Recipe of the Month: Simplified Malai Kofta

Last year during Passover, I bought a box of instant mashed potatoes, thinking perhaps I could use them for a cheaper alternative to the potato-based hot cereal I usually eat for breakfast during that week. That experiment didn't work out, so most of the box ended up just stashed away in the pantry. Then, earlier this year, we suddenly discovered a use for them. In a thread on the Frugal forum on Reddit about things that are much cheaper to make or do for yourself, one Redditor mentioned making homemade gnocchi with instant mashed potatoes. This caught my attention because gnocchi were one of the few convenience foods Brian and I bought regularly, since they came in so handy for a last-minute meal on a busy evening. We'd once tried making our own using the recipe in Mark Bittman, but it was a big hassle, and the result wasn't as tasty as the store-bought stuff. So we (or, more accurately, Brian) decided to give it a go with the potato flakes, and it turned out to be much quicker and easier, and produced better results, to boot. Since then, it's become a staple in our recipe collection.

That's not what this post is about, however. It's just an intro to explain how, once we'd discovered this use of instant mashed potatoes, Brian got to thinking about other recipes in our collection that we might be able to simplify through the use of these handy little flakes. And that's how he came to develop this recipe for easy malai kofta.

Malai kofta, for those not familiar with them, are Indian potato dumplings with bits of chopped veggies in them, served in a creamy tomato gravy. Brian already had a recipe for vegan malai kofta made with coconut milk and ground cashews in place of cream, but he didn't make it often because it took about an hour all told, with 30 minutes of hands-on work. The substitution of instant for fresh mashed potatoes simplified the recipe considerably and inspired him to tinker with it more. He adjusted the spices, tweaked the amounts of other ingredients, and started using grated rather than chopped carrot. He first substituted ground almonds (which we usually have in the pantry) for the ground cashews (which we usually don't), and eventually simplified the recipe still further by using almond flour.

Brian's simpler version of this dish cuts the prep time from about 30 minutes to 15 or 20. It still needs around half an hour of cooking time, so it's not ideal for a busy weeknight, but it's easily doable for a weekend. It's also tasty, with a rich creamy sauce that's full of flavor but not overpoweringly spicy, and makes a dinner for two with a couple of lunches to spare. And I consider it to be different enough from the original to count as a new recipe. 

So here it is:

    SIMPLIFIED MALAI KOFTA 

1. Preheat oven to 450°F.
2. Combine 1 1/2 cups water, 1/2 cup frozen peas, and 1/2 cup grated carrot in a pot. Bring to a boil and simmer about 10 minutes.
   
3. While veggies are cooking, heat 1 tablespoon oil in a deep skillet. Add 1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds and cook until they begin to sizzle. Then add 1 cup finely chopped yellow onion, 1 teaspoon peeled and chopped ginger root, and a pinch of cayenne pepper. Cook 3-4 minutes, until onion starts to brown. Add 1 cup tomatoes (chopped, crushed, or pureed) and cook another 3-4 minutes.
   
4. When veggies are done, stir in 1 cup potato flakes and mix until water is all absorbed. Transfer to a large mixing bowl to cool.
5. Transfer tomato mixture to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Return to pan and stir in 2 tablespoons almond flour, 1 cup canned coconut milk, 1/4 teaspoon garam masala, 1/4 teaspoon turmeric, 1/4 teaspoon ground coriander (no more! Be careful!), 1/4 teaspoon cardamom, and 1 teaspoon salt (or more, to taste). Add enough water to make a nice gravy consistency, up to 1 cup, keeping in mind it will continue to thicken as it cooks. Stir well and let it bubble gently over low heat as you prepare the koftas. If it's too watery, add more almond flour.
6. Add another 2 tablespoons almond flour to the potato mixture, along with 1/4 cup chickpea flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/3 teaspoon turmeric, 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin, and a pinch of black pepper. Stir to form a thick dough.
7. Oil a metal baking sheet. Form dough into balls, about golf ball size, and place a few inches apart on the sheet. Bake at 450°F for 10-12 minutes until crisp on the bottom. Flip balls and bake another 10-12 minutes until crisp on all sides.
8. Drop the baked dumplings into the heated gravy. Serve immediately with rice or your favorite Indian bread. (If you cook your rice in the pressure cooker, as we do, you can prepare it in the time it takes the kofta to bake.)
   

And that wraps up my first full year of vegan Recipes of the Month! I'll return with more in 2021.

Money Crashers: Three unrelated articles

Money Crashers has popped up three of my articles in the past week, all on quite different topics.

Article #1 is the first in a series of pieces I'm doing on Medicare. Originally, my editor asked me for just one article providing an overview of this government program and the process of signing up, and as I got into it, I discovered just how ludicrously complicated it is. I mean, doing your taxes is hard, but at least there's software for that; for Medicare, all the government provides is a grotesque kludge of a website that has the information you need to navigate the system scattered across dozens of different pages with no coherent path through it.

So I ended up writing not one, but four articles that try to provide the kind of clear, comprehensive explanation the government so noticeably fails to provide. This is the first of the four: an outline of the ins and outs of the Medicare system. It explains who is eligible for Medicare, how the program is funded, what all the different parts of Medicare (Part A, Part B, Part D, Medicare Advantage, and Medigap) are for, and how to choose the coverage you need. In future articles, I'll tackle the topics of what Medicare costs, ways to reduce the cost, and how to enroll — a process that's far more complicated than you might expect.

What Is Medicare – How It Works & What It Covers

The second piece deals with a lighter topic: streaming video services. I originally wrote this piece years ago, but like many of my articles, it sat unpublished until this spring, when my editors discovered that it had suddenly become highly topical. So they told me to quickly bring the old piece up to date so they could get it up onto the site — and then, apparently, they forgot about it until this month, when I suddenly got notice that it had been published and I should check to make sure all the info in it was still correct. It wasn't, but I did yet another quick edit to bring it up to date once more, and the revised piece now offers a comparison of the top streaming services: what content and features they offer, what they cost, and what kind of viewer would get the most out of them.

Best Video Streaming Services of 2020 (On-Demand & Live)

Lastly, we have a piece on another topic that's become highly relevant during the pandemic: restaurant delivery. These days, ordering is the new dining out, but surprisingly, it's often more expensive than the old dining out — partly because of delivery and service fees, and partly because the takeout menu itself is sometimes priced higher than the dine-in one. In this piece, I outline ways to keep your takeout food budget under control, which fall into three main categories: placing a cheaper order, controlling delivery fees, and taking advantage of discounts wherever possible.

18 Ways to Save Money on Restaurant Food Delivery & Takeout

Gardeners' Holidays 2020: The Changing of the Garden

This was a weird year for — well, everything, but particularly for our garden, one of the few things that shouldn't have been affected by the pandemic. As I noted on the last gardeners' holiday, it was a fabulous year for raspberries, and not too bad for peppers, winter squash, and tomatoes. (In fact, our tally of those has increased as we successfully ripened some indoors.) But other crops that have flourished in our garden in years past — basil, green beans, snap peas, lettuce — had disappointing yields, and a few were absolutely terrible. Through the whole season, we got only 6 ounces of arugula, one solitary zucchini, and not a single cherry or plum. And it's not even altogether clear what was to blame: the weather? The squirrels, who are reproducing faster with fewer cars on the road to prey on them? Does that mean the pandemic was indirectly responsible after all?

