I'm back -- or most of me, anyway

I’m now 20 pounds lighter than when I wrote that last post in August -- and 90 pounds lighter than last Jan. 18, when I wrote about my belated New Year’s resolution to “be more positive” by accompanying my mom to a Weight Watchers meeting (despite my aversion to paying someone else to help me lose weight.)

Needless to say, it feels great to be taking up less space on this planet. I‘m eating fewer resources, buying used clothes (another New Year’s resolution) that take less fabric to construct -- and now I’m helping the rest of my family make the shift to a healthier lifestyle.

You can read about that quest in more detail at 90in9.wordpress.com. In the meantime, I’m going to resume posting here at least once a week, and I might get my husband to post once in a while as well.

Let’s ban automatic windows

Just when I’d resigned myself to driving around with the van window permanently stuck in a partially closed position -- leaving a tolerable two-inch gap -- it finally came unstuck the other day.

The funny thing was, I’d just sent our paychecks through the pneumatic tube in the bank drivethrough lane when it happened. I was standing there with the van door open so I could reach the tube. While I was waiting, just for something to do I pressed the window button. And suddenly it worked! So I gave a little shout of triumph and hopped back in the van and opened the window -- only to discover that I couldn‘t reach the tube. So I had to get back out again.

And so now we have an apparently functional window that we never use, because I don’t trust it to not get stuck in some inconvenient position.

Which makes me wonder: Who decided that automatic windows were a mark of human progress? Can’t we all just go back to the old-fashioned cranks, which almost never break down? I mean, the worst that ever happened is a knob would break off or something, but you could still get the window open with just a little bit of extra effort. Do kids today even remember hand-cranked windows?

If I had a Facebook page, I’d start a campaign to demand automakers scrap automatic windows: Ban them! Wipe them off the face of the planet! Except for people who need special assistance, I guess.

So maybe this will get me over the inertia speed bump and I’ll finally plug in to the rest of the human interface. We’ll see.

A matter of perception

I was looking over granola bars at the store the other day when I found myself gravitating toward the cookies. Usually bars are found in the breakfast aisle and cookies in the bakery or snack aisle. But at Aldi‘s, granola bars co-exist with cookies, and with good reason: According to their labels, the primary difference between the bars on my list and the oatmeal-raisin cookies I was coveting was their shape.

The Benton’s Homestyle Oatmeal Raisin cookies I bought were 120 calories each, with four grams of fat and two grams of fiber. That comes out to two Weight Watchers points -- the same as a typical Fiber One bar and less than many other granola bars, which often have more fat and calories and less fiber.

Here’s an even weirder comparison: One serving of Nature Valley Oats ‘n Honey crunchy granola bars has 190 calories, six grams of fat and two grams of fiber. That’s four Weight Watchers points -- the same as one of those frosted bakery-style Lofthouse sugar cookies, which have 190 calories, seven grams of fat and less than one gram of fiber.

That doesn’t mean all cookies can compete nutritionally with granola bars, or that all breakfast bars are little more than rectangles of cookie dough. But when you consider that granola bars usually cost more than cookies, it’s worth checking the label.

Beach substitute yields cheap vacation discovery

We were going to go to the Warren Dunes on Lake Michigan last weekend, just drive up for the day because we’re squeamish campers and the Holiday Inn Express wanted almost $300 a night, this being peak season and all. But then we heard about the E. coli trouble they’ve been having up there, and decided to do the beach thing at Mississinewa Reservoir instead -- which was much closer and much cheaper, when you consider that we were able to rent a cabin for less than the cost of a tank of gas.

I was afraid it would be boring. I couldn‘t get the idea out of my head that this big old “lake” was really, underneath it all, just flooded farmland (and at least one flooded town, Somerset, Ind., the ancestral hometown of my husband’s family). But the beach was really nice, and as the kids played in the water it suddenly occurred to me that while this body of water lacks the grandeur of the Great Lakes or the Gulf of Mexico, the kids were basically having the same sort of fun they’ve had on tonier beaches.

Economical, environmental and cute, to boot

It’s not exactly groundbreaking news that reusable sandwich containers make a lot more sense than plastic sandwich bags. But it took the pop art kitsch of this Wonder Bread box to get me over the inertia hump and finally make the switch.

