In April and May, National Public Radio featured a series on inexpensive gourmet dishes entitled “How Low Can You Go?” Although many of the dishes looked quite tasty, most of the dishes weren’t actually all that inexpensive, often narrowly getting below $10 to feed a family of four, and many involved arduous cooking processes. I decided to try out some of these recipes throughout the summer to see how I could take the recipes and reduce them down to a simple and very inexpensive form.

While digging through the submissions, I came across this interesting recipe by Wendy T., who states that she’s “writing a cookbook of economical meals for working people - this is one of my husband’s favorites.” Intriguing. Here’s what Wendy offers up:

1 lb ground beef
1 slice white bread, crumbled
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 small yellow onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp olive oil
1 egg, beaten lightly
1/4 cup flat leaf parsley, minced
1/4 cup mint leaves, julienned
1 cup plain yogurt (preferably whole milk)
salt and black pepper

In a small bowl, mix the yogurt, a large pinch of salt, and the mint. Set aside.

Crumble white bread crumbs over ground beef and parsley in large bowl.

Place a large frying pan over medium low heat. Add the olive oil and sweat the onions and garlic until translucent. Add 3/4 tsp salt and the coriander and cumin, and saute a minute more. Cool a minute and then add to the meat-bread crumb mixture. Add the beaten egg and mix with hands lightly just to combine. Form a test meatball and fry - taste for seasoning and add additional salt if necessary.

Form into meatballs. Fry in batches in the pan on all sides until cooked through. Drain on paper towels if necessary.

Serve the meatballs with the yogurt-mint sauce. Delicious as sandwiches with pita or naan bread.

A few things popped out at me immediately that indicated this recipe would be a lot of work. First, the ground coriander - dried coriander in the store is not the same thing at all. Ground coriander needs to be freshly ground or it loses most of its flavor. Second, the julienned mint leaves - meaning you’re slicing the mint leaves into thin strips - will be significant work as well, and likely the most expensive aspect of the recipe if you don’t have a source of fresh mint.

In order to try out the recipe as is, though, I did both of these.

I also went through the cupboard and the freezer to see what we had on hand. The only ingredients that we didn’t already have in spice jars were the mint leaves ($2), the yogurt ($0.99), the onion ($0.30), and the ground beef ($2.49 for a pound of lean meat), for a total cost of $5.78. We did, of course, use lots of spices and other materials we had on hand.

Here are the ingredients as I used them.

(The horse statue in the picture is a Breyer version of Man o’ War, included at the encouragement of my three year old son.)

I made one major change. Instead of mincing the onions, I coarsely chopped them, because I love the caramelized flavor of onions and felt it would add to the meatballs.

Once the work of prepping the ingredients is done, the recipe itself is pretty easy. First, I made the yogurt-mint sauce by putting a pinch of salt, a cup of yogurt, and the mint leaves in a bowl and mixing them.

I then tossed the onions and garlic into a frying pan along with the olive oil and cooked them over medium heat until they were nicely caramelized - taking on a light brown color roughly the same as caramel. I then added a pinch of salt, the coriander, and the cumin, and cooked it for a minute more.

When that was finished, I let it cool for a bit. While doing that, I added the bread crumbs and the beaten egg to the pound of ground beef and mixed them together with my hands, then I added the onion mixture to the meat and mixed that in. The result was a large ball, ready to be shaped into smaller meatballs.

Making meatballs is easy. Just pinch off a bit of the meat - whatever size you like - and roll that bit around in between your hands until it forms a round ball. If you’re not sure what size to make, just divide the ball into equal halves, divide each of those halves into equal halves (four bits), divide each of those halves into equal halves (eight bits), then divide each of those halves into equal halves (sixteen bits). Each of those sixteen bits will make a nice meatball.

So, I rolled up the balls and tossed them into the frying pan.

Obviously, if you chose to mince the onion, you wouldn’t see the large pieces of onion in the meatballs.

I simply browned these in the pan over medium heat, rolling them around about every minute or so. When they became dark brown - the color of a cooked hamburger, roughly - I cut one in half and checked the insides to make sure it was no longer pink. Here they are, about halfway cooked (with some sides looking finished, others still pink, and yet others in the middle):

I chose to serve the meatballs with the mint sauce on the side, a long grain rice and vegetable medley, some steamed broccoli, and a glass of Wandering Grape 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz (a free trade wine). Here’s how it looked on the table:

And there you have it!

