He thought it might be ’some sort of twill’. Several of us recognized immediately that what he had was not twill but I thought that perhaps a little bit of information on what twill is…and ain’t..might be useful.

The picture at the top is a twill that is probably the most accessible and well known to all of us – and that is denim. I put the pen in the picture to draw your attention to the twill weave effect, which goes diagonally on the goods. That picture was taken straight down the leg of an old pair of blue jeans, so although the ’straight of the grain’ is vertical, you can see that the twill effect runs diagonally.

The definition, per wiki: “Twill is a type of fabric woven with a pattern of diagonal parallel ribs.It is made by passing the weft thread over one or more warp threads and then under two or more warp threads and so on, with a “step” or offset between rows to create the characteristic diagonal pattern. Because of this structure, twills generally drape well. Examples of twill fabric are chino, drill, denim, gabardine, tweed and serge.” Twill

The one thing this definition does not mention (strangely enough) is that this structure does something else for fabrics: It makes them extremely “hard wearing”. Look at that list and what many times these fabrics are used for:
Chino: Men’s work pants and hot weather military uniforms.
Drill: Men’s work clothing where an element of protection is required; also used as coverings on items that have to take heat such as ironing board pads. Usually light colored or natural and all-cotton.
Denim: The original American work clothing: blue jeans. The original fabric came in a dual fiber form: the dark blue was cotton and the white or natural was actually wool. You can still get ‘wool denim’ clothing and fabrics from time to time and it is a fabric that the Australian Wool Board has promoted (for obvious reasons).
Gabardine: The number of various fibers that this material can be made from are legion, but it remains that this fabric is used for nicer levels of office clothing such as suits for men and women.
Serge: This fabric is not as popular in men’s suits as it once was but was considered very hard wearing; one weakness was that it had to be pressed from the back through a press cloth. The fibers in the weave are so numerous that pressing from the front caused shine.
Tweed: The best use of this form of twill is in outerwear as the fibers in the weave are relatively coarse.

So, what was the fabric that the blogger got? It certainly had a pattern of parallel ribs on it, but the direction was horizontal to the straight grain of the goods. I just made a skirt (thank you; I couldn’t find a navy pencil skirt in my size any place. I had to make one for myself) out of the same type of fabric, though mine is a mixture of cotton and silk. This weave is called “faille” and can be found in many different fibers. The ribs are more pronounced than in a twill (besides the direction being totally different) and this gives the fabric entirely different qualities in terms of draping, durability and so on. In general, it is seen as a dressier fabric than twills are and is generally not used in items such as pants, where durability in the seat and inner leg areas is a concern.

So, from a ‘bang for your buck’ aspect, what’s your best choice? Well, for rough outdoor work clothing, denim and drill can’t be beaten. For suits with slacks, gabardine is best (and even better if you get it in ‘worsted wool’ or a ‘worsted wool blend’ as the worsted processing produces fibers with a hard finish, which makes the fabric even more durable). For women’s suits and dresses, gabardine is a very good choice as gabardine (especially in lighter weights) has a very nice drape but will also tailor well. For outerwear, heavier gabardines and tweeds are very good choices. Remember – hold up the fabric in the item up to the light and move one hand up and down so that the light plays across the face of the fabric and you’ll be able to see the diagonal rib effect. That way, you’ll know you have a true twill.

And that I was DEFINITELY loath to replace by going out and buying new curtains or even making a whole new set of curtains. I figured if I could find something that I could use to ‘freshen them up a bit’ it was a winner. I needed something I could pull everything together with and I found it in the fabric section of Ikea.

Now, Ikea is definitely not for ‘girly girly’ décor fabrics – the designs are very strong on bright colors and Scandinavian feel, but I found some striped fabric in the same weight as the curtains that had the same aqua in it and a good dark brown. Eureka!! I had my color scheme. I got a dark brown cover for the futon and as you can see from the photos, used the striped fabric as a border of the curtains. With the rest of the fabric, I’m going to make cushions for the futon.

So, here is how I dealt with the curtains without taking them apart (The Lazy Aunty’s Method):

1) How to figure out how much you are going to need: Measure one of the curtains and estimate how wide a border you will want to put on and then add two inches on all sides for the fold over. Most home dec fabrics (except for the extra wide ones but this method works for them also) are 60 inches wide so make a sketch for yourself on a piece of paper and call the width 60”. Divide up that 60” by the amount of you borders. Let’s say, to make it easy, that the borders plus their fold overs are 20” wide and 60” long. So, on your sketch, break that up into three sections across the width – you’ll be able to get three of those border across. But you also need 60” long – that is 60/36” or 1 2/3 yards. Now, how many borders are you going to need? For anything over 3, you will need another ‘width’ – another piece that is 1 2/3 yards long. Out of two widths, you will get 6 borders – enough for three windows. So, you trot down to your local fabric store(and I do hope you have a local fabric store..there are so few of them left) and you buy 1 2/3 + 1 2/3 yards of this stuff – that’s a total of 3 1/3 yards. If you want tie backs or valances or anything extra like that, you’ll need more and we’ll discuss that at another time. If you are buying 100% cotton fabrics, buy some extra – like instead of 3 1/3 – get 3 ½ yards because they will shrink.

2) How to make the borders: First, wash the fabric in the hottest water you can get with a little bit of soap to get out any sizing and dry it. This will take any shrinkage out. Then iron. Take out your yardstick and measure across the width of the fabric and mark the borders and cut them out. If you have regularly woven fabric, you will be able to literally snip at the marks and rip them down to size, but if you don’t feel brave enough, mark with pins or a pencil and cut along the marks. Iron down the fold overs.

3) Lay out a pair of curtains on the floor or your dining room table or any large flat surface and decide if you want the borders on the inside or the outside. Lay the new borders on the curtains where you want them (hey, you might even want them smack in the middle – who knows?) and pin them right at the top below whatever header you have (tab tops are easy – if you have pleats at the top, you will need to take out the pleater hooks, etc.). Then, carefully smooth them down the length of the curtain, pinning the two together as you go, until you get to the bottom. If you get to the bottom and it’s a little bit short, then unfold the fold over you ironed down and pin it to match the bottom and re-iron that. If it’s too long, you can refold the bottom, pin and re-iron that. Sew along the edges of the borders and there you are.

