Gardeners' Holidays 2021: Indoor Growing Day

Here in New Jersey, we're just settling in for a big winter storm that's expected to dump anywhere from 13 to 23 inches of snow on top of us between now and Tuesday morning. Yet at the very same time, we're preparing for our first harvest from our 2021 garden. Our indoor 2021 garden.

You see, one of our Hanukkah gifts this year was a gift certificate to High Mowing Seeds, a purveyor of organic herb, flower, and vegetable seeds. However, we knew we didn't want to buy all the seeds for our 2021 garden there, because they didn't carry some of the trusted varieties we normally buy from Fedco. So we checked out the website to see what they had to offer, and we noticed a section dedicated to microgreens — those little baby greens that were so popular in trendy restaurants before COVID shut them all down.

As it happened, I'd just read an article in the New York Times about growing microgreens indoors, and I'd already been musing on the possibility of starting some, perhaps with our remaining arugula seeds. Our garden was one of the few spots of normalcy in our lives that helped get us through the long, isolated pandemic summer, and I thought perhaps bringing a bit of the garden indoors could help get us through an even longer and more isolated pandemic winter. So our gift certificate proved to be just the nudge we needed to get this project started.

We spent our store credit on two varieties of seeds: broccoli, which I'd enjoyed before in sprout form, and basil, which the Times article recommended as a way to "punch up the summery quotient" in winter recipes. The article recommended growing them in "standard nursery flats with drainage holes, called 1020 flats, with trays that fit beneath," and as it happened, we already had three of those that we'd received as a gift one previous Christmas. We hadn't used them for starting seeds, preferring to stick with the seed starting setup we'd already fine-tuned over several years of gardening, so they were just stashed away with the other gardening supplies, ready and waiting to be pressed into service. We decided to start by planting one tray with each variety of greens, and depending on the results, we could opt to plant a second tray of one type or the other. The trays came with their own clear plastic covers, and we already had a spray bottle for misting the seedlings and a lighted tray to set them on. The only other thing we needed was a bag of potting soil, which we picked up at the nearest Home Depot, and we were ready to grow.

So, according to the instructions in the article, Brian moistened the soil and mixed it together with his hands until it could hold its shape when squeezed.

Then he loaded it into the trays and tamped it down, and I gently scattered the seeds on top. I just took a generous pinch between two fingers and sprinkled it across each of the little squares built into the tray, counting the seeds as i went. The article said to aim for 10 to 12 seeds per square inch for "small seeds like basil, mizuna or kale" and 6 to 8 per inch for "larger ones like beets or chard." Since the little squares built into the trays were closer to an inch and a half on a side, I went for about 20 of the little basil seeds and 15 of the larger broccoli seeds.

Then we covered them up with their plastic lids and waited for the seeds to sprout, which took about two days for the broccoli and four for the basil. Once the seeds in each tray were showing their first bits of green, we took the domes off and set them under the lights for the recommended 16 hours a day, misting them regularly but lightly with water from the spray bottle.

After about one week, both trays now display a dense carpet of tiny green sprouts. According to the Times article, they're still not ready to harvest, as neither one has its first "true leaves" yet. So far, they're just large sprouts, not small greens. But I have snitched a couple of the broccoli sprouts from some of the more densely packed squares, and they were both tender and tasty. 

I'm guessing they'll be officially ready to eat sometime this week, so now all we have to do is figure out how we want to use them. So far, my ideas include:

• Additions to a salad (but it's a bit chilly for salads at the moment)
• Toppings for falafel (or any kind of sandwich, really)
• Toppings for pizza
  
• Tossed with pasta
• Broccoli greens added to a soup, such as Mark Bittman's "vastly improved store-bought ramen" (discard the flavor packet and add soy sauce, sesame oil, scallions, and an egg)
• Broccoli greens in a stir-fry 
• Added to scrambled eggs (one of the suggestions from a grower in the Times article)
  

And that's just off the top of my head. I'm sure a quick search could lead me to lots of recipes specifically featuring these varieties of microgreens, and I'm sure you'll be seeing some of those in future Recipe of the Month posts. But for now, I feel like we have plenty to get started with.