Did we like it? This meal was a big hit. The kids were not big fans of the mint sauce, but the meatballs were completely consumed with gusto - no leftovers at all. Both my wife and I liked everything - I wound up drowning the meatballs in the sauce after trying them together.

Our total cost for the main course and the mint sauce (ignoring fractional items we had on hand): $5.78. Our cost per meal: $1.45. Not bad. But we can do better - and we can certainly make it less involved.

Changes I Would Make to Save Cost and Time
First of all, I’d skip the coriander and use more cumin as a substitute. If you don’t have a grinder, smashing the coriander seeds will take forever and it doesn’t contribute substantially to the meal, especially when you can easily substitute a bit of cumin for nearly the same effect.

Second, if I was pinched for time, I’d substitute dried mint for the fresh mint leaves. I’d just add dried mint - probably two tablespoons full - to the yogurt to taste and skip the julienning of the mint leaves.

Third, I’d substitute garlic powder for the minced garlic cloves. Although you miss the caramelization of the cloves, you also save the work of peeling the cloves, cooking the cloves, and smashing the cloves.

Fourth - and I did this in my own version above - I’d skip the fresh parsley and use dried. I used 1/4 cup dried parsley and it was perfect.

These changes modify the recipe a bit, but it also reduces the cost and vastly reduces the time. Here’s the new recipe, as I’d do it:

1 lb ground beef
1 slice white bread, crumbled
2 tbsp ground cumin
1 small yellow onion, chopped
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp olive oil
1 egg, beaten lightly
1/4 cup dried parsley
1/4 cup dried mint
1 cup plain yogurt (preferably whole milk)
salt and black pepper

In a small bowl, mix the yogurt, a large pinch of salt, and the mint. Set aside.

Crumble white bread crumbs over ground beef and parsley in large bowl.

Place a large frying pan over medium low heat. Add the olive oil and gently cook the onions until caramelized. Add 3/4 tsp salt and the cumin, and saute a minute more. Cool a minute and then add to the meat-bread crumb mixture. Add the beaten egg and mix with hands lightly just to combine. Form into meatballs. Fry in batches in the pan on all sides until cooked through. Drain on paper towels if necessary. Serve the meatballs with the yogurt-mint sauce.

The things that stick in your head after reading a book are often interesting. For example, just yesterday I posted a detailed review of Miserly Moms that outlined a ton of useful tips for cutting domestic spending.

Yet, the thing that stuck in my head for days after reading the book was an offhand comment she made about buying garbage bags. She pointed out that these were an item that one could easily switch to generic, since the low-cost garbage bags are a great way to save money.

My response to that? Not in my world, it isn’t.

We bought low-end garbage bags once. Of the first nine bags we used, two of them ripped and dumped their contents all over our kitchen floor on the way to the trash can. Each mess took at least ten minutes to clean up - one mess was almost entirely dry stuff, so it was fairly easy, but the other mess involved some sticky items, including a glass bottle that cracked and leaked some maple syrup on the floor.

The time lost cleaning up these messes almost immediately ate up the “value” we got in buying the low-end brand versus the price we would pay buying better bags in bulk.

Since then, we’ve stuck to the brand we trust - Glad Forceflex tall kitchen bags - which have won garbage bag comparisons in both Real Simple and Consumer Reports. We can get these bags in bulk for about eighteen cents a bag, compared to roughly fifteen cents a bag for generic. Given that we have, in three years, only had one breakage of our preferred kind of bag, we’ll stick to our preferred brand, thank you.

Whenever I make a comment along these lines, people almost always suggest not filling the bags as much. “If you only filled the generics 80% full, then you wouldn’t have the breakage!” Well, let’s look at that scenario. If I have five 13 gallon bags and I fill each of them 80% full, I’ve got 52 gallons of trash. On the other hand, if I have four 13 gallon bags and I fill each of them to the brim, I have the same amount of trash - 52 gallons.

So, I can either use five generic bags (which cost fifteen cents a pop), empty the trash 25% more often, put more plastic into the environment, and spend a total of 75 cents, or I can use four of our preferred bags (which cost eighteen cents a pop), put less plastic into the environment, and only spend 72 cents.

