Recipe of the Month: White Bean and Butternut Quinoa Bowl

March has been a pretty busy month for us. Between medical appointments (including our first COVID shot, yay!), gardening tasks, and our first few tentative social engagements of the spring, we never quite got around to trying a brand-new vegan dish. However, Brian did experiment with a new variant on his one of his existing recipes, first introduced a year ago as Black Bean Butternut Burrito, and I think the new version is different enough to deserve a Recipe of the Month slot of its own.

Mind you, this variation didn't come about all at once. It was actually some time last year that we discovered that the bean-and-butternut mixture he originally conceived as the filling for a burrito worked just as well, if not better, as the topping for a quinoa bowl. This doesn't really take any longer to make than the burrito version; the quinoa cooks up in just a few minutes, and this can overlap with the cooking time for the squash and beans, so everything is ready at the same time. Then just dish up some of the quinoa in a bowl and scoop the beans and squash onto the top. It's more substantial than a burrito wrapped in a flat little flour tortilla, and it makes plenty of leftovers.

The second or third time Brian made the quinoa-bowl version of his black bean recipe, he added yet another twist: he roasted the seeds from the butternut squash and sprinkled them on top. We normally roast the seeds anyway, so this wasn't any extra work; we just incorporated them into the main dish instead of enjoying them separately as a snack. Their crunch adds a satisfying bit of textural variation to the dish, contrasting with the chewiness of the quinoa and the softness of the squash and beans.

This month, Brian decided to try yet another adaptation: substituting white beans for black. He initially planned to use some cooked butter beans he had in the freezer, but here he ran into a snag. Apparently freezing hadn't agreed with them, and when he cooked them in the pan with the butternut squash, they turned inexplicably hard and dry and crumbly. No matter how long he cooked them, they didn't soften. So eventually he fished them out of the pan as best he could with a fork, then added a can of cannellini beans to take their place.

Along with the substitution of the beans, he made some alterations to the seasoning. The black-bean version, originally intended for use in a burrito, contained garlic and scallions, so as to be compatible with guacamole. However, his white-bean version was inspired by another recipe he'd tried in which white beans were paired with sage and caramelized onions. Accordingly, he added onions to the pan along with the squash, replaced the scallions with sage, and skipped the guacamole.

Adding all these iterations together, the current version of the recipe looks like this: 

WHITE BEAN AND BUTTERNUT QUINOA BOWL

1. Cook 1 cup quinoa until tender. (In the pressure cooker, this requires 1 1/2 cups of water and 1 minute of cooking at full pressure.) 
2. Remove seeds from 1 butternut squash and spread on a baking sheet. Roast at 250 degrees F in the oven or toaster oven until crisp, around 20 minutes. (Do not turn the heat any higher, or they will start to pop and scatter all over the place.)
   
3. Meanwhile, finely chop several leaves (about 1 Tbsp.) of fresh sage, chop half an onion fairly small, and dice about 4-6 oz. butternut squash into pieces about 1 cm square. Saute squash and onion together in olive oil over low to medium heat until onions are caramelized. Squash should be slightly browned, tender but not too soft. 
4. Drain 1 can white beans, reserving the liquid. Stir beans into pot with the sage, plus salt to taste (start with 1/4 teaspoon salt and adjust as needed). Cook until heated through, stirring in as much of of the reserved bean liquid as needed to keep it moist.
5. Serve beans over cooked quinoa and sprinkle the toasted seeds on top.

This adjusted version of the dish is at least as good as the original, if not better. The added flavor of the sage and onion compensates for the relative mildness of the beans, creating a balance of sweet and savory flavors. The combination of starchy beans, tender squash, chewy quinoa, and crisp seeds gives it a good texture balance as well. It's hearty enough to be quite satisfying. And conveniently enough, it doesn't call for any ingredients we don't typically have around for most of the year. (Although butternut squash is a fall crop, we usually grow enough of it to last through the following spring, and our outdoor sage plant is vigorous enough to provide us with a few green, usable leaves in all but the very dead of winter.)

In short, what we have here is a tasty, inexpensive vegan meal that we can whip up on pretty much a moment's notice. It's an ideal addition to our ecofrugal repertoire. The only thing we have to be careful of is remembering not to make it with frozen butter beans.