It remains to be seen whether any of these microgreen-spiked dishes become regular additions to our winter recipe repertoire. But even if they're never anything more than a novelty, they've already served the purpose of livening up this long, cold, lonely winter. As far as I'm concerned, that alone has made them a worthwhile investment.

Money Crashers: Why Gas Prices Are Rising So High

Earlier this month, a post popped up on my Nextdoor group lamenting about how expensive gas is getting. I honestly hadn't noticed, since we never really go anywhere these days and it's been over a month since we filled up our gas tank. But what struck me about the post was that the comments on it immediately turned political and extremely nasty. Many of the commenters — my neighbors — blamed the rise in gas prices on the incoming Biden administration, even though Biden hadn't actually been inaugurated yet. Others snarled back about Trump, and I guess a lot of people complained about the "unneighborly" tone, because eventually the moderators took the entire thread down.

This experience did more than just reinforce how toxic the combination of politics and any kind of social media can be (and how hard it is to keep them separated). It also showed that most people don't have any real understanding of what causes gas prices to rise and fall. Since they have no way to make sense of it, they just weave it into whatever political narrative they've decided to believe and pin the blame on whichever party they don't like.

I hope my latest Money Crashers post can serve, in some small way, as an antidote to that. It explains the real, complex, and intertwining factors that lead to changing gas prices, including seasonal fluctuations in demand, foreign affairs, changing technology, natural disasters, and shifts in gas taxes (the only one that really has anything at all to do with U.S. politics).

I don't expect most of my Nextdoor neighbors to read it, but if any of them do, perhaps they'll realize that the government can't possibly control all the factors affecting gas prices, and so it's silly to blame any government (especially one that isn't officially in power yet) when they go up. It's much more useful to adapt by driving less: making fewer trips, walking and biking more. And if the price remains high, perhaps even choose a more fuel-efficient vehicle (or even an electric one) the next time you change cars. This not only saves you money but also prevents climate-destroying emissions, so it's a win-win.

Why Gas Prices Are Rising So High – Reasons for Fluctuations

Thrift Week 2021, Day 7: Puzzles

It was below freezing this morning, with a stiff wind, but Brian and I made a point of leaving the house right after breakfast anyway and heading out into the cold on foot. With our neighborhood thrift shop now open only in the mornings, except on Sunday, it was our only chance to include it in my local shopping challenge before Thrift Week comes to an end tonight. And it would certainly have made a great dramatic finale if I had scored some amazing find there, like a warm and cozy cardigan or a colorful pullover, for only a buck.

Sadly, that did not happen. I did try on one little jacket that seemed to fit fairly well, but the mirror — once I managed to locate it — told me that it was bunching up in a very unflattering way. And I found a pair of corduroy pants that might have been worth trying on, except the girls' bathroom that passes for a dressing room was completely blocked with boxes. So, alas, no thrift shop bonanza for me.

However, we did not leave empty-handed. While I was looking at clothes, Brian was examining the toy and game shelf, and he emerged with four, count 'em, four 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles. Well, I did promise him that he could have anything he wanted when his grant application was done, and apparently, what he really wants is to spend some time working on puzzles. (Plus his parents gave us a fancy puzzle mat for Christmas, which makes jigsaw puzzles and cats compatible.) And, once we were able to track someone down to take our money, it was only three bucks for the lot. New, they'd probably have cost at least $10 each.

This experience sort of highlighted the best and worst aspects of this particular thrift shop. You can find occasional gems there at truly amazing prices, but they sure don't make it easy for you. There's been a sort of halfhearted attempt to sort clothes by type and size, but the volunteers clearly can't maintain the organization, so clothes end up in random piles on the table, the rack, even the floor. The one mirror is way in the back where you can't easily find it. There's no proper dressing room, and the space that passes for one isn't always accessible. And you often have to hunt all over the shop looking for someone to take your money.

All of which would seem to be an argument against shopping locally, were it not for one problem: other thrift shops within driving distance aren't really better. There was one really good thrift shop in Pennington five years ago, but it's closed down. And while there are several left that have larger selections, they also have higher prices, and I still can't usually find anything there that looks good on me. And if I'm going to visit a thrift shop and almost certainly walk out with nothing, I might as well do it in town and save gas.