In the end, though, the take-home message has nothing to do with grocery bags. Instead, it has to do with finding your own maximum value. For us, the best value in garbage bags doesn’t come from buying the generic bags - in fact, with most of our household supplies, we’ve found that simply sticking with the Consumer Reports Best Buy provides us with an item that’s not much more expensive than the low end option (and sometimes cheaper if we can find a coupon) and doesn’t have usability problems like not getting the dishes in the dishwasher clean or dumping garbage all over our kitchen floor.

For us, a product that does its job well without such crises has a greater tangible value than one that tends to fail on occasion. We’re willing to pay a little more for easier use and fewer failures because of the time factor - cleaning garbage off the floor because we bought the cheap bags is time that we don’t get to spend with our kids.

Even better, when we start evaluating the situation as a whole, incorporating some of the costs incurred by poorly-working products (like the bad dishwashing detergent, which causes us to run another load of the same dishes, eating up water and another batch of detergent), we often find that the “cheap” item actually ends up being the expensive one.

Our perspective? Find the best price you can on quality items that actually do their job well. Over the long haul, the convenience of items that actually work all the time will add up to enough to make the difference between the prices, even if you don’t see that factor directly in play.

If you think I’m giving the generics a bad rap, let me make it clear: by all means, try the low-end items. Find out for yourself if they really add up to the total value that you want.

For us, it’s rarely worth it.

Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book.

Miserly Moms by Jonni McCoy wears its target audience right on its cover - stay-at-home moms (or at least moms who devote a significant amount of time to domestic management) that are trying to maximize every penny. It’s a good read with lots of specific, applicable tips for domestic spending, particularly in terms of food and household supplies. The book hones in on these issues like a laser beam - though the cover of the book clearly aims for the stay-at-home mom, the contents of the book really apply to anyone - we all shop for groceries and we all need to eat, after all.

In other words, if you’re looking to maximize every penny on household expenses - particularly if you have a large household - this book is packed with advice. If you want stock investing material… you might want to go somewhere else.

Since the book is actually divided into thirty two short chapters, I’ve just pulled out ten of the points and principles that I thought were really thought-provoking.

Don’t Confuse Frugality With Depriving Yourself
Many people hear frugality and they have visions of eating a steady diet of ramen noodles and wearing fifteen year old clothes and never leaving the house while living in a hovel and driving a rusted-out 1978 AMC Gremlin. The truth is that frugality merely means being mindful of finding the best value in your own life and not just settling for the easy, thoughtless solution. As Jonni says on page 33:

If any money-saving activity makes you feel cheap or tight, you will eventually abandon your efforts. This is not the price we need to pay to reach our goals. I don’t need to feel tight and cheap in order to stay home with my kids. There are ways to save money and keep my dignity.

Well said, indeed. If you’re unhappy with a spending cut in your life, then don’t make it. The big trick with frugality is that many people never even think about it. They never ask themselves if they really are getting value out of that expense, or if a less-expensive option will do for them. Quite often, you can make a more frugal choice and never notice the difference (except for the gradually heavier wallet - don’t go frugal if you don’t want extra cash in your pocket).

Don’t Buy Everything at the Same Store
Jonni advocates finding the stores that have the cheapest prices on the various items that you buy, and I fully agree with that strategy. However, I think it’s possible to take that advice too far. I essentially use two stores for almost all of my grocery and household supply shopping - Fareway and Sam’s Club - with occasional stops at Walgreen’s if there are a number of exceptional bargains there.

The trick is simply being objective and finding the store or two that really does have the lowest prices on the items you buy regularly. Don’t obsess over grocery store flyers from every different store, because you eventually reach a point of real diminishing returns, where you dig through flyers for an hour to save $3.

Instead, just stick to the basics. Find a grocery store with low prices. Plan your meals carefully (and use the flyer as a tool). Make a grocery list from that meal plan. Then, go shopping and stick to that list. If you’re not doing these things already, switch to them and your food bill will drop dramatically - I wouldn’t be surprised to see a 50% drop.

Buy in Bulk Whenever Reasonable
Sure, buying whichever version of the item has the lowest cost-per-ounce is usually the best deal. But not always.

For one, if you don’t have adequate storage space, such excess items can easily get in the way. For another, if you’re not going to use the entire amount before it expires, then you’re wasting money buying the bulk version.

