This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Friday, April 3, 2015
Ecofrugal Living podcast #17: The SNAP Cookbook
Here's the latest Ecofrugal Living podcast, based on the blog entry for August 19, 2014.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Savings challenge, week 5: A financial fast
Once again, this week's topic in the 52-Week Savings Challenge is one that's not particularly useful for us. It's actually a challenge that I've considered before and rejected as unhelpful: a "no-spend month." Bankrate describes this as "a monthlong commitment to spend money only on necessities: gasoline, groceries, rent, utilities, etc." The point, supposedly, is not just to save money by skipping non-essentials for a month, but also to get a handle on how you normally frivol away money on a daily basis. The money expert quoted for this challenge, so-called "Ultimate Cheapskate" Jeff Yeager, says the idea is to "step back and look at the way we spend and probably waste money in a typical week." (His version of the challenge, apparently, is only 7 days instead of a full month.)
I first encountered this challenge back in 2012. In fact, in one month, I came across two different versions of it. The first, printed in the Dollar Stretcher, challenged readers to have "no discretionary spending at all" for the entire month of February. This means more than just limiting spending to "necessities": it means that you should not allow for any spending at all beyond your regular monthly bills. Even groceries are supposed to be bought ahead of time, so you don't make any extra trips to the store (though you're granted a small allowance for "fresh milk and produce"). Spending for medical emergencies is allowed, but if it's your car that suffers a sudden injury instead of you, you're supposed to find some way to do without it for the rest of the month rather than pay for a repair.
The other version, somewhat less strict, was the "21-Day Financial Fast" promoted by the Washington Post's Michelle Singletary. In addition to being three weeks long instead of four, this challenge allows spending for personal needs, including (but not necessarily limited to) gas, groceries, medicines, "essential personal hygiene products," and all "regular household bills." However, all these necessities must be purchased with cash only—no credit cards, and ideally, no debit cards either. Like Yeager, Singletary sees the purpose of the challenge as "breaking the chains that keep you from being a better manager of your money"—i.e., kicking mindless spending habits.
When I first considered this challenge three years ago, I objected to it on the grounds that it "impose[s] a set of arbitrary rules that could actually end up costing you money in the long run." By enjoining you from spending money on anything that can't reasonably be defined as a necessity of life, the challenge prevents you from taking advantage of bargains on items that would genuinely enhance your quality of life and possibly even help you save money in the future. To take a common example: suppose you want to replace all your old, inefficient light bulbs with energy-saving LEDs. And suppose, further, that a local store is offering a special sale on them this week: just $2 for an 800-lumen bulb, which would normally cost around $8 at Home Depot. At that price, the new bulbs would pay for themselves in just a couple of months, according to the savings calculator at LEDwaves.com, and they'd continue to save you $10 a year—each—for the rest of their lifespan. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Well, sorry, but as long as you currently have some sort of working light source in your home, those new bulbs are not a "necessity." You'll have to wait to buy them until your no-spend month is over and pay an extra $6 per bulb.
It might have been a situation like this that prevented the Bankrate reporter who tried this challenge, Lance Davis, from sticking it out for the whole month. He reports that he "only made it about 10 days," though he doesn't actually explain how he came to fall off the strict-necessities wagon. Still, he claims that the challenge definitely helped him "significantly decrease how much I spend on extras," saving him about $100 altogether. More to the point, it helped him "define what I need and what I think I need," possibly pointing the way toward future savings.
Based on Davis's experience, I can see the possible benefit of a no-spend month, but at the same time, I don't want to get myself stuck in a no-LED-bulbs-for-you situation. So rather than following the challenge as written, I'm going to try to practice mindful spending in a different way. For the whole month of April, I'm going to keep track of all the money that Brian and I spend—which is easy enough, since I routinely do this anyway. But then I'm going to add a new twist: at the end of each day, I'll mark my spending list (possibly with some sort of color-coding) to sort all my purchases into three different categories:
I'm sure this is just the first of many tough calls I'll have to make over the course of the month between necessities, luxuries, and wise investments. For instance, what about charitable giving? It's not a necessity for me, but it may be providing necessities to others; does that make it an investment? Or how about our cable TV bill? Cable is clearly a luxury, but ours is bundled inextricably together with our phone and Internet service, both of which I consider necessities (at least for someone like me, who works from home). So should I pull out the cable portion of the bill and file it under luxuries, or treat the whole bill as a necessity? If we buy a bottle of wine to go with our dinner, does that count as a luxury, or is it lumped together with groceries, a necessity? Does it make a difference if the wine is for the Seder on Friday, and could thus be considered a religious or cultural necessity?
My guess is that, when I look back over my expenditures at the end of the month, I'll find very few definite luxuries, but a lot of tricky expenditures like these—things that could be necessities or luxuries, depending on how you look at them. But after all, the whole point of the no-spend challenge, or at least the main point, is supposedly to make you more mindful of the way you spend your money. So for me, thinking about these fine distinctions, and figuring out where I personally want to draw the line, is probably the best way to do this. I expect that, in the end, it will prove much more useful than blindly following a set of rigorous rules that may or may not be relevant for me.
I first encountered this challenge back in 2012. In fact, in one month, I came across two different versions of it. The first, printed in the Dollar Stretcher, challenged readers to have "no discretionary spending at all" for the entire month of February. This means more than just limiting spending to "necessities": it means that you should not allow for any spending at all beyond your regular monthly bills. Even groceries are supposed to be bought ahead of time, so you don't make any extra trips to the store (though you're granted a small allowance for "fresh milk and produce"). Spending for medical emergencies is allowed, but if it's your car that suffers a sudden injury instead of you, you're supposed to find some way to do without it for the rest of the month rather than pay for a repair.