These sell for $3.99 at various online sites, including Amazon, but I found this one in the bread aisle at Walmart for about a buck less. That’s Rowan in the pic, with her first-day-of-school PBJ (on whole wheat, of course).

The liberation of disposable clothing

A horse used my shirt for a napkin the other day at the 4-H fair, drooling green grassy slime all over my shoulder. The stain didn’t come out the first trip through the washer, so it remains to be seen whether this is a napkin of the reusable or disposable variety.

The bad news: It was a brand new shirt. I literally cut the tags off just before I put it on that day.

The good news: Thanks to the “no new clothes” vow (and my rapidly changing clothing sizes as I cut weight), I’ve developed an “easy come, easy go” attitude about my wardrobe. (Though this really was a brand new shirt, with its original tags intact, I bought it at Goodwill.)

Micro meals: A “frugal fuel” experiment

Last week I wrote about the weirdness of learning to accept my frugal fuel needs even while living in a super-sized society -- realizing that my body type, underneath all that padding I’d accumulated before losing 60 pounds in six months, is actually much closer to an economy car than an SUV.

Well, in an attempt to make the most of a day’s worth of fuel, I decided to try an experiment: Taking in my 23 allotted Weight Watchers points one at a time over the course of the day.

For those of you not familiar with the points system, use this for reference: A McDonald’s quarter pounder with cheese and medium order of french fries equals 20 points. So it’s rather easy, eating the typical American diet, to blow through your allotted points in a single meal if you aren’t careful.

But you can also take the opposite perspective, and marvel at some of the delightful things you can eat for only a single point: A cup of grapes or blueberries or strawberries, for instance. Half a cup of fat free refried beans with salsa, using carrots instead of chips for dipping.

By eating only one point at a time, I’d essentially be eating 23 snacks and mini-meals all day long. Hard to feel deprived doing that. And I didn’t. For the record, here’s what I ate the day of the experiment:

1. 1/2 thin whole-wheat bagel
2. 1/2 tablespoon peanut butter (eaten from the measuring spoon)
3. 1/2 cup skim milk
4. 1/2 thin whole-wheat bagel
5. 1/2 slice American cheese, melted over mushrooms in the microwave
6. 1/2 tablespoon peanut butter (see above)
7. 1/2 thin whole wheat bagel
8. Fiber One 90-calorie bar
9. 1 cup blueberries
10. 1 plum (at only 35 calories, this item is only half a point)
11. 1/2 cup fat free refried beans, eaten from the measuring cup with a spoon
12. 1/2 cup baby carrots dipped in two tablespoons of salsa con queso
13. 1/2 banana
14. the second half of the banana
15. 1/4 cup rice and beans
16. Fiber One 90-calorie bar
17. 1/2 slice bread with 1/2 tablespoon jam
18. 1/3 cup bran flakes with 1/4 cup milk
19. 1/2 cup fat free ice cream
20. 4 tortilla chips with 1 tablespoon chili conqueso
21. 1/3 ounce swiss cheese
22. 1 sugar free popsicle (at only 15 calories, this item has zero points)
23. 1/4 cup rice and beans

Total snacks and micro meals: 23
Total calories for the day: 1,370
Total Weight Watchers points for the day: 21.5

As you can see, that’s quite a lengthy list of food. No single thing took very long to eat, but because one of the rules I made up was that I had to consume each “point” separately, as its own meal or snack, I felt like I was constantly eating. And I was: If you average 23 snacks or “fuel stops” out over the approximately 18 hours I was conscious last Thursday, then it was meal time every 47 minutes. Yet I never did use up all the points I was allotted, coming in 1.5 points under my limit.

The most amusing part of this experiment were the “micro meals” I came up with: that three-bite serving of cereal, for instance, or the tiny plate of nachos.

And then there were those tasty 1-point items I completely forgot about: A 12-ounce bottle of Miller Genuine Draft lite beer (only 64 calories), a three-egg white omelette with veggies and salsa or ketchup, a 3-ounce baked potato with salsa or ketchup.

Oh well, maybe next time.

Cassie's clutter craft

I really hate recycled crafts that call for you to buy a bunch of stuff to complete the project. So when Cassie wanted to make this treasure keeper frog we saw in Family Fun magazine, we decided to look around the house for a spare 12-inch zipper rather than going to the store.

