Recipe of the Month: Pasta with Cabbage and Soy "Sausage"

Brian and I didn't get too adventurous this month with our dinner recipes. We have a few new ones in the queue that we want to try out soon, but so far we have stuck pretty close to what we know. So our Recipe of the Month for April is not a brand-new dish, but a new variant on an old recipe — or, to be more exact, two old recipes that Brian combined together.

The first of these was a pasta recipe from Vegetariana that has long been one of our go-to dishes. The original version, "Bow Ties with Cabbage," is pretty simple: just saute four cups of shredded cabbage together with a thinly sliced onion and a minced clove of garlic, and when everything is tender, toss it with cooked bow-tie pasta and sprinkle it with poppy seeds. This is a particularly handy recipe to have in the file, since cabbage is sort of a staple veggie for us. It's cheap and can be used in lots of different recipes, but most of them don't use more than half a head, so this pasta dish is a simple way to dispose of the other half. And it doesn't call for anything we don't tend to have on hand.

Anyway, at some point it occurred to Brian that he could spice up this familiar dish by combining it with the cabbage and vegan sausage recipe he invented last January. These two dishes already have cabbage, onion, and garlic in common, and the non-overlapping ingredients — pasta, apple, and Soy-Curl "sausage" — certainly seemed like they'd all be compatible.And since we'd just recently taken the plunge and ordered the big 12-pound package of Soy Curls from the manufacturer, we had plenty of those to work with. (Brian portioned them all out into zipper bags and stuffed the freezer full of them.) The only ingredient he decided to omit was the caraway seeds from the sausage-and-cabbage recipe, since he was already using poppy seeds.

Sure enough, this combination of ingredients worked perfectly well and was more interesting than either dish on its own. It was heartier, too, with protein, veggie, and starch all in one pot, so it didn't require anything else to make it a complete meal. The only quibble we had with it was that the mock sausage came out a bit too salty; in future, Brian plans to cut down the amount of salt used in the soaking liquid from 3/4 teaspoon to half a teaspoon. With that modification, this will likely become our new go-to recipe for using up extra cabbage.

Here's the edited version:

PASTA WITH CABBAGE AND SOY "SAUSAGE"

Boil a pot of water. When it boils, add 1/2 pound of any short pasta and cook to al dente (about 8-10 minutes depending on the type).

Meanwhile, heat 1/2 cup water for one minute in the microwave. Stir in 3/4 tsp. salt, a couple of grinds of pepper, 2 crushed garlic cloves, 1/4 tsp. Liquid Smoke, and 1 drop red food coloring (optional if you want your "sausage" to look pinkish). Add 2-3 ounces dry Soy Curls to the liquid in the cup, or however many it takes to soak up all the liquid. 

Coat the soaked Soy Curls with 1 Tbsp. corn starch and fry in oil until they're slightly browned and crisp, about 5 minutes. Set aside.

Heat more oil in the pan and toss in 1/2 medium cabbage (sliced into thin shreds), 1/2 onion (thinly sliced), and 1 apple (chopped). Cook until tender.

Drain the pasta and toss it with the cooked Soy Curls, the cabbage mixture, and 1/2 tsp. poppy seeds.

Money Crashers: Gender Pay Gap – Negative Effects of Inequality & How to Fix Wages

Just a quick update here: my article on the gender wage gap has now been split into two. The first one, at the original URL, covers the size of the pay gap and what causes it. This new one explains why the pay gap is a problem for society and what can be done to fix it.

Gender Pay Gap – Negative Effects of Inequality & How to Fix Wages 

 

 

Money Crashers: 2 new posts

A quick update here to tell you about my two latest posts on Money Crashers. The first is about your credit score, and about how to get around the annoying fact that (1) it has a tremendous impact on your life, and (2) the credit bureaus have no obligation to tell you what it is. My article explains how to get around that problem and check it for yourself, either for a fee or, better yet, for nothing.