We can't say, but one thing we feel pretty confident is not at fault is the seeds we planted. Most of them were varieties we'd used before with reasonable success, and we have enough faith in them to stick with them for another year. There were a few new varieties that we tried this year, such as the Lancelot leeks and Opalka tomatoes, that weren't great performers, but given what a disappointing this year was for the garden generally, we feel they deserve another chance. Besides, it's not like we had any better candidates to replace them, since the Lincoln leeks we've grown in the past were equally feeble, and no paste tomato variety we've tried has exactly been an impressive producer. (Also, Brian was impressed with how firm-fleshed the Opalkas were, producing almost no juice when used in Pasta a la Caprese.) So we'll give them both one more try and hope that next year they get a better chance to show what they can do.

So, in the end, there was only one veggie variety in our 2020 garden we decided not to keep in 2021: the new Takara Shishito peppers. These were certainly productive, giving us a total of 26 fully ripe peppers and 16 green ones from just two plants, but there were a couple of problems with them. First, the individual peppers were quite small, and it's a lot more work to get the same volume of edible material from four little peppers than from two medium ones or one really big one. But an even bigger problem was their flavor. The Fedco catalog says of these, "Most will be mild — the occasional green pepper, around 10%, will be hot," but that was not our experience at all. Pretty much all of them were hot, making them only suitable for use in hot dishes. In fact, they were probably slightly hotter than the Caballero poblano chili peppers we also tried this year, edging close to jalapeno heat levels. Since they had limited utility, the bulk of the Takara Shishito peppers we harvested ended up going into the freezer, and we estimate that this preserved harvest should be enough to last us another two years. In short, there's clearly no good reason to grow more of them next year.

Thus, when we cracked open the Fedco catalog this year, we went straight to the pepper section to look for a replacement. We skipped over the entire page devoted to bell peppers, since (a) we've never had the slightest success with them in the past, and (b) they're a bigger risk than smaller frying peppers, since each plant produces fewer fruits. If a single fruit is damaged by disease, or insects, or whatever, you've just lost maybe 20 percent of your crop. We also skipped the tiny cheese and pimiento peppers, which are a bit too small to be terribly useful, and also not our favorites in terms of flavor.

So we went straight for the "Elongated picklers, fryers & roasters," and there we found two that looked particularly promising. Both of them, coincidentally, are named after fruits, which we took as a good sign, based on how much we like our Pineapple tomatoes. The first, Banana, takes 65 days to produce "yellow pointed 6" fruits that look hot but are not, turning orange and ripening red"; the second, Apple, takes 80 days to produce "shiny 4" fruits that are elongated...Irresistibly appealing even before the ripe fruity sweetness touches your tongue." While the Apple's boasts of "dependable and problem free" plants and award-winning flavor were tempting, we ultimately decided the Banana looked like a better bet simply because it takes less time to mature. Part of the problem with this year's garden, we suspected, was that everything took so long to ripen, and we had quite a lot of unripe fruit left on the vines at the end of the season. So we're hoping that by choosing a faster-growing pepper, we'll get to harvest more of them over the course of the summer.

Aside from that one new crop, we're planning to try a few other interventions in next year's garden to see if we can improve on this year's rather feeble harvest:

• Reducing the number of Marketmore cucumber vines, which all died this year, and increasing the number of the hardier but less productive Cross-Country vines
• Investing in some Bt spray to protect the zucchini from squash vine borers
  
• Taking more aggressive action to protect the plum trees, including heavy pruning, regular spraying, deterring squirrels with Tree Tanglefoot on paper collars, and picking the fruit at first blush to ripen indoors. (We might be missing out on tree-ripened flavor, but that's better than never getting to taste the plums at all.)

But all that work is to come. All we have to do right now is order the seeds and supplies, then curl up under our blankets and wait for spring to come — while the garden itself, under its heavy blanket of snow, does the same. Here's to a better year in 2021, in the garden and everywhere else.

Money Crashers: Two gardening articles

Two more Money Crashers articles have been posted today, this time on the subject of gardening. The first outlines the benefits of five different types of gardens: in-ground, raised beds, container gardens, window boxes, and community gardens. It's designed to help people who feel they can't grow their own produce due to a lack of time, space, or money find ways around these problems.

5 Home Vegetable Garden Ideas & Types You Can Start on a Budget

And to go with that, here's a freshly updated version of my 2015 article on seed swaps:

How to Have a Seed Swap With Other Gardeners in Your Community

Hope these will help you as you look ahead to the 2021 gardening season.

Money Crashers: Two health insurance articles

Money Crashers has popped up two of my articles in the past few days. Both deal with the topic of health insurance, but from very different angles.

The first article is a broad overview of the Medicaid program: how it works, who is helped by it, what its critics (on the left and right) have to say about it, how justified those criticisms are, and what could be done to make the program more sustainable in the future.

What Is Medicaid – How It Works, Criticisms & Future

The second piece is about private health insurance — which, for most of us, means workplace health plans. It walks you through the complex process of choosing the right plan for yourself and your family, from the general (how health insurance and health insurance marketplaces work) to the nitty-gritty details of comparing types of plans, costs, and coverage.

How to Choose the Best Health Insurance Plan for Your Family

Hope this information is helpful for you during this season of peace, joy, and open enrollment.

Cheap tools for role-playing games: Pandemic edition

First of all, my apologies for not putting up a new post last week (aside from my usual updates about what I've written for Money Crashers). My excuse is that I had to spend most of the weekend at a conference for the Citizens' Climate Lobby — the organization I joined back in January that's working to get the Energy Innovation and Climate Dividend Act passed. I should add that, in a normal year, I probably wouldn't have gone to this conference at all, since it would have taken place in Washington, DC. Traveling and hanging out in a large crowd of strangers are two of the things I find most stressful, and I certainly wouldn't be willing to sacrifice an entire weekend (including part of Friday), not to mention the dollar cost of the tickets, all for the sake of learning a couple of things that I could just as easily read about online. But this year, on account of COVID, the conference was entirely online, so instead of losing the whole weekend, I lost only Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday afternoon. Plus there was no travel, no crowding, and no rushing around. In short, this conference, which would have been a huge hassle in person, was only a minor hassle in its online format.

I bring this up because it's such a rarity: an activity that was actually easier and more agreeable to take part in online. Sadly, the same cannot be said of any of our normal social activities. We were never really social butterflies, but we had our few regular gatherings: Morris dance practice on Thursdays, the occasional concert at the Troubadour, board game nights every couple of weeks, and of course, our two RPG (role-playing game) campaigns. When the Great Isolation began in March, all these forms of social activity became off-limits, and we've had to either do without altogether or make do with online substitutes that can't really measure up to the real thing.

Still, an inferior substitute is far better than no social activity at all, and so we've muddled through as best we could with what we had available. For instance, we had to set aside all those nifty and inexpensive minis Brian had designed for his Wildemount campaign — along with the Wildemount campaign itself, since the local game store we'd gone out of our way to order the book from shut down when the quarantine started. (It seems to be open again now, but our order apparently got lost in the shuffle, as they never called to notify us about it.) So instead, we ordered a copy of the Eberron campaign guide from big old, mean old, corporate old Barnes & Noble, and Brian began running a new, socially distanced Ebberon campaign.

To make this work, we needed a couple of different technological tools. First, we needed a way to see and hear each other online. We started out using Discord for this purpose, but it proved to be kind of buggy. For many of us, video didn't work at all; the computer would just freeze whenever we tried it, so we ended up with audio only, which wasn't a very satisfying substitute for a social gathering. Eventually, we switched over to Zoom, the new standard for all forms of human interaction, and that worked better — not perfectly, but adequately most of the time. Its biggest downside is that the free version of it kicks you out of your meeting after 40 minutes, but since our group has one corporate user and one academic user who can set up meetings of indefinite length, we got around that problem easily.

