Our first seed snails

This week's post was supposed to be all about Highland Park's first Repair Cafe event, which was scheduled to take place on Sunday. But that didn't happen, because this happened instead:

The storm that I imagine future generations will call the Blizzard of '26 blew into town last night, leaving 14 inches of snow in its wake. Brian and I have spent most of our afternoon so far digging out from under it. (This has left me once again cursing our yard's awkward layout and trying to decide if it would be worth dropping a couple of grand on heated mats to keep the driveway clear.)

But before we went out to face the snow, we spent a little time indoors starting seeds for this year's crop of leeks. And this year, we've decided to shake things up a bit. Rather than deploy the extra-narrow seed-starting tubes we generally use for leek seedlings, we're testing out a new method: seed snails.

I learned about this method from a YouTube video that popped up while I was doing my daily "walk and watch" (my ecofrugal exercise of choice in unpleasant weather). The gist of it is, you layer soil on top of a sheet of plastic or paper, roll it into a spiral shape, turn it on its end, and plant your seeds in the top. This takes up less room than pots or seed trays and uses less soil, yet provides plenty of depth for the seedlings to develop long, healthy roots. And when it's time to transplant, you can simply unroll the spiral and lift the little seedlings out. This is the perk that really sold us on trying this method for the leeks in particular. Although we have a dowel that's meant to push the entire soil plugs out of each narrow tube, in practice the soil always falls away. So if all we're going to have to plant is the little seedlings themselves, we might as well extract them the easy way.

To create our first seed snails, Brian went hunting through our stash of reused bubble wrap. The gardener in the video recommended this as the best material for seed snails because it's flexible, it holds moisture well, and the air bubbles insulate the seedlings' roots while adding structural strength to the roll. Since our current seed-starting tubes are 4 inches deep, Brian took a piece of bubble wrap one foot wide and cut it into three 4-inch strips to make the seed rolls. Then, taking another tip from the video, he wrapped each strip of bubble wrap in a layer of baking parchment paper to protect the seedlings from microplastic contamination. Our parchment paper was in individual sheets 16.5 inches wide rather than on a roll, so he cut each sheet in half, folded it over, and tucked the bubble wrap inside. Each bubble-wrap strip took one whole sheet, plus about half of a second one, to cover it.

We then repaired to the basement, where Brian dumped out the garden soil he'd dug up for seed starting into a tub, misted it with water, and mixed it with his hands until it was about as moist as a wrung-out sponge. The YouTube video claimed this would help the soil stick to the sheets of bubble wrap and also "prime" it with moisture so it would be easier to water later. Once he had it moist enough to form a good, solid clump without turning into mud, he patted it into place over top of the parchment paper, creating a soil layer about half an inch thick. However, he didn't extend the dirt quite to the top of the parchment. Instead, he left a gap of about a quarter inch to layer some seed-starting mix on top of the spiral, so the seeds could start their lives in a medium designed to support them.

He then carefully rolled up the soil-covered sheet into a spiral shape and secured it with rubber bands. (The video recommended using painter's tape to hold the loose end in place, but he couldn't get it to stick to the moist parchment.) He nestled the completed spiral into a little plastic tub that had formerly held mushrooms, which he'd gone and fished out of the recycling bin as soon as he decided to try the seed-spiral method. After that, he repeated the whole process with a second strip of bubble wrap and parchment, giving him two neat spirals ready for seeding. He got out the packet of leek seeds and carefully dropped them into the dirt along the top of the spiral, aiming for a spacing of about half an inch. 

Once both spirals were planted, he spread seed-starting mix over their tops and gave them both a good misting to get them thoroughly moist. Finally, following a final tip from the video, he covered each one with a clear plastic bag to help hold in that moisture so they wouldn't need as much watering. The two completed seed snails then joined the parsley seeds that are already (we hope) germinating in their tubes on the seedling table.

To be honest, these two seed snails don't actually take up noticeably less space than the milk carton full of narrow tubes in which we used to start our leeks. On the other hand, they most likely contain more individual seeds than the tubes did. And most important, we hope, they'll give us more healthy seedlings to plant out when spring arrives. That may still be a month or two away, but all this snow has to melt sometime, and when it does, we'll be ready.

How we became financially independent

This week, Brian finally did something he's been wanting to do for years: He quit his job. He is now officially retired, financially independent, a gentleman of leisure. Thirteen years after we officially set our sights on early retirement as a goal, we have now crossed that goal line.

