Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Green Eggs and Ham

Well, ham anyway.

I was reading one of my many "frugality" blogs that I like and found this tidbit which now seems super obvious. If you by an actual ham, rather than lunchmeat ham, you not only get a higher quality product (relatively), you pay less. I tried it and it's true. The kid likes ham sandwiches. Apparently there is no limit to the amount of ham he will eat. So I make them for his lunch at work and sometimes for supper with soup or salad. This time instead of crappy plastic baggy of watery ham, I got a 2 pound watery ham in plastic wrap. Less plastic per serving. And almost 2$ per pound cheaper. I of course sliced it up and froze 3/4 of it. We'll get a half pound out of the freezer per week. That ought to do it. Now if only I could freeze parts of the giant blocks of cheese rather than buying the costlier smaller cheese. I've never had success with the smaller cheese.

Other frugal move: back to making my breakfast bars. This saves not only on breakfast, but on laxative since they are laden with fiber (or "fibre" as the trendy people say). The recipe is on here. This time I threw in some huckleberries and juice I had in the freezer so they are sort of a lavendar brown. Like if you fed a baby purple popsicles then it pooped. Ick. But tasty (the bars, not the poop).

Now if only this blasted heat would end!! I've kept the apartment 10degs cooler than outside so far, but only by shutting off all lights and unnecessary appliances, closing windows, and covering many of them with foil, cardboard, or sheets. Not pretty, though apparently effective.

I'll be back in the trailer for a week soon so can do a comparison between apartment passive cooling and trailer passive cooling. Honestly, I think the trailer performs better. It has more shade on it, and more effective cross ventilation to get it cooled off at night. Also, it's a good 10degs cooler during the day down there and often 15 or 20 degs cooler at night due to less pavement and more trees per hectare. (I could use any measure of area, but though "hectare" made it sound more sciency)

I am no longer going to try to be funny on this blog because Angela's blog is SO MUCH FUNNIER than I could ever ever be. I suck. She even committed to being funny all the time. I can't take the pressure!!

2 comments:

Fly Right said...

Oh, Jill, you're funny too. You said "sciency" and that made me laugh. Hectare indeed!

Anonymous said...

Hi Jill,

I agree -- you are funny! And in a ha-ha way, not a strange-in-the-head way. I didn't think a person could freeze ham, but you are right -- the lunch meat is terribly expensive. I know that I have frozen cheese before and it has been OK from what I can tell. But I've frozen the shredded stuff. Maybe if you bought big/cheap cheese and shredded it into smaller amounts, that might work for freezing purposes. I'll have to start thinking about buying stuff in bulk to save some $$ and some packaging. Angela