Yard-sale haul 2024

Most years, when we head out to shop Highland Park's annual yard-sale weekend, we aren't looking for anything specific. Our goal is simply to score the most interesting, fun, and/or useful items for the lowest total sum of money. These days we tend to pass over the sales that focus on kids' toys, since we no longer have any children under 10 in our lives, but we always brake for books, board games, adult clothing, or tools that we don't currently have.

This year, however, we did have a particular quarry in mind. Over the past two years, our Christmas gift exchanges have been such a big hit with the niblings on Brian's side of the family that we knew we wanted to do another one this year. But, since we've already done gift exchanges featuring books and board games, we didn't want to repeat either of those themes. So we decided that the theme for this year's exchange would be simply "interesting objects"—something we knew we had a good chance of finding during yard-sale weekend. So, along with seeking out items for ourselves, we were keeping our eyes peeled for any whimsical items that might show up on our neighbors' sale tables. And, as luck would have it, we found some, which is why I won't be too specific in describing or displaying all our finds in this blog entry.

We knew when we set out on Saturday morning that we wouldn't be able to shop for more than a couple of hours at a stretch. I had my monthly Citizens' Climate Lobby meeting at 11:45, and I had to be home by 11:30 to tune in over Zoom. (Normally I go in person, but I wasn't willing to sacrifice an additional hour out of my yard-sale time for the drive.) This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, since what seemed at first like perfect weather for a yard sale—bright, clear, and warm—became uncomfortably hot after two hours of traipsing around. 

But we couldn't bring ourselves to head home any earlier than we had to, because the sales were thick on the ground and we were finding lots of good stuff. As we worked our way westward along the south side of town, we accumulated three potential gift items, three books for ourselves, a pair of pants for Brian, a turtleneck for me, and a tall stack of plastic flowerpots, all for a total of just $10. By the time we headed home, all three of the shopping bags we'd brought with us were bulging.

After my meeting and a bite of lunch, we went once more into the breach. This time, we worked our way west along the north side before heading down to the farmers' market parking lot, where we knew there would be a large collection of sales, as well as entertainment from some local bands. Unfortunately, the music was turned up so loud that we couldn't stand to spend much time browsing. However, the thrift shop at the Reformed Church, which is normally open only until 1pm on Saturday, was open for the occasion, so we ventured in there and emerged with two board games and one jigsaw puzzle, all for $5. We also received two freebies at a booth run by Sustainable Highland Park: a packet of butterfly weed seeds (a native plant) and a small, decorative flowerpot much nicer than all the free ones we'd found earlier.

Next we made our way to Pino's bar, which was hosting a thrift market of its own, with both new and used clothing from a large number of sellers. Most of the customers were a lot younger and hipper than either of us, displaying tattoos, piercings, vivid hair colors, and outré outfits such as a black mini dress with a large spider embroidered on the butt. Yet somehow, we didn't look glaringly out of place; I even got compliments on my sun hat and my colorful patchwork skirt. Unfortunately, most of the clothing at the market was either too small, too fancy, or too rich for our blood, but I picked up a nice T-shirt for $2. By that point we were feeling pretty tired, so we plotted a course for home, stopping only at the sales that happened to be on our path. En route, Brian scored one additional item: a set of earphones to replace the unreliable pair he uses at work. (He wasn't sure the new ones would work either, but they seemed worth risking $1 on, and once we got home he confirmed that they were usable.)

On Sunday, as usual, we encountered far fewer sales. But, to compensate for that, we saw quite a lot of free piles full of rejects from the previous day's sales. In our first two hours of shopping, we picked up a hedge trimmer, four cool-looking glass bottles, two possible stocking stuffers, and one book, all without spending one red cent. We didn't so much as pull out our wallets until we reached the huge, chaotic sale at the synagogue on South First, and even there we spend only $1 on a little stuffed animal (possibly another stocking stuffer, or possibly too cute to give away). After that, we started wending our way home, peeking at other sales and free piles but not actually acquiring anything except for one small houseplant at a "Mama's Got Too Many Plants" sale. (It was perhaps a tad overpriced at $5, but Brian felt the need to help out a fellow gardener.)

Here you can see our complete haul for both days (strategically arranged to disguise the future gift items). Total money spent: $24. Total time spent: 7 hours. Being part of the joyful chaos that is the annual Highland Park sales: Priceless.