How to Check Your Credit Score – Subscription Services & Free Monitoring

The second is about my former favorite store, IKEA. Although I've become disillusioned with IKEA lately, we still have some IKEA pieces that have served us well for many years and that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend. So I'd say the key to shopping at IKEA is knowing which pieces are good values and which ones aren't — and that's what this article is all about. It looks at reviews and interviews with home professionals to identify the best items in every category, from furniture to textiles to lighting and beyond. as well as the ones best left on the shelf.

What To Buy And What Not To Buy At IKEA

Money Well Spent, part 2

Years ago, I read a post by another frugal-living blogger that centered on a saying popular with her family: "A problem that can be solved with money isn't a problem." At the time, I had an instinctive and negative reaction against this idea, because it seemed to me that this attitude is not only privileged (since plenty of people in the world cannot afford to solve their problems with money) but also limiting. It encourages you to solve problems by throwing money at them rather than coming up with the kinds of creative ecofrugal solutions that I tend to enjoy, such as constructing a toothbrush holder from coat-hanger wire or a soap-dish insert from garlic wrappers.

But over time, I've gradually softened this viewpoint. Mind you, I still don't think reaching for your credit cards should automatically be your first approach to dealing with any problem. But I now feel prepared to endorse a more moderate version of the saying: "If you have a problem that you can easily solve by spending money and can't easily solve without spending money, and you have the money, then you have no problem."

I first came around to this way of thinking back in 2017, when my old winter boots started leaking. For an ecofrugal person, the obvious thing to do in that situation would be to try to fix them, rather than spending money on a new pair. But in the first place, it might not work; in the second place, even if it worked, it would only be a temporary solution; and in the third place, I'd never really been all that happy with those boots to begin with. So I concluded that, under the circumstances, it made sense to spend some money — even spending an amount of money I wouldn't normally consider, but could easily afford — for a new pair of boots that would completely fix the problem.

Since then, I haven't been what you'd call a knee-jerk shopper, but recently I've found myself placing a lot of online orders, every one of which addressed some sort of "pain point" in my lifestyle. The term "pain point" is kind of marketing jargon, but I think it does a good job of expressing the idea of one of those little things in your life that's just always bothering you, like a rock in your shoe. It may be no more than a minor annoyance, but if it's a minor annoyance you experience every single day, it adds up to a problem worth spending some money to fix.

For instance, in recent weeks, I've felt entirely justified in spending money on:

• 
  A new over-the-door shoe rack for our basement door. Since we use our kitchen door as our main entrance to the house, we need a place nearby to put wet shoes. There isn't enough space for a wall-mounted shelf, so until recently, we were using an over-the-door shoe bag on the back of the basement door. But the pockets weren't really big enough to accommodate Brian's shoes, which therefore had a tendency to fall out, sometimes on our heads, whenever the door was moved. Also, wet shoes trapped in the enclosed pockets would take days to dry out. So eventually I got fed up and hunted up this shoe rack at Home Depot, which can accommodate shoes of any size and actually provide enough airflow around them to let them dry out after a wetting. This new rack looks much better, works much better, and (with a minor adjustment to the door) actually allows the door to close.
• A new folding umbrella. When my purse was stolen in 2018, I treated this crisis as an opportunity to upgrade my everyday carry. I vowed that I would replace each and every item I had lost with something at least as good, if not better. Yet as time went on, I realized I hadn't really done this with my folding umbrella. The old one had been kind of flimsy, not great protection in a storm, but it did have one big advantage: it folded up to a compact 7 inches, allowing me to tuck it into the purse vertically. The new one wasn't really any sturdier, but it was longer, forcing me to lay it down lengthwise in the bottom of the purse, which left me less room for everything else. After spending two years cursing with frustration every time I tried to cram all my stuff into the bag, I finally decided to shell out some money for an umbrella as compact as my old one — and since I didn't want to have to replace it yet again in a year, I decided to get the best one I could find at that size. A search for "best folding umbrella" led me to the $50 Davek Mini. Normally, this price tag would be a deal-breaker, but after two years of living with this pain point, I was ready to look on it as an investment (especially since the umbrella comes with a lifetime warranty, which reviews say the company is really good about honoring). The new umbrella feels very sturdy, looks cute, and fits neatly in the purse, leaving me enough room to add back in the collapsible cup I hope to be able to use again soon once Starbucks joins the rest of the world in concluding that surface transmission of COVID really isn't a threat.
  