The other version, somewhat less strict, was the "21-Day Financial Fast" promoted by the Washington Post's Michelle Singletary. In addition to being three weeks long instead of four, this challenge allows spending for personal needs, including (but not necessarily limited to) gas, groceries, medicines, "essential personal hygiene products," and all "regular household bills." However, all these necessities must be purchased with cash only—no credit cards, and ideally, no debit cards either. Like Yeager, Singletary sees the purpose of the challenge as "breaking the chains that keep you from being a better manager of your money"—i.e., kicking mindless spending habits.
When I first considered this challenge three years ago, I objected to it on the grounds that it "impose[s] a set of arbitrary rules that could actually end up costing you money in the long run." By enjoining you from spending money on anything that can't reasonably be defined as a necessity of life, the challenge prevents you from taking advantage of bargains on items that would genuinely enhance your quality of life and possibly even help you save money in the future. To take a common example: suppose you want to replace all your old, inefficient light bulbs with energy-saving LEDs. And suppose, further, that a local store is offering a special sale on them this week: just $2 for an 800-lumen bulb, which would normally cost around $8 at Home Depot. At that price, the new bulbs would pay for themselves in just a couple of months, according to the savings calculator at LEDwaves.com, and they'd continue to save you $10 a year—each—for the rest of their lifespan. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Well, sorry, but as long as you currently have some sort of working light source in your home, those new bulbs are not a "necessity." You'll have to wait to buy them until your no-spend month is over and pay an extra $6 per bulb.
It might have been a situation like this that prevented the Bankrate reporter who tried this challenge, Lance Davis, from sticking it out for the whole month. He reports that he "only made it about 10 days," though he doesn't actually explain how he came to fall off the strict-necessities wagon. Still, he claims that the challenge definitely helped him "significantly decrease how much I spend on extras," saving him about $100 altogether. More to the point, it helped him "define what I need and what I think I need," possibly pointing the way toward future savings.
Based on Davis's experience, I can see the possible benefit of a no-spend month, but at the same time, I don't want to get myself stuck in a no-LED-bulbs-for-you situation. So rather than following the challenge as written, I'm going to try to practice mindful spending in a different way. For the whole month of April, I'm going to keep track of all the money that Brian and I spend—which is easy enough, since I routinely do this anyway. But then I'm going to add a new twist: at the end of each day, I'll mark my spending list (possibly with some sort of color-coding) to sort all my purchases into three different categories:
- True necessities: things I genuinely couldn't get by without.
- Investment purchases: things that I could manage without, but will definitely manage much better with.
- Clear luxuries: new clothes, meals eaten out, concerts, any kind of entertainment.
I'm sure this is just the first of many tough calls I'll have to make over the course of the month between necessities, luxuries, and wise investments. For instance, what about charitable giving? It's not a necessity for me, but it may be providing necessities to others; does that make it an investment? Or how about our cable TV bill? Cable is clearly a luxury, but ours is bundled inextricably together with our phone and Internet service, both of which I consider necessities (at least for someone like me, who works from home). So should I pull out the cable portion of the bill and file it under luxuries, or treat the whole bill as a necessity? If we buy a bottle of wine to go with our dinner, does that count as a luxury, or is it lumped together with groceries, a necessity? Does it make a difference if the wine is for the Seder on Friday, and could thus be considered a religious or cultural necessity?
My guess is that, when I look back over my expenditures at the end of the month, I'll find very few definite luxuries, but a lot of tricky expenditures like these—things that could be necessities or luxuries, depending on how you look at them. But after all, the whole point of the no-spend challenge, or at least the main point, is supposedly to make you more mindful of the way you spend your money. So for me, thinking about these fine distinctions, and figuring out where I personally want to draw the line, is probably the best way to do this. I expect that, in the end, it will prove much more useful than blindly following a set of rigorous rules that may or may not be relevant for me.
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Raising the flower stakes
Last year, as you may recall, we had mixed results with our mixed wildflower bed. After getting off to a slow start in May, the wildflower seed mix produced a riot of colorful blooms by mid-June—but by mid-July, those tall, top-heavy stalks had all flopped over, turning our bounty of blossoms into a scraggly, untidy mess. This year, I was determined to find some way around this problem if at all possible. I knew that the flowers in this year's bed wouldn't be the same as last year's, since the first year's blooms were all annuals—cornflowers, cosmos, poppies—and this year the perennials would take over. But some of the perennials in the mix, such as coreopsis and Shasta daisies, get as high as 4 feet tall at full growth, making them even taller than the cornflowers that collapsed so dramatically last year, and I didn't want to risk a repeat of last year's fainting fit.
I did some hunting around online and found several proposed methods of propping up tall flowers, but most of them seemed impractical for a mixed bed like this one. This article on About Gardening, for instance, recommended staking each flower individually, tying the stem to a bamboo stake with twine looped all the way up to the bloom. This clearly wouldn't be feasible with so many flowers in one bed; I'd end up trampling the shorter blooms every time I stepped in to stake the tall ones. Fine Gardening suggested that the flower-flopping problem by choosing the right spot for your flowerbed and making sure to feed and water the plants properly, but that didn't help me; I wanted a fix for the flowers I had already planted, not a recommendation to start over completely with new plants that would be much more expensive to buy and difficult to care for. And commercial products, like these cages and trellises from Gardener's Supply Company, wouldn't work in a mixed bed with tall and short blooms all commingled together indiscriminately—and would be prohibitively expensive even if they did.