Another key point: storage containers. If you’re not reusing the containers you use to store items, you’re likely throwing money away. In other words, you’re better off over the long run putting sandwiches in small reusable containers than in Ziploc bags - even buying them in bulk doesn’t add up. This is a principle I remember my parents using when I was a kid - my father’s lunch was always packed with resealable small containers instead of with baggies.

Cut Back on Prepackaged “Convenience” Foods
The argument in favor of convenience foods is pretty clear - you’re paying a little extra to save time. However, that “little extra” is substantially more than you think at first glance.

Why? It’s a health thing. Prepackaged convenience foods are often loaded with preservatives and unhealthy ingredients like corn syrup and artificial sweeteners. Over the long haul, these things add up to additional weight, a lower quality of living, and additional health care costs. Instead of subscribing to a pattern of unhealthy convenience foods that cost more and contribute to poor health just to shave a few minutes, learn how to prepare your own healthy simple foods instead. For example, I can make an egg-white omelet sandwich with whole wheat toast in about four minutes for less than $1 (and put all dishes straight in the dishwasher) or I can buy an unhealthy breakfast to go for about the same time cost, a lot less health, and likely a higher cost, too.

Why do this? Cut back on the prepackaged foods!

Don’t Assume Something Saves Money
Jonni tells an interesting anecdote about her freezer on page 241:

The first thing I did to conserve energy in my kitchen was to get rid of the extra freezer I had. It wasn’t actually in my kitchen (it was in the garage), but I considered it an extension of my kitchen, as it held all my extra food. When the energy audit revealed that it was responsible for 15 to 20 percent of my utility bill, I questioned its cost effectiveness. I figured it was costing twenty dollars a month to run. At that time, that was 20 percent of our utility bill. I was buying in bulk and storing food in there, but the savings on bulk foods was being spent on the appliance to store them in.

It’s worth noting that many modern freezers are more energy efficient than this. We actually ran similar calculations on our own freezer and found that it was cost-effective for us, but it was closer than we expected. We also found that we were better off filling it to the brim, so we started filling up the extra space with ice - empty gallon milk jugs, rinsed and filled with water, then frozen.

Cut Back on Meats
I’ll admit it - I am currently thisclose to switching to being an ovo-lacto vegetarian. For example, today so far I’ve had a bean and salsa omelet for breakfast and a bowl of leftover vegetable soup for lunch, and I anticipate a vegetarian dinner.

Why am I doing this? As I try cooking with these restrictions, I’m finding more and more recipes that are quite tasty - and I’m finding more and more that meat is the most expensive part of the diet.

Take beans, for example. They’re very healthy, they provide lots of protein, and they’re incredibly cheap. You can take a lot of meat recipes - especially those with ground beef - and just substitute beans, and the resulting recipe is quite tasty.

I never would have believed that I would find myself cutting back on meat so much, but there are lots of great, tasty, filling recipes out there that don’t use meat - and they’re almost always much cheaper than similar dishes that contain meat.

Have a Regular Soup-and-Bread Night
Pencil in one dinner a week for just soup and bread, nothing else. A big bowl of vegetable soup is incredibly easy to make (just boil up whatever leftover vegetables you have with a bunch of spices) and a bit of bread to soak up some of the juices and make the meal more filling is a great side.

Not only that, you pretty much can’t get a cheaper meal. Just take the vegetables you cook during the week and save the leftovers in a closed container in the freezer. If you’re like us, a nearly free and quite healthy meal once a week - especially one that can really be jazzed up with spices and peppers - is a spectacular deal.

Cook Several Meals at Once
A while back, I wrote an article providing an example of preparing several meals at once. The central principle is absolutely true - preparing several meals at once and freezing the extras saves both money and time. The money savings comes in because you can buy ingredients in bulk - the time savings comes in because you have to do very little prep work for each meal once the extras are frozen, since you just pull them out and cook them.

Jonni offers a ton of examples on how to do this. My favorite is one that we’ve started using - just cook tons of chicken breasts at once. We cook several pounds of chicken breasts in the crock pot at one time. Then, we put two chicken breasts into a freezable container, pop several such containers in the freezer, then just pull them out when we need cooked chicken as an ingredient - salads, soups, and the like. Easy as pie.