4) Question: What do I do if I have lined curtains? Well, unless you want to sew through the linings (which I don’t recommend), then what you do is this – undo the stitches holding the lining at the bottom and on both long sides of the curtain and flip that up at the top before you pin on the border. You’ll need to be a little bit more careful when you run the curtain through the sewing machine to sew on the border so that you don’t catch the lining, but once you have the new border sewn on, you can then catch stitch the lining back onto the back side of the curtain and no one will ever know that your newly refurbished curtain did not always have the colorful border!
5) Question: What do I do if I get tired of the border? Ah – well one of the issues with curtains (unless you are using some of the Sunbrella fabrics or something like that, which is UV treated), is that even with a lining, you will get fading and if you are tired of the border but still want to use the curtains, if you take off the border (easy enough, just take out the stitches), you will find that the fabric that was underneath the border is now a different color. But Not To Worry!! If you are using cotton curtains, you can go down to your local store and buy some RIT dye in a color you like and using the washing machine method on the back of the box, you can take off the borders and dye the curtains a completely new color! Voila!

From a growing standpoint, places which ordinarily have not been ‘friendly’ to grains such as wheat (find a latitude on any globe where in your own mind – versus anyone else’s – you say, “It’s cold there” and you will find oats growing well there: parts of the former Soviet Union, Norway, Scotland, Canada and the northern US and so on). Weather conditions that make for poor growing conditions for wheat and many other grains (wet conditions, cool conditions, humid conditions, etc.) don’t seem to bother oats.

From a nutritional position, oats can more than hold their own with other grains. They are a great source of minerals such as manganese and selenium (which is something that we actually find it hard to get enough of in today’s diets), phosphorus and magnesium. It’s a great source of fiber.oats

In a one-cup cooked serving (which starts out as ½ cup uncooked), it’s got over 6 grams of protein all by itself and provides Omega 3 as well as Omega 6 fatty acids and a whole bunch of other stuff that frankly are really good for us in terms of vitamins and minerals. They are also a great base in terms of combining them with other food stuffs that will take advantage of the protein and other goodies in oats.

And don’t forget the fiber (because Aunt Toby’s all about the fiber).

Another item about oats which is actually sort of controversial is the issue of gluten. Oats, by themselves, out in the field, don’t have any gluten, so on the face of it, oats would seem a terrific food for people with gluten sensitivities, celiac diseases, inflammation issues and so on….EXCEPT, that people don’t buy oats straight out of the field. They buy oat-something – oats that have been processed, and unless you live in a place where oats and NOTHING BUT OATS can be grown, the mill that has been hulling, cutting, chopping, or whatever-ing the oats into the form that you buy, has also been doing the same things to a whole lot of other grains as well – like barley and wheat and so on. So, when you buy processed oats, you are actually getting oats with gluten contamination from those other grains. Unless the company making the processed product basically creates a mill that handles nothing but oats, consumers will be getting some gluten in their product. However – research indicates that a small amount of oats might be tolerated by people with gluten problems – but that they need to be closely monitored. Can Celiacs Eat Oats?

That being said, oats have their uses for the rest of us. Combining oats with other things is something that we are all very familiar with, if only we’d think about it. First example: the breakfast bowl of oatmeal. Do you know anyone who just cooks up oatmeal and then throws it in a bowl and eats it without…adding something else? OK – so you know people who throw in raisins and/or brown sugar. If nothing else, they should also be putting milk on it, right? Or maybe they are New Wave and throw some vanilla yoghurt and nuts on top. Bingo – more protein, more good fats. As far as I know, the only creatures that eat oats all by themselves are horses.

We like oats a lot Chez Siberia. In the winter, they are a favorite breakfast with milk or yoghurt.

Basic Oatmeal (not ‘quick oats’ or anything like this – made with plain, old thick cut, steel cut, or rolled oats)
For each person, take ½ c. dried, uncooked oats and combine with 1 cup of water in a saucepan.
Slowly, bring to a boil.
Cover the pot, turn down the heat to as low as you can get it.
Check after 5 minutes and stir. If it’s thick enough, put out in the bowls; otherwise, cover again and check in another five min.
Serve with things like: milk, yoghurt, (soy milk if you use that), dried fruit (if you use this, you might not need sugar), and brown sugar or honey if you feel the need.

At other times of the year, they make their appearance in everything from meat loaf to cookies and bars, bread, and the DH’s famous granola and muesli. So, that is what you will get here:

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (modified from The Fanny Farmer Cookbook, 1979 – makes 50-60 cookies)
1 stick of butter
½ cup veg shortening
1.5 cups of sugar (we prefer splitting it 50/50 between white and whatever brown sugar we’ve got)
2 eggs
1 tsp of vanilla
2.5 c. of general purpose flour (if you have specialty flours in your kitchen, a 50/50 split between bread and cake flour works really well)
2 tsp of baking soda
1 cup of oats (we use thick cut, but any rolled or cut oats will do; I have no experience with steel cut oats)
1 cup of semisweet chocolate chips.

Sift the flour and baking soda together. Cream the sugar(s), butter and shortening together. Add the eggs and vanilla followed by the flour and soda mixture. Check it for ‘looseness’ – it basically should be thick and heavy enough that you could really make cookies with it already; if it is too ‘loose’, then add, by tablespoons, more flour until it is. Once it’s really ‘cookie dough’, THEN add the oats and the chips. Put on greased cookie sheets by tablespoonfuls. Bake in a 375 degrees F oven for 11 min. Take off and cool on a rack. Baking Notes: Bake these between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. because otherwise, they disappear within moments – quite magically. Also, don’t try to make them either with all vegetable shortening or all butter. Does not produce a cookie that either holds its shape or resists breaking. These cookies are actually ship-able and will arrive 99% in one piece.