Eventually, I decided my best bet was a variant of the "cat's cradle" technique described in the Fine Gardening article. Instead of making a small grid of stakes and twine to support just one plant, I'd build a loose grid around the entire bed. If the tallest flowers in the bed were 4 feet high, I figured, I'd put a row of stakes in and run twine across at a height of 3 feet. That way, if they started to fall forward, they'd descend one foot, hit the twine barrier, and (ideally) stop. But then a snag occurred to me: what about the other flowers in the bed that were 3 feet or shorter? They might still be tall enough to flop over, but they wouldn't be tall enough to be stopped by a barrier at 3 feet. Should I run several rows of twine across the stakes at different heights, to catch the different types of flowers?
After a little consideration, I decided on three rows of twine at staggered heights. The back row would be at 3 feet, to catch the tallest blooms. The middle row would be at 2 feet, and the front row at 1 foot. This setup wouldn't completely stop the plants from falling over, but it would catch them before they hit the ground—so instead of just falling down and lying flat, they'd drape over the rows of twine in a cascade. The tallest blooms that stood furthest back would be caught at the 3-foot level; ones further forward, or short enough to slip under the 3-foot string, would be caught at 2 feet; and the shortest and frontmost blooms would be caught at 1 foot. Instead of a vertical flower arrangement, the whole display would be tilted forward on a diagonal.
Naturally, I had no way of knowing how well this would work in practice, since no one else seemed ever to have tried it before. But it was a lot better than doing nothing, and a quick trip to Home Depot confirmed that it wouldn't be that much more expensive: just $6 for a packet of 25 bamboo stakes (dyed green to make them blend in with the foliage, although personally I think their natural color would look better) and another $3 or so for a ball of twine. For 9 bucks, we figured it was at least worth a shot, especially since neither of us had any better ideas.
We were actually planning to construct the grid the weekend before last, but our spring snowstorm but the kibosh on that plan, so we did it yesterday—after the snow had melted away, but before any of the flowers in the bed had actually popped up. I could have tried to do it by myself during the week, but I'm glad I didn't, because it turned out to be a job that's a lot easier with two people. Brian did the brute-force part of the work, driving the stakes in by hand to a depth of about 1 foot, while I stood outside the bed and sighted along the rows of stakes to make sure each one was lining up with the others. We put the back row a couple of feet away from the house, aligned the front row with the front of the planting bed, and positioned the middle one roughly halfway in between.
Once we had all the stakes in place, we ran into a bit of difficulty attaching the twine: the bamboo stakes were so smooth that the twine slid easily up and down them and wouldn't stay put in one spot. So Brian decided, rather than attaching the twine at the exact height we wanted for each row, to tie it in place just above the nearest natural segment break in the bamboo. That created enough of a bump in the surface to keep the strings from slipping. After that, we just wrapped the string twice around the middle stake in each row and tied it in place at the end. The result of all this was that the three rows of twine weren't exactly level, since they had to shift around a bit to take advantage of the knots in the bamboo, but at least they were reasonably secure. Attaching the strings was another part of the process where having two people proved handy, as Brian could hold the twine at the right height with both hands, keeping it taut, while I snipped it off the ball with scissors.
Once the horizontal rows were done, Brian completed the grid by running three more rows of twine across the rows of stakes, from back to front. These crossways rows slope downward, from the 3-foot height of the top row at the back to the 1-foot level in the front—so the finished grid now sits at an angle tilted up toward the sky, much like a solar panel. Now all we need to do is wait for the flowers to grow on up through it, and we'll see whether my cockamamie idea actually worked.
I did some hunting around online and found several proposed methods of propping up tall flowers, but most of them seemed impractical for a mixed bed like this one. This article on About Gardening, for instance, recommended staking each flower individually, tying the stem to a bamboo stake with twine looped all the way up to the bloom. This clearly wouldn't be feasible with so many flowers in one bed; I'd end up trampling the shorter blooms every time I stepped in to stake the tall ones. Fine Gardening suggested that the flower-flopping problem by choosing the right spot for your flowerbed and making sure to feed and water the plants properly, but that didn't help me; I wanted a fix for the flowers I had already planted, not a recommendation to start over completely with new plants that would be much more expensive to buy and difficult to care for. And commercial products, like these cages and trellises from Gardener's Supply Company, wouldn't work in a mixed bed with tall and short blooms all commingled together indiscriminately—and would be prohibitively expensive even if they did.
Eventually, I decided my best bet was a variant of the "cat's cradle" technique described in the Fine Gardening article. Instead of making a small grid of stakes and twine to support just one plant, I'd build a loose grid around the entire bed. If the tallest flowers in the bed were 4 feet high, I figured, I'd put a row of stakes in and run twine across at a height of 3 feet. That way, if they started to fall forward, they'd descend one foot, hit the twine barrier, and (ideally) stop. But then a snag occurred to me: what about the other flowers in the bed that were 3 feet or shorter? They might still be tall enough to flop over, but they wouldn't be tall enough to be stopped by a barrier at 3 feet. Should I run several rows of twine across the stakes at different heights, to catch the different types of flowers?
After a little consideration, I decided on three rows of twine at staggered heights. The back row would be at 3 feet, to catch the tallest blooms. The middle row would be at 2 feet, and the front row at 1 foot. This setup wouldn't completely stop the plants from falling over, but it would catch them before they hit the ground—so instead of just falling down and lying flat, they'd drape over the rows of twine in a cascade. The tallest blooms that stood furthest back would be caught at the 3-foot level; ones further forward, or short enough to slip under the 3-foot string, would be caught at 2 feet; and the shortest and frontmost blooms would be caught at 1 foot. Instead of a vertical flower arrangement, the whole display would be tilted forward on a diagonal.
