booze - 11.51

Total - $54.53