September discoveries

We're only a week into September, but we've already made several interesting discoveries this month—either by design, by happenstance, or by a combination of the two. Here, in order of occurrence, is a summary of our September adventures so far:

Discovery #1: A stealth melon

Most of the time, Brian and I make a point of uprooting any "volunteer" plants that pop up in or near our compost bin. We know from past experience that if we leave them be, they're liable to take over the side yard, making it difficult to navigate. Plus, they're usually the offspring of supermarket tomatoes that don't breed true, so any fruit we get off them won't be particularly tasty.

But this summer, we made an exception. A couple of what appeared to be squash vines sprouted directly out of the bin, which kept them mostly confined. Since they weren't really in the way, and since we would have had to open up the bin to remove them, we let them stay put. And this week, when Brian went to trim the weeds around the compost bin, he uncovered this underneath one of the vines.

As far as we can tell, this is the offspring of a Galia melon (a cantaloupe-honeydew hybrid) that we bought last April to put into a fruit salad for a May Day morning potluck breakfast with our Morris dance team. If that's correct, then we should be able to tell it's ripe when it turns from green to yellow-orange. The closer to orange it gets, the sweeter it's liable to be. Since the Galia melon is a hybrid, I'm not getting my hopes up too much that this fruit will be as sweet and juicy as its parent. But just in case, I've tucked a flowerpot underneath it to get it off the ground so it won't rot from excess moisture.

Discovery #2: A found puppy

After completing his planter project in July, Brian had a lot of little scraps of wood left over. Last Sunday, he came across them in the workshop and thought he really ought to get rid of them. But since they were pressure-treated, he didn't want to burn them the way he usually does with chunks of wood too small to be useful. So, rather than just toss them in the trash, he decided to play with them a little and see if he could make them into anything interesting. He also had a bunch of wood screws we'd saved after dismantling the old patio set we replaced in June, so he grabbed his drill and a screwdriver bit and started piecing them together. And when I came into the shop to ask him a question, I found him putting the finishing touches on this little guy. 

Brian and I both decided, independently, that the most appropriate name for this new addition to our family was Woody. I adorned him with an old collar we'd bought that turned out to be too big for either of our cats, and we set him outside underneath the planters that are sort of his parents. He's close enough to the street that passersby can spot him if they're paying attention, but close enough to the house that he won't be mistaken for trash being discarded. Since he's made out of pressure-treated wood, he should hold up as long as the planters do, provided no one decides to steal him.

Discovery #3: Tofu pepperoni

After his semi-successful attempt at creating a vegan pizza topping from Soy Curls, Brian decided to try the same thing with tofu. He cut half a pound of tofu into thin strips and soaked it in a mixture of canola oil, Dijon mustard, soy sauce, Liquid Smoke, paprika, garlic powder, and ground red pepper and fennel seeds. Then he baked it for about 20 minutes at 350F before adding it to the pie, which he'd already loaded with eggplant, bell peppers, and our vegan mozzarella.  

The resulting concoction looked more similar to pepperoni than his previous attempt, but the flavor and texture were wider of the mark. The tofu didn't soak up the spice mixture as well as the Soy Curls, so it tasted mostly like tofu with a dusting of spice. And despite the pre-baking, it never really browned. The texture remained soft and tofu-like, not meaty and chewy.

So, we probably won't be using this recipe again (which is why I didn't reproduce it in full). But that doesn't make this attempt a failure. It just means that, like Thomas Edison, we have succeeded in finding a method that doesn't work.

Discovery #4: An easier way to milk almonds

A second kitchen experiment was a bit more successful. A few years ago, in an attempt to cut down on packaging waste, we experimented with making our own almond milk. The first version we tried, made from almond butter, was easy but not that milk-like. And the second version, made from whole, blanched almonds, was so much hassle that we decided it wasn't worth the effort. 

But this week, I started reconsidering the issue while reading the comments on a YouTube video titled (rather prematurely, I thought) "The DOWNFALL of Plant-Based Milks." Several comments remarked on how much cheaper it is to make your own, and the thought suddenly popped into my head, "Why not try starting with almond flour?" Almond flour is basically ground blanched almonds, so using it would eliminate two of the steps involved in making it from scratch. 