Naturally, I had no way of knowing how well this would work in practice, since no one else seemed ever to have tried it before. But it was a lot better than doing nothing, and a quick trip to Home Depot confirmed that it wouldn't be that much more expensive: just $6 for a packet of 25 bamboo stakes (dyed green to make them blend in with the foliage, although personally I think their natural color would look better) and another $3 or so for a ball of twine. For 9 bucks, we figured it was at least worth a shot, especially since neither of us had any better ideas.We were actually planning to construct the grid the weekend before last, but our spring snowstorm but the kibosh on that plan, so we did it yesterday—after the snow had melted away, but before any of the flowers in the bed had actually popped up. I could have tried to do it by myself during the week, but I'm glad I didn't, because it turned out to be a job that's a lot easier with two people. Brian did the brute-force part of the work, driving the stakes in by hand to a depth of about 1 foot, while I stood outside the bed and sighted along the rows of stakes to make sure each one was lining up with the others. We put the back row a couple of feet away from the house, aligned the front row with the front of the planting bed, and positioned the middle one roughly halfway in between.
Once the horizontal rows were done, Brian completed the grid by running three more rows of twine across the rows of stakes, from back to front. These crossways rows slope downward, from the 3-foot height of the top row at the back to the 1-foot level in the front—so the finished grid now sits at an angle tilted up toward the sky, much like a solar panel. Now all we need to do is wait for the flowers to grow on up through it, and we'll see whether my cockamamie idea actually worked.
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Soup of the Month: Hearty Bluefish Chowder
As we entered the last week of March, I started wondering how I was going to handle the Recipe of the Month post. True, I'd already tried one new vegetable-based recipe in March, but it wasn't a soup or a salad, which was what I'd pledged in January to try every month this year. I was toying with the idea of going ahead and counting it anyway, but before I was reduced to that, Brian came to the rescue. Last night, he conjured up a brand-new soup out of his own imagination and an assortment of odds and ends pulled out of the freezer, fridge, and pantry.
Although this soup is heavy on the veggies, it isn't vegetarian. We happened to have some bluefish filets in our freezer, so Brian decided to build the soup around that. As an aside, this fish has an ecofrugal story attached to it. We originally received it as a gift from my folks, who had more of it than they could eat. The reason they had so much is that they had, in turn, received several pounds of it as a gift from a friend who'd gone on a fishing trip and caught nothing but bluefish—which he, unfortunately didn't like. So rather than let it go to waste, he gave it away to them, and they shared the bounty with us. Waste not, want not—a fitting starting point for this out-of-thin-air soup.
His original plan was to supplement the fish with some white beans we also had in the freezer, for an extra boost of protein. But upon consideration, he realized that the white beans might come in handy for Pasta e Fagiole, which is another favorite soup of ours, so he substituted a can of chick peas instead. Then he started chucking in whatever vegetables he had to hand: carrots, celery, onion, potato. To season it, he thought something along the lines of Old Bay Seasoning would be appropriate, so he looked up the ingredients and did his best to reproduce the flavor with what we had in the spice cabinet. As a result, his recipe has quite a long list of ingredients, many of which are only added in tiny amounts:
That's a lot of different ingredients, but I must say, the overall effect was very satisfying. Between the fish, chick peas, and chunks of potato, the soup was very thick and hearty, and the seeming hodge-podge of seasonings actually blended together into a very harmonious whole. The resulting soup was not only rich and flavorful, it was so substantial that I actually couldn't finish my bowl. (Admittedly, I'd also had one and a half whole-wheat biscuits, but since I typically eat a full bowl of soup and two biscuits, this soup is definitely extra filling.)
If you want to make this soup yourself and don't want to mess around adding a pinch of this and a dash of that, you could probably just add a couple of teaspoons of Old Bay—or one of the many homemade versions of it you can find online—and get much the same effect. Prepared that way, it should be pretty easy to make, and definitely worth the effort. Especially if you have several pounds of bluefish you need to use somehow, and grilling season is still a couple of months away.
Although this soup is heavy on the veggies, it isn't vegetarian. We happened to have some bluefish filets in our freezer, so Brian decided to build the soup around that. As an aside, this fish has an ecofrugal story attached to it. We originally received it as a gift from my folks, who had more of it than they could eat. The reason they had so much is that they had, in turn, received several pounds of it as a gift from a friend who'd gone on a fishing trip and caught nothing but bluefish—which he, unfortunately didn't like. So rather than let it go to waste, he gave it away to them, and they shared the bounty with us. Waste not, want not—a fitting starting point for this out-of-thin-air soup.
His original plan was to supplement the fish with some white beans we also had in the freezer, for an extra boost of protein. But upon consideration, he realized that the white beans might come in handy for Pasta e Fagiole, which is another favorite soup of ours, so he substituted a can of chick peas instead. Then he started chucking in whatever vegetables he had to hand: carrots, celery, onion, potato. To season it, he thought something along the lines of Old Bay Seasoning would be appropriate, so he looked up the ingredients and did his best to reproduce the flavor with what we had in the spice cabinet. As a result, his recipe has quite a long list of ingredients, many of which are only added in tiny amounts:
BRIAN'S HEARTY BLUEFISH CHOWDER
1 - 2 Tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 large celery stalks, diced
2 carrots, diced
1 large potato, diced
1/2 - 1 lb bluefish, cut into small chunks
1 can (15 oz, about 2 cups) cooked chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 bay leaves
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp dry mustard
1/4 tsp paprika
1/8 tsp ground ginger
pinch black pepper
pinch nutmeg
pinch cardamom
pinch allspice
water to (just) cover
Saute veggies briefly in oil. Add remaining ingredients and heat to a boil. Lower heat and simmer, mostly covered, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are soft (about 45 minutes).