• A new cordless phone. Ever since we switched from Optimum to Verizon, we've been having problems with our phone occasionally failing to ring when a call comes in. Verizon, needless to say, was unable to solve this problem and told us our phones must be to blame. Initially we were skeptical, but sure enough, when we tried unplugging our cordless phone, it seemed to solve the problem. Unforunately, doing this creates three new problems: (1) we're tethered to a cord every time we have  a conversation, (2) we can only get caller ID by checking the printer, and (3) the ringtone on the corded phone is really loud and annoying. So at this point, we had three choices: (1) live with these three problems, (2) live with the problem of an occasional dropped call, or (3) just shell out fifty bucks for a new cordless phone (from a different manufacturer, just to make sure) to deal with the problem entirely. (Mind you, we don't have the new phone yet, so we can't be sure it actually will fix the problem, but we can always return the phone if it doesn't.)
  
• A warm cardigan. As I noted in February, I've been repeatedly frustrated over the past several years by the gap in my wardrobe left by the demise of my favorite winter cardigan. I have one cardigan that fits and goes with everything but isn't warm; I have one that's warm and goes with most things, but is so huge I can barely get my coat on over it. So when I found a simple grey wool cardigan on ThredUP in what looked like my size, I just took the plunge and clicked "buy." Yes, there's the risk it won't fit or won't meet my needs, but if it doesn't, I can always return it. And if it does, that will be one more pain point removed from my life.
• New handles for the TV cabinet. A few months ago, one of the handles on our TV cabinet broke. We quickly realized we couldn't repair it, and replacing it was complicated by the fact that the old handles were a non-standard size. We searched the entire stock at Home Depot and Lowe's and couldn't find a single pair that would fit into the existing holes. So we just lived with it for months, opening the door by grasping it at the top. It wasn't that hard, but it was an annoyance, as was the lopsided appearance of the now one-handled cabinet. So I finally did a little more investigation and found that Home Depot sold handles online that could adjust to fit holes of any size. Took but a minute to place the order and no more than five to install them.

All told, these five items cost us around $220 — not a trivial sum, but a sum we can easily spare — and each one of them will make our lives just a tiny bit better, every single day. If that's not what money is for, I don't know what is.

Money Crashers: How to Get Help Paying Your Medicare Premiums and Other Costs

Money Crashers has just posted the third article of my four-part series on Medicare. I didn't set out to write a four-part series, mind you: I was supposed to write just one article providing a general overview of the program and how to enroll. But enrollment proved to be such a complicated topic that I ended up splitting it off into its own article.

Then I started on the first article, planning to include such information as what Medicare is, how it's funded, what it costs for users, who's eligible, what all the different parts are for, and how to choose coverage. But before long, it became clear that the material on Medicare costs was going to be long enough to make a separate article, so I split that one off as well.

In my first draft of that piece, I noted that out-of-pocket costs for Medicare are more than some patients can afford and included some info on programs to help with payment. But my editor decided that this, too, was a big enough topic to turn into a separate piece. So I went in, cut out that section, moved it to a separate article, and expanded it to provide more detail on these various types of programs: Medicaid, Medicare Savings Programs, Extra Help, and PACE.

This is that third article. The fourth of the series, covering the topic of how to enroll, is still to come, and it's a doozy. I mean, if you thought doing your taxes was complicated, you ain't seen nothing yet.

How to Get Help Paying Your Medicare Premiums and Other Costs

 

Money Crashers: Why Some Stores Are Not Accepting Cash – Is it Legal & What to Do

I'm old enough to remember when many stores didn't accept credit cards. Nowadays, by contrast, there are some stores that don't take cash. For some, this is just a temporary measure during the COVID pandemic, when many people see bills and coins as germ carriers (although the CDC now admits that catching COVID this way is highly unlikely). But the cashless trend was already around before COVID, and it will probably be around afterward.