We found just what we needed in an old sweatshirt from Cassie's toddler days. It was in a pile of stuff headed for Goodwill, but the rest of the sweatshirt will still be put to good use -- we'll make hot pads or some other rag rug project.

We did buy googly eyes, though we could have just as easily made the eyes (to cover one end of the wine cork eyeballs) out of small circles of white fabric and smaller circles of black fabric.

By the way: This project works out a whole lot better if you use a hole punch to make the holes on the 2-liter bottles, rather than the push pin the magazine recommends.

Grocery thrifts, as a species

Another scratch-and-dent grocery has sprouted along one of my usual driving routes. You’d think stores like these would be as unique and individual as their often eccentric owners, but in my experience there are far more similarities than differences. It’s almost like going into a chain store, only without a unifying branding and color scheme. 

The prices were about exactly what I expected: Canned food, with its long shelf life, isn’t much of a bargain in stores like these. Cereal, a bit more fragile (though not as much as you might think), was priced just low enough -- $1.50 -- to make me consider pulling the trigger. Mostly I bought cereal bars, a good enough deal at $1 a box, especially when I needed to restock our snack container.

I didn’t ask, but I find myself wondering: Is the uniformity dictated by suppliers that operate somewhat like multi-layer marketing outfits, providing (or perhaps even demanding) specific layouts and strategies? Or are these just natural characteristics of a certain species of business that have evolved over time?

Bottomfeeder Pie

In the supermarket ecosystem, I’m a bottomfeeder. My eyes are calibrated to zero in on those orange stickers indicating food that’s nearing its expiration date. And one of my favorite things to look for, when I’m trolling grocery stores, is bagged spinach.

I never pay full price for fresh spinach, because at one of the stores I frequent there‘s almost always a bag or two that’s been marked down. But unlike bagged lettuce, which looks like a goner by the time it gets its orange sticker, bagged spinach can be used up to a week after its expiration date. It may not be crisp enough to go in a salad, but you can always put it on a pizza or a grilled cheese sandwich, or in a cheesy baked concoction I call Bottomfeeder Pie.

This isn’t a pie in the conventional sense, because there’s no crust. I call it that because I like the name and I usually make it in a pie pan. The funny thing is, Bottomfeder Pie shares 98 percent of the same DNA as Delectable Spinach, an elegant party dish in the local Unitarian Church’s cookbook. But whereas I once spent nearly $10 buying the ingredients to make Delectable Spinach for a holiday party -- uncharacteristically shopping at the last minute -- Bottomfeeder Pie is practically free.

The reason: This dish is like a sponge I use to clean out the fridge and freezer compartment. Whenever I detect a buildup of partially used old cream cheese containers and mushrooms that look like they’re getting ready to walk out to the compost heap on their own, I gather up my collection of half-full bagged spinach from the fridge and/or freezer, dump it in a greased baking dish, and shake whatever’s hiding in the bottom of the oldest shredded cheese bag on top. Delicious. Delectable, even.

Learning to accept my frugal fuel needs

I’m up to 56.6 pounds lost since Jan. 18. Which means it’s time to cut my food intake again, according to the Weight Watchers plan I‘m following.

It’s weird to come to grips with just how little food I really need to sustain the smallish frame underneath all that padding I’d accumulated. As a food lover, it’s been quite an adjustment. But as a frugal person, it’s like trading an SUV in on an economy car.

I’m learning to accept that food is fuel, but I like the idea of concocting my own formula for the most satisfying mix of nutrients. Among my favorite fuel components thus far:
    -- a tablespoon of peanut butter (2 points) with six chocolate chips (half a point), either on a spoon or a thin whole wheat bagel (2 points)
    -- half a cup of fat free refried beans (1 point) topped with salsa (O points) and maybe a tablespoon of salsa con queso (1 point)
    -- a three egg-white omelette with veggies and ketchup or salsa (1 point).
    -- raw spinach and half a slice of cheese on two slices of low-cal bread (2 points)

These components provide the framework of my daily fuel intake, and because I like all of these things a lot, I don’t feel deprived. I do sometimes set aside a few points for a special “spotlight” food, such as a cup of Great Value fat free ice cream with a tablespoon of peanut butter and a tablespoon of Hershey’s chocolate syrup (5 points) or a Wendy’s baked potato with margarine spread and reduced fat sour cream (7 points).