Finding a way to visualize battle scenes proved a bit harder. Our first approach was to try out a Google Jamboard, which Brian and I had tried in our other campaign. This is basically just a big online notepad where members of a group can insert text and images. Brian would use the pen feature to hand-draw a map, and we'd use two sets of sticky notes to represent our characters: one to show the initiative order, and one to show our actual locations on the map relative to the monsters and each other. As you can see from the screenshot below, this could get a bit confusing.

We considered moving to a more sophisticated "virtual tabletop" designed specifically for online gaming, such as Fantasy Grounds and Roll20, which would have made it easier to incorporate maps, monsters, and other artwork from the official Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks. These systems also include other handy features for gaming, such as storing the game rules and character sheets right in the app and doing the math for you automatically whenever you roll dice to swing a sword or sling a spell. But they had two problems: first, they were fairly resource-intensive pieces of software, and given theamount of trouble we'd had using just the Jamboard and Discord at the same time, we feared they would tax our systems too heavily. And second, both of them (at least at the time) charged a monthly subscription fee, which every member of our party would need to pay in order to use it. Given the relative infrequency with which we actually managed to get everyone together for a game session, we didn't think it would be worth the cost. (Since then, both systems have changed their pricing model; Fantasy Grounds gives a choice of a one-time fee or a subscription, and Roll20 lets you sign up for free and instead charges a one-time fee for each game sourcebook you add content from.)

But then I discovered Foundry VTT (for Virtual Table Top). I think it was the Dungeons & Dragons group on Reddit that turned me on to it, but regardless, it was a literal game changer.

For one thing, this system offered maps not merely as good as, but actually better than the fancy, three-dimensional Dwarven Forge battle maps that we routinely salivate over when watching Critical Role. Better how, you ask? Simple: these maps can not only show the terrain in detail, but can show each individual player a different view of it, reflecting exactly what their character would be able to see from their current position. If your view of something is blocked by a wall, you don't have to ask the dungeon master, "Can I see that from where I am?"; you just look at the map, and what you see is what you get. If your character has darkvision, they can see in the dark while other characters are blind; if your character is flying, the software keeps track of how their perspective would change based on how high up they are. Light sources within a room and even background noises, such as a crackling fire or the roar of a tavern crowd, fade in and out as you pass through.

And that's only the beginning of what Foundry VTT can do. It can automatically measure the radius of a spell for you, so you don't have to get out a ruler to see who would and wouldn't be hit by your fireball. It can automatically do the math when you make a roll to hit, to damage, or to use an ability. It can keep track of your character's hit points and spell slots, so you don't have to mark them separately on paper — and it can do the same with the monsters you're fighting. It can track initiative order, so you always know whose turn it is. It can import maps you've drawn in another program, or provide you with tools to create them within the app. It can even provide audio and video connections within the app, so you don't need to keep a separate Zoom window open (though we haven't tried this feature yet for fear it would overtax our systems).

OK, you may be asking, but can't Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds do all this too? Well, yes, they can certainly do at least most of it. What really made Foundry VTT superior for us was its pricing model. Because to use it, you need only one copy of the software, owned by only one person in the group. That person then turns the computer that has the software into their own private server, and everyone else can log in from there. So for a one-time expense of 50 bucks, you can use this software with anyone you want, basically forever.

Now, there may be a few features that aren't quite as easy to use in Foundry VTT as they are in Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds. For instance, you can use Foundry VTT with any game system, but the flip side of this is that it doesn't contain a lot of pre-loaded content — maps, characters, rules, monsters — for any one system, such as D&D. There's a small library of pre-loaded monsters and maps available, but if you want to use anything fancier, you have to key it in yourself. But this honestly isn't that hard to do. You can also import your maps from anywhere you like and adjust them to fit a standard grid, after which you can add walls, light sources, or whatever other features you want your terrain to have. So while you don't have as much ready-made stuff to use, you can also add your own stuff in basically any form you like. (Brian has added some maps copied from the sourcebooks, made some — like the airship below — himself, and borrowed some from other players who made them available online.)

Which brings us to this additional technological tool we've been thinking about adding to our lineup: Game Master Engine. I learned about this one from Reddit as well, in a post by its creator on the D&D subreddit. It's a tool for creating 3-D maps of indoor and outdoor terrain, which you can then export as PNG files to any virtual tabletop you use — including Foundry VTT. And when I say maps, I mean really elaborate, beautiful maps with tons of options. You can not only choose all sorts of terrain, you can add animated features like misty waterfalls, crackling campfires, and wind-stirred trees. You can import character and monster minis. You can change the time of day, the weather, and the colors. And that's just in the basic version of the software, which — did I mention? — is completely free.

The only catch, as far as I can tell, is that it only works on Windows machines. But Brian happens to have one of those, so we really have nothing to lose by testing it out. Other Redditors who have tried it say it is just as easy to work with as the video makes it look, but if it turns out not to be all that handy for us, oh well, it didn't cost us anything. And if we try it and find it's very handy, we can shell out a mere 15 bucks extra to upgrade to the "pro" version, which has a bunch of additional assets.

In fact, our new online maps are so handy and full-featured, we might even want to continue using them once (if the gods be pleased) we can actually sit down around a real gaming table again. Admittedly, this would be tricky; first we'd have to find a way to put a screen on the table where everyone, including the dungeon master, could see it, and then we'd have to figure out how to switch back and forth between characters to get the different perspectives on the scene. (We could do it by each logging in separately and looking at our own screens, but sitting around a table with our faces buried in separate screens would kind of take out most of the social element of the game.) It certainly wouldn't be as easy as moving around paper minis on our picture-frame battle map.

But if we can find a way to make it work, it would be one more example of something that actually got better as a result of our time in isolation. And goodness knows we could use more of those.

Money Crashers: More holiday articles

It looks like we can add the winter holidays to the list of events this year that are going to be, if not ruined, at least dramatically altered by the pandemic. So far, our Passover Seder, our May Day morning gathering, and our entire weekend of Thanksgiving festivities have all become Zoom meetings, and now Hanukkah and Christmas are going to be the same.

Since most people around the country are now in this same boat, I was a little wary when my editor at Money Crashers suggested an update of my five-year-old article on holiday entertaining. I pointed out that it probably wouldn't get much traffic this year, since not that many people are going to be inclined to throw holiday parties (and those who are probably shouldn't be encouraged). I proposed delaying that update for next year and, instead, doing a new article on ways to celebrate the holidays with family and friends during a pandemic.

This is that article. It offers a total of 25 suggestions on COVID-safe celebrations, grouped into three main categories: activities you can enjoy with just the immediate family, things to do outdoors, and ways to connect virtually. Across these three categories, I manage to suggest alternatives for nearly every part of a typical Christmas season, from visiting Santa at the mall to going caroling to opening stockings on Christmas morning. (We're planning to do virtual stockings with the family ourselves, and I'm cherishing a secret hope that the family will like it enough to suggest we go with smaller presents in future years as well.)

25 Fun & Frugal Family Activities to Safely Celebrate Christmas With Kids 

To go with this new article, I've also got freshly updated versions of three of my existing articles on holiday gift shopping:

23 Best Christmas Gift Ideas for Your Boyfriend (on Every Budget)

21 Best Christmas Gift Ideas for Your Girlfriend (on Every Budget)

31 Best Gift Ideas for Foodies (on Every Budget)

Hope these tips help you to enjoy the holidays with your family and friends as completely as social distancing allows.