Gardeners' Holidays 2021: Spring Cleanup

For the first time I can remember, spring actually came right on time this year. After a couple of weeks of alternating cold and warm weather, today was a bright and sunny 60 degrees, with no more freezing spells in the forecast for the rest of the month.

Brian and I took advantage of the nice weather to head out to our favorite garden center to pick up half a yard of bulk mulch for our yard. There are several places in the yard that need it, but the top priority was the hill where the honeyberry bushes are. They're supposed to be mulched deeply at all times to deter weeds, but over the past year the slope has developed bare patches as the mulch layer has slid downhill over the slippery surface of the ground cloth underneath. But once we got the mulch home, we realized that if we simply started piling it on top of the same smooth surface on the same steep slope, it would probably slide off as well, leaving us back where we started. We had a few notions about how we might try to keep it in place — I thought laying some branches along the slope might work, and Brian thought we could use some of the netting we've bought to keep the birds off the berries — but the ideas weren't full-baked enough to put into effect right away.

So, for the time being, we decided to simply stash all the mulch in the shed. But in order to make room for it all, we had to pull out the patio furniture we'd stowed in there for the winter — and we couldn't simply set the furniture up on the patio, because it was currently home to a huge pile of branches we'd trimmed off our rosebush a few weeks ago. We couldn't just bundle those up and leave them at the curb like we normally do with brush, because we'd scratch ourselves to pieces on the thorns, so our plan was to burn them in our little outdoor fire pit. And since we clearly wouldn't be able to get any use out of our patio until that pile was gone, it seemed like this was the day to do it.

Initially, Brian tried simply chopping a few of the branches up and loading them into the fire pit with some newspaper as a starter, but that didn't get us very far. Since we'd only trimmed the branches off a few weeks ago, the wood was still too green to burn well on its own. So he went and fetched some better-seasoned wood from the shed, got a blaze going, and then started carefully feeding in the thorny branches piece by piece. They gave off a lot of smoke, but with the heat of the fire to help dry them out, they did eventually burn down, and over the course of a couple of hours the pile slowly diminished until there was nothing left but some stray leaves. And in the meantime, I busied myself about the yard, raking up dead leaves and pulling out stray bits of brush to add to the fire.

Mind you, the yard isn't completely tidy now by any means. There are still all the branches we pruned off the plum tree this month to be bundled, along with some evergreens left over from the holidays and a few more clumps of dead leaves here and there. We still need to pull some weeds out of the various garden beds and haul out and set up the rain barrel. And of course, all that mulch we just bought isn't going to lay itself. But at least we've taken the first step toward getting our outdoor living space set up to enjoy all this warm weather.

In fact, perhaps next time we fire up the outdoor fire pit, we might even be able to have a few friends over to enjoy it with us. After the long, cold, lonely winter we've had, that seems like as much excitement as we could possibly ask for.

Money Crashers: 15 Types of Birth Control (Contraception) and How to Choose

Money Crashers has finally published an article of mine that's been in the works for a while. As you may recall, back in my article on the pink tax — the extra cost women pay for many products — I mentioned birth control as a cost mainly borne by women. I didn't have the space in that article to compare the costs of different birth control methods in detail, but it seemed like a topic worth discussing. So I ended up creating a separate piece devoted entirely to the subject of birth control.

In it, I compare the many different methods available for women (and the very few currently available for men) not only in terms of cost, but also in efficacy, health effects, and ease of use. Then I discuss how to evaluate your own needs and figure out how these factors balance out for you.

15 Types of Birth Control (Contraception) and How to Choose

Ecofrugal computing

I've known for over a year that my old Mac Mini, bought in 2011, was on its last legs. I'd been having more and more trouble as the years went by with software freezing and crashing, and this year it finally reached a point where a program I needed for work was so slow to use that I was probably wasting an hour out of each workday just waiting for documents to load. I'd already upgraded this machine to the limit of its capacity, so the only option left was to replace it. The question was, what with?

One thing I knew for sure was that I wasn't going to buy another Mac. I'd been a loyal Apple user for over 30 years, but of late, Apple seems to have practically lost interest in making computers; the company has discovered that the real money is in making phones and other gadgets that people can be persuaded to replace every year. And to the extent that it still makes computers, it seems to want to use the same business model with those, forcing users to replace their computers and/or software as often as possible. It's no longer even trying to maintain back-compatibility, so each time a new version of the OS comes out, software that ran on the last version becomes unusable. And with each new model, it offers newer, faster, "better" interfaces and ditches the old ones that many users are still relying on. This was already a problem when I bought this Mac ten years ago, and I found that the new Mac Minis not only lacked a CD drive — on the grounds that CD technology was obsolete, which is questionable even now and certainly wasn't true then — but the latest version of MacOS, called Lion, broke all my software (and there was no way to "downgrade" the system to an older version). At the time, I dealt with these problems by returning the new Mac and buying a year-old one that still had a CD drive and was running the previous OS. But there would be no getting around them now.

