Making your own cottage cheese

Following hard on the heels of Stephen’s now-famous yoghurt-making antics, I thought I’d try out making cottage cheese, and see if the savings were enough to get me into the paper as well. I didn’t think that one would work twice, and thought I’d make do with the kind of crazy google hits were going to get off the frequent use of the word cottage.

If there is anything that makes me think of the 1970s it is cottage cheese. That and bean sprouts. But because around here we mostly stick to seasonal vegetables, getting greens for sandwiches is tricky, so sprouts it is. Likewise, with cheese being at times unreasonably expensive, cottage cheese is a good fat-and-protein addition to liven up lunches.

So how to make it? Easy. Put a litre of milk into a pot and apply heat, when it’s tipping 80-odd degrees, put one 1/4 cup of white vinegar into the mix and stir gently. The milk will curdle, and you strain the hot mixture through a muslin. And…. voila. Cottage cheese, or paneer, depending on your background.

I keep the whey and continually try to find uses for it, but let the curds cool in the fridge, mash it with a fork, and moisten it with some of that home-made yoghurt (you can’t use the whey, doesn’t work well). This makes it, to coin a phrase, just like the bought one.

And the savings. Well, I bought a litre of milk for this costing $2.09, and made 250g of cheese. 250g at the supermarket cost $2.35 the last time I checked. We’ll call that one “not a substantial saving”.

However, there are some key differences. My cottage cheese is incredibly simple to make, and is not time consuming. It is also without unnecessary packaging, and hasn’t been transported half-way across the country or world to my fridge (ignoring the packaging/transport of the milk, which I buy in bulk). Also, I know exactly what’s in it, something the me who has worked in food manufacturing knows is very, very important.

All in all you’d need decent access to a ready supply of cheap or free milk to make this one work well. But, there is satisfaction in making your own food, and in knowing that it has a low carbon-cost. Plus, you get to try celery sticks stuffed with raisins, and topped with cottage cheese! 1978 par excellence.

Greening the Nation’s bottoms

One thing most parents seem to share is dread at the cost of nappies. These things are seriously expensive, and if you chose the wrong option, then you’re talking several thousand dollars over the duration. One friend commented specifically that their grocery bill plummetted after their 2nd child graduated.

To address this dreadful expense my partner and I talked over our options before the wee tacker was born, and settled on re-useable nappies. And he being 8 months old tomorrow I thought I’d give a progress report.

In short: Not so bad.

We thought that things might become… different… when he moved to solid food, but we’ve been lucky and the reusables options has worked out well. The principle of the nappy is that it has a waterproof cover, an absorbent cloth, and a disposable liner. The liner is supposed to act as a “catch-all” that allows you to easily dispose of any offending solids. And that’s pretty much exactly what it does. You just gather up the liner and flush it. Since there are no solids heading in the wash cycle the need for a rigorous soaking/washing sterilisation process is less, and a decent warm wash followed by sunlight by kill any bacteria.

And that’s the next issue. Hot washes. We’re still tracking the power bill compared to last year, but it’s being complicated by bad billing in 2008 (a topic for another day), and this winter being so much more cold. But initial figures suggest it’s not too bad, and it includes the additional washing needed to keep on top of grubby baby clothes (feeding is messy!). Total power bill for 2008 was $1021, and this year to date is $633 (6 months). Mind you, we are only using warm washes, but it seems to do the trick, and every few months we spend a week doing spanking hot washes, just in case.

Meanwhile, costs for cleaning are not substantial. Our entire detergent bill last year was $58 (seriously…), and cost to date (January to July), is $50. That includes concentrate, baking soda (bleach), and white vinegar (disinfectant), the latter two bought from Moore Wilsons, the former from the Warehouse in 5kg bags.

Pretty good right?

But! I hear you say. But the initial cost of he nappies!! It’s a killer!!

Well, total cost of nappies including disposables (used at night or when/if we travel), is [drum roll maestro]… $602.