Money Crashers: 10 Ways to Shop for a Cause and Give Back This Holiday Season

Gift shopping and charitable giving are two things I normally like to keep separate. I know many people think "a donation to charity in your name" is a good present, and maybe for the right person it could be, but to me, a gift to a worthy cause is not at all the same thing as a gift to an individual, chosen specially for that individual. If someone gives me a "gift" of a donation in my name, I always feel like, "Well, that was very nice of you, but it isn't really a gift for me, was it? It's a gift to the charity, and possibly a gift to you because it makes you feel good about yourself, but if what I really wanted most was to see this charity receive money, I'd give it myself."

However, there are ways to support a charity and give a gift at the same time, without compromising either. By knowing where and how to shop, you can direct a portion of your gift-giving dollars to a worthy cause — so both the cause and the recipient get something that will make them happy.

My latest Money Crashers article (an update of a piece by a former writer) outlines several ways to do this, including:

• Charity portals such as iGive and Amazon Smile
• Various types of vendors that support charitable causes
• Getting free or cheap items for donation through extreme couponing
• Specific products that come with a charitable donation
• Charitable credit cards
• Rounding up for charity at the register

And it concludes with some tips on how to make charity begin at home, or at least close to it, by using your shopping dollars to support local businesses, many of which are struggling during the pandemic. 

Brian and I have already put this advice to use for our own holiday shopping. Since Hanukkah and Christmas are both going to have to take place at a distance this year, we've been looking for small gifts we can ship easily — and we've already picked up several from either local businesses and several more from online vendors that donate an item to charity for every one you buy. We can't get more specific, since some of the people receiving these gifts are readers of this blog, but we think the recipients will be happy with the merchandise. And we'll feel good knowing they were gifts that gave twice — gifts that could please the people in our lives and help total strangers at the same time.

10 Ways to Shop for a Cause and Give Back This Holiday Season

Money Crashers: Holiday gift article updated

Just a quick note here to let you know my Money Crashers article on holiday gift-giving has been freshly updated for 2020. Most of the content is the same — ways to limit your gift list, shop secondhand, make homemade gifts, and so on — but there's some new content about how holiday sales will look during the pandemic. Read it here: 5 Ways to Save Money on Holiday Gifts for Your Friends & Family

A simple shoe fix

As I've mentioned a few times before, I just have the dickens of a time shopping for new shoes. Not only do I have rather oddly-shaped feet, I'm also an ethical vegetarian (well, near-vegetarian, anyway) who won't wear leather. So finding shoes that fit both my feet and my values, provide reasonable value for the money, and look acceptable (not fantastic, just acceptable) is a major struggle every time. Walking into a shoe store, looking at every single pair on the shelves, finding maybe half a dozen worth trying on, and walking out with nothing isn't just a common experience for me — it's par for the course.

As a result, whenever I do manage to find a pair of shoes I'm reasonably happy with, I become deeply attached to it and will go to great lengths to keep it working. So when I discovered that I'd lost one of the decorative snaps off my spring-and-fall walking shoes, discarding the shoes clearly wasn't an option. In theory, I could have just kept on wearing them, since the shoes are a slip-on style that doesn't actually need the snap to function, but its absence made the shoe look untidy. So instead, I set out to find something to repair it with.

First of all, naturally, I hunted around the bedroom, looking under dressers and into corners to see if the missing snap cap would turn up (the post was still in place). When that yielded nothing, my next thought was to find a set of snaps similar to the original ones and just replace the missing cap. There isn't a fabric store near here, so I tried Michael's, where I knew they carried a few assorted sewing notions. No luck. They had some snaps, but nothing close to an appropriate size.

Fortunately, I'd figured this might happen, so I'd already come up with a a backup plan: just buy some beads of an appropriate size and replace both snaps with those. And for this, Michael's was able to offer me quite a large selection. After several minutes perusing the bead aisle and comparing options, I settled on a $3 strand of grey beads with an agate-like appearance. There were over a dozen of them, so even if my first attempt didn't work out, I'd have plenty of chances to try again.

The first step was to get the snap off the intact shoe. This proved much tougher than I expected — so tough that it made me wonder how I'd ever managed to lose the other snap in the first place. Eventually, with the aid of a knife and a bit of leverage, I managed to work the cap loose, slightly bending the post it attached to in the process. So whatever happened, I was committed now.

For my first attempt to attach the beads, I used a hot glue gun. Neither Brian nor I can remember where we first picked this thing up, but as I recall, it cost us only $5, including the glue sticks, and the repairs it's made possible have paid for it many times over. But alas, this was not one of them. It was relatively simple to apply a bead of hot glue to the stub where each snap had been and press one of my new beads into it, though I did have a little trouble with tendrils of hot glue stretching out from the bead like hot cheese on pizza. But once I'd cleaned those up and let the glue dry, it proved not to be very secure. As soon as I picked up one of the shoes and just experimentally flexed it, off popped the bead.

So, once again, I moved on to Plan B: sewing the beads in place. This went fairly easily for the first shoe, the one that started out with an intact snap: I just removed the back half of the snap, then stitched up through the back of the flap of material where it had been, through the bead, and back down through the flap. After a few iterations of this, I had a bead in place that neatly covered the hole, and I was thinking, "Hey, this will be a pretty easy repair after all!"

Needless to say, I spoke too soon. When I removed the back half of the snap on the other shoe, the fabric behind it separated into two pieces. At first I thought I could just stitch through both pieces before going through the bead, but it quickly discovered I would have needed at least three hands for this: one to hold each flap in place and a third to do the sewing. So instead, I used one hand to rather awkwardly hold both flaps while I stitched them more or less back together. Then, once I had only a single piece of fabric to work with, I was able to sew the bead on more or less as I had with the first shoe. 

I can't be sure how well this makeshift repair will hold up, since I've only worn the shoes a couple of times since performing it. But at least the two shoes match now, and at a glance, you wouldn't realize they hadn't originally been designed this way. In fact, if anything, the little beads are snazzier-looking than the original snaps. And best of all, I should now be able to keep wearing these shoes for at least one more year, spring and fall, before I have to embark on a long, grueling search for a suitable replacement.

Solving the celery problem

Every time I see statistics about food waste, my mind completely boggles. I read a news story claiming that the average family of four in the U.S. throws away $1,500 worth of uneaten food each year, and I just don't understand how it's possible. Are these people deliberately buying food they don't intend to eat? Are they discarding all their leftovers after every meal without even thinking about whether they can be useful? (In some cases, apparently, yes.) Are they making no effort at all to use the food in the fridge before it rots?

I will admit, however, that there's one particular ingredient we have often had trouble disposing of before it goes bad: celery. The problem with celery is that while there are lots of recipes that use it, there are almost no recipes that use much of it. When we buy, say, a cabbage, we usually plan to use it in a specific recipe, such as Indian cabbage or Rumbledethumps. If there's enough left over, we make a second dish with it, and if there's still a bit left we toss it in a stir-fry. All gone.

But celery is a different matter. We have lots of different recipes that use it — Pasta Fagioli, mushroom soup, sometimes tuna casserole — but as a rule, they only use a stalk or two at a time. So it's something we always like to have on hand, but not something we go through very fast. All of which means that we're often unable to use up an entire bunch of celery before the last few stalks turn limp and soggy, fit only for the stock bag, or worse, brown and squidgy, fit only for the compost bin. We've tried wrapping the celery snugly in aluminum foil, which is supposed to make it last longer, but according to WikiHow, even this can only extend its lifetime to about three or four weeks — not usually enough for us to go through a whole bunch.