The funny thing is, the line between the fuel framework and the food taking the spotlight inside that “frame” can be blurry. Though I usually reserve my peanut butter ice cream sundae for Monday nights, after my Weight Watchers weigh-in, points-wise, it falls within accepted parameters for a meal. So this morning, when we were out of milk, I decided to add 1/4 cup of dry oatmeal “sprinkles” to my peanut butter sundae for a tasty six-point breakfast that, while technically a dessert, still provided protein, calcium, fiber and a smattering of vitamins. (Not to mention a whole lot of satisfaction.)

Framing foods can also be a great way to deconstruct them in such a way that they begin to lose their power over you. Take McDonald’s quarter pounder with cheese. Every once in a while I’ll have one of these on Monday nights, when I’ve saved most of my points for after weigh-in. But I don’t have them as much as I used to, because I’m no longer convinced this burger delivers 12 points’ worth of satisfaction.

The problem is the bun. I love bread, and could never deal with the Atkins diet for that reason. But I’ve always preferred breads with substance over poofy white clouds, and now whenever I find myself holding a quarter pounder, I can’t help thinking how many points you could cut out of this sucker with a whole grain thin bun. It would taste better, too.

And as for the burger itself, I’ve had some mighty fine veggie burgers in my day. After you load on the cheese and veggies and condiments, it seems like all you really have is a protein disk underneath. So is it really necessary to kill an animal and consume extra fat, calories and cholesterol for one kind of protein disk over another?

Nearly a century after some now-forgotten vice president* quipped that what this country really needs is a good five-cent cigar, I say it’s time to up the ante: What this country really needs is a really good whole-grain vegetarian version of a quarter pounder with cheese.

*Thomas R. Marshall, a democratic governor from Indiana who, unlike Evan Bayh, went on to become vice president. He served under Woodrow Wilson, from 1913 to 1921. 

‘No New Clothes’ update

I finally found a tank top to go with my favorite orange running shorts, at Salvation Army, where they group shirts according to color. Wouldn’t it be easier if regular stores did the same? You need an orange shirt, you look in the orange shirts section. What could be simpler?

Cheap emergency ice for the cooler

I really hate the way you can bargain-shop for kids’ sports treats, and then wind up spending your savings (and more) on ice for the cooler.

Ideally, we harvest ice cubes from trays and bag them for storage in the second freezer for just this purpose. But the last time we were supposed to bring snacks for Ben’s baseball team, I only had five trays’ worth of cubes to stock our vintage Playmate cooler -- and because Colleen had an earlier T-ball game, we had to leave the house three hours before game time on a hot, muggy night.

Needless to say, most of the ice melted before Ben’s game even started. Determined to avoid buying a bag of ice, I stopped at a convenience store and filled a 44-ounce cup with ice for a dime. It was just enough to keep the drinks cold until after the game.

The misery-index gift registry

When it comes to finding gifts for middle-aged people, I no longer think in terms of what we can buy or make them, but how we can reduce their misery index.

I got the idea while talking to an older relative whose birthday we usually try to acknowledge, though often in a haphazard, after-the-fact fashion. We were discussing his birthday, which happened to be of the milestone variety, when he mentioned that he spent it in a very unsatisfying fashion, feeling obligated to attend an event that made him miserable. Though we wound up slipping a pizza discount card in his birthday envelope, it occurred to me that what might have been more useful, and made him happier, was offering to track this particular noxious event in the coming year, note the date on which it was to occur, and suggest alternative ways he could book that time slot on his schedule so that he could say he was busy and couldn’t attend.

When you live with someone, of course, you have a much greater knowledge of their misery index. So when Father’s Day arrived this past Sunday, it wasn’t so much a question of trying to think up ideas as simply settling on one of the many possibilities. The kids and I decided to tackle the tool problem, which really amounted to a two-part gift:
    1. Finding all the tools that the kids were always spiriting away and then misplacing in various odd locations.
    2. Clearing out the garage, especially all the junk piled on top of the workbench, so that Bob could finally set up a neat, well-organized tool area, especially desirable now that he’s actually developed a knack for using said tools.
    As a bonus, Rowan settled on an independent study project clearing out a room that we’ve been intending to convert into Bob’s office.
    Not surprisingly, Bob reported that this might be the best set of Father’s Day gifts he’s ever received. And we didn’t spend a penny.