I made one additional purchase to round out the trip: some more medicine from the Rite Aid. I didn't absolutely need to buy it now, but on my last trip there they gave me a $5-off-$20 coupon, and this seemed like a good chance to use it. The pills I needed were actually priced at $19.99 for the biggest bottle — one cent shy of the amount needed to use the coupon — so I added a bag of kale chips to my order to put myself over the limit. But, as it turned out, no dice: the pills were on sale for $17.99, a fact that wasn't advertised on the shelf, so even with the chips I was still under the limit. I could have gone back and looked for something that cost $2.01, but I decided to just cancel the chips, take my $2 savings, and leave. Which I did — with a second $5-off-$20 coupon for this purchase, which I almost certainly won't be able to use either. Oh well.

That wraps up my week of local shopping, so it's time for the final tally:

• Magnesium supplements (Rite Aid): $10 for two bottles. Minimum price elsewhere: $10 each, or $20 for two.
• Groceries (Stop & Shop): $3. Minimum price elsewhere: $1.66. (I checked, and scallion prices at H-Mart were a little higher than I'd guessed. Though technically, those cheaper prices were at local stores too, so I'm not sure if this even counts.)
  
• Flowers (Robert's Florals): $15. Minimum price elsewhere: $10.
• Gin (Pino's): $10 for one liter. Minimum price elsewhere: $9.30 per liter (and again, that's technically local, since the cheaper price was at Rite Aid).
• Groceries (Stop & Shop): $11.03. Minimum price elsewhere: Probably around $11.03 also.
• Socks (dollar store): $8 for three pairs. Minimum price elsewhere: $8 for two pairs, or $12 for three.
  
• Olives (Ellin Kon): $5 for 13 ounces. Minimum price elsewhere: around $7 per pound, or $5.69 for 13 ounces.
• Hazelnut chocolate (Ellinikon): $0.94. Minimum price elsewhere: around $0.50.
• Calendar (local organization): $20. Minimum price elsewhere: around $8 (assuming you don't count the extra cost as a charitable donation).
  
• Groceries (H-Mart): $39. Minimum price elsewhere: the same, since H-Mart has the best prices on all the items we bought.
• Jigsaw puzzles (thrift shop): $3. Minimum price elsewhere: $40.
• Meds (Rite Aid): $17.99. Minimum price elsewhere: $19.99.

Total for everything we bought locally: $142.96. Minimum price to buy it all non-locally: $169.97. Amount we paid extra for shopping locally: negative $27.01. Yes, our local stores actually gave us better value than we could have found anywhere else.

So what's the takeaway here? Does it mean we're better off doing all our shopping locally from now on?

Well...no. It's true that, on the whole, I got better prices shopping in town on the stuff I was able to shop for in town. But there was lots of stuff I wasn't.

For instance, I got a gift certificate for Hanukkah to Better World Books, a site that's like the anti-Amazon. It serves as a platform for a huge network of local bookstores all over the country; when you buy books through the site, one of those local stores fills them. Buying through this site supports local businesses, but not our local businesses. Since there are no bookstores here in town, it's not even theoretically possible for any purchases I make with that gift certificate to benefit our local economy. But they're not taking business away from it, either, because buying the books in town isn't an option. It's just a purchase I have to make non-locally if I want to make it at all.

Similarly, my computer has been giving me some trouble lately. It just can't seem to handle the demands my work software puts on it, to the point that it takes two to three minutes to do something as simple as opening a file. Given that it's nearly ten years old, this is probably to be expected, but if I need to replace the thing, I can't do it locally. We have places in town that repair computers, but none that sell them.

And there are a few other things that are pretty much impossible to find locally. Shoes, for instance; I was lucky enough to be able to buy my last pair of winter boots in an actual store, but finding a pair that fits me at the thrift shop — the only store in town that sells footwear — would be too much to ask. Even finding clothing that fits me is a long shot.