That's a lot of different ingredients, but I must say, the overall effect was very satisfying. Between the fish, chick peas, and chunks of potato, the soup was very thick and hearty, and the seeming hodge-podge of seasonings actually blended together into a very harmonious whole. The resulting soup was not only rich and flavorful, it was so substantial that I actually couldn't finish my bowl. (Admittedly, I'd also had one and a half whole-wheat biscuits, but since I typically eat a full bowl of soup and two biscuits, this soup is definitely extra filling.)If you want to make this soup yourself and don't want to mess around adding a pinch of this and a dash of that, you could probably just add a couple of teaspoons of Old Bay—or one of the many homemade versions of it you can find online—and get much the same effect. Prepared that way, it should be pretty easy to make, and definitely worth the effort. Especially if you have several pounds of bluefish you need to use somehow, and grilling season is still a couple of months away.
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Savings challenge, week 4: Kitty cuisine
This week's topic in the Bankrate 52-Week Savings Challenge is about how to save on dog food by making it yourself. Since we don't have a dog, this challenge isn't really relevant for us; dogs and cats have different nutritional needs, and the recipes they recommend for dogs wouldn't necessarily be healthful for cats. But I figured I might as well use the topic as an opportunity to talk about what we feed our cats, and how much it costs us.
When we got our first cat, Amélie, about eleven years ago, we initially tried feeding her a combination of canned food and dry food, since that's what they'd been giving her at the shelter. However, we quickly discovered that she wasn't all that interested in the canned food; she'd eat a couple of bites of it, then walk away and leave the rest. This seemed awfully wasteful, so we asked our vet about it, and he said there should be no problem with feeding her just dry food. (It's worth noting that not all vets agree with this view. When I researched cat food on ConsumerSearch, I found that some of the experts cited in the report say cats have a low "thirst drive" because they've evolved to get most of the moisture they need from their food. Thus, on a diet of dry food, they won't get enough water and will be prey to kidney and bladder problems. However, the report adds that "most vets" see no problem with dry food, and I was more inclined to take the advice of our vet, who had actually seen and examined Amélie, than one who had never met her.)
The dry food we gave Amélie was the Authority brand from PetSmart, since it's what she was used to. An 18-pound bag of the stuff cost $27 and lasted us about four months, so altogether it cost us about $81 a year to feed her. Now, admittedly, this is not a grain-free "premium" brand, which is what many vets consider ideal for cats. However, once again, vets are divided on this issue; the cat food FAQ at PetMD.com, for instance, says that grain-free foods are "not necessarily" preferable to formulas with some grain. The main point on which all sources seem to agree is that the chief ingredient in any cat food should be meat, since cats are true carnivores and can't get all the nutrients they need from plants. The Authority food met this standard, and once again, our vet said it was fine, and we knew she'd eat it happily, so we decided not to mess with success.
Of course, I can't honestly claim that Amélie never ailed a day in her life on this diet, since she developed hyperthyroidism at age 11 and eventually died at 13 from a rare brain disorder, but neither of these problems is likely to have had anything to do with her diet. (Vet Lisa Pierson at CatInfo.org notes that there may be some link between thyroid problems and a diet high in fish or soy, but Authority doesn't contain either of these.) We can say for a fact that she never developed urinary tract infections, diabetes, or any of the other problems that Pierson insists will result from feeding your cat dry food.
You might think that if this worked fine for Amélie, we'd just stick with the same regimen for our new kittens. But we decided, since so many vets seem to recommend canned food over dry, to try them on a mixture of the two and see how they liked it. We found that they would eat canned food readily enough, as long as they weren't given too much at once—maybe a third of a small can or a sixth of a large one. (We also found, to our amusement, that when we give each one her own dish of food, she will eat part of it and then switch bowls with her sister, as if she's wondering whether the other bowl has something better than what she ordered.) So we give them a dollop of canned food every evening, and for the rest of the day, we leave out a big dish full of the dry stuff for them to nosh on at will. Our medium-sized tart pan, which we've never actually used for baking, turns out to be just the right size for the two of them to share with minimal spillage.
We've been getting our canned cat food from Trader Joe's. A 5.5-ounce can of their food costs only 79 cents, making it actually cheaper than most of the brands sold in little cans at the supermarket—and the quality, according to ConsumerSearch, is far better. It's not grain-free, but neither are many "premium" cat foods, and our cats eat it up quite happily. So, if we figure they go through a can of this stuff every 6 days, that works out to around $48 per year. That's on top of the dry food, which, if they were going through it at the same rate as Amélie, would be another $162 per year. However, it's a bit early to say whether they're actually eating the same amount she did; they might go through it faster because they're younger and more active, or slower because they're getting canned food as well. We should have a better idea in a couple of weeks, but this estimate is good enough for now.
There's one additional component in our new cats' diet that we didn't give to Amélie. When we took them to the vet for their first check-up, he said they were both suffering from upper respiratory infections, and he said it was likely they would always be prone to them after spending most of their first year in a shelter. He said a lysine supplement might help, so we looked for the stuff at several pet stores. However, all we could find was one bag of extremely expensive cat treats at our local pet boutique; the big stores didn't have even that. Our cats love the treats, but at $6 a bag, they would add about $150 a year to the cost of feeding them, so I went online looking for other alternatives. After a bit of research to compare prices and reviews, I ordered a small jar of powdered lysine from PetFoodDirect.com. (It would have cost less per ounce to buy a bigger jar of a different brand, but I wanted to make sure they would eat it first.)
It's too early to tell at this point whether the lysine is actually doing them any good, but I figure it's worth keeping them on it if it's not too expensive. The little jar cost $18 with shipping and should last about 50 days. That's only a bit cheaper than the treats—about $130 per year. However, now that I know they'll eat lysine in powdered form, I can try them on the pure stuff, with no added flavor, which is a lot cheaper. Pet owners on this forum say they give their cats 500 mg per day of the pure lysine, so at 500 mg per cat per day, a 250-gram jar should last 250 days. At $17 for the jar (including shipping), that comes out to 6.8 cents per day, or about $25 per year. That's a lot better than either the treats or the flavored stuff. Of course, that's assuming they'll eat it at all, which remains to be seen. But for a possible savings of over $100 a year, it's certainly worth risking $17 to find out.