So, with Apple off the table, I was pretty much constrained to buy a Windows machine. (A Chrome or Linux box might actually be able to run all the software I needed to use for work, but not the Filemaker program I need for my volunteer job.) But Windows machines come in many types and sizes: laptops, full-size PCs, mini PCs, all-in-ones. To meet my needs as ecofrugally as possible, I wanted one I could keep using for as long as possible: one that would be not only adequate but ample for everything I currently need it to do, and that could be upgraded easily in future to keep it running for at least ten years (like my old Mac and the one before it).

I ruled out the idea of an all-in-one right away, since having the monitor and the CPU in one unit means that if either one fails, the whole thing fails. Besides, there's no point in paying extra for a machine with a built-in monitor when I already have a perfectly good one. I didn't give serious consideration to a full-size PC, either. They're the easiest type of machine to upgrade, but also the most power-hungry, and it's pretty much impossible to take one with you on a trip — something I normally need to do once a year so that I can keep up with my volunteer job (which requires special software) during our Christmas vacation.

The idea of a laptop was somewhat tempting, as it would be nice to have the option of working outside on a beautiful, sunny day instead of being stuck in my home office. However, I had to admit that I wouldn't really get that much benefit from portability. I never travel for work, and the one time a year (in normal years) that I need to take a computer on vacation, I have everything I need to hook up a PC to waiting at the journey's end. And given that laptops cost more for the same amount of computing power, have wussy keyboards and trackpads instead of mice, are easier to damage, and are harder to upgrade, it seemed clear they weren't a truly ecofrugal choice.

So it seemed clear that I'd get the most bang for my buck with a mini PC like the one I was replacing. The Wirecutter report on this type of computer confirmed that "they’re more than powerful enough for web browsing, basic photo and video editing, and working in documents or large spreadsheets." The only task they can't really handle is high-end gaming, which I never do anyway. And while their small size "prevents much expansion," you can at least upgrade the memory and storage, and sometimes even the processor. 

At that point, it was just a question of finding the right model. The Wirecutter report recommended several models, three of which ran on Windows. Of the three, the "for DIYers" pick — a build-your-own Intel NUC — clearly offered the best bang for the buck. For roughly the same $700 I'd paid for my old Mac, we could put together a complete system with "twice as much memory and storage as in the preconfigured systems we recommend," plus a copy of Microsoft Office thrown in. It would take a little more work to get it up and running, but nothing Brian's mad tech skills couldn't handle. And it would be even smaller and easier to transport on vacation than my old Mac.

So, about six weeks ago, we ordered all the necessary pieces (CPU, hard drive, memory, software) on NewEgg. Brian spent an evening installing all the parts, and over the past month we've been gradually getting the new system up and running. We hooked up the two computers side by side to facilitate the process of transferring files over, and we're still holding on to the old one to make absolutely sure we have everything working on the new one. It's also taking more adjustment than I expected to get used to doing things on Windows. I had to unlearn decades-old habits about simple things like navigating the file system, and I'm still figuring out how to handle more complex tasks like doing backups. In some cases, I had to pick up new software because the Windows versions of the programs I was using, such as iTunes, were so buggy. And my eyes still haven't really adjusted to the Windows interface, which even after several weeks still looks cluttered, blocky, and hard to read.

But on the plus side, I'm no longer wasting an hour a day on stuck computer processes. And if all goes well, this new computer should serve me another ten years, by which time I hope I'll either get used to it or figure out how to change the things I don't like.

Money Crashers: 7 Best Places to Buy Lingerie (Bras & Underwear) Online

It's been years since I last underwent the mysterious feminine ritual known as Bra Shopping. You ladies know the one: you go into a store, scour the racks looking for a bra in your size, pull out every one that looks acceptable, take them all into a tiny fitting room, and struggle in and out of one after the other, all the while whispering prayers to the Cleavage Gods that maybe, just maybe, one will fit not too uncomfortably and still provide decent support. And if you're fortunate enough to find that one, you pay whatever ridiculous price they're asking for it, because you might never get so lucky again.

