Some of my cheapest meals are Indian foods like dahl or khichadi. Dal/dahl refers to the lentils or the dishes made from them. Dahls are basically split lentils (mung dahl, masoor dahl, etc.) and spices cooked until soft, served over rice. My favorite has onion and tomato in it. Khichadi is rice, dahl, and spices all cooked together until soft. Some of my recipes feature greens and sweet potatoes, but the most basic is mostly rice with a bit of dahl and spice. You can get bags of these dahls at Asian stores for cheap. (Same with chappati flour, which with a little water and salt is all you need to make roti = flatbread.)

One thing about frugality/food storage I learned the hard way: it’s not cheap if you have to throw it out. It only takes one bug-infested bag of rice to get into everything you have. To prevent this I now:

1. Freeze rice, flours, etc., for several days to kill any insect eggs that may be in them. (We’d like to think our food comes to us pristine, but we are kidding ourselves.) In the dead of winter I use the trunk of my car.

2. Put boxes of pasta and grains into airtight plastic containers (brands like Lock & Lock or Pods). I don’t have a separate box for each item, but at least if I get a bad box of something, it doesn’t affect everything else. And it keeps mice out.

3. For larger bags, 5-6 gallon plastic food storage buckets come in handy. You can buy them online, or get them for free from your grocery store’s bakery department. (I ended up doing the former, since when I tried to do the latter, I got one that had had garlic mayonnaise or somesuch in it.)

Wash your hands often, cuts down on minor illnesses and doctor bills. Remind the kids.

Keep your heat down and wear a sweater, or even longjohns *and* a sweater.

Make your own bread, it’s easy with or without a bread machine. You can get at least five loaves of bread out of a bag of flour, and the flour costs a lot less than five loaves of bread.

Buy your jeans and sweats at the thrift store. If you work, change out of your good stuff and into the thrift shop stuff as soon as you get home. I’m retired, so I wear thrift shop all the time. Nobody knows unless I tell them.

If you eat meat (I do), use it as a flavoring in casserole type dishes rather than as the main dish. If a casserole calls for 1 lb. it will usually be just as good with 1/4 lb.

You only have to carry 13 coins for change. 4 quarters, 2 dimes, 2 nickles and 5 pennies. Each night take any “extra” coins and throw them in a jar. It adds up faster than you think, and if you always carry that configuration of 13 coins your purse or pocket will be a lot lighter.

If your community has a recycle center that pays for recyclables, use it! Recently took back 120 lbs. of aluminum (crushed soda cans) and got $100 for it. Use the money if you’re short, or donate some/all to the local food pantry.

Learn some sort of craft that will let you make personal gifts rather than buying them.

He should win on the name alone!

A crockpot is a fantastic way to combine and consume leftovers. I always add something new and fresh to the pot, usually fresh vegetables at the end with pasta or rice as a side dish. I’m never certain exactly what the hell I’m eating, but it’s always yummy and I can’t remember the last time I threw away any food.

Try it, you’ll like it.

From Reuters
Final debate called a draw
Report

Oct. 16 – Presidential hopefuls McCain and Obama may have saved the best for the last debate, but analysts call it a tie favoring Obama.

In opinion polls three weeks before the November 4 election, more voters say they trust Obama’s leadership on the economy, which has dominated the campaign-trail discussion and dwarfed McCain’s expertise in foreign and military policy.

Deborah Lutterbeck, Reuters.

We have become so wasteful as a culture that there are millions of ways to begin to cut back on waste.

And for some hard core frugality, you’ll get a kick out of the Tightwad Gazette. Be forewarned, the tips in there are fairly severe in terms of not wasting anything, ever — we’re talking Depression-era in some cases — but it does make you think, a LOT, about waste and over-spending.

I read a book last summer – The Inheritance of Loss by Kirin Dasai (sp?) which takes place in India. Wonderful book. In one scene, the long suffering family servant is washing and carefully folding his piece of tinfoil, which he has reused hundreds of times. And while that concept might seem shocking – why not wash and reuse tinfoil? Why not wash and reuse everything? I’ve gotten quite focused on throwing nothing out that may have value again. Used wooden matches – tinder. Plastic bags, to the extent I allow them in my house, washed and reused again and again. Tin foil. I buy very little, and reuse it multiple times.

Because I was bread with old yankee values thanks to my parents, this saving for a future date when it may come in handy comes easily to me. One of my favorite sayings is “Patch it up. Wear it out. Make it do or do without.” Followed closely by “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”

Last thought: during the 20th century we took a turn away from traditional ways, from knowledge handed down over generations. The old timers knew a thing or two. Time to tap back into their ingenuity and know how.