So, no, I can't really start doing all my shopping in town. But what I can do, and probably should, is to shop in town first.

In other words, if there's something I need, or just want, I can make a point of trying the local businesses first. If I can't find it there, I can always go further afield. But if they do have it and it's just a bit more expensive, maybe I should just accept that as the price of doing business. Especially when I know there's a good chance that the next purchase I make locally will actually be cheaper here at home than anywhere else.

Can I actually pull this off? I don't know. But I think it's worth a try, at least.

Thrift Week 2021, Day 6: Gifts

Throughout most of my Thrift Week adventures, I've been shopping locally for myself — or, in the case of groceries, for me and Brian together. Today, I decided to shake things up a little bit and pick up a few treats specially for him.

Some background: for the past several weeks, Brian has been wrestling with a grant proposal for work. Actually, I probably shouldn't say "wrestling," because that would be much less exhausting. It might be more demanding physically, but it wouldn't be anywhere near as emotionally draining. Picture a man walking around with a fifty-pound pack on his pack and another on his chest, 24/7, and you'll get an inkling of how much this has taken out of him.

As we came into the last week of the project, I promised him repeatedly that we could do absolutely anything he wanted (within current social distancing requirements) to celebrate when it was over. A special dinner? No problem — I'd even watch him eat steak, as long as I didn't have to join in. A dumb superhero movie? I would watch it without complaints. After what he'd been through, he deserved nothing but the best.

The problem was, Brian has made such a habit of self-denial that I feared he wouldn't take me up on it. So I decided to take matters into my own hands. I would go out for my walk today — by myself, while he was stuck at home laboring to push the grant proposal through its last few remaining steps — and pick up some special goodies that he likes and I don't. Then he'd have to eat them or let them go to waste.

I tried to find some marzipan, but the assortment of Valentine candy at Rite Aid didn't include any, and the little independent sweet shop on Raritan Avenue was closed. I also considered a bottle of amaretto, but since I'd bought him half a dozen bottles of his favorite tawny port for Christmas, I figured he wouldn't have that much use for any other drink for a while. So instead, I stopped into the little Greek grocery on Woodbridge avenue and got him a little jar of olives, which I loathe, and some hazelnut chocolate, which I'm fairly indifferent to. Total: $5.94 for both. 

Neither of these is something I normally buy, but I just checked the price of olives online and found they're around $7 for a one-pound jar. This was 13 ounces for $5, or about $6.15 per pound, so once again, the local store was actually cheaper in this case. The $1 chocolate-hazelnut bar would probably only have cost around 50 cents at Aldi, but that still puts me about 19 cents ahead. And in any case, it was a trivial price to pay to treat Brian after all he's been through.

I also made one other impulse purchase. As I was passing through town, I saw a guy recruiting volunteers for a workers' organization in New Brunswick. I knew I didn't have time for that in my schedule, but I had cash to spare, so I blew $20 on of the group's calendars. I'd been wanting a bigger calendar than the dinky one we got this year from the Nature Conservancy anyway, and this was a chance to help a good cause at the same time. I could have bought one on sale for around $8, so my local shopping premium in this case was $12 — the only significant cost I've had so far throughout the entire challenge. But it's not clear if it should even count, since it was really more of a donation than an expense.

As it happened, that wasn't my only shopping excursion today. Once Brian had finished slaying the grant, we made a jaunt out to the H-Mart to pick up some groceries, including the eggs we didn't buy at Stop & Shop earlier this week. But though we spent around $39 bucks on them all told, everything we bought was something we would normally buy at H-Mart anyway, so there's no question of paying anything extra for shopping local there.

So, total spending for today: around $65. Cost premium for shopping local: around $12 if you count the calendar, or negative 18 cents if you don't. One more day to go before we tally it all up.

Thrift Week 2021, Day 5: Socks

Today I discovered one of the biggest flaws in my plan to shop for a whole week at local businesses: Sometimes, they won't let you in.