Compared to the cost of buying disposable nappies that is a fairly big saving. We figure the boy will run through a minimum of 6 nappies a day (not skimping and making him wear them for longer), but at least 8. A 20-nappy pack costs a minimum of $10 on special, but more usually $12. Wolfram Alpha tells me that we have 243 days between 4 December and 4 August. This gives us a potential consumption of 1944 nappies, costing us a minimum of $972. Of course this is in reality likely to be higher.

And, we can change the boy as many times in a day as we want. The most water we ever need use is the minimum setting on the washing machine, so 8 nappies or 15 nappies makes no difference. Plus, the disposable liners are actually good for a couple of washes if they have only been peed on! Another saving!

We’re thinking that we won’t have to make the outlay for the next size up nappy for several months (his growth has evened out at around 11.5kg), so the next $180-odd so a little way of, meaning that from here till then the only cost is cleaning and purchasing additional liners ($10 for 100, cost to date included in the $602).

The final word? Well worth it.

A field trip to The Reduced to Clear Store in Rongotai

Yesterday I visited the Reduced to Clear Store in Rongotai.

This shop sells short-dated grocery items at a discount to normal retail. It’s been the subject of some controversy as health professionals see it as a source of even cheaper high-calorie/low-nutrient food. (I don’t really want to get into that debate, but on their website the picture they have chosen for “kids lunches” is hilarious — a lovely healthy sandwich and a piece of fruit, misleadingly illustrating a  list of starch and sugar-rich processed foods.) Anyway, I was hoping that they might have pantry staples that don’t spoil and so on.

I have to say I was a bit disappointed. I really like the concept, and I was hoping I’d see a somewhat supermarket-like range of dry goods. But the shop is quite small, and the range seemed limited, mostly to confectionary and packaged snack food of a low-grade sort. I did see some cheap sugar (can sugar spoil? I don’t think so) but it was not markedly cheaper than the cheapest sugar at Pak’N'Save up the road. The only useful basic thing I saw there was liquid laundry detergent.

It’s possible of course that they are ramping up and that in months to come there will be a bigger range with the kinds of things I’m interested it. Reduced to Clear have a good website which describes a bigger range than what I saw. I presume it’s what’s available in their Auckland branch. The website would be even better if it had prices on it. Woolworths have all their prices on their website, New World have their special prices listed — I’d hope that a feisty upstart whose proposition is that they are cheaper would have their prices available for me to check before I leave home too.

Right now, I wouldn’t go there unless I needed to cater a 5 year old’s birthday party in a hurry. But I’ll pop in again in a month or two and see what the shelves look like then.

Squeezing out every last cent

One of the downsides of handy modern packaging is that it’s sometimes hard to get out that last little bit of something.

And this is an example. This hand sanitiser, in short supply currently because of people worried about swine flu, is no useless. This is because the level of the gel contained in there has dropped below the level of the tube that sucks it up into the dispenser. As a result, we’re out money because we can’t squeeze out those last few drops.

Now, some people would throw this away now because it is, after all, only a little amount of gel. Other more sensible people will unscrew the cap, and wait a minute or so for the gel to drop all the way to the cap end, and then use the remainder. But, that’s at least a dozen or more uses of that gel in there, and unscrewing the cap and waiting for it to trickle down involves an interminable wait when you have an infant on the changing table giving you hell about, well, anything.

So what to do?

Well, we’ve put the boffins here at Frugal Me onto this one, and we think we may well have an answer.

1. tip the now-useless dispenser bottle of gel upside down until all the gel runs to the cap end.
2. unscrew the top carefully, so as not to get gel all over yourself, and tip the remaining gel into the new bottle of gel you bought to replace the old one.
3. relax in the knowledge that you probably saved 50c, while also not telling those manufacturers get the better of you.

Awesome.

How to Pimp Ur Ride

Kids. One things kids are not is cheap. The mountain of crap you need to keep them in all the stuff you need to keep them in is immense.

And one thing the suppliers like to ensure is that you spend a heap more than you need to.