All that ended for me the day I discovered my favorite bra was available online. Now, instead of hunting through every store looking for it, I just pop over to either One Hanes Place (usually cheaper, but sometimes runs out of stock) or Bare Necessities, type in "Bali Comfort Revolution Wirefree Bra," select the size I already know fits me, and pop it in the cart. Takes less than ten minutes, start to finish, and a week later, I have a new, comfortable bra that I know will fit perfectly.

Now, of course, this is easier for me because I've already found my favorite bosom buddy, so I don't have to search for the right bra before ordering. But even if you're not in this fortunate position, you can still shop for bras online. It may seem crazy to order something requiring such careful fitting online, when you can't try it on — but thanks to the detailed fit questionnaires and algorithms these websites use, it's actually much easier to find the right fit online than it is by trial and error in a store. That goes double for anyone who falls outside the size range that U.S. manufacturers have more or less arbitrarily decided to be standard, since bras anywhere outside this range are practically impossible to find in a store.

In my latest Money Crashers article, I explore the top seven sites that are revolutionizing the bra-shopping game. For each site, I outline the shopping process, available sizes and styles, and any special perks the store has to offer. And at the end, I offer some general tips on finding the right fit.

7 Best Places to Buy Lingerie (Bras & Underwear) Online

Money Crashers: two baking articles

In the past year or so, Money Crashers has swung from preferring long articles that explore a topic from all angles to favoring short ones that cover just one possible angle. Maybe they've observed that readers accustomed to paragraph-long Facebook posts balk at reading anything that fills several screens of text, but whatever the reason, the directive is clear: keep it short and snappy.

In keeping with this new rule, they have once again split one of my articles into two. Thus, instead of a single article on why it's worth baking your own bread at home and how to fit it into a busy schedule, you're getting two teeny little articles: one on the why and one on the how.

First, the why.  It explores the top benefits of home-baked bread, both tangible (cost, flavor, nutrition, and the ability to customize recipes) and intangible (the satisfaction of making it with your own hands. That one is here: 5 Benefits of Baking Your Own Bread at Home 

Then, if you have more patience than my editors expect from the average reader, you can move straight on to the how. In this piece, I compare five ways to fit bread baking into a busy schedule: batch baking, machine mixing, machine baking, slow-cooker baking, and no-knead bread. Check that one out here: 5 Ways to Make Bread at Home Quickly on a Busy Schedule

Then, once you've got both the why and the how, all you need is some flour and yeast, and you're ready to go. Tasty, healthy home-baked bread is just around the corner.

A home energy enigma

Eight years ago, I was confused and dismayed to see that our household water usage had been gradually creeping upward over time. Where once we had consistently been in the lowest tier for water usage, we were getting one, two, even three bills a year that put us in the middle tier. What upset me most wasn't the higher bill, but the fact that I couldn't for the life of me figure out where all this water was going. We hadn't added any water-hogging appliances or landscape plants, and we hadn't changed our everyday habits significantly (e.g., showering more frequently), so what the heck was going on? Even though our bill ended up dropping back down the following summer, I still never found a really satisfactory explanation for what had bumped it up in the first place.

Today, I find myself in a similar position with regard to our household energy use. Our local utility, PSE&G, has added a "MyEnergy" feature to its website, which allows you to enter some details about your home and then receive an insert with your bill that shows how your energy use compares to other homes in your area. If your electric or gas usage seems to be outstripping your neighbors', the insert includes a few tips on how to get it back in line.

When I signed up for this, I assumed that it would probably just reinforce what I already know: Our electric and gas usage are both well below average, and there's not much we could do to reduce them further. But instead, for the last two bills running, the message has been, "Congratulations! Your household is among the most energy efficient in your area for electric use; but a little behind in gas savings." Then it presents a little chart to show that, compared to other homes similar to ours — built between 1961 and 1971, between 1,400 and 2,000 square feet, with non-electric heating — our household electric use (133 kWh) was well below both the average home (235 kWh) and a typical energy-efficient home (199 kWh). But when it comes to gas use, our usage of 96 therms puts us above the average (87 therms) and well above the energy-efficient home (71 therms).