Still more weird crap for the compost stew

According to its website, Prima water bottles are made from 100 percent “plant material.” Corn, actually. They’re supposed to biodegrade in a commercial composting facility, though I‘m guessing a bottle left lying in the grass would be there for an awfully long time.

We’re dumping this one in the compost, where it will join “the world’s first 100% compostable chip bag” (Sun Chips), some allegedly biodegradable balloons and a cardboard pizza box, along with some of the more typical natural ingredients you find in a compost brew.

How nature recycles leftovers

Cassie found yet another example of thrift in nature the other day: caterpillars eating their own shedded skin for the extra protein boost. She got this from "Lanie," an American Girl book by Jane Kurtz. And we found this photo of a caterpillar in skin-eating mode on www.clayruth.com. 

The anti-grocery list

Ten things I refuse to buy in the middle of the week, even if I run out:
1. Dishwasher detergent -- whether it’s the commercial kind, or simply the ingredients for my homemade version, I always figure there’s no reason I can’t do dishes by hand until Friday, when I get my next week’s supply of grocery money.
2. Sandwich bags -- You can always swathe sandwiches in plastic wrap or make a bag out of the bottom of a cereal-box liner. Better yet, maybe I’ll finally buy one of those plastic “sandwich keeper” containers.
3. Coffee filters -- Two napkins laid so that eight corners are exposed do just as well. In a pinch, I‘ve even reused the filter from the day before.
4. Band-aids -- Almost any injury requiring a band-aid can be handled with a square of folded-up Kleenex and some packing tape.
5. Bread -- Make your own!
6. Cereal -- My kids get a cereal allowance, and just like their money, when it‘s gone, it‘s gone. The only exception: My husband‘s Raisin Bran, which is as much a part of his diet as bamboo to a panda.
7. Jam -- Put fruit on your PB in place of the J. Lettuce is nice, too.
8. Toilet bowl cleaner -- There’s almost always something around I can use instead: a can of Coke, bleach, borax. Bob‘s had great success with that heavy-duty citrus orange hand cleaner.
9. Deoderant -- The next time we run out of this in the middle of the week, I will finally be inspired to investigate how one goes about using baking soda as a deoderant.
10. Pasta -- You never really run out of pasta or noodles if you’ve got a little flour, oil and an egg in the house. Mix it up, roll it out, and cut into strips.

Celebrating shrinking

How do you celebrate losing 50 pounds in 21 weeks? (The official tally: 51.4). My first thought was to order a pizza, having restrained myself to just one skinny slice the night before Monday‘s weigh-in. After not eating much all day, I figured I had enough Weight Watchers points saved up for half a large cheese pizza from Pizza Hut.

On the other hand, I had a bunch of veggies and whole-wheat tortillas at home to make myself a customized personal pizza. So I bought some mozzarella cheese and indulged myself by using half a cup, twice as much as usual. Very tasty, very satisfying, and only a fraction of the cost and calories of a Pizza Hut concoction.

I followed that up with my usual Monday night ice cream sundae, what I think of as a stripped-down version of a Dairy Queen peanut buster parfait: One cup of Great Value fat free ice cream, 1 tablespoon of chunky peanut butter and 1 tablespoon of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. It’s only five points instead of the real thing’s 16, but it pushes all the right buttons in the reward center in my brain. And I didn’t have to buy anything -- all the ingredients were leftover from a couple of weeks ago.

Emergency rations for hungry guests

Coming back from a movie the other day with an extra “kid” in tow (my daughter’s boyfriend, Kevin), I was panicking because I knew everyone was hungry but wasn’t sure what I had on hand. Like a true brainwashed consumer, I kept thinking pizza was our only solution. Then I remembered we had a box of Velveeta-style cheese and a couple of loaves of bread. A big platter of grilled cheese sandwiches did the trick.

The compostable bag that wouldn't die

The "world's first 100% Compostable chip bag" is proving to be one tough nut to crack in the compost heap. We dug this Sun Chips bag out of the compost over Memorial Day weekend for an impromptu photo session, and discovered that after 69 days -- just under seven weeks, half the time it's supposed to take to decompose -- it didn't look much worse than it did in Week 1. We could probably run it through the dishwasher and reuse it. Then again, maybe that would jump-start the composting process. Hmm....