Granola (again, modified from The Fanny Farmer Cookbook, 1979)
Dutch Oven or other large heat-proof baking pot or dish
¾ cup light olive oil(find the stuff with the label, “For sautéing and baking”)
4 cups of oats (rolls, thick cut)
1/2 sesame seeds
½ c wheat germ (and keep your wheat germ in the freezer until you use it; the oils will go rancid if you do not)
1 cup dried coconut (not baking coconut, which has been coated with glycerin and corn starch, ok? – look for ‘dried coconut’ or ‘desiccated coconut’ in health food stores, natural foods, etc.)
1 cup honey (please do yourself a favor and do NOT use commercial stuff like clover honey – get something like wild flower that has some taste to it, ok?)
¾ cup hulled sunflower seeds
1 cup nuts (roasted unsalted peanuts, slivered almonds, cashews, whatever you can get)
1 cup small dried fruit (currants, raisins, craisins tm, chopped dates, etc.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Bring 1 cup of water to a boil and mix with the oil. In a large heavy pot, combine the oats, sesame seeds, wheat germ and coconut. Combine the honey with the oil and water, stirring well and mix into the dry ingredients a little at t eimt. When all the particles are covered with the honey mixture, put the pot into the oven and bake for 15 min. Stir well, Reduce the heat to 275 degrees F and repeat the procedure, stirring every 10-15 min. for 1/5 -2 hours, until the granola is thoroughly toasted. Let the granola cool, then stin in the sunflower seeds nuts and dried fruit. Store in the freezer or refrigerator in tightly sealed containers. Baking notes: This is a rather “soft” granola – this will not have crunchy clumps in it. If you want to produce that, then split up the granola onto cookie sheets, go through basically the same procedure, but don’t stir it up so often; it will clump up and get a lot more crunchy. Also, make the decision right from the get-go about what sort of granola you are going to make and if the rest of the family doesn’t like it, well, then..too bad. Unfortunately, at Chez Siberia, the DH offered to make custom batches for people and now he’s basically tied to the wheel of making ‘granola with nothing in it,” “granola with only nuts” and so on, which is most annoying.

Oatmeal Bread (Maryetta’s Oatmeal Bread from Beard on Bread, 1974)
4 cups boiling water
3 cups rolled oats (we use thick cut but regular rolled will do)
7.5 – 8 cups all purpose flour, preferably unbleached (we use bread flour, but regular will do)
2 packages of active dry yeast (we use 2 Tblsp. Of dried yeast that we get from the natural foods store)
4 Tablespoons of vegetable oil (we use the olive oil meant for ‘sautéing and baking’)
½ cup of molasses (we us ½ cup of our wildflower honey – again, any darker honey will do; the darker the better – best would be buckwheat honey)

Pour the boiling water over the oatmeal in a large bowl and leave to cool.
Stir in 2 cups of flour and the yeast and place in a warm, draft free spot and allow to rise, uncovered until double in bulk.
Punch down and work in the oil, molasses(or honey) and enough of the remaining flour to make s stiff dough.
Turn out on a floured board and counter and knead, adding flour if necessary, to make a smooth, pliable, firm dough; which will take about 10 minutes of good, solid kneading.
Divide dough into three equal pieces and form into loaves to fit three greased 9×5x3 inch loaf pans.
Allow to rise again, uncovered, until doubled in bulk.
Bake in a preheated 350 degrees F oven 40-60 minutes, until the bread sounds hollw when rapped.
Cool on racks before slicing.
Freezes well.

(photos courtesy of Racheliscocnut&lime and Pam-I-Am)

salmonella testimony

For those of us who have some concerns, what are our options?

One of Aunt Toby’s concerns is that even if I wanted to make my own peanut or other nut butter, I’d had to deal with possible contamination issues because I don’t have any control over how the nuts were handled before they got to my kitchen counter. Considering the description of the conditions of the warehousing and processing facilities of PCA, I certainly wonder what conditions are elsewhere. At the same time, I have some concerns about what I’m getting in my peanut butter just to start with.

Here’s the nutritional info from the label of the ‘organic’ peanut butter that gets used Chez Siberia:
Serving size: 2 Tablespoons
Calories: 200
Fat Calories: 150
Total Fat: 16 g
Sat. Fat: 4 g.
Total Carb: 6 g.
Dietary Fiber: 2 g.
Sugars: 2g.
Protein: 8 g.
Sodium: 85 mg.

A spread that we’ve fallen in love with at our house, and which has been used as a dip, sandwich spread, and wrapper filling, is Hummus, that humble stuff from the Middle East made up of mashed up garbanzo beans and a couple of other ingredients. Here’s a recipe that comes from the “Flat Belly Diet Cookbook” (2008, Rodale Press): Rodale Cookbook

“1 can (15.5-19 oz) garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed.
½ c. Tahini (sesame seed paste – get the light colored one)
4 cloves of garlic
¼ freshly squeezed lemon juice
¼-1/2 c. of water
¼ tsp of salt

Place the beans, tahini, garlic, lemon juice, ¼ c. of water and salt into a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Process until smooth. Add more water, if needed, until the hummus reaches the desired consistency.”

Now, we don’t use any added salt Chez Siberia, so we did not use salt. I did not have any lemons in the house, so I used the bottled lemon juice I had in the fridge. We don’t have a food processor, so I used our trusty blender, and other than having to stop it and stir everything around a couple of times to make sure nothing got jammed into the blades at the bottom, it worked fantastically. The whole process took all of about 10 minutes, tops – and that’s with all the additional stirring. If Aunt Toby had a food processor, I bet we’d be able to knock this off in half the time.

The one secret NOT told in the cookbook is this: RESIST THE URGE TO EAT THIS STUFF RIGHT AWAY. If you do, all you will taste is the garlic. Put it into some sort of sealable container and put it into your fridge for 24-36 hours, and THEN take it out. Fantastic.