A week or so ago, as we found ourselves once again discarding the sodden remnants of a once-crisp head of celery, I got frustrated and started searching the Internet for better ways to preserve it. And I hit on this article from Eating Well about a solution so obvious I wanted to give myself a dope slap for not thinking of it sooner: just freeze it.

Since most of the celery we use is cooked rather than raw, there's no reason why it needs to be fresh. Both its flavor and its texture are just as good if it's been frozen — particularly if you blanch it first, as the article suggests, by cooking it in boiling water for about three minutes and then quickly dunking it in ice water to stop the cooking process. 

So, with the last bunch of celery we brought home from the store, we did just this. We washed and chopped the entire batch, blanched it, spread it out on a cookie tray to freeze, and then transferred it to a freezer bag. Last night Brian used some of the frozen celery in a batch of mushroom barley soup, and it was pretty much indistinguishable from the same soup made with fresh celery. And it was actually more convenient to use, since it had all been chopped up ahead of time. It could just go straight into the pot  from the freezer.

There's only one problem with this celery preservation method: once in a while, we actually do like a bit of fresh celery in a salad or a tuna sandwich. Fresh is a bit better for stir-frying, too, since it retains more crunch. We could buy a batch of fresh celery when we need some for one of these purposes, but then we'd be back to where we were before: using up only a few stalks of celery and needing to preserve the rest. Of course, we could just use two stalks and freeze the rest, but if we did this every time we needed fresh celery, our freezer would soon be overflowing with the frozen stuff.

Fortunately, I had recently heard of another trick that could address this problem as well. Over the summer, I joined an online gardening discussion group called Everybody's Farm, and in one of our meetings, someone mentioned the technique of regrowing a head of celery from the cut-off base. We'd been doing this for years with scallions, another veggie that we often use only one or two at a time, but I had no idea it worked with celery too.

So, when we cut up our current head of celery for blanching and freezing, we made a point of leaving a couple of inches at the bottom, as instructed in this article from The Spruce. Since it was our first time trying this, we opted for the simpler method of just submerging the bottom of this cut-off celery base in a dish of water and putting it in our sunny southeast-facing window. (The article recommended "a bright area but out of direct sunlight," but since we didn't have any spots that fit both criteria, we figured the first was more important. The sunlight isn't all that direct.) And sure enough, within a few days, tiny leaves had started to poke out from the chopped-off stalks. After about a week, it's developed a regular little tuft of leaves like a green Mohawk.

Now that we know this is working, we'll probably transfer the celery end to a permanent home in a pot, which The Spruce says will encourage it to grow bigger. The article warns that we'll probably still get "more leaves than stalks" this way, but the leaves are good fodder for the stock bag, and the new celery plant will be able to keep our potted scallions company.

In fact, after this success, we've actually been toying with the idea of growing some microgreens in that corner as well, as outlined in this New York Times article. We've already got some takeout containers that would work for seed starting, some arugula seed left over from this year's garden, and the light from our seed-starting setup, so all we would need is a bag of potting soil. And if that actually works — and if we decide to keep up the practice as more than a one-off experiment — I think we should start referring to that sunny table in the southwest corner as our winter garden.

Money Crashers: 25 Thanksgiving Potluck Ideas

Normally, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. It's not so much the meal itself I enjoy as having the whole family (or at least my dad's side of it) gathered together. As we pass around the food, we share our thoughts about what it is we're most thankful for this year. After dinner, we play a rousing and usually hilarious game of charades. And then we spend the whole weekend hanging out, taking walks in town, hitting the thrift shops in Princeton, playing games, solving the Saturday crossword together. It's a whole weekend to relax and have fun with family.

Obviously, none of that is going to happen this year. Hosting visitors from out of state is definitely off limits, and given how bad the COVID numbers look for New Jersey — and the fact that it's mostly small gatherings driving the spread — I didn't even feel safe having just me and Brian go over to my parents' house for an indoor, unmasked meal. 

So we will have to celebrate Thanksgiving apart, at least physically. But I'm determined to keep as much of our traditional Thanksgiving festivities as possible. We've come up with a plan to play charades online (with the help of a Google form to submit our entries and a corresponding Google sheet to read them from), and I'm working on ways to do other activities online as well — Boggle, thrift shopping, even hide and seek with the kids.

The one thing we can't share is the Thanksgiving meal. I mean, we could Zoom while eating it, as we did for Passover, but we won't be sharing the meal itself. However, for extended family members who live closer together, there actually is a way to do that too: a socially distanced potluck. Just have each person prepare a dish, divvy it up into containers, and deliver them to people's homes. That way, you can all enjoy the same meal, even if you can't be around the same table.

My latest Money Crashers article is for all those who are having socially distanced potlucks this year (as well as for future reference for those who want to enjoy a frugal Friendsgiving potluck next year, when things will — we hope — be back to normal). It's a list of suggestions for dishes you can bring (or in this case, remotely contribute) to a Thanksgiving potluck beyond the obvious mashed potatoes and green bean casserole. Check it out here:

25 Thanksgiving Potluck Food Dishes & Recipe Ideas (Budget-Friendly)

Recipe of the Month: Carrot salmon

Although Brian and I are eating mostly plant-based these days, we haven't gone full vegan and don't have any plans to. One particular animal food we still occasionally enjoy is fish, which is both healthful and less carbon-intensive than meat. It's also more expensive, so we don't indulge too often, but we buy canned tuna, salmon, clams, and the occasional tin of smoked herring from Trader Joe's; we pick up frozen shrimp and catfish nuggets when they go on sale; and once in a while, we buy a chunk of salmon from H-Mart for homemade sushi.

However, in terms of sustainability, these choices aren't all equal. Fish farms can produce pollution, and natural fisheries can be over-fished, endangering the stocks of fish over the long term. I've always tried to avoid the types of seafood that were most notoriously unsustainable, such as Chilean sea bass, but I recently came to the disgruntling discovery that fresh salmon might not be the best choice either. According to the Seafood Watch website run by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, while the canned white tuna and Alaskan salmon we buy are generally "Best Choices" (meaning "well managed and caught or farmed in ways that cause little harm to habitats or other wildlife"), fresh salmon is a mixed bag. There are many different varieties of salmon that comes from many different areas, and only some of them can reasonably be considered sustainable. You can look for the label of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) or the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) to find the best choices, but since the sushi salmon we buy at H-Mart never has any sort of label on it, there's no way to know if it's up to par.

At this point, I could have just shrugged my shoulders and said, "Oh well, we don't eat it all that often anyway." But instead, I started wondering if there might be an acceptable plant-based substitute for raw salmon that would work in sushi. So I started hunting around, and I discovered a recipe for "vegan carrot salmon" on a site called ProVeg. It looked simple enough to make: just cut a big carrot into really thin strips, then marinate it for at least eight hours in a mixture of water, vinegar, salt, Liquid Smoke, and nori seaweed, which presumably would serve to infuse it with a marine flavor. (Actually, we kind of inferred the part about the water; the recipe calls for 300 mL of water, about a cup and a quarter, but the instructions don't actually say where to use it. We assumed it had to go in the marinade because it didn't seem like there would be enough of it to cover the carrots otherwise.) Once it's fully soaked, you're supposed to coat it with oil and a bit more liquid smoke before serving it. It wasn't clear how much like salmon this would actually be, but since we already had all the ingredients on hand, it wouldn't really cost us anything to find out.