Strange as it may seem, this is perfectly legal. Cash is legal tender "for all debts," meaning bills you already owe — but if you haven't made a transaction yet, a store is within its right to accept or refuse any form of payment it likes. It can insist on Visa, MasterCard, or even Bitcoin if it wants to.

For most of us, cashless stores aren't a big deal. Most consumers prefer to use credit or debit cards anyway, or the even newer payment apps. And even those who like to use cash usually have at least one card to fall back on. But for the "unbanked" — those without bank accounts or cards — a cashless store is a store where they can't shop, period.

So what can be done about it? That's the topic of my latest Money Crashers article. It explains why some stores are going cashless, why it's a problem, and how you can deal with it.

Why Some Stores Are Not Accepting Cash – Is it Legal & What to Do

 

First harvest of 2021

When it comes to gardening, perennial crops are the most ecofrugal kind of all. Our rhubarb plants and asparagus crowns cost more initially than a packet of seeds the garden, but they've kept producing year after year, giving us much more food per dollar than the ones we plant yearly. Plus we only had to go through the work of planting them once to get many years' worth of crops.

But at this time of year, the nicest thing about perennial crops is that they're already producing. The parsley and leek seedlings are only just ready to set out, the lettuce and arugula haven't even been planted, but our asparagus patch has already produced six ounces of tender green spears. It's not a huge amount, but it's enough to celebrate the arrival of spring officially.

Brian and I have a few go-to asparagus recipes we could have used these for. During asparagus season, we regularly make the Polenta with Mushrooms and Asparagus recipe from Easy Vegetarian Dinners (which also works quite nicely with gnocchi). We also recently discovered two new pasta dishes with asparagus, one with mushrooms and leeks and the other in a garlicky white sauce. But for this first asparagus harvest of the year, we decided to go with a simple dish we've made many times before: asparagus, potatoes, and eggs.

This dish is a combination of two different recipes from Easy Vegetarian Dinners. The first, "Potatoes & Eggs," is a frittata made with new potatoes, asparagus, tomato (which isn't in season at the same time as asparagus), and Parmesan cheese. The second, "Roasted Asparagus with New Potatoes," also calls for new potatoes, but you roast them in a pan with the asparagus and finish it by sprinkling on fresh rosemary, Parmesan, pepper, and toasted pine nuts.

Over the years, Brian has merged these two recipes to eliminate the tomato, reduce the amount of egg required, and minimize the cooking time needed. And, more recently, he replaced the Parmesan with our standard substitute, a mixture of salt and nutritional yeast. His current version looks like this:

Asparagus, Potatoes, and Eggs

Cube 2 medium potatoes, spread them in a pan, and roast in a 450-degree oven for about 25 minutes.

Snap 6 ounces of asparagus spears into 1-inch pieces. Saute them in olive oil with 1 Tablespoon pine nuts and 2 teaspoons snipped fresh rosemary for about 3 minutes, or until the asparagus is bright green and tender.

Add the potatoes to the pan. Sprinkle on 1 teaspoon nutritional yeast and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Beat 3 eggs and stir them into the mix. Scramble until the eggs are as firm as you like them, then remove from heat.

This version of the dish is perfectly simple and perfectly satisfying. The tablespoon of pine nuts is just enough of an extravagance to make it feel special without putting a real burden on the budget. It's quick, easy, and delicious. In short, a perfect way to kick off the gardening season.

Money Crashers: 8 Ways to Save Money on Magazine Subscriptions

For the past several years, I haven't subscribed to any magazines. I canceled my subscription to Mother Earth News five years ago, when I came to the conclusion that most of the material in it just wasn't useful for a town dweller like me, and I've never really found a suitable substitute. Which is a shame, because curling up with a magazine is relaxing in a way that sitting at your desk, staring at your computer screen (or hunching over your tiny smartphone screen, peering at the tiny type) just can't compare with.