Here’s the nutritional information on this recipe (one of the great aspects of this cookbook is that every recipe has nutrition per serving info):
Serving size: ¼ cup
Calories: 126
Total Fat: 9 g.
Sat. Fat: 2 g.
Total Carbs: 10 g.
Dietary Fiber: 2 g.
Sugars: -0-
Protein: 5 g.
Sodium: 121 mg. (I did not use the extra salt and I washed and drained the garbanzos several times, so I don’t think there is a whole lot of salt in there – that is from the addition of the salt in the recipe)

Now, I’m sure some of my faithful readers are saying, “But, Aunt Toby, I can get more protein out of a serving of peanut butter.”

Ah, but here’s the rub on that. Have you ever tried to make a peanut butter sandwich with 2 tablespoons of peanut butter? Think about it. To get enough ‘stuff’ between two slices of bread that you end up feeling as if you really ate something, you used more than 2 tablespoons, didn’t you? Check out that photo at the top — I measured out those servings very carefully onto that plate. That really IS 2 tablespoons of peanut butter and ¼ cup of the hummus.

Most people making a PB&J are using at least 3 tablespoons – and yes, you will get 12 grams of protein – WOOHOO. You are also ‘buying’ that protein with a tremendous amount of fat. Most of it is not terrible fat either – peanut oil is not truly ‘naughty’. But in terms of calories, there are only 50 calories in that serving of peanut butter that are NOT fat. You are ‘buying’ your protein a lot more cheaply in terms of calories and fat in the hummus. The other thing is that you get to eat a whole ¼ cup of hummus – that’s twice as much (1 cup = 16 tablespoons). You can put that into a tortilla with some salad greens, cucumber and pepper and feel as if you’ve really filled yourself up.

Can you get kids to eat this stuff for lunch? You bet. I like it as a sandwich with lots of greens but if your kids would rather, make it into a wrap, or take a tortilla, cut into quarters, toast it a little bit and have them use it like crackers to scoop it up. With a little freezer packet in their lunch kits, they could take a small container and eat it with crackers and some fruit.

Cost: Well, I had a lot of these ingredients in my fridge and freezer already. All I had to do was buy a can of garbanzos and some tahini, but here’s my estimate as to how much this cost me:
1 can of garbanzos: $.69
½ c. of tahini: $.1.33
Garlic: A bulb of garlic is in the $.50 range and has between 10-15 cloves, so we’ll throw in $. 20 for the garlic.
Lemon Juice: I am going to estimate $.50 for ¼ c. of bottled lemon juice here

Total cost to me: $2.63 and it made about a pound of hummus. Each serving cost 65 cents. Now, I’ve bought store-made hummus and it’s $4.99 a pound, so doing this is definitely worth the money.

Now, back to the original point about contaminated peanut butter: Can canned garbanzo beans (or any other bean for that matter) become contaminated? You bet. As a matter of fact, last year there was a huge recall of called beans of various kinds from a company in Michigan that were contaminated with Clostridium Botulinum – Botulism, another potentially deadly contaminant. The difference to me, though, is that when canned goods are contaminated, and the bacteria start to grow, they produce gas and the ends of the cans start to bulge – a sure sign of contamination. The average consumer can pick up a can and SEE the bulging, and can call the local health department; the CDC, their local grocery store and can dispose of the product safely. With those peanut products and peanut butter, there was no way to tell. It might just be more worth your while and peace of mind to…make a different and perhaps safer and cheaper spread.

Can you make hummus out of other beans than garbanzos? I’ve never tried it but I’d like to try the same thing with black beans, which are my absolute favorite bean. I think they have a lot of flavor – the color is bound to be a bit funky (ever eat black bean soup – the flavor is to die for but the color….eeeeeeew), but I’ll bet with some Mexican spices, it will be fantastic with tortillas.

Learn to do one thing really well. Make that a bunch of times…and then learn to make another thing really well and make THAT a bunch of times.

Example One: Men’s shirts. I make men’s shirts for the DH as an act of love (ok, I admit it), but also because he has a sort of shoebox shaped body and the tails are just not long enough. Men’s shirts, from a sewing and design aspect are like Japanese pen and ink drawings: the buffet of design opportunities is pretty narrow. The items that are usually seen when the man wears it with a suit or sportcoat are the collar, the cuffs and the band (and even then, with a tie an observer doesn’t get to see much, actually) . The only other place to do anything is the yoke in the back and the chest pocket and even then, there is this really thin line between “Oh, that’s nifty” and “Oh, you’re subbing for The Tumbleweed Boys” this evening?” THE item that separates a shirt that looks really good and professional and one that does not is the placket in the sleeve where the cuff opening is. I’ve made a bunch of shirts for the DH and I STILL have to open up David Paige Coffin’s book, Shirtmaking: Developing Skills for Fine Sewing to the section on this. Every…single….time. I literally have the book open on my ironing board while I’m flipping the pieces around, ironing them, pinning them and so on. I figure after three or four more shirts, I might feel slightly more competent. I’m a whole lot better at sewing up these shirts now, so I use my time in a more efficient way.

David Page Coffin’s Shirtmaking Book

Example Two: The TNT. For those of you who are not ‘sewists’ (that’s what we’re calling ourselves these days), “TNT” is not going to have a whole lot of meaning. It stands for ‘Tried and True’ and refers to a pattern that someone has gone to the trouble to work out all the fitting issues with, and then has made numerous times, in various permutations, until frankly they could cut it out, in the dark with only the light from the weeny bulb in the sewing machine to do it by ..and sew it the same way and still come out with something that looks fantastic. The two dresses above are the start of a TNT for me. The pattern is McCalls 5701. McCalls 5701

This dress is described as: Pullover dresses …have side front panel and pockets, back pleats and self faced bands; dress A has contrast bands; dress B has optional jewel trim; length for dresses is 2″ above mid-knee.
If you go to the link and then scroll down so that you see the line drawing of the front and back views you will see this is not a terribly complicated dress but it does have several redeeming qualities that have endeared it to me:

1) No zipper. Aunt Toby has, over the years, conquered many of her sewing fears: buttons and buttonholes, lapels, boning. She still hates putting in zippers. This dress has no zippers.
2) It’s got some seam interest in the front AND usable pockets.
3) It’s got some action going on in the back. There is actually too much fabric for someone as short as Aunt Toby is, so I’ve modified it but it is still interesting coming…and going.