So, last week, Brian shaved some carrots as thin as he could get them and soaked them as instructed. And after marinating for two days, we found, they actually looked not unlike smoked salmon. But would the taste, and the all-important texture, live up to the appearance?

To put the carrot salmon to a thorough test, we tried it three ways: by itself, on bread, and in sushi rolls. The sushi came out looking a little wonky, since these thin strips of carrot aren't really the ideal size, but Brian was able to get enough of them in there to make a reasonable roll.

Unfortunately, it was a little hard to evaluate the flavor in this form. The vinegar-flavored sushi rice had a strong enough flavor on its own that the carrot salmon didn't really stand out against it. It definitely didn't taste like carrots, but it was a bit hard to say whether it tasted like salmon.

Tasted by itself, however the carrot salmon was...not unlike the real thing. Without the sushi rice as a distraction, it was clear that this carrot salmon was actually meant to simulate smoked salmon, and it did that surprisingly well. It had the expected saltiness and smokiness, and the nori did, in fact, seem to impart a hint of fishy flavor. The texture, too was better than I expected. It didn't quite have the buttery softness that makes raw or cold-smoked salmon so appealing, but it was  pretty tender, and munching it on a piece of bread was a not-too-bad approximation to eating an actual slice of lox.

So, as a substitute for raw sushi salmon, this stuff wasn't quite ideal. As a substitute for smoked salmon, it was not too shabby, but there was room for improvement. Although the genuine fishy article is quite salty, this stuff tasted even saltier, and I thought dialing down the salt in the recipe would probably improve it. Cutting the strips a tiny bit thinner or marinating them longer might also help eliminate the remaining hint of crunch that tipped off the tongue that the origin of the product was vegetable rather than animal. However, we both agreed that what this salmon substitute really lacked was the fat that gives the original its smooth, melting texture. Adding the oil to it before serving is presumably supposed to remedy this problem, but having oil on the "fish" just isn't the same as having it in the fish.

Brian suggested that serving this carrot salmon in a sushi roll together with avocado might help compensate for its less-than-perfect texture, since the avocado would supply the melting softness you normally expect from the salmon. I wouldn't pair avocado with real salmon, since the textures are too similar, but with the carrot version it would probably work quite well. I also think this vegan salmon could work in any sort of smoked salmon canape that has another, contrasting texture, such as salmon-wrapped asparagus spears. Or we could follow the advice of BBC Good Food and use it in place of the bacon in our favorite spaghetti carbonara recipe. (It still wouldn't be vegan, since it contains eggs, but it would be a trifle more healthful.) All of those would camouflage the telltale texture of the carrot salmon and highlight its smoky flavor. We'll probably have to try at least one of these ideas, since we still have some of the carrot salmon left that needs to be put to use. 

As things stand now, I don't think this carrot salmon is going to become a regular addition to our vegan repertoire. It's interesting as a curiosity, but it's not the special treat that real smoked salmon is, and it's not like we had a whole lot of recipes to try it in. But if it turns out to be particularly good for some other application that we try, I'll let you know.

Money Crashers: 12 Elder Fraud Scams That Target Senior Citizens

A quick post here to let you know about my latest Money Crashers article. This one focuses on scams that target senior citizens, who make particularly juicy targets because they often have both well-padded bank accounts and less-than-perfect memories. Some popular ones include:

• The call from (allegedly) the Social Security Administration warning you that your Social Security Number has been "suspended" because it's been used improperly and you need to supply lots of personal information pronto to avoid losing your benefits
• The call from your "favorite grandchild," who is in terrible trouble (a car accident, an arrest for marijuana possession, something like that) and needs money immediately, sent by an untraceable method, and also a pledge of secrecy because their parents would kill them if they knew
• The one where you get three issues of a magazine for free, followed by a bill for your new "subscription" (what, you don't remember subscribing? Well, your memory isn't what it used to be.)
• The particularly heinous one where you get a call immediately after a loved one's death to inform you that they owed a lot of money for which you are now on the hook, and threatening you with exposure, lawsuits, or arrest if you don't pay up

Don't let the bastards get away with it! Inform yourself, and your loved ones over 65, about these scams so you know what to be on the lookout for. And learn some tips for protecting yourself if you get a call that sounds suspicious, and for protecting your loved ones if they seem to keep falling for these cons. Get the skinny here:

12 Elder Fraud Scams That Target Senior Citizens – How to Stay Protected

 

Money Crashers: 9 Best Online Will Makers of 2020

For the past several years, I've had "make a will" on my to-do list. I knew it was a good idea to have one, but it never really seemed urgent. It wasn't just that I didn't expect to die any time soon, since I know that's impossible to predict; I also knew if I died without a will, my money would automatically go to Brian as my next of kin, and I was fine with that. Most of our assets are jointly owned anyway, and my IRA already has a named beneficiary, so I didn't foresee any problems there. The only possible wrinkle was that if we both died at the same time — say, in a car crash — our assets would then most likely go to our parents, who really don't need them. So I figured it would be a good thing to have a will specifying how to split up the money in that case, and also naming a guardian for the cats.But since the contingency seemed pretty remote, I dragged my feet about actually making one.

Apparently, I'm not alone in this. According to AARP, 6 out of 10 Americans haven't made a will, and most of them give the same reason I did — they just haven't gotten around to it yet. Unfortunately, for many of them, dying without a will could pose a significant problem for their heirs. Even if the money eventually gets to their kids, their siblings, or whoever is their next of kin, it could be held up for months in probate.

So, when I proposed an article about online will software for Money Crashers, I had a sneaky ulterior motive in mind. I figured in the process of writing it, I'd learn enough about the various software programs that exist to help you create a will to be able to choose one that would meet my needs and finally get this item off my list once and for all. And sure enough, it worked. I researched the various options, settled on one with decent features and a free trial period, and was able to dash off my will and supporting documents (living will and power of attorney) before the trial was up. (Actually getting the documents witnessed in the middle of a pandemic was trickier, but I managed it in the end.)

So if you're in the same position I was, knowing you need a will but putting off making one because the task seems overwhelming, this article can help. I've already done all the research for you, so all you have to do is read it, figure out which service looks best for your needs, buy it, and use it. Once you take the plunge, the process is actually quick and fairly painless.

9 Best Online Will Makers of 2020

Money Crashers: Two holiday articles

As longtime readers will know, I normally dislike all references to Christmas and other winter holidays before Thanksgiving is over. I've boycotted stores during the holiday season because they started their Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving Day; I even do my best to steer clear of stores that display premature holiday decorations before Thanksgiving. Of course, I have to work on holiday-related articles before Thanksgiving, since they have to be started that early if my clients want to get them online before the holidays have actually come and gone. But I still prefer not to promote the published articles until the end of November at the earliest.

However, for these two recently published pieces on Money Crashers, I'll make an exception. Because they both tackle the subject of cutting your holiday spending — and if you want to do that, you need to start planning before the holiday season is officially under way.

For instance, the first piece deals with the topic of making a holiday budget. Now, obviously, a holiday budget does you no good unless you make it before you actually begin any of your holiday shopping and spending. So it makes sense to start working on it now, iron out all the details, and have it all ready to go when Thanksgiving is over and the frenzy of holiday shopping begins. This piece explains how to create one, and offers a few tips on how to keep your spending within it once you actually get started.