How did we do it? Basically, by following the same plan that I outlined in that 2013 post and later expanded on in a 2016 article for Money Crashers: 

1. Cut your expenses as much as possible to maximize the amount you can sock away each month. (This step is what you've been reading about here for the past 13 years.)
2. Invest those savings in a mixed portfolio of low-fee funds. We've had some help with this step from a reliable finance guy who's sniffed out investments that earn us solid returns while minimizing what finance guys like to call "downside risk." (What exactly would be an upside risk?)
3. Stick with the plan until you've earned enough to retire. Technically, we reached this point a few years ago, but Brian needed a little time to get comfortable with the idea. Last year, he decided he was ready to take the plunge, and his official last day was Wednesday.

Before we could cross that finish line, though, there were a few t's to cross and i's to dot. The most obvious one: health insurance. Luckily for us, we live in New Jersey, which has a well-organized state health marketplace (Get Covered NJ) that makes it quite easy to shop for plans and compare costs. Even more luckily, New Jersey is one of the ten states that have stepped in to pick up the cost of the Obamacare subsidies Congress canceled last year. With our new, lower income (which is based on our taxable investment earnings, not the amount we withdraw each year to pay our bills), we qualified for a discount of over 80%, cutting our monthly premiums to just $318 per month for the two of us. Mind you, this is for a plan with a pretty hefty deductible ($2,100 per person per year), so we'll have to get used to paying out of pocket for a lot of costs that used to have only a nominal copay, such as prescription meds. But with all the practice we've had stretching our dollars over the past 22 years, I'm sure we can manage to keep those costs under control.

The health plan I bought doesn't cover dental or eye care (except for children, which we don't have). With a little searching, I was able to find a separate vision plan that wasn't too expensive (around $21 a month for both of us) and included our current eye doctor in its network. Based on our typical eye-care needs, which are a bit on the high side, it looks like this plan will save us around $300 a year. But dental coverage, at first blush, looked like a completely different story. There were dental plans available on Get Covered NJ, but most of them, once again, offered coverage for children only. The few plans I found that included adult care were not only expensive but had very low out-of-pocket maximums. (The worst of the lot capped payouts at a mere $1,000 per year, which was barely more than the annual cost of the premiums. It was practically guaranteed to cost us more out of pocket than it would ever pay back.) With such limited coverage, these plans would do little to nothing protect us from ruinous costs, which is what insurance is supposed to be for.

But after looking a little further, I found an alternative that looked much more cost-effective: a dental discount plan. This isn't technically the same as insurance, which pays your bills (or a portion of them) for you. Instead, for a nominal yearly fee (around $125), you get charged a reduced rate for all care from dentists in the plan's network. If the plan's estimated costs for services like cleanings, exams, and fillings were accurate, it looked like it would save us about 65 percent on our average yearly dental costs. The only catch was that it would require us to choose a new dentist, since the trusted dentist we've been seeing for years isn't part of this or any other dental network. But after a little research, I was able to find a dental office with very good reviews from customers that's not only in the network, but also within walking distance of our house. Given how much we stood to save, it seemed like we should at least give the new dentist a try. If we didn't like her, we could always go back to our old dentist, and it would cost us nothing (since the savings just on that one visit would be enough to offset the signup cost).

In addition to the health insurance, there was one other workplace benefit we had to replace: Brian's computer. The laptop he's been using for the past several years belongs to Rutgers, and we knew he'd have to surrender it when he left. The last time we bought a computer, we chose a mini PC, which combined a low price with ease of upgrading. But Brian prefers the portability of a laptop, which he can easily haul into the kitchen for a video chat with his folks, set on the coffee table to stream a show on the TV, or take with him on a trip. So I did a search on Craigslist and found a lightly used Lenovo ThinkPad, which gets high ratings for repairability, for just $200. It's pretty basic, but more than adequate for his modest needs (email, Web surfing, streaming video and audio).

Although Brian is now officially retired, there still are a few more retirement-related tasks we need to clear up. For one, I've scheduled a couple of doctor appointments to take advantage of our current health insurance before it switches over at the end of the month. (One of these is with a dermatologist to see if I can find a cheaper alternative to the cream I'm currently using for my rosacea, which I've just learned would cost me about $100 a month to buy out of pocket.) Then, once the new plan kicks in, we'll need to officially select our new doctor and dentist and arrange to have our health records transferred to these new providers. And there's a bit of paperwork I need to complete to roll over Brian's 403(b) to a new IRA under the care of our trusty finance guy. 