What I can do to make this into a true TNT:
1) Redraft the pattern piece for the back and take all that extra fabric out.
2) Put a seam in the front that mimics the seam in the upper back that is in the back
3) Take out the pockets completely and just continue those seam lines that are in the front right down to the hemline.

My inspiration for making the commitment to a TNT is a wonderful sewing blogger with a great site called Diary of a Sewing Fanatic

Carolyn is the absolute queen of the TNT – actually, that is wrong. She is the Mozart and Beethoven of the TNT. Her ability to riff theme and variations on one pattern is truly phenomenal.

Carolyn’s TNT Dress, Episode I
Carolyn’s TNT Dress, Episode II

She saves a ton of time and money by using a pattern that she is extremely familiar with. She knows exactly how much fabric is necessary to do this pattern – no ‘well, just in case, I’ll get another half yard.” She knows exactly how much time this is going to take her to do it, lined and unlined. She knows how this pattern is going to behave if she makes it in various kinds of fabrics. She’s been ‘married’ to this pattern for ten years.

I can’t think of one sewer who has not fallen into the stash trap – after all, most of us fall in love with fabric even before we fall in love with a pattern. But one sure way to waste money is to whack away at pattern after pattern after pattern that just…doesn’t…work. There are a few companies that actually draft patterns well; Burda is famous for its pants for example. But all patterns can give you trouble, which is why a lot of sewers make a trial item in muslin first to work out the fit and any technical issues before they cut into the real stuff. Once you have that muslin, you can put the changes into the paper pattern and off you go. Once you’ve made something enough, you can let your imagination loose in terms of interpreting what is the latest ‘on-trend’ item from a top designer…using your TNT as a base. We all like to be in fashion (yes, I realize this is hard to believe that Aunt Toby is someone who loves ‘teh fashion’ but I do) and look well – one way to get the look AND have it fit, look smart, and save time and money is by having a TNT.

When you have a pattern that you’ve committed to – and have made several times and can see the possibilities with…ah….THAT’s a relationship that can last and can save you money in both the short term and the long haul.
(a note on those two dresses: the one on the left is made out of 100% wool gabardine and is lined; the one on the right is made from stretch cotton sateen and is not lined)

No, that photo at the top is NOT Aunt Toby’s freezer, though there are moments when I gaze into mine and have the same feeling like I’m going to be climbing into it, not knowing what the hell I’m going to find. Do you have that feeling too?

Even when you stock up, and even if you know one week later that you bought chicken on sale, cut it up, packaged it and put it into the freezer, would you know how much you really have and when you put it in there. How about a month later? How about 3 months later?

Are your eyeballs glazing over (and not from the cold air, either – you can shut the door to the freezer now..)?

Aunt Toby is as guilty of ‘lack of inventory management’ as the next person, perhaps more so since I have this really deep seated belief in socking stuff away for the winter. So, I have more stuff there that I can’t identify, which makes me very grouchy indeed. And I’m going to cure that one RIGHT NOW.

One of the things that defeats people with freezer management is that a lot of us have advanced cases of ‘I know I’ve got xxx in there someplace, but I don’t know where’. So, when we want to find that, we are faced with basically emptying out the freezer until we come to a package that sort of looks like what we think ground meat or ham hocks or whatever it is should look like. At the same time, we all tend to pick from the section closest to us and if we come up a winner, well, if there is the same thing at the back of the freezer (or the bottom, depending on whether you have an upright or a chest), we are not going to find it. And eventually, guilt or a major family dinner or extra people arriving or whatever causes us to eviscerate the freezer to find the rest and…dang, freezer burned meat (or veggies or fruit or whatever)…again. And you throw that away because freezer burned meat just is very unappetizing (Aunt Toby actually advocates trimming off the freezer burned stuff and cooking it anyway, especially if you can do chicken cacciatore or stew or something like that; sauce hides all sins).

So, here is what Aunt Toby is going to do: Using my fairly dormant (but pretty well developed at one point) skills at taking inventory, I’m going need a couple of things for this:

1) Containers – I figure whatever foam or other coolers, wash baskets, heavy cardboard boxes, etc that I can find and I’m going to label them: beef, chicken, fish/shellfish, veggies, fruit, prepared meals(because I’ve got a whole whackload of chili in that freezer..I know that because I see it every time I open the door. Do I take any out? Nyet.)
2) Indelible markers
3) Heavy Duty Freezer bags
4) Grocery Plastic bags (or plastic tubs or whatever storage I can find easily)
5) Garbage can
6) Pail of hot water with a little bit of soap in it, a sponge and paper towels
7) A helper (if you don’t have a live in helper, find a friend and offer to do this for them too)
Inventory Sheets that look something like this:
Location/Shelf……..Item……Weight……Date Purchased……………..Took out

Right now, I have no clue as to when anything got purchased, but when I get new things, I can put that in. Also, for things that I took out of a bigger package, and broke down into smaller packages, how do I know how much is there? Well, I always repackage into meal-sized chunks, so I know that I’d be looking at a pound of meat anyway. If you can estimate by feel, then you should heft the packages and mark them accordingly. If not, find or borrow a scale.

So, here we go – I’ve got my boxes arranged around me and I reach in and the helper and I start pulling things out , undoing the wrapper if we have to take a peek and putting them into the boxes: chicken goes here; beef goes there, the chili and chicken soup and enchiladas go into the box marked ‘prepared meals’. Anything that is a disaster goes into the garbage. Anything like a bag of veggies that looks like it could use a new bag gets it.