Since there was nothing in particular I needed today, I decided to try for a purely frivolous purchase instead. I headed uptown to a local chocolatier, thinking I'd browse a bit and settle on something tasty. But when I got there, I found a big sign on the door informing me that the business was open for curbside pickup only. To make a purchase there, I'd have needed to order it online before setting out. I suppose in theory I could have whipped out my phone and placed an order then and there, but I didn't much feel like standing out in the freezing cold waiting for it.

So I headed back downtown along a route that I knew would take me past a bakery. If chocolates weren't on the menu, I figured I'd indulge myself with cookies instead. But that store wasn't just closed to walk-ins; it was closed entirely, dark and shuttered. A sign on the door said "We will be closing at 1:30 on Fridays," but since today is Thursday, that didn't explain why it was closed then and there.

Frustrated, I turned and headed back along Main Street, trying to figure out a fallback option. Brian, who was with me, suggested we just take the car out this evening and fill it up with gas, but that barely seemed to qualify as local shopping, and it certainly wouldn't make a good blog entry. So I decided on one last-ditch attempt: I turned in at the door of our local dollar store. Actually, it's not so much a dollar store anymore as a discount store, with some stuff priced up into the double digits, but the point is, there's a wide variety. This place carries all kinds of stuff, from cleaning products to costume jewelry, so I figured I should be able to find something.

I poked my way up the center aisle, past the makeup, the hair ties, the little kitchen gewgaws, and I found myself facing a display of socks. And I recalled that, while getting dressed that morning, I had noticed that I was running low on clean socks — or at least, the really good clean socks. I have a few pairs of nice, thick wool ones, and then a larger supply of somewhat wussy acrylic ones that don't fit as snugly and aren't as warm. So when I spotted a three-pack of wool-blend socks in assorted colors for $8, I thought, "Bingo!"

I haven't worn these properly yet, but I tried one of them on, and they seem — well, not too bad. Maybe not quite as nice as my top-tier socks, but better than the bottom-tier ones. They're reasonably warm, reasonably thick, and reasonably cushy. And there's even a nice burgundy red pair that matches one of my shirts and should be cheerier to wear than plain black or grey.

At $8 for three pairs, I'd say these were a pretty good value. I mean, heck, last month on a trip to a different discount store outside of town, I spent that same amount on just two pairs of wool socks and considered it a good deal. Granted, these aren't quite as high-quality, but I'd say they're at least two-thirds as good, and they were something I actually needed.

So, once again, local shopping for the win. Can I keep it up for two more days?

Thrift Week 2021, Day 4: Groceries

Today's Thrift Week excursion was more utilitarian than indulgent: just a quick jaunt out to the Stop & Shop to pick up a few necessities. Here's our haul: a bunch of parsley, a head of green leaf lettuce, one cucumber, one plum tomato, two cans of tomato paste, and a bag of coffee. Total cost: $11.03.

Could we have bought any of this stuff cheaper somewhere else? Well, I honestly don't know. Although I keep a price book to track the prices of various food items we buy regularly, most of the items shown here aren't in it. All the fresh produce items fluctuate so much in price that tracking them is more or less pointless, and a single can of tomato paste lasts us so long that it doesn't really qualify as a staple item. (The only reason we bought two this time is that Brian always assumes we have a can to spare, and when he unexpectedly discovered yesterday that we were clean out, he figured he'd better buy an extra. Of course, after we got them home, he discovered that he did in fact have a can in the pantry; it was just in the wrong place. But oh well, it's not like the stuff goes bad, and an extra 79 cents is hardly going to break our budget.)

The only item in this assortment that qualifies as a staple is the coffee. This is one particular item I've had a lot of struggles over in the past, trying to find a brand that meets my ethical and environmental standards at a price that isn't too ridiculous. I used to buy five pounds at a time from Dean's Beans; with shipping, this came to just under $10 a pound, which was a lot, but less than I could find anywhere else. I tried a house brand from Costco that was cheaper, but the flavor was awful, and it's no longer available anyway; for a while I was buying the stuff from IKEA, until they switched to a new brand that doesn't have a decaf option. Even Trader Joe's doesn't offer a decaf that bears any sort of sustainable certification.