But within a few weeks, we'll be officially set up to live a life of leisure. I'm already more or less retired myself, as all my long-term clients have dropped me one by one over the past few years and I've had no luck finding new ones. I've spent quite a bit of time over the past year or two scouring freelancer job listings and applying for suitable-looking jobs with essentially no results, and since we don't really need the money, I've decided to stop bothering with it. I'm happy to accept a new assignment if it simply falls into my lap, but I'm not wasting any more of my time looking for work. I'll leave it to the younger freelancers who need it more than I do.

Having reached this major financial goal, we don't feel any need to set a new one. All we have to do at this point is make sure our nest egg can carry us through the next 40 years or so. (We'll still have smaller, shorter-term goals, like gradually electrifying our home and, eventually, our car. But we've got ample cash in the kitty to dip in for those expenses as needed without cutting into our income.) So basically, we just need to stick with the same plan we used to get here: keep our expenses low, keep our investments sound, and keep on trucking. Which means that the posts you'll be reading on this blog in the future will probably be along much the same lines as the ones you've read here in the past. We'll still be doing all the same things to save money and care for the environment as we've always done; we'll just have a lot more time now to do them.

Recipe of the Month: Shish Andaz

This month, for a change, Brian and I did not wait until the last minute to squeeze in a Recipe of the Month. In fact, I discovered this recipe at the end of January, and Brian deliberately held off on making it until last Sunday so that it could serve as the Recipe of the Month for February. 

It comes from a website called (for some reason) Hermann, which was featured in my One5C newsletter. Run by chef Julius Fiedler, it showcases "traditional vegan recipes from around the world." This one, called Shish Andaz, is an Iranian stew made primarily from eggplant and walnuts. It caught my eye because we're always looking for new eggplant recipes, particularly ones that pack a good dollop of protein. And we just happened to have everything on hand required to make it, with one notable exception: the pomegranate molasses. Not only did we not have it, I'd never even heard of it before. 

A quick trip to Wikipedia informed me that "molasses" is a misnomer: this "Middle Eastern, Caucasian and Balkan condiment" is actually made from concentrated pomegranate juice. It wasn't something we could whip up at home, and I wasn't even sure where we could buy it—or if we'd want to, since we didn't know of any other ways to use it besides this one untested recipe. Fortunately, someone had already asked in the comment section if there was a reasonable substitute for it, and Fiedler proposed "a tablespoon of sweet molasses of your choice and then 30-40ml of lemon juice." With this substitution, we had everything we needed to make the dish.

The recipe offered two alternatives for preparing the eggplant strips: pan-frying and roasting. Brian opted for roasting, which he'd found from previous experience to be the best way to bring out the flavor of almost any veggie. And since a single big baking sheet can hold all the eggplant at once, it didn't take appreciably longer than frying it, a job that would have needed to be done in two batches. It's not a quick recipe either way, about 80 minutes from start to finish, but about half of that is just simmering time.

The finished dish could not by any stretch of the imagination be considered pretty. It's an amorphous, brownish mass, broken up only by vague blobs of eggplant and gritty particles of walnuts. But it tasted much, much better than it looked. The author said it "might be the richest plant-based stew I’ve ever made," and I'd say that's a fair description, but there was a lot more going on than just the rich, nutty texture. It had hints of all five major flavors: the faint bitterness of the eggplant and walnuts, the acidity of the lemon and tomatoes, savory onion, salt, and a touch of sweetness from the molasses. Layered over that, there were the fragrant, spicy tones supplies by the cinnamon, pepper, and turmeric, all combined into one complex, flavorsome whole. I didn't enjoy looking at it, but I certainly enjoyed eating it, as did Brian.

This dish has just about everything we could ask for in a recipe. It's tasty, healthful, and reasonably easy to make with ingredients we nearly always have on hand. With all those walnuts, it's not particularly cheap, but since Brian only made a half recipe, the 150 grams he used (about a third of a pound) is only $1.44 worth, which certainly isn't going to break the bank. The only downside is the lengthy preparation time, which might make it impractical for a weeknight. But, as I'll discuss more in next week's entry, Brian is about to retire from his job, which means he'll soon have the leisure to cook a slow-paced dish any day of the week. So I think we can count on this Persian stew to become one of our go-to recipes, particularly for cold weather like we're having right now.