Queue: the introduction of the Mountain Buggy, Urban Elite.

This is a pretty good pram. There’s one on TradeMe as I write this selling for $310 (with two bids). It has a lightweight frame, a mobile from wheel, sunshade, rain cover, nice wide berth and high riding position for the baby who is both urbane, and elite.

Brand new they retail for around $800. Which I would not pay. And not only because the website makes me a little sick in my mouth… But because it is daylight robbery.

Second Chef, bless her frugal heart, found this buggy in a second-hand place for a whopping… $50. The only trouble is, it needed a little love.

But a whole lotta love we got. Number one issue was that the canvas on the seat area had started to give way, and the metal frame of the sun cover had worn through. So, we got in touch with the very nice man at Hurry Up Shoe Repair in the bottom of the State Insurance Building. He was able to whip up some patches and have the whole deal fixed for $18, as depicted.

The next problem was that the tyres had pretty much worn down, and were likely to pop unexpectedly causing both crying and shouts of exasperation from respective family members.

So, a quick trip to Capital Cycles, and for $30 they sold us two new tyres and put them on for free.

Finally, new sun/rain covers to keep the wee guy happy, which were a whopping $90 all up…

And there we go. One pram restored to former glory for under $200.

Verdict? Excellent. The pram is larger so the not-so-small man is happier. It’s lighter so it’s easier on Second Chef. And it has an adjustable handle so those of us taller folk don’t have to stoop to push it, and it therefore preserves the back.

A win.

Reusable vs. Disposable nappies

I’m hardly on old hand at this parenting business, but I think I’ve realised the financial benefit of making sensible decisions about convenience versus cost.

The main thing, and the philosophy of Frugal Me, is to think through what you’re doing and spending.

So here’s the thing. I just bought infant disposable nappies on special from New World and they were $10 for 30. Not bad, right? $0.34 per change. But with a minimum of 8 changes a day that adds up pretty quickly.

That pack of disposals might last for three days if we were using it exclusively.

But what we have been using is these Real Nappies. They have a reusable padding that’s extremely good at catching all the liquids, and these liners that catch any solids. You chuck the liners down the toilet (they’re paper so break down quickly), and wash the padding.

In total, we were given a Top-Up Pack, and bought an Essentials Pack. In total this costs, $118, and should last until the wee tacker is around 9kg, which is a fair old way off (hopefully). Once he gets that big we’ll just replace the outer pocket, and keep using the old padding.

So how much do we expect to save? Current estimates are around $2000. The boy is only 6 days old, and that would have cost us ~$16 in disposal nappies. If he keeps using nappies at the same rate we should have paid off the investment in around 20 days. Considering that he’s going to be in nappies for at very very least a year, we’ll be saving money (even considering washing the nappies – hot water and detergent), we’re still up.

Value for money in legumes

Following up on Stephen’s post on the musical fruit, I thought I’d weight up my options on chickpeas, one of my favoured legumes.

Chickpeas are blimmin great, they’re moister than most legumes, they make dishes like hummus (one of everybody’s favourites), and spicy pumpkin and chickpea soup.

The question you have to ask yourself is, is it better to buy dried or tined beans? From an environmental point of view you’re going to go for dried. Other than the cost of heating the water to cook the legumes, the only other cost is transportation of said legume to the market in which you the consumer purchase it. Tinned things on the other hand are heavy, using more fossil fuels, and need additional products like tins to be manufactured.

So no real competition there.

But. And there’s always a but. Are they easier on the back pocket?

100g of dried chickpeas from the local New World costs $0.99, and that seems like a pretty good deal right? Even with the cost of cooking them added in, they’re still going to come in cheap (incidentally, if anyone knows the kw/h used by a typical household stovetop, I’d love to hear it. The interweb has been useless in this instance).

I took my 100g of chickpeas, soaked and cooked them, and ended up with ~230g of ready to eat peas.