However, just as I was about to switch back to buying in bulk online, I made a discovery: The store brand at Stop & Shop, my trusty neighborhood supermarket, is in fact UTZ-certified. And this isn't the fancy, high-end Nature's Promise brand, either; it's just the plain old house brand. The Nature's Promise coffee, which costs a bit more, is organic and Fair Trade certified, but as I discovered five years ago, that's not necessarily better. 

So now, Stop & Shop's modest medium-roast decaf is my go-to coffee. And at $4.79 for a 12-ounce bag, or $6.38 per pound, it's about as cheap as the stuff I used to get from IKEA — for which I had to drive 45 minutes and pay four bucks in tolls each way — and significantly cheaper than any other brand I've ever favored. And I only have to travel ten minutes to get it — on foot.

So, basically, I know for a fact that I could not buy coffee, or at least coffee that's acceptable to me, at any other store for less than I pay at Stop & Shop. And as for the other things we bought, while some of them might in fact be cheaper somewhere else, they would also have required a separate trip that would almost certainly cancel out all of the savings.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I'll reveal that we deliberately skipped one item on our shopping list during this trip: eggs. We're currently down to our last two eggs, but the only eggs at Stop & Shop that are Certified Humane cost $5.70 per dozen, and that's more than we're prepared to pay. But even those could still be available locally at a more reasonable price; H-Mart, which is within my local shopping radius, carries several brands that are Certified Humane, and usually at least one of them is on sale. So we can typically find them there for no more than $3 per dozen.

In short, I'm now halfway through my local shopping experiment, and so far, I have only spent a total of $7 more than I would have shopping as cheaply as possible. In fact, if you count my BOGO bargain on Day One, I'm actually ahead for the week. Could it be that sticking to local businesses is actually, on the whole, the most frugal way to shop?

Thrift Week 2021, Day 3: Booze

For the third day of my local shopping Thrift Week, I didn't have any particular shopping needs to fill. But I'd made a promise to get something from a local business each day, so I decided I'd stop by our local thrift shop and browse for a bit. Even if I didn't find any clothes to fit my needs, as I usually don't, I could always grab a couple of dirt-cheap books off the shelves.

The snag with this plan was that I'd forgotten about the thrift shop's new hours. It's now open only from 9am to noon on weekdays, which makes it highly impractical for me ever to shop there during the week — particularly in wintertime, when I prefer not to venture out until the warmest part of the day. And Saturday, with hours of 10am to 1pm, is only marginally better. So it's unlikely I'll make it to the thrift shop at any point during this Thrift Week challenge.

As Brian and I turned away from the store in disappointment, we started running through the list of other local businesses we might try to patronize. A local bakery was right nearby, but sadly, it's closed until February, making it also off-limits for this week's challenge. And outdoor dining isn't a very appealing option right now. So, after considering the supermarket, the drugstore, and the dollar store, we decided to pop into our local liquor store, Pino's, and replenish our supply of gin. Brian pointed out that we could also do this, possibly more cheaply, at the Rite Aid, which carries booze as well as medications. But I figured for purposes of a local shopping challenge, the truly local business should take priority over the chain store.

And, as it turns out, this was a pretty smart decision. Though most of the bottles on Pino's shelves were quite pricey, we found one on the bottom shelf called Gary's Good Gin, which was only ten bucks for a full liter. It wasn't what I'd call fancy, but we liked the name, and the price rivaled the cheapo Crystal Palace gin that we normally buy in a plastic bottle at Rite Aid. (We later went back and checked, and found that it was actually cheaper than the small bottles, which were $8 for 750 milliliters. The larger 1.5-liter bottles were $14 each, for a marginally cheaper price of $9.30 per liter, but 70 cents seems a small enough price for supporting an independent business.) And, after trying it both straight and in an orange blossom, I'd say it lives up to the claim on the label. I don't claim to be an expert, but its piney aroma and flavor strike me as reasonable marks of a good gin, even if not an outstanding one.

So, once again, this is a purchase that wasn't strictly necessary, but if you compare it to what we would otherwise have bought, the extra expense was minimal. So far, local shopping seems to be working out in our favor. I'm beginning to wonder if I should try extending the challenge past the end of the week, just to see how long I can keep it up.