A quick search revealed that I was not the first to come up with this idea. Most of the recipes I found online called for a ratio of 1 cup of almond flour to 4 cups of water. They generally included dates for sweetening as well, and sometimes vanilla, but I decided not to bother with any of that. I figured if I wanted it sweeter, I could always add sugar after the fact.

So, one morning this week, Brian obligingly loaded half a cup of almond flour and 2 cups of water into our blender and ran it on high for three minutes, the minimum time most recipes recommend. He tried straining it with a fine mesh strainer, but it just ran right through, so he poured it through an old nylon stocking and squeezed out as much liquid as possible. And the result was...okay. The flavor was very almond-forward, much more so than the stuff we'd made from whole almonds, and entirely devoid of sweetness. The texture was watery and, even after straining, faintly gritty—nothing at all like the creamy smoothness of the emulsifier-laden commercial product. And, nutrition-wise, it has nowhere near the protein content of my Lidl soymilk.

So, sadly, this homemade almond milk isn't the cheap, sustainable milk alternative that will finally get those cardboard cartons out of our lives once and for all. But it is less work than the whole-almond method, so we'll keep it in mind as an emergency backup. If we ever run out of soymilk and can't easily make it to the store, this stuff should see us through until our next visit.

Discovery #5: Decorative basil

Several of the new crop varieties we ordered this year from True Leaf Market, our new seed supplier, have been distinctly underwhelming. The biggest disappointment: a Thai basil variety we tried called Red Leaf Holy Basil. The plants were quite healthy, but the leaves were entirely flavorless. This is not an exaggeration. When Brian used the Thai basil in a dish, neither of us could detect it at all. Even when I tried putting a fresh leaf in my mouth and chewing it up, I got nothing. It was indistinguishable from chewing on a blade of plain grass.

So, when I noticed yesterday that the plants had gone to flower, I thought, well, they're not doing any good here in the garden; why not just cut them and put them in vases? Waste not, want not. And while they're useless as food, they work rather well as decoration, so at least we'll get some use out of them. (But certainly not enough to justify devoting any garden space to them next year.)

Make or buy: food items

Back in July, I posted about which personal care products Brian and I make at home and which ones we buy. That post was fairly popular, so I thought folks might be interested in a similar one about food products. We tend to come down on the "make" side a bit more often where food is concerned because most foodstuffs are a lot easier to make in your own kitchen than, say, soap. Food recipes generally don't call for obscure (and often pricey) ingredients or special equipment. They're written for home cooks, so they only include things the average home cook is likely to have.

Bread: Make

Brian and I have never been in the habit of buying bread—neither the good stuff from the bakery nor the cheap, squishy loaves at the supermarket. When we first got married, we had a bread machine, so either of us could quickly throw together a loaf of any bread we fancied. When that machine died back in 2013, Brian started making all our bread by hand. He'd always enjoyed working with dough, and this just gave him an excuse to do it more often.

His go-to recipe is Brian's Basic Brown Bread, which costs us about $1.70 per batch (85 cents per loaf) and requires about half an hour of hands-on work. Even with the cost of the fuel used to bake it, it's probably under a dollar a loaf. A loaf of supermarket whole-wheat bread costs around $3, so he's saving us $2 per loaf by baking it himself. That works out to $8 per hour—more than the pathetic federal minimum wage, but only about half of New Jersey's. But since he enjoys the process, it doesn't feel like work to him.

Buns: Buy

Although Brian is very good at baking bread, for some reason his skill doesn't translate to making hot-dog or hamburger rolls. He's tried it a few times, and the buns always come out kind of flat, not at all the right shape for a burger or a dog. Maybe if we ate them more often, he'd keep working on trying to master this baking skill, but for the few times a year we cook veggie burgers on the grill, it's much easier to pick up a bag of buns for $1 at Lidl.

Tortillas: Make

We used to assume that flour tortillas, like buns, wouldn't be worth the effort to make from scratch. But the first time Brian tried making his own, using a simple recipe he found online, we discovered that homemade tortillas are reasonably easy and much, much tastier than the packaged kind. He started out making them with all-purpose flour, but eventually he switched to chakki atta flour from Costco, which makes a more fiber-rich tortilla without compromising the texture. A batch of 16 tortillas costs about 85 cents, or 5.3 cents per tortilla—about one-sixth the price of whole-wheat tortillas from the store. And, as I said, so much better.