So, assuming this lysine maneuver works out, then the total cost of feeding our new cats works out to about $235 per year—64 cents per day. Compared to the $5 per day the Bankrate reporter says he spends on his three dogs, that ain't bad at all.
When we got our first cat, Amélie, about eleven years ago, we initially tried feeding her a combination of canned food and dry food, since that's what they'd been giving her at the shelter. However, we quickly discovered that she wasn't all that interested in the canned food; she'd eat a couple of bites of it, then walk away and leave the rest. This seemed awfully wasteful, so we asked our vet about it, and he said there should be no problem with feeding her just dry food. (It's worth noting that not all vets agree with this view. When I researched cat food on ConsumerSearch, I found that some of the experts cited in the report say cats have a low "thirst drive" because they've evolved to get most of the moisture they need from their food. Thus, on a diet of dry food, they won't get enough water and will be prey to kidney and bladder problems. However, the report adds that "most vets" see no problem with dry food, and I was more inclined to take the advice of our vet, who had actually seen and examined Amélie, than one who had never met her.)
The dry food we gave Amélie was the Authority brand from PetSmart, since it's what she was used to. An 18-pound bag of the stuff cost $27 and lasted us about four months, so altogether it cost us about $81 a year to feed her. Now, admittedly, this is not a grain-free "premium" brand, which is what many vets consider ideal for cats. However, once again, vets are divided on this issue; the cat food FAQ at PetMD.com, for instance, says that grain-free foods are "not necessarily" preferable to formulas with some grain. The main point on which all sources seem to agree is that the chief ingredient in any cat food should be meat, since cats are true carnivores and can't get all the nutrients they need from plants. The Authority food met this standard, and once again, our vet said it was fine, and we knew she'd eat it happily, so we decided not to mess with success.
Of course, I can't honestly claim that Amélie never ailed a day in her life on this diet, since she developed hyperthyroidism at age 11 and eventually died at 13 from a rare brain disorder, but neither of these problems is likely to have had anything to do with her diet. (Vet Lisa Pierson at CatInfo.org notes that there may be some link between thyroid problems and a diet high in fish or soy, but Authority doesn't contain either of these.) We can say for a fact that she never developed urinary tract infections, diabetes, or any of the other problems that Pierson insists will result from feeding your cat dry food.
You might think that if this worked fine for Amélie, we'd just stick with the same regimen for our new kittens. But we decided, since so many vets seem to recommend canned food over dry, to try them on a mixture of the two and see how they liked it. We found that they would eat canned food readily enough, as long as they weren't given too much at once—maybe a third of a small can or a sixth of a large one. (We also found, to our amusement, that when we give each one her own dish of food, she will eat part of it and then switch bowls with her sister, as if she's wondering whether the other bowl has something better than what she ordered.) So we give them a dollop of canned food every evening, and for the rest of the day, we leave out a big dish full of the dry stuff for them to nosh on at will. Our medium-sized tart pan, which we've never actually used for baking, turns out to be just the right size for the two of them to share with minimal spillage.We've been getting our canned cat food from Trader Joe's. A 5.5-ounce can of their food costs only 79 cents, making it actually cheaper than most of the brands sold in little cans at the supermarket—and the quality, according to ConsumerSearch, is far better. It's not grain-free, but neither are many "premium" cat foods, and our cats eat it up quite happily. So, if we figure they go through a can of this stuff every 6 days, that works out to around $48 per year. That's on top of the dry food, which, if they were going through it at the same rate as Amélie, would be another $162 per year. However, it's a bit early to say whether they're actually eating the same amount she did; they might go through it faster because they're younger and more active, or slower because they're getting canned food as well. We should have a better idea in a couple of weeks, but this estimate is good enough for now.
There's one additional component in our new cats' diet that we didn't give to Amélie. When we took them to the vet for their first check-up, he said they were both suffering from upper respiratory infections, and he said it was likely they would always be prone to them after spending most of their first year in a shelter. He said a lysine supplement might help, so we looked for the stuff at several pet stores. However, all we could find was one bag of extremely expensive cat treats at our local pet boutique; the big stores didn't have even that. Our cats love the treats, but at $6 a bag, they would add about $150 a year to the cost of feeding them, so I went online looking for other alternatives. After a bit of research to compare prices and reviews, I ordered a small jar of powdered lysine from PetFoodDirect.com. (It would have cost less per ounce to buy a bigger jar of a different brand, but I wanted to make sure they would eat it first.)
It's too early to tell at this point whether the lysine is actually doing them any good, but I figure it's worth keeping them on it if it's not too expensive. The little jar cost $18 with shipping and should last about 50 days. That's only a bit cheaper than the treats—about $130 per year. However, now that I know they'll eat lysine in powdered form, I can try them on the pure stuff, with no added flavor, which is a lot cheaper. Pet owners on this forum say they give their cats 500 mg per day of the pure lysine, so at 500 mg per cat per day, a 250-gram jar should last 250 days. At $17 for the jar (including shipping), that comes out to 6.8 cents per day, or about $25 per year. That's a lot better than either the treats or the flavored stuff. Of course, that's assuming they'll eat it at all, which remains to be seen. But for a possible savings of over $100 a year, it's certainly worth risking $17 to find out.
So, assuming this lysine maneuver works out, then the total cost of feeding our new cats works out to about $235 per year—64 cents per day. Compared to the $5 per day the Bankrate reporter says he spends on his three dogs, that ain't bad at all.