This is all the more baffling since we're actually at the low end of this size category: technically, our home has about 1,400 square feet of heated space, but that includes the basement level, which we only heat to 54 degrees. The main level is only 936 square feet, and we only heat it to 67 degrees. And I know our insulation is superior to most of the homes in our neighborhood, because after a snowfall, snow melts off their roofs right away but stays on ours much longer (because less heat is leaking out through the roof). And our boiler is less than seven years old and supposedly 83 percent efficient. So what gives here? Do our neighbors actually have their thermostats turned even lower? Do they all have much more efficient heating systems? Or are they actually heating their homes with oil, which is "non-electric" but doesn't add to the gas bill?

One thing's for sure: it's definitely something to do with heating that's causing the problem. The MyEnergy insert also included a couple of line graphs to show how our electric and gas usage have looked over the past year, and during the warmer months (mid-March through mid-November), our gas usage was below not just the average house but the theoretical efficient house as well. It was only after the heating system went on that it jumped above the "efficient" level, and it still remained below the "average" level until January, when it got really cold. So it's clearly our heating system that's to blame. But how? 

PSE&G's report sheds no light on this question. Last month, its suggestions for reducing our energy use last month were to "Maintain your ducted heating and cooling systems," which we don't have; this month's are all about saving on hot water use by doing things we already do, like washing our laundry in cold and not letting the water run while shaving or doing dishes. And even if these tips were useful, they'd only save us 5 percent on our hot water usage, which itself is only an estimated 5 percent of our total energy bill. That's never going to make the difference between outperforming and underperforming our neighbors. Even the more detailed "Home Energy Analyzer" on PSE&G's website offered only such lukewarm tips as "open west- and south- facing window coverings during the day to let the sun in and close them at night to keep in heat" (which, duh, we already do); replace the pilot light in your heating system with electronic ignition (which we already have); and "don't set your thermostat too high" (which I doubt anyone would ever accuse us of doing).

And it gets weirder: when I went to PSE&G's website to add more details about our home, thinking maybe this would give me a clearer picture, it suddenly started telling me that both our gas and electric use for this month were below average. Our usage (96 therms) was exactly the same, but now it said the average usage was 186 therms and the efficient usage was 154. For a smaller house than it was comparing us to before. Apparently, our neighbors in smaller houses, around 1,200 square feet, are all using much more energy than those in houses between 1,400 and 2,000 square feet. And when I adjusted our numbers again to say that our home was 1,400 square feet, all of a sudden it was back to telling us we were less efficient than average. How could 96 therms for a 1,400-square-foot house be not just less efficient, but much, MUCH less efficient, than 96 therms for a 1,200-square-foot house?

Perhaps the simplest explanation here is that PSE&G's comparison tool is just plain broken, and the most useful thing to do is ignore it. But that just leads to a new mystery: how in the world did they come up with these bogus numbers? What formula could they possibly be using that leads them to conclude that a small home using 96 therms of gas is much more efficient than a slightly larger one using the same amount? And, perhaps more to the point, is there any way to get them to fix it and give us some numbers that are actually useful?

Money Crashers: Home Generator Buying Guide

Here's the companion piece to my article on whether to buy a power generator that came out last month. This one is for those who have made the decision to buy a generator and now need to figure out what kind to get. The article covers all the alternatives: portable versus standby generators, gasoline versus propane, sizes from mini to massive, and features such as electric start, low oil shutoff, CO detection, and inverter technology. It also provides tips on how to use a generator safely and maintain it so it will always be ready when you need it. Put this together with the first piece, and you've got a complete primer on home power generators and their alternatives.

Home Generator Buying Guide – How to Choose the Best for Your Needs

Money Crashers: How Much Does Medicare Cost?

Back in December, I had a piece published on Money Crashers that was meant to provide a broad overview of the Medicare system. However, this turned out to be a much bigger topic than my editors had anticipated, and so the single article ended up being split into four different pieces. The first piece, which you've seen, was about the Medicare system, the second was on how to enroll, and the last two were on costs — what they are and how to manage them.

Two of those pieces are still in the pipeline, but the one on Medicare costs has just been published. It's a more complicated topic than you might think, covering all the different parts of Medicare and all the different costs — premiums, coinsurance, deductibles — associated with each. It's not exactly a cheerful subject, but forewarned is forearmed, and one of the later articles will offer more concrete advice on ways to reduce the costs.

How Much Does Medicare Cost? – Parts A, B, D, Advantage & Medigap