Warehouse Club Wariness
This is one area of the book where my perspective differs from Jonni’s a bit. With regards to warehouse clubs (Costco, Sam’s Club, and the like), Jonni is extremely wary, arguing that on many items, the prices aren’t better than what you can find in other stores. I agree with her in this regard - as with any store, you have to have a good grasp on what you’re buying. In my own experience, however, I’ve found that many items are substantially cheaper there.

From there, though, Jonni makes several claims about warehouse clubs that oppose my own experience. She argues that they sell only store brand items and usually only sell one type of many items (dishwashing detergent, etc.). In my experience, there are usually several brands available for these types of items. Similarly, her shopping list of items that are good deals at warehouse clubs are a little confusing as well, since I’ve found that different warehouse chains tend to have different items with exceptionally low prices.

Your best bet? Figure out what’s really worthwhile at your local warehouse store. If it’s worthwhile for you, join up - it probably will be. Remember, the key is to get the items you want at the best possible value for you - and you may find that a warehouse club does that very, very well.

Make Your Own Gift Baskets
When it comes to gift-giving occasions, many people sweat it out and end up spending way too much on gifts. Jonni offers a different avenue: a themed gift basket pointed at an interest or life event of the recipient. This requires some planning, but since the basket is made up of little items (many of which are consumable)

This is a great encouragement to make batches of homemade items for weekend projects. We make homemade beer, homemade soap, homemade pasta, and homemade wine. Later this summer, we intend to make a few giant batches of salsa. All of these items will be used in part to make gift baskets - we’ll just package these items nicely, collect them together, and given them as gifts to family and friends, with different assortments depending on the person.

Is Miserly Moms Worth Reading?
If you feel a need to cut domestic spending in your life, Miserly Moms is undoubtedly a worthwhile read. Aside from The Tightwad Gazette, this is probably the best collection of tips I’ve ever read on trimming domestic spending - and it’s certainly quite concise and focused.

If most of the advice above seemed very old hat to you, though, you may not get too much out of the book. Having said that, though, for most people, the advice above is not old hat.

For me, I pulled out a few useful tips, but this book was not a world-changer for me. However, I can certainly see it being very valuable for some people I know, and I’ve already passed along my copy to a friend that’s also a stay-at-home mom. For her, Miserly Moms could very well be an invaluable read.

In April and May, National Public Radio featured a series on inexpensive gourmet dishes entitled “How Low Can You Go?” Although many of the dishes looked quite tasty, most of the dishes weren’t actually all that inexpensive, often narrowly getting below $10 to feed a family of four, and many involved arduous cooking processes. I decided to try out some of these recipes throughout the summer to see how I could take the recipes and reduce them down to a simple and very inexpensive form.

Jose Andres’ Moorish-style chickpea and spinach stew looked and sounded delicious - a vegan recipe that appeals to a burger-eating guy like me. Andres’ recipe was submitted as follows:

9 ounces dried garbanzos (chickpeas)
Pinch bicarbonate of soda
6 garlic cloves, peeled and whole
1/4 cup Spanish extra-virgin olive oil
2 ounces white sliced bread, with the crusts removed
2 tablespoons pimenton (Spanish sweet paprika)
1 pinch Spanish saffron
2 tablespoons Spanish sherry vinegar
1/2 pound spinach, washed and cleaned
1 teaspoon ground cumin
Salt and white pepper to taste

The day before you cook, soak the chickpeas in cold water with a pinch of bicarbonate of soda. The next day, drain and rinse the chickpeas.

In a big saucepan, combine the chickpeas with 2 1/2 quarts of water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low and simmer for two hours, until the chickpeas are tender. Every 10 minutes or so, add 1/2 cup of cold water to slow down the simmering. By the end, the water should have reduced so it is barely covering the chickpeas. Turn off the heat and let sit.

In a small saute pan over medium to low heat, brown the garlic in 1/4 cup of the olive oil. When the garlic is browned, after about 3 minutes, remove from the pan and set aside. Add the bread and brown on both sides, about one minute each side. Remove the bread and set aside.

Remove the pan from the heat and allow to cool for a few minutes. Add the pimenton and saffron to the saute pan, and the sherry vinegar immediately afterward to prevent the pimenton from burning.

In a mortar, smash the reserved garlic and the browned bread to make a very thick paste.

Bring the chickpeas back to a low boil and add the spinach. Simmer for 5 minutes. Add the