Plant butter: Make

Back when we were regular dairy users, Brian and I used butter for baking and Blue Bonnet vegetable-oil spread on toast. When we shifted away from dairy, we switched from real butter to Country Crock plant butter. At around $5 a pound, it was actually more expensive than the real thing, but it was the plant-based product that gave us the best result for cookies and shortcrusts.

Until, that is, we tried the homemade plant butter recipe from The Loopy Whisk. At roughly $1.30 for a 2-cup batch, it was less than half the price of the Country Crock and even slightly cheaper than the Blue Bonnet, and it was perfectly suitable for both baking and spreading. Plus, it contained no palm oil, an ecologically questionable ingredient (though, as I've since learned, not nearly as harmful as it's made out to be). And since it takes only a few minutes to whip up a batch, using it is a complete no-brainer.

Plant milk: Buy

One of the greatest annoyances in the ecofrugal life is that plant-based milks, which are unequivocally better for the environment than dairy milk, are also significantly more expensive. In an attempt to cut the cost (and reduce packaging waste), we've made several attempts over the years to make our own plant milk from oats, canned coconut milk, and almonds, but they were all a lot of hassle. Moreover, none of them had a taste or texture as good as the commercial stuff, and a few (like our first attempt at oatmilk) were outright undrinkable. Even though some of these homemade recipes were significantly cheaper than the $2.44 we pay for half a gallon of soymilk at Lidl, the savings just weren't enough to justify the work involved. (Besides, soymilk is the only plant-based "schmilk" that has as much protein as the cow-based variety.)

Coffee creamer: Buy

My favorite plant-based coffee creamer used to be Silk Protein milk, which had a nice creamy texture, a neutral flavor, plenty of protein, and very little sugar. Unfortunately, it became much harder to find when our local supermarket closed down, and it now appears to have been discontinued altogether. In an attempt to find a substitute that would provide a decent dose of protein, I tried several methods of making coffee creamer from soymilk, but none of them worked very well. 

So far, the best compromise I've found is to buy the coconut-based creamer from Trader Joe's, which costs $1.99 per pint, and cut it half and half with soymilk. The resulting product costs $2.60 per quart, and I use about a quarter-cup—roughly 16 cents' worth—per cup of coffee. It doesn't have nearly as much protein as the Silk, but at least it isn't loaded with sugar like some plant-based creamers.

Whipped cream: Buy

Even back when we were using real whipped cream, it made more sense to buy it than make it for everyday use. If you buy a container of cream and whip it by hand, you have to use it up right away; even if you whip only a little bit at a time as needed, you still need to use it all up within a week or so if you don't want the cream to go bad. The canned stuff will stay good for months, allowing you to use it up gradually. So, while we weren't thrilled about all the excess packaging, we figured throwing away a can every month or two was better than going through a cup of cream every week. And we eventually found a way to recycle the cans, which helped take the curse off. So we would buy cream and whip it up ourselves only if we needed a bunch of it at once to make something like raspberry fool. 

After we went nondairy, we found the coconut whipped cream from Trader Joe's was ideal for everyday use. However, it wasn't suitable for any recipe that used whipped cream in bulk. We tried a plant-based product called Coco Whip and it worked reasonably well, but the store where we found it soon stopped carrying it. 

We made several attempts to make our own plant-based whipped cream from various combinations of coconut milk, aquafaba, and soymilk, but the results ranged from limited success to epic fail. None of them was really an adequate substitute for the real thing. So these days, for desserts that absolutely depend on whipped cream, such as our anniversary cake, we give in and buy a container of real cream. As long as it's only once or twice a year, that's a compromise we can live with.

Ice cream: Make

Ice cream is another dairy product we had a hard time making a plant-based version of. We tried various homemade recipes, such as iced coconut milk and plum whip, but none of them quite ticked all the boxes for flavor and texture. But last month, we tried a version made with much richer coconut cream, and this was considerably more successful. 

We'll most likely tinker with the recipe some more to see if we can tone down the richness a little or replace at least part of the allulose sweetener we used with plain sugar, which is considerably cheaper. But even in its present form, this is better than most nondairy ice creams we've tried. And at around $3.50 per batch (about 1.5 cups), it's cheaper than Oatly or Ben & Jerry's and not too much more than Breyer's.