Monday, March 23, 2015
DIY cat tree
As I mentioned last week, Brian and I have recently adopted two adolescent kittens into our home (our previous cat, our beloved Amélie, having died in February). We are still adjusting to the difference between one sedate, mature cat, who even in her youth was never much inclined to romp around or jump on anything above couch height, to two very active, energetic kitties under a year old. For instance, while Amélie would occasionally prowl around the legs of my chair and meow when she thought I was paying too much attention to my work and too little to my cat (who was clearly much more important), our new kitties, Gwen and Winnie, will simply hop up on my desk and place themselves between me and the computer screen. Of course, that's not necessarily a sign that they want attention, just that they want to investigate the contents of my desk and don't mind if I happen to be using it at the time.One change we're not prepared to adjust to, however, is that while Amélie was pretty content with her homemade scratching post, Gwen and Winnie appear to consider the doormat and the back of my desk chair more suitable scratching surfaces. Before turning to behavioral therapy (such as the ol' squirt gun) to cure them of this habit, we thought perhaps we'd try offering them a new post that might be more to their liking. They're both a little bit bigger than Amélie, as well as more limber, so we figured they might need something a little taller that they could really stretch up against. And as long as we were getting a new post, we thought it might be a good idea for it to have some sort of shelf or perch on it where they could sit to look out the office window and watch the birds. (Amélie used to like being picked up and held up to the window, but the new cats don't seem to care for it.)
We checked out some of the cat "furniture" at PetSmart and Petco and found quite an extensive collection of taller pieces, but the prices were high as well—starting around $80 and ranging up into the high three figures. And aside from the cost, none of these pricey cat trees was exactly the right size and shape to fit into the space we had in mind. So the obvious solution was to take up tools once again and DIY ourselves a new cat tree, one specifically designed to fit both our space and the tastes of our new kitties.
After measuring the space, Brian took stock of his supply of scrap wood. The old post was made of two-by-fours, but Brian quickly determined that he didn't have any pieces long enough for the main "trunk" of the cat tree. He also didn't have a single piece of plywood large enough to make a base for it, since this new, taller post would require a much broader base to be stable. However, after hunting through the pile, he came up with a sawn-off branch that we'd scavenged from a friend who had recently taken down a tree, and he thought this would make a perfectly good trunk for the cat tree. Since it was irregularly shaped, we'd have to wrap it in rope or twine rather than using carpet samples as we had for the old scratching post, but that was okay; since our cats had already shown a taste for scratching our front entry rug, which was made of sisal, it seemed likely that rope would be more to their taste than carpet anyway, and it would probably hold up better as well.
As for the base, his original ideal was to take a wide, heavy plank, saw it in half, and join the two pieces together to form a rough square that would be sturdy enough to support the trunk. But after he fiddled around with the two chunks of wood for a while and couldn't figure out a good way to attach them, he abandoned that idea in favor of a three-piece stand, with two parallel supports joined by a crosspiece. He cut these pieces out of a plank of pressure-treated wood he'd bought at some point for an outdoor project and ended up not using. I was initially concerned about whether the chemicals in the pressure-treated wood might be bad for the cats, but he assured me that he was planning to seal the wood with a coat of polyurethane anyway, which should keep any nasty toxins at bay. (And, as it turns out, pressure treated wood these days is far less toxic than the old stuff anyway.)
Once he had the base assembled, he drilled five small holes in the center to attach it to the trunk. In the center, he put one of the extra-long screws we'd received as part of the hardware kit for our ill-fated yard-sale futon. Then he used regular wood screws in the other five holes to make it extra secure. He repeated this process on the top to attach the platform, made from a scrap slab of painted wood that was about the right size to accommodate one cat. Since we'd be covering this top surface with carpet anyway, looks weren't all that important.
The next step was to cover the post in rope. We'd bought two 50-foot rolls of sisal rope—the only component we actually had to buy new—for about $12 at Home Depot. However, after some rough calculations involving the diameter of the rope, the circumference of the branch, and the amount likely to be wasted in overlap at each end, he still wasn't sure that would be quite enough. Thus, he decided to start wrapping the post from the top end, near the platform, and work his way downward. That way, if there was any exposed wood left, it would be right at the bottom, where the cats weren't likely to scratch it anyway. So he smeared the post with glue along about a foot of its length, then began wrapping the rope around and around it (tucking one end under right at the top to keep it in place).
Once he'd covered the entire glued area with rope, he added a clamp to hold it in place while he smeared glue over the next section and continued working his way down. When he ran out of rope at the end of one roll, he started on the next roll, tucking the tail end of the first one in underneath. Eventually, he had the entire post covered except for a section about two inches long at the very bottom, which he decided to wrap in ordinary household twine rather than leave the wood exposed.
The next step in the process was to cover the top platform with carpet. A couple of years earlier, we'd stumbled on a stash of carpet samples at C. H. Martin, a discount store in New Brunswick, for a couple of bucks apiece. We'd bought several of them, figuring we could use them as needed to re-cover the old cat scratching post when its surface wore out, and we still had one left. Brian wrapped it roughly around the platform, trimming away the excess to make it fit as snugly as possible. At first he tried securing it with carpet tacks, but eventually he switched to the staple gun, which was faster and seemed to hold the carpet in place more securely.