Once the freezer is empty (and I’m not going to defrost this thing, ok; I accept that I am going to waste some energy here with this), the helper wipes out the freezer and dries it out with paper towels. While he or she is doing that, I am labeling all the packages with what it is and that day’s date and I’m putting everything that is the same item into one of the many grocery store plastic bags I’ve got. Now, my freezer is an upright, but I have some baskets in it. Chest freezers usually come with baskets. If you have baskets, put some sort of label on them because people do pull baskets out to rummage around in them and move things around before they put them back. Once you’ve put on your inventory sheet that the chicken is in basket 1, then as long as you always know which basket is number 1, then you are good to go.

So, now I have all of my stuff labeled, categorized and all lumped together. Someone now packs the stuff back into the freezer and shouts out the number of packages in the basket, plastic bag, tub or whatever you are using, and the location you are putting it in. Such as: “Chicken, 10 meals, shelf one” or “ground beef, 5 servings, basket 1”. And the helper marks that down on the list and you go through everything until you have everything packed back into the freezer.

THEN, what I’m going to do with this information is this:
1) I’m actually going to look at it. What have I got? What don’t I have? Between now and when harvest season starts, what do I have to clean up and make into meals? If I have a bunch of something there that I just don’t eat very often, I have to write myself a reminder – Don’t get that again – that is a waste.
2) I’m going to set this up with another set of columns on the right and keep a running inventory so that as I take something out, I’ll know when I get to the last two pieces or whatever and can put things on the shopping list.
3) I’m going to get a lot more creative with my cooking because dayam…I’ve got some very interesting stuff in my freezer that I need to move out of there.

Freezers are a great tool for food storage, but they really needs to be managed – and the best way I know of to manage them is to treat them the same way that the frozen food department managements in grocery stores do – rotate the stock, pull the old stuff to the front, move it out.
Photo at the top is courtesy of Aleksi Aaltonen
This post can also be found at Firedoglake

A lot depends on what sort of bread you’ve got – garlic bread, cheese bread, breads with herbs in them are prime candidates for stratas (the main dish version of bread puddings); raisin bread or plain white bread can be used in desserts. We’re all familiar with French Toast (the French do not call this dish “French Toast” just as they do not call the musical instrument we know and perhaps love as the “French Horn” – in France, this dish is referred to as ‘pain perdu’ which means ‘lost bread’–which is rather ironic, since it is really bread that has been found and turned into something rather nice), and something to think about is using left over raisin bread as a nice change.

But back to basics. If you want to recycle bread into bread pudding, strata, or French toast, the basic thing that you are doing is…soaking the bread (either in slices or cubes or just mushed up) in eggs beaten up with milk and either spices and cheese (for the strata) or sugar and spices for bread puddings and their dessert-y ilk. What you are doing, frankly, is whipping up a basic baked egg custard which you are changing with sugar and spices for dessert or cheese and other spices for the main dish meal.

Basic recipe for baked egg custardy stuff: ½ C. of milk for every egg you use. So, if you use 2 C. of milk, you use 4 eggs.

For bread pudding/desserty type of stuff: add to that 2 c. of milk and four eggs: ½ stick of butter, ½ c. of sugar, ½ tsp of vanilla, ¼ tsp nutmeg, 1 C. of raisins (or other dried fruit – if you don’t like this you can leave it out) and enough cubed, stale bread to fill a really big mixing bowl. Mix the butter and sugar in with the milk and heat until it boils, turn off, stir in the eggs, vanilla, etc. and pour over bread in a greased baking pan. Cook at 375 for 45 min.

For strata/main dish sort of bread pudding, add to the 2 C. milk and 4 eggs things such as: 1 tsp dried mustard, ¼ c. of minced onion, a little cayenne pepper, or ¼ tsp of curry powder, ¼ c. butter(half a stick), and at least 8 ounces of shredded cheddar or other hard cheese. Put the bread and cheese into a big greased baking pan, pour heated milk, spices and stirred in eggs over it and bake at 350 for an hour or 375 for 45 min. You can mix in things like sausage, or cooked broccoli or spinach before you bake.

And now for something (ahem) completely different: the soup course (courtesy of Carol Field, “The Italian Baker”, Harper and Row, 1985 – this book has two complete chapters on stuff to do with left over bread including Corn Bread):

Panada di Milano (Rich Easter Soup)
Makes servings for 6
½ C. plus 2 Tblspoons bread crumbs
6-7 C. beef broth
3 eggs
3 Tbs. Freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Place ½ C. bread crumbs in a small bowl and pour ¼ C. of the broth over the bread. Heat the remaining broth in a large saucepan to a rolling boil.

About 10 min. before serving, heat the butter in a small skillet over low. Add the moistened bread crumbs and sauté until golden, about 5 min.

Place the 2 table spoons dry bread crumbs in a soup tureen and break the eggs into the bottom of the tureen. Add the cheese and beat with a fork or whisk until well blended. Pour the boiling broth into the tureen and add the sautéed bread crumbs. Beat vigorously for one to two min. and serve immediately.

Here is something totally different in terms of use of stale bread: Salad course: Bread and Tomato Salad

Ingredients:
1/4 Loaf Italian Bread — Cubed
1/2 cup vegetable broth
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 Cucumber, Seeded, Sliced — Peeled
5 Green Onion Tops — Thinly Sliced
1/2 cup finely diced red onion
1 pound Tomatoes — Seeded, Chunked
6 basil leaves — chopped
3 tablespoons olive oil
Salt
Freshly ground pepper

In large bowl, moisten bread with broth; squeeze out excess liquid and discard. Sprinkle bread with 1 tablespoon vinegar; toss to distribute vinegar flavor. Mix lightly with cucumber, green and red onions, tomatoes and basil. Add olive oil and remaining 1 tablespoon vinegar. Season to taste with salt ad pepper. Toss gently; refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Can be made a day ahead. Season to taste. http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/17/Bread_And_Tomato_Salad2141.shtml

Finally, we’re going to go off into the next dimension – think of something sort of like bread..only better…think of (cue scary music) CAKE. Regular, not terribly exciting, not frosted..cake. Cake like: pound cake, yellow cake, angel food cake….heck, let’s go off the deep end and think about: sugar cookies, Vienna fingers, chocolate cookies — any cookie that is not filled. During WWII, in the UK, my mom and her nurse friends used to treat themselves to a dish whenever they could pull together leftover cookies, a tin of evaporated milk and some other things. We have better things to work with however. With this sort of stuff, milk eggs and sugar, we can make: Trifle. Trifle is NOT bread pudding – it’s pastry cream….and bread pudding.