However, in the event that I do find a magazine I like, I'll have another dilemma to deal with: is it really worth the cost? Because while the cost per issue for a magazine subscriptions is certainly much less than the truly ludicrous prices you pay buying off the newsstand, it's still not exactly cheap.

That's where my latest Money Crashers article can help. It explores all kinds of ways to save money on magazine subscriptions, from shopping on discount sites to sharing your subscription with a friend. With so many strategies to choose from, I can feel fairly confident I'll have no trouble affording the magazine of my dreams, when and if I finally discover it.

8 Ways to Save Money on Magazine Subscriptions

Money Crashers: Engagement Ring Cost – How Much of Your Salary Should You Spend?

Previously, in my work for Money Crashers, I've had a few words to say on the subject of weddings. Back in 2018, I analyzed a study finding that people who have low-budget weddings were less likely to end up divorced than those who had big blowouts. In that piece, I also noted that people who huge, expensive rings were more likely to split up than those who had more modest ones. However, those who had very small rings, costing less than $500, slightly increased their risk of divorce — possibly because they had lower incomes and were more likely to struggle financially.

Based on this work, Money Crashers suggested I write a second article, this one focusing specifically on how much it's actually reasonable to spend on an engagement ring. Spoiler alert: the answer is not "two months' salary," a number invented by the De Beers diamond cartel to sell bigger stones. In fact, there's no simple formula you can use to calculate it. Instead, you have to find out what your partner wants and expects in a ring, then balance that against what you can reasonably afford. And that means considering your partner's finances as well as your own, since you're about to merge your financial lives together.

This makes the purchase of the ring a good occasion to sit down and have the money talk with your partner — something every couple really should do before getting married anyway. Because blowing your financial future for the sake of a big diamond is no way to start living happily ever after.

Engagement Ring Cost – How Much of Your Salary Should You Spend?

Ecofrugal news items

As it happens, there's been no big news in our ecofrugal life this week, so instead I thought I'd share a roundup of news stories from the outside world. There's no particular thread linking them except that they all relate to money or the environment or both, and they were all interesting enough to catch my eye.

Story #1: The Skybrator   

Three weeks ago, a story popped up on The Guardian about a new, innovative design for a wind turbine. Actually, it's not really a turbine at all; it's a ten-foot tower that oscillates in the wind and turns that motion into electricity. This design has all kinds of advantages:

1. It's much smaller than a traditional turbine, so it can fit into smaller spaces where there isn't room for a full-scale wind farm. It could be deployed in cities or even in suburban backyards, perhaps as a complement to solar panels, since the wind is usually stronger at night when there's no sunlight. There are currently plans to fit it on top of existing streetlights along highways and power them directly, sending excess energy to the grid.
   
2. Because it has no blades, it doesn't pose a threat to migrating birds and other wildlife.
3. It's quieter than big turbines, and the noise it creates is at a frequency barely detectable to humans.
4. It's unobtrusive, eliminating the "it's ugly" objection so often raised to traditional wind turbines.

And if it happens to resemble a giant vibrator, well, that's just another selling point as far as I'm concerned.

Story #2: The Rise of Non-Dairy Cheese

It was a big breakthrough in our quest for a more plant-based diet when we learned how to make a non-dairy cheese that actually tastes like, melts like, and stretches like the real thing. Prior to this discovery, we'd tried all kinds of different commercial cheese substitutes available in the store and found all of them distinctly lacking in taste, texture, or both.

But apparently, according to a recent story in Eater, there are much better non-dairy cheeses available commercially that we've never tried. In fact, the entire field of vegan cheesemaking has undergone a revolution in the past five to ten years, all without our knowledge.