After that, all that remained was to apply a coat of dark stain and a coat of quick-drying, water-based polyurethane to the base. By the next morning, the entire creation was installed in our office, right next to the futon and neatly lined up with the bottom of the window. The cats were quick to investigate it as they do with any new object, circling it and sniffing at it curiously, but they didn't seem to get the idea what to do with it. So, throughout the day, I gave them a couple of hints. When Winnie climbed up onto my desk and disrupted my work, instead of picking her up and dumping her onto the futon, I deposited her on the platform of the cat tree, which she explored curiously for a few minutes before successfully making her way back down via the back and seat of the futon. Later on, I gave both her and Gwen a quick demonstration of how to scratch the surface of the rope. Winnie gave it a brief try and walked away, but Gwen took to it more eagerly, quickly figuring out that with all her claws out, she could actually climb up the tree instead of just standing on the floor and scratching. By the end of the day, she had managed, with some difficulty, to climb all the way up onto the platform. Winnie seemed to be having some thoughts about jumping up from the top of the futon to join her, but instead she settled for sitting below the platform and taking swipes at her sister's tail.It remains to be seen just how much use they will actually make of the platform, but as long as they're both willing to use the center post for scratching—in preference to the rest of the furniture in the office—we'll consider our DIY cat tree a success.
UPDATE (3/26/14): After the cats had used it for a few days, we concluded that the post was actually a bit too tall for them. They had a bit of trouble getting onto the platform from the futon, and the long post would rock back and forth a bit when they did. So Brian took the base off and cut the post down a little, removing that last two unmatched inches at the bottom. Now the reassembled post reaches just to the bottom of the windowsill, so the cats can still see out, but they have less trouble hopping up. He also added some felt furniture pads to the base to help stabilize it.
Friday, March 20, 2015
Gardeners' Holidays 2015: First Sowing (Even If It's Snowing)
Once again, the weather is not cooperating with the calendar.
Today, March 20, is the vernal equinox, the official start of spring. Google is celebrating the occasion with a Google Doodle of flowers blooming and a little honeybee buzzing among them. However, when I click away from Google to my local weather report, I get a Winter Weather Advisory warning of snow throughout the day, with total accumulations of 3 to 5 inches. As of now, around 10am, the first flakes have only just begun to fall, but if the weather report is to be believed, there's plenty more where that came from.
Reading this put me in a bit of a quandary, because the spring equinox is also the next Gardeners' Holiday in my calendar. Last year, I celebrated it as First Sowing by planting my snow peas, the first crop of the year to be seeded directly into the garden. This year, I was planning to do the same with new Cascadia snap peas, which we selected back in December to take the place of our old Oregon Giant snow peas. The seed packet says to plant these "as soon as ground can be worked" in the spring, but was it really reasonable to try and work ground that could shortly be under three to five inches of snow?
After mulling it over, I decided there was only one way to find out.
My first order of business was to open up the garden and check the soil. If it was still frozen solid, then obviously no planting would be happening today. But no, it was nice and loose and loamy, yielding easily to my experimental prodding with the trowel. So I figured I had nothing to lose by going ahead and putting my peas in. After all, they are snow peas (well, okay, snap peas, but they're in the same family as snow peas), so having a little snow cover shouldn't hurt them. It might even help them stay nice and sheltered while they germinate. All I had to do was get them into the ground before the snow started to pile up.
So, following the instructions on the packet, I made a channel in the dirt with my trowel about 3/4 inch deep, and I dropped the peas in every 2 inches all along the channel. Then I just scooped the dirt back in over them. I didn't even bother watering them: if the forecast is correct, snow mixed with rain throughout the day will take care of that part of the job.
If this works, in a couple of weeks we should start to see the first sprouts of the first plants of the 2015 gardening season. (Assuming, that is, that there aren't still 3 to 5 inches of snow in the way.) And if it doesn't, oh well, I can just replant them; there are plenty more seeds in the packet.
Even though the snow at this point is barely noticeable, I still feel very hardy and intrepid for having braved it to carry out my spring planting as planned. If it's time to plant peas in my garden, then by gum, those peas are getting planted, snow or no snow! Take that, winter!
Today, March 20, is the vernal equinox, the official start of spring. Google is celebrating the occasion with a Google Doodle of flowers blooming and a little honeybee buzzing among them. However, when I click away from Google to my local weather report, I get a Winter Weather Advisory warning of snow throughout the day, with total accumulations of 3 to 5 inches. As of now, around 10am, the first flakes have only just begun to fall, but if the weather report is to be believed, there's plenty more where that came from.
Reading this put me in a bit of a quandary, because the spring equinox is also the next Gardeners' Holiday in my calendar. Last year, I celebrated it as First Sowing by planting my snow peas, the first crop of the year to be seeded directly into the garden. This year, I was planning to do the same with new Cascadia snap peas, which we selected back in December to take the place of our old Oregon Giant snow peas. The seed packet says to plant these "as soon as ground can be worked" in the spring, but was it really reasonable to try and work ground that could shortly be under three to five inches of snow?
After mulling it over, I decided there was only one way to find out.
My first order of business was to open up the garden and check the soil. If it was still frozen solid, then obviously no planting would be happening today. But no, it was nice and loose and loamy, yielding easily to my experimental prodding with the trowel. So I figured I had nothing to lose by going ahead and putting my peas in. After all, they are snow peas (well, okay, snap peas, but they're in the same family as snow peas), so having a little snow cover shouldn't hurt them. It might even help them stay nice and sheltered while they germinate. All I had to do was get them into the ground before the snow started to pile up.
So, following the instructions on the packet, I made a channel in the dirt with my trowel about 3/4 inch deep, and I dropped the peas in every 2 inches all along the channel. Then I just scooped the dirt back in over them. I didn't even bother watering them: if the forecast is correct, snow mixed with rain throughout the day will take care of that part of the job.If this works, in a couple of weeks we should start to see the first sprouts of the first plants of the 2015 gardening season. (Assuming, that is, that there aren't still 3 to 5 inches of snow in the way.) And if it doesn't, oh well, I can just replant them; there are plenty more seeds in the packet.
Even though the snow at this point is barely noticeable, I still feel very hardy and intrepid for having braved it to carry out my spring planting as planned. If it's time to plant peas in my garden, then by gum, those peas are getting planted, snow or no snow! Take that, winter!
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