• Pastry cream:
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 5 tablespoons cornstarch
• 2 1/2 cups 2% reduced-fat milk
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Plus enough broken up plain cookies or cake that will fill a big veggie bowl – one whole pound cake’s worth.

Plus some sort of fruit, fresh or frozen, ½ c. of sugar, ¾ c. of fresh orange or other juice, (and if this is being eaten by adults, ¼ c. of some sort of fruit based liqueur – Grand Marnier, Chambourd, etc.)

Preparation
To prepare fruit, combine 3/4 cup sugar, orange juice, and liqueur in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat; cook 3 minutes until sugar dissolves, stirring occasionally. Add fruit to pan; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer 8 minutes. Spoon mixture into a bowl; cover and chill.

To prepare pastry cream, combine 1/2 cup sugar and cornstarch in a medium, heavy saucepan over medium heat. Gradually add milk to pan, stirring with a whisk until blended; bring to a boil. Cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Gradually add half of hot milk mixture to eggs, stirring constantly with a whisk. Return milk mixture to pan; cook over medium heat 1 minute or until thick, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Stir in vanilla and salt. Place pan in a large ice-filled bowl until custard cools to room temperature (about 25 minutes), stirring occasionally.

Arrange half of cake cubes (or broken up cookies) in the bottom of a 2-quart dish (if you have a fancy glass trifle dish, use that – any clear glass bowl will do – it’s just so you see the layers of stuff in it). Spoon 1 1/2 cups fruit mixture over cake/cookies; top with 1 1/2 cups pastry cream. Repeat layers. Garnish with grated orange rind, slivered almonds or whatever neat sweet thing you’ve got (hey, jimmies!! Chocolate chips!). Cover loosely with plastic wrap, and chill at least 4 hours.

So, don’t throw away the last two pieces of bread or those half a dozen tired cookies. Put them in a plastic bag, put that in the freezer and collect them so that you can recycle them into something nummy later!!

This post can also be found at Oxdown Gazette.

Right about now, between McCain’s totally spinning out of control (on a personal and on a campaign basis); Palin “going rogue”; banks NOT doing what Paulson promised they’d do with their bailout money, and winter coming on, it’s going to be easy to just throw up your hands and say, “I can’t cope – there is nothing I can do – I’ll just end up sitting in the dark, freezing to death, starving.”

There are a lot of things out there that none of us can control. None of us is going to be able to go to Congress, lock the doors and refuse to let them have access to the bathrooms until they hold Paulson and the financial community accountable.

Ok? Get used to it.

But – on an individual and family basis, as I have written here before, there are a whole lot of things we can do. The problem is: which corner of the elephant do you sink your teeth into first?

As Curly says at the top (God, I love that film), “one thing…just one thing” – just pick one thing and take a good long hard look at that and see where you can make changes.

I’ll use myself as one good, sinful example: in many areas of my life, I have no idea how much stuff I’ve got or where it is. So I end up doing things like: buying another pair of black pants, another pair of black pumps, another size 8 set of knitting needles, etc. I also do things like when I see a sale on something I like, I tend to buy a bunch of it. I must come by this one naturally because when my father died, we found six pairs of darned (and redarned and redarned) socks in his drawer and elsewhere in his chest, 32 pairs of brand new, in the packages, beautiful wool socks that he’d bought because they were a great price and goodness-only-knows-when-I-might-run-out. Sort of socks as savings account.

Now, I have this problem all over the house, and it really is quite overwhelming and makes me feel guilty and stupid and out of control. So, what I did was PICK ONE THING: the stupid knitting needles (hey, I like to start small – the black pants thing is just too over the top – I’m really afraid of finding out how many pairs of extra black pants I have that I am not wearing). I enlisted the DH’s help (easy to get him to help get things organized) to run around the house, look in every odd paper sack, knitting bag, etc. and find all the odd needles. I happened to have saved a couple of those ‘in-notebook’ zip pencil holders and I organized them and the other notions and oddments (hey, so I have a collection of 12 tape measures – whose business is it?) and put them into a three ring binder that I put on the shelf in the room where I (shudder) keep my sewing machine, my fabric (another project), and other craft stuff.

So, how is taking an hour of an afternoon to get this one thing organized a thrifty thing to do?

Well, I now KNOW (really and truly know because I also wrote down the numbers on a 3×5 card and put it into my wallet) that I have no excuse to buy any knitting needles ever again..unless I want Size 0 or Size 1. So I have no excuse to spend money on that at all. I’m on the knitting needle diet – sort of like being a diabetic only with knitting needles instead of refined carbs – never again. When I added up all the additional pairs of size 8s (and 7s and 6s and 5s) that I’d bought (these babies are not cheap – we’re looking at $6-$7 a pair) because I’d forgotten I had them or couldn’t find them, I was looking at almost $100. Wasted money.

So, how to pick “just one thing”? Just look at where your money goes and pick one activity in your life that is costing you money and change what you are doing and how you are doing it. It might require organizing it, like I did with the needles (and desperately need to do with my closet), or it might require rethinking the planning (like cooking on weekends or using the grocery store circulars to do the shopping or getting up 15 min. earlier to make yourself lunch to take to work).

But it will do two things: first and most important, it will make you feel that at least in this one area of your life, you have exerted control, made it better and made it more workable, and secondly, it will save you money. It will not take you a tremendous investment of time and probably no investment of money at all. The first time is a little bit crazy, but it does get easier – just pick one thing and do that – start big, start small, but get started with one thing … and then move on to the next.