Plant cheese: Make

Before we went off dairy, Brian and I could usually pick up cheese on sale for around $2 a pound. The really good stuff, like fresh mozzarella, was pricier, and we once attempted to save a little money by making our own, but it wasn't nearly as good as the store's. And since it wasn't any cheaper than the sale-priced stuff, we saw no point in trying it again.

But once we went off dairy, we discovered that a good plant-based cheese was much harder to find. Fortunately, we were able to find an ideal DIY substitute: the vegan mozzarella from the It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken blog. It's much closer to real mozzarella in both flavor and texture than any store-bought substitute, and cheaper, too. The first batch we made cost $4.56 for two cups, but we've since found cheaper sources for some of the ingredients, bringing the cost down to around $3 per batch—equivalent to $6 per pound. That's a lot more than we used to pay for real cheese, but a bargain compared to store-bought alternatives like Daiya, which cost over $10 a pound.

Meat substitutes: Make and buy

Brian and I use a variety of substitutes for meat. The simplest one is tofu, which we've never attempted to make ourselves since it's so cheap to buy. It's gone up a bit in price recently, but it's still under $2 a pound, and I doubt we could make it for less than that.

Another commercial product we really like is Butler Soy Curls. These chewy soy strips absorb the flavor of whatever liquid you soak them in, so they make a reasonable substitute for almost any kind of meat. They can replace ground beef in chili, sausage in a savory cabbage dish, chicken in fajitas, pork in a kebab, and pepperoni on a pizza. We buy them in bulk from the manufacturer for $6.47 a pound, which works out to about $2.15 for a pound of rehydrated, cooked curls. Not many real meat products can beat that price.

We used to buy commercial veggie burgers as well, but we never found a brand we really loved. Fortunately, we recently developed a veggie burger recipe that's both better and cheaper than most commercial alternatives. Our grill-friendly mushroom seitan burgers have a savory flavor and a hearty, chewy texture that we actually prefer to Impossible Burgers, and at roughly 70 cents per patty, they're less than one-third of the price.

Sadly, there's one meat product we've never found a decent substitute for: sausage. We used to really love the free-range pork kielbasa from the Amish market, and we've never found a vegetarian version that could come close to it. We tried one recipe that billed itself as "The World's Best Vegan Sausage," but it turned out to be disappointingly dry. And while the Impossible Brat proved to be spot-on in terms of texture and, according to Brian, flavor as well, I discovered that I apparently don't care much for bratwurst. So, in this one area, neither making nor buying has proved satisfactory, and our search continues.

Pasta: Make and buy

For the most part, Brian and I are perfectly happy to buy our pasta at the store. We don't own a pasta machine, and the one time we tried rolling it out by hand, it was a huge amount of work and came out lumpy. For something you can buy for $1 a box, it just doesn't seem worth it.

The only pasta we do make is gnocchi. We used to buy those too, since a $2 bag from Trader Joe's made such a handy last-minute meal. But a few years ago, I learned in a Reddit forum that it's reasonably easy to make your own gnocchi with potato flakes. We tried it, and it was so easy and tasty that we've never gone back to the store-bough gnocchi since. (Brian has also tried making them from scratch with baked potato, and those are still better, but too much work to make on a regular basis.) 

Cereal: Make and buy

Brian's usual breakfast is a bowl of homemade granola. He cuts the sweet, baked clusters with a roughly equal volume of plain oats, making the finished cereal both healthier and cheaper. At the prices we currently pay for all the ingredients, it's about $4.85 per batch, or 61 cents per bowl.

However, he doesn't always have time to bake a new batch of granola before he runs out, so he relies on Kellogg's raisin bran as a backup. It costs $2.05 per pound at Costco, and his usual breakfast is about 3 ounces, or 38 cents' worth, with an additional nickel's worth of oats on top. That's only 43 cents per bowl, making the commercial product actually cheaper than the homemade one. But Brian likes the granola better, so he considers it worth the cost and effort.

That pretty much covers our make-or-buy list as it currently stands. Most of the items on the "buy" list are ones we'd be happy to make if we could find a recipe for a homemade version that was cheaper and not too complicated. But for now, this is what works best for us.