In the tinned variety, you can buy 415g of cooked chickpeas from the Pams range for $1.55. That’s almost twice as many peas for only $0.56 more, right?! Wrong. Once you tip off the brine they use to preserve the peas after cooking them for you, you end up with ~245g of peas.

My shonky maths stands to be corrected, so lets run through this carefully.

• Dried chickpeas are $0.99 for ~230g ready to eat, making them $4.30 per kg.
• Tinned chickpeas are $1.55 for ~245g ready to eat, making them $6.33 per kg.

What this tells me is that the manufacturer has added 68% more value to their product by cooking them for you, which is lovely for them but not so lovely for you – or the environment.

And this is why frugality is so important to me. By getting it together to cook my own chickpeas I’m not only saving myself money, I’m preventing communal resources being squandered on useless commercial activity. Worse, supermarkets are full of this type of crap. Instant pasta sauce? I’m looking at you, buddy…

UPDATE: There’s an “Turkic” store of some kind in Newtown that sells pulses. Their chickpeas are $5 a kilo. This would add up to $2.15 per kilo cooked. I’d say you’re hard-pressed to find a better bargain than that.

The place is on the corner of Constable/Riddiford St, heading towards New World. Which I was.

Rough and ready reckoning

I’ve started to realise that applying a little elementary calculation is very important to my frugality practise. Over time, I’ve got in the habit of using some simple rules to decide whether something is a good deal.

Annual Savings

When I look at a saving, if it’s near weekly I multiply by 50 to figure out what I would save over a year. If monthly, by 12. And so on. I always try and think about what something is worth over time. One long black every weekday? $3.50 x 5 is 18.50, call it $20 a week; so that’s about $1000 on coffee a year. Which (are you reading this Morgue?) I would like to find down the back of the sofa. Wouldn’t you?

Interest

Do you know the rule of 72? If a sum of money earns umpty % interest, just divide 72 by that number to find out how many years it will take to double. When I do this in my head I cheat and make it 70, which isn’t quite as accurate but is close enough.

So if you have a 100 bucks at 10%, it will take a bit over 7 years to turn into 200 bucks. I always find that quite encouraging. I think to myself, well, Stephen, if you could save $500 this year (see previous rule) and invest it at 7%, then it will double in 10 years, so that $500 will be worth $1000 before you’re 50.

Hours I would have to work

I have done the maths to figure out my hourly rate after tax and expenses. So I can look at something chunky and say “gosh! I would have to work for a week to pay for that!” and then ask myself whether it’s really worth a week’s work to me.

Notice I said “after tax and expenses.” I reckon that just using your raw hourly rate doesn’t reflect the reality that tax and essential spending reduce the amount available for you to dispose of (“discretionary spending”). I got this idea from the marvellous book Your Money Or Your Life. There are copies in the Wellington Public Library.

Multiply by 25

This is a bit complicated to explain in detail—the idea comes from here—but the guts is, if you make some conservative guess about returns on savings, then multiplying by your yearly spending on something by 25 tells you how much you’d have to save to pay for something out of savings interest without running your savings down.

For example, if you spend $240 on takeaway pizza a year, because it’s your monthly treat, and you could save $6000, you could pay for all your pizza needs out of the earnings on that $6000 and still not run it down.

Help me out

Do you have rough reckoning rules that help you make money decisions quickly? What are they?

Fingerwagging Postscript

When I was at school, and we asked why we had to learn maths, we were told it would be useful in later life. (This is true even for higher maths, actually, but not many people I went to school with became programmers). However, we didn’t get very concrete explanations. I would now say if I were a maths teacher: because if you don’t learn basic arithmetic, and fractions, and percentages, and algebra, people who have learned those things will cheat you blind.

I never really cared about the answer because I liked maths and was good at it. But I do think that if you hated maths, and were not good at it, it would be really worthwhile to get a little remedial tuition now. I can’t imagine how you can make good money decisions without it, and it must be very stressful worrying about whether you’re coming out ahead or not.