Here’s a few of the “one things” that I changed that got us more knowledgeable, organized and saved us money:
1) Sat down with the DH and the grocery store ads on Sunday and decided what we wanted to eat on a weekly basis.
2) Made it family policy that when the DH picks me up from work, we go home immediately instead of running errands which can lead us to go out to eat. Eat at home and then decide if going out to do errands is worth it or if they can be done at lunch, consolidated at the weekend, etc.
3) Looked in the freezer to see exactly how many pieces of chicken we had. At this rate, we don’t have to buy chicken, no matter what the bargain price, until Spring ’09.
4) Looked at myself in the mirror and decided that I really look awful in white blouses, thus eliminating the urge to purchase any even though they are being flogged in the fashion press.
5) Figured out that if we could get paste tomatoes for less than a certain amount of money, it would be worth it to can them; otherwise, not worth it (except for the whole sodium thing – but that is a quality issue).
6) Looked at the list of charities that we’ve been supporting and made some decisions in terms of what is really important to us as a family.

Don’t feel overwhelmed; just make your own list and start with one thing at the top and do it. Just one thing. (Thanks, Curly)

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)

A big part of the problem is that the whole concept of “being thrifty” got thrown out the window in about 1982 – that’s as close as I can come to a date when certain people — who before could not put their hands on a credit card for love, money, their first born or anything else — all of a sudden became a “desirable market.” The reason I know this is that when the DH and I were young, foolish and early married, we couldn’t get a credit card despite two jobs that together earned us $25K in 1979.

By 1985, when I was working at a different job and also serving on the loan committee of my company’s credit union, we were packaging “credit card consolidation loans” for people already in the hole (and taking away all their cards except for Sears so that they could get a new furnace if they needed one).

But, I digress — before this period, there were a lot of people out there who had “thrifty skills.” Yes, there were folks like the grannies who were washing and saving plastic bread bags. I don’t see that really as thrift – that’s recycling. Thrift was knowing that buying your lunch out was a big mistake. Thrift was knowing that buying crappy clothes and shoes was NOT a good way to go.

What happened to that? Well, besides the whole “loose credit” thing (and we know what that has done to us), what also happened was: Walmart, Payless, Target, H&M, etc. etc. all around the world. It is not just us here in the US of A who have been seduced away from thrift…but people all over Europe as well. The engine that serves all of those “cheap goods at cheap prices” is all the manufacturing that takes place in places such as China, Vietnam, so called American Samoa, etc. And we won’t go into here the effect of having that engine out there…and not within our national borders any longer. Suffice it to say that finding an American made pair of leather shoes is a chore.

So, what is thrift in today’s “buy and throw away” environment? We won’t get into your 401K (which looks as if it’s on life support at the moment – we all have this issue). Let’s look at the actual stuff of daily living.

Rule 1: Think of yourself as a diabetic: plan how you are going to put things into your mouth that will nourish you and get you through the day…and do it ahead of time. Diabetics do not walk out of the house and, on an adhoc basis, purchase stuff as they go along. The ones I know plan out and take stuff with them to work, school etc. They are not at the mercy of whatever coffee shop or restaurant happens to be out there inviting them in when they feel hungry.

How to put this in motion and what makes it thrifty: If you are single, this is not so easy. This is an opportunity to get together with friends, do some planning, buy stuff in bulk, cook it up, put it in the fridge and be ready for the week (and how great is that).

This works the same way for families as well: once a week, sit down, actually discuss “what do we want to eat this week,” make out the shopping list, buy, cook or package, and get ready for the week. Yes, it takes time away from watching tv and football and going out drinking with your friends (unless you want to combine drinking with your friends with cooking, which is actually a great idea). But it saves time and stress and money.

The last time I bought a take out salad that had cheese and nuts in it, it cost me $7.50. Trust me, you can do this from ingredients that you buy at the store for a whole lot less and you will eat better; you will have control over what you eat, how much you eat, etc. I used to spend about $50 a week on lunches and coffee. I don’t spend that any more. That money goes into the bank and accumulates.

That, my friends, is thrift. It is worth your while to do it and it puts money in your pocket (or keeps money from jumping out of your pocket and into someone else’s pocket). Thrift – it’s the new black.

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)

A lot of us are going to start feeling even more uncomfortable and insecure very soon, if we haven’t already done so. How to survive? For all the comparisons to The Great Depression, in my estimation, this is a whole new ballgame. Why? First and foremost: in 1929, people in the United States were not that far removed from subsistence living. Even people who lived in the largest urban areas still were doing many things for themselves, simply because the consumer economy behemoth did not exist the way it does today. The distance between farmers and other producers and consumers was not that far — consumers in New York City, for example, were buying their farm products from New Jersey and the counties in New York State within a couple of hours travel. No one was getting strawberries in January from California or Florida – that … did…not…exist. The whole economy of just going to a store and buying whatever you wanted/needed was much smaller than it is today; people many times had to make do, make over, or make their own.

My great aunties worked in the garment trade; one of them did put herself through secretarial school and graduated from the sewing machine to a typewriter at The American Tobacco Company. A real step up. Her sister sewed for a fancy ladies’ lingerie manufacturer her whole life. At home, they made their own clothing, were thrifty, and only indulged themselves on occasion. In the Depression, when their parents had to move out to Coney Island (because it was a lot cheaper than the Bronx), they all moved in together in a fifth floor walk up. They pulled together and reduced the entire family’s overhead. And they survived. The big book of the period was Five Acres and Independence (you can still get it from Amazon), aimed at people moving out of cities and surviving because they had a bit of land (actually, five acres is quite a chunk of property).

How are people going to survive the loss of major family income today — especially if they live someplace where either they don’t have a big yard or if they do, they might live where there are restrictive covenants (lawns of a certain size, planting of xx plants, no vegetable gardens where they can be seen, no hanging clothes on a clothesline outside and so on)? In a society where much of people’s image of themselves and their families revolves around financial resources rather than actual “do it for ourselves, thrift, etc.” skills, what are the possible outcomes for families who lose a big chunk of their income?

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)