How to Create a Holiday Budget & Stick to It – Strategize Your Spending

The second piece tackles the topic of holiday spending in more detail. It helps you strategize for saving on all aspects of the holiday, including gifts, decorating, travel, and entertaining. (Admittedly, those last two will probably look a bit different this year; we'll have to do them extra carefully if we plan to do them at all. But that's all the more reason to start planning ahead early.)

20 Ways to Save Money During the Holiday Season – Tips & Ideas

There are several more holiday articles in the pipeline at the moment, including a new one on ways to celebrate safely during a pandemic. I'll let you know about that one as soon as it pops up, too, so you'll have plenty of time to start planning. And there's one upcoming piece that's Thanksgiving-related, so I'll make sure to notify you about that one even more promptly.

Smaller and larger potatoes

So, remember how we harvested our first bucket of potatoes last month, and the total potato content inside came to roughly one ounce? And how I concluded that if the other three were equally disappointing, our harvest would come to only four ounces total?

Well, they were and they weren't. Brian harvested the other three buckets today and laid out the contents of all four buckets for comparison. The contents appear here in the same relative positions as their buckets in the garden. The two piles at the upper left were from the two buckets at the northeast corner of the garden, the tiny pile at the upper right was in the southeast corner, and the one at the bottom left was in the northwest corner. However, it actually got far more light than all the others, as the other three are all partly shaded by trees. That's presumably why it yielded so much more than the others, and probably also why it was the only one of the four buckets that still had some living greenery in it.

This gives us another useful piece of data: potato plants apparently need significantly more light than ours were getting. So, along with the other changes we plan to make with next year's crop (placing the potatoes directly atop the drainage stones, mixing soil with the compost, sprouting fewer potatoes, raising the buckets for better drainage, and watering more thoroughly after planting), we'll want to find a place for the buckets where they'll get as much light as possible. Brian was concerned that if we moved them outside the fenced garden area, the groundhogs would go for them, but Laid Back Gardener claims they don't, which makes sense if they're a member of the generally toxic nightshade family. So perhaps we'll try putting the buckets along the edge of the patio instead (possibly dressing them up with burlap to make them look a bit nicer).

The two other buckets on the eastern side of the garden barely doubled the harvest from the first one, but the fourth bucket, the one from the western side, increased it considerably. When Brian weighed the contents of all four buckets together on our kitchen scale, he found that we had a total of roughly eight ounces — about twice as much as I expected to get, and exactly the right amount to make a nice batch of roasted Brussels sprouts with potatoes and eggs for tonight's dinner.

So, all in all, our potato-growing experiment was not a total failure. True, the half-pound of potatoes we actually harvested would only have cost us about a buck to buy at the store, as opposed to $3.71 worth of seed potatoes and a whole season of work tending the plants. But we'll get one good meal out of it, and plenty of useful information about what to do differently next year.

Gardeners' Holidays: Last Harvest

Once again, it's that time of year when production in the garden slowly winds down. Or rather, most years it happens slowly. This year, we got a frost warning on Friday, so Brian hastened out into the garden to pick all the tender veggies that weren't likely to survive it. And he came back in with this.

The contents of that overflowing bowl: one Pineapple tomato, one Premio tomato, 39 Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, 10 Carmen peppers (green), 7 Caballero peppers (also green), 16 Takara Shishito peppers (mostly green), about 2 cups of arugula, and about half a cup of basil. And the little pink cup in the background is holding approximately half a cup of raspberries, which just might be the last of our haul for the year.

This isn't quite all that was left in the garden. Brian figured the frost wouldn't be likely to hurt the thick-peeled winter squash, so he didn't bring those in until today. Even now, there are still a few left on the vines that he didn't pick because they were still green, so he's leaving them out in the hope that they'll ripen a little more. (If that doesn't work, we'll have to pick them and try to ripen them up indoors, though we certainly can't provide an environment that's 80 to 85 degrees with 80 to 85 percent humidity.) There are also a few leeks still in the ground, and we still haven't harvested those three other buckets of potatoes. But it pretty much finishes out the year, so I thought it might be a good time to do a little tally and see how much our harvest came to in total.

Now, there are some crops I don't have an accurate tally for. Although we've been harvesting little bits of leafy greens all year, Brian hasn't really been notifying me about them, because he says it's hard to figure out how to count them when you're just collecting a few leaves at a time. So, although I know we got some value out of these crops, I can't say just how much. Generally speaking, Brian says the arugula wasn't very productive this year, because it bolted quite early on (although it did come back to give us a small second helping in the fall). But he has literally no idea how much we got of the basil, Thai basil, or the various lettuces we planted. So, conservatively, I'm estimating we got the equivalent of one bunch of each, for a value of about $18.

With other crops, however, we can calculate a bit more precisely. Since all our produce is organically grown, I'm using approximate prices for organic produce to calculate its value.

• Cucumbers: 1 Marketmore, 1 large Cross-Country, 5 medium, and 11 small. It's not an impressive showing for the Marketmore, but given that it's produced substantially more in the past, we'll probably keep it in next year's garden. The total weight of cucumbers was probably between 5 and 6 pounds, for around $11 worth.
• Green beans: About 33 ounces of the Provider and 10 of the Climbing French variety. That's actually a rather disappointing take for us: in the past, we've harvested 5 to 6 pounds of Provider and 1 or 2 of Climbing French. We'll probably try both again next year, as they've done well in the past, but it definitely wasn't a good year for beans. But even so, it's about $9 worth.
• Leeks: Eight smallish ones harvested to date. For some reason (maybe too short a season?), we've just never been able to grow big fat leeks like you can get at the store. Total weight was probably around a pound, for a value of $3. Not the best use of garden space, maybe.
• Peppers: 26 red and 16 green Takara Shishitos (about a third of an ounce each), 9 red and 11 green Carmens (2 ounces each), and 3 red and 10 green Caballeros (3 ounces each). So that's a total of 2.2 pounds of red peppers, which cost maybe $6 per pound, and 3.6 pounds of green ones, which cost about 2.50. Total value: about $22, which is a little more impressive.
• Tomatoes: We got 5 big tomatoes off our Pineapple plants — not nearly as many as last year, but better than 2018, when we got only one. And they're big, tasty tomatoes, about 12 ounces on average, so that's actually around not too bad a haul. Then we got 37 small Premio tomatoes (maybe 7 pounds), 3 Opalka paste tomatoes (about 1 pound, not at all impressive, but then we've never done well with plum tomatoes), and a whopping 528 Sun Golds (at 6 tiny tomatoes per ounce, roughly 5.5 pounds). So that's a total of 17.25 pounds of tomatoes, or about $69 worth. Now we're talking.
• Potatoes: Based on the harvest we got from the first bucket, we figure we might get about 4 ounces total, for a value of about four bits. Pretty sad. But we think we can do better next year.
  
• Winter squash: So far, we've harvested a dozen, averaging around 2 pounds each. There are eight left on the vines, but we're not counting on them. So I'm putting it down as 24 pounds of butternut squash, a value of $48.
  