One thing I did turn my nose up at was spreadsheets. A few years ago I worked with people who would model every little decision in a spreadsheet, and I used to think that was pretty naff. But now I cannot stop making them, and damned handy they are. If you have a PC (and how else are you reading this?) you can get OpenOffice for free. Learning to drive its spreadsheet component is a valuable investment of your time.

Making the most of what you’ve got

I’m going to be frank and say that if you don’t know what the starred bit in the photo is for, then you’re not actually frugal.

What seems to have come with the new, post 1950s disposal economy is the willingness to throw “stuff” out because it isn’t as perfect as “the one in the picture”. Consequently supermarkets will only buy up the most ideally marketable fruit and veges, and not buy the rest. This leads to large amounts of waste at the farm or orchard gate in the name of “adding value” through quality control.

I know this from working for years in kiwifruit, where the tiniest blemish on a fruit can lead to it becoming a ‘reject’. There’s not actually anything wrong with the fruit it in question, it will still taste like crap the way all kiwifruit do, but it looks subjectively ‘odd’. I remember seeing bins of fruit being given away because it couldn’t be exported to Japan.

And that always pissed me off, because all they’re doing is inflating prices and limiting some consumers choices in order to make more money. Mind you, it means they transport less stock, but… they shouldn’t be transporting produce huge distances anyhow. It’s crazy to buy oranges from the USA when we grow perfectly good, though slightly ugly and harder to peel oranges here.

The wee appendage on the potato peeler is there to dig out the crappy bits of the spud that you don’t want to eat. Because it’s full of dirt for example. Or might be too hard to chew. Or might make the spud discolour when you cook it.

And why is that important? Because often the cheaper fruit and vegetables are the ones that are a little blemished, and if they sold more blemished fruit overall, then prices would be lower. What you want to do is deliberately choose the cheaper produce, but consider how much waste you’ll be digging out with that nobble. If the level of waste is too high, then you’re doing no-one any favours.

Mind you, I’m not recommending you never buy flash produce. Sometimes it’s exactly what you need for a meal like summer salads. But always consider what you can do with the crappier stuff, such as pickling, preserving, or stewing.

Frugal taxi tactics in Wellington

There are times when you have to take a taxi. We fellow frugal people understand. We do not judge. Perhaps it is part of your frugal car-free strategy, or maybe you just can’t face a late-night walk home. But if you must cab it, you can be frugal at it.

I have a regular engagement in town after work. I end up taking a taxi at least once a week, which is still cheaper than all-day parking and more bearable than a long wait for a bus and a longer uphill walk from the bus tunnel. There are several factors in taxi hire that have a bearing on the final fare.

Choice of firm

The cheapest firms are Capital, Green and then Combined, in that order. When I last checked, they were $2.50, $2.50 and $2.75 per km respectively. The others are significantly more expensive both for flagfall and for tariff per kilometre. On my route home from Courtenay Place the most expensive firms are over $3 more expensive than the cheapest.

Method of hire

All firms charge an extra fee for phone hire, typically $1. Therefore if there is a rank nearby you should go there.

Choice of route

There are two ways to get my house from town: the obvious way, and the cheap way, about $2 cheaper. I have no compunction about telling the driver which way to go, and neither should you. One or two have grizzled, but I don’t care.

Location of pickup

Taxis charge for waiting time, and per km. Therefore if you are in the centre of town, and you have ten minutes up your sleeve to walk to a rank on the periphery, avoiding red lights and the one-way system, you can save several dollars. The advanced student could try timing getting in the taxi with the phase of the lights, but that could be taking it too far.

So, following all these strategies in my case amounts to over $5 difference between the cheapest and the most expensive choices, which is nearly two cheese puffs in any given week, but $250 over a year. I’d like to find $250 in my jacket pocket, wouldn’t you?

Update

How could I have forgotten the most important commandment? Be nice to the driver and make small talk. Not only is this the polite thing to do, they’re more inclined to round down the fair, like the nice driver from Capital did tonight.