According to Eater, these days there are three tiers of products sold as vegan cheese:

• The stuff found in most grocery stores, like Daiya. It's "made from a combination of fat, starch, and flavors that have been emulsified and solidified," and it has a texture that a vegan chef interviewed in the article describes as "melted crayon."
• Cheese made from cultured or fermented plant milk, usually cashew. This is made somewhat like traditional cheese: by adding enzymes to the plant-based milk to create curds and whey. The article says this type of cheese has "some of the funky notes and textural complexity" of the dairy-based kind. It says the best-known brand is Miyoko’s Creamery, which I've seen at the Whole Earth Center but never tried, mostly because it costs somewhere on the order of $20 a pound. Yet even, this, apparently, isn't the true top tier of vegan cheese. That honor goes to...
• Artisanal vegan cheese. This is made just like traditional cheese: you make a nut milk, then let it ferment to form curds, drain off the whey, and mold it. Eater says this type of cheese "oozes, stinks, and blooms as convincingly as its dairy counterparts, " although its texture tends to be on the soft side. It's sold mainly at vegan cheese shops (yes, those exist, apparently) at prices I shudder to contemplate. (The online ordering section for Riverdel, a "vegan cheesemonger" in Manhattan, shows selections ranging from $4 to $18 for a quarter-pound. Yes, that does work out to $16 to $72 per pound.)

All this is interesting to hear about, but from an ecofrugal perspective, not actually all that useful. Based on my calculations, our homemade mock-zarella costs roughly $9.12 per pound, half the price of most higher-end vegan cheeses, and it's been good enough for every recipe we've tried it in so far. I admit that it would be nice to find a vegan cheddar that's equally good for use in our Cheesy Rice Casserole and Potato Apple Skillet, but not so nice that we're willing to pay twice as much for it. We'd be more inclined to try modifying the vegan mozzarella recipe with more cheddar-like seasonings (perhaps the ones from this cheddar substitute on the same vegan blog) and see how it serves us.

Story #3: The Wedding Industry Strikes Again

Finally, a story I feel somewhat ambivalent about: I learned today that Netflix has introduced a show called Marriage or Mortgage. The premise is that a wedding planner and a real estate broker both meet with engaged couples and compete to convince them that they should spend their life's savings on their dream wedding or their dream home, respectively.

The reason for my ambivalence is that, if I'm being truly honest, I have to admit I would probably enjoy this show. It's mindless fluff, obviously, but it's my kind of fluff. Yet I must also admit, even more shamefacedly, that a good portion of my enjoyment would come from my own feelings of smug superiority. I would watch the couples struggling to choose between the Most Beautiful Day of Our Lives and the American Dream Home, and I would think to myself, "Ha ha, I got my dream wedding and my dream home without going broke over either one!"

But underlying this smugness is an important point: both weddings and homes tend to be oversold. Admittedly, I would say a home is always a better investment than a one-day event, no matter how special, because it's a tangible asset that will, you can reasonably assume, grow in value, and one that you can sell to recover the money if you have to. But if HGTV is any guide, there seem to be lots of Americans out there buying way more house than they really need, and overextending themselves on their mortgage as a result. A childless couple does not need a five-bedroom house; a family that never entertains does not need a formal living room and dining room; a person who never cooks anything more complicated than a pot of spaghetti does not need a gourmet kitchen. And the same thing goes double when it comes to weddings; people are assuming they "need" a four-figure dress and a limousine and a videographer and all the other stuff we didn't have and didn't miss, without really stopping to think about what they want.

Ultimately, I think, this would end up making the show more frustrating than enjoyable for me. I would always be wanting to yell at the screen, "You don't need all this stuff!" (At least I wouldn't be alone; the reviewer for Wired had exactly the same reaction.) Every episode, I would be hoping for just one couple to push back against the show's assumptions by announcing that after seeing just how much house and how much wedding they can buy on their budget, they've decided they can afford both by just scaling back a bit. But based on a Chicago Tribune article (via NNY 360) about the show, which wonders why "no one suggests the possibility of buying a home and then having a small wedding there," this hope would never be fulfilled.

Has anyone, I wonder, ever made a reality TV show about small weddings? About having the day of your dreams without spending away the down payment for your first house? Or would that never work because these shows all rely on the "wedding-industrial complex" for their advertising dollars?