• Zucchini: Terrible. We got exactly one squash — not even a big one — off both vines before the borers did them in. (Next year we're going to try applying some Bt to try and stop them, since burying the stems doesn't seem to do the trick.) That might be one measly dollar's worth, at most.
• Plums: Even more terrible. Between the brown rot and the squirrels, we didn't harvest a single one. Next year we're stepping up our control measures.
• Cherries: Equally terrible. The few that we actually produced got picked off before they were ready, because we had so few that we didn't even bother netting the bushes. Not sure what was wrong, but it's probably the same thing that affected so many other crops this year.
• Asparagus: Not great, but not terrible. We got about 39 ounces — enough for a few meals, at least. So that's a little over $12 worth.
• Garlic: We got 3 ounces of garlic scapes and about 25 small heads, of which about 8 will be saved for planting. We don't normally buy organic garlic, so I'm not sure what that would cost exactly, but I figure it's about the equivalent of three $1 packs of fresh garlic, for $3.
• Rhubarb: Whatever was wrong with the weather this year didn't affect these plants. We've harvested about three pounds this year, and there's still more out there for the taking. I figure that's a value of around $10.50.
  
• Raspberries: This is the crop that makes up for everything. Between the summer and fall crops, we harvested a total of 37 cups — 18.5 pints, at an estimated value of $6 per pint. That's $111 worth, in one year. Yee-haw!

So, all told, our garden provided us with about $318 worth of produce this year. However, we also invested a lot in it, what with seeds, seed potatoes, compost, spray for the plum trees, stakes and wire for the one that tipped over, and materials for altering the raspberry trellis (though it really has made harvesting much easier). All told, we've spent around $164, which brings our profit down to only $154.

That doesn't look like a great return for all the work we've put in, but the numbers are somewhat misleading. A lot of our expenses, like the stakes and wire, were only one-time expenses, and a lot of the crops were unusually poor producers this year. In a more typical year, we'd probably get a much better return — maybe not enough to pay us a great hourly wage for all the work we put into it, but oh well, everyone needs a hobby. And after all, the flavor of a homegrown tomato, like true love, is a pleasure money can't buy.

3 new(ish) Money Crashers articles

I've got a bit of a backlog of new Money Crashers articles to tell you about here, since for some reason my work e-mail stopped sending me messages for nearly two weeks. This afternoon, I suddenly found over 40 "new" messages dating back to October 15, including several notifications about newly published pieces. They are:

1) An article on reducing winter heating costs. This is something I've struggled with personally, as I'm such a weather wimp that just turning down the thermostat from 68 to 67 left me shivering. But with winter tips and tricks like weather stripping, wearing a blanket over my clothes, using fleece sheets, drinking hot tea, doing lots of baking, and keeping a pressure-cooker space heater next to my desk, I'm managing to get by. This article can help you do the same.

How to Lower Your Heating Bills & Save Money on Winter Energy Costs

2) A piece on money-making schemes that won't make you any money. Some of them are outright scams, some are illegal, and some just don't pay diddly, but they all have one thing in common: they promise a big payoff for practically no work. In other words, they sound too good to be true, and they are.  

10 Money Making Schemes That You Should Probably Avoid

3) And lastly, a guide to digital cameras. This isn't exactly my area of expertise, since I've been using the same cheapo camera for the past ten years (except that I've somewhat switched over to my phone camera since I bought one that was reasonably easy to use), but hey, if my years at ConsumerSearch taught me anything, it was how to research a purchase. So if you're in the market for a camera, you can gain the benefit of all my skill in this area. You're welcome.

9 Best Digital Cameras to Buy for Photography in 2020

 

Recipes of the Month: Almond Crusted Tofu and Eggplant Soy Curls

This month, you are getting two new vegan recipes for the price of one (which is to say, free.) After cruising through most of October without trying anything new, we have tried two new recipes in the space of one week, and you are gaining the benefits of our experience with both. (Actually, one of them isn't quite vegan, since Brian used some fish sauce in the stir-fry sauce, but there are plenty of vegan substitutes for this to be found online, so it would be easy to make it vegan-friendly if you wanted to.)

The first dish was the Almond Rosemary Lemon Crusted Tofu from It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken. I had downloaded this one at some point, thinking it looked like an interesting main dish to try, and we finally got around to making it this week. The concept is pretty simple: it's just thick slices of firm tofu, dredged in flour, dipped in coconut milk, coated with a flavorful mixture of bread crumbs, crushed almonds, lemon zest, and fresh rosemary, and then baked. It's not at all difficult to do, and it takes maybe half an hour, tops.

And the result? Well, it's not bad, but it's not extraordinary. The breading mixture has a nice crisp texture and zingy lemon-rosemary flavor, but the tofu within has basically none, because it hasn't been marinated or spiced at all prior to cooking. It has a pleasant soft texture that contrasts well with the crunchy coating, but it contributes nothing at all to the taste. So as a whole, the dish is nowhere near as flavorful as many other vegan recipes we've tried, including some from It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken. 

Another problem with this dish is that it supplies only one portion of the meal. The tofu has plenty of protein, but it still needs an accompanying veggie and some sort of starch for ballast. We had ours with baked potatoes and green beans, neither of which is much trouble to make, but it's still not as convenient as a one-dish recipe that provides protein, veggie, and starch all together.

All in all, neither Brian nor I thought this was a dish we would go out of our way to make again. Brian thought it could be useful to keep in the repertoire for those occasions when we already have an open can of coconut milk and/or a partially used package of tofu, since it could put them both to good use and doesn't call for any other ingredients we're not likely to have on hand. (Well, maybe the lemon zest, but we could just replace the pepper in the breading with lemon pepper.) But it probably won't go into the regular rotation.

The second dish was a bit more off-the-cuff. Brian had bought an eggplant on a whim at the market, and he was originally planning to cook it up with some of the tofu left over from the first dish. But instead, he decided to experiment by replacing the tofu with Butler Soy Curls, which we were flush with after taking the plunge on a six-bag order from the manufacturer. And since our order of Penzey's Vegetable Stock had also arrived in the interim, he decided to soak the curls in veggie broth, rather than plain water, and see how that affected their flavor.

Answer: a lot. I would say these broth-soaked soy curls were significantly more flavorful than plain chicken would be, and the texture, as always, was about indistinguishable. And because he served them in a sort of Thai stir-fry with the chopped eggplant, garlic, Thai basil, and a Takara Shishito pepper (a mild chili), the dish as a whole was absolutely packed with flavor and the contrasting textures of silky eggplant and chewy soy curls.

All in all, this was a recipe we're much more likely to make again — and one I deemed worthy of reproducing here on the blog in its entirety. So here, without further ado, is:

BRIAN'S THAI EGGPLANT AND SOY CURLS

For the soy curls:

Dissolve 3/4 tsp. Penzey's Veggie Soup Base in 1 cup water and microwave on high for one minute. Submerge 2 oz. Butler Soy Curls in this mixture and let them soak for about 10 minutes. Remove hydrated curls and gently press with a slotted spoon, reserving all the liquid (this is important!). Sprinkle 3 Tbsp. corn starch on the soy curls, toss to coat, and fry in 2-3 Tbsp. canola oil until crisp and just beginning to brown. Set aside.

For the sauce:

Combine 2 Tbsp. brown sugar, 3 Tbsp. fish sauce (or a vegan equivalent), and the leftover soaking liquid from the soy curls. Stir until the sugar dissolves.

For the stir fry:

Dice 1 eggplant (about 1 pound) into roughly 1/2" cubes and chop 1/4 cup Thai basil leaves. Finely chop 1 Takara Shishito pepper (seeds removed) or other mild chili pepper and 3 cloves garlic. Add  pepper to the remaining oil in the pan and try for one minute. Add garlic and eggplant and fry until eggplant is soft but not mushy. Add the sauce and mix, stirring until sauce begins to boil. Add soy curls and stir until sauce thickens. Add basil, stir, and remove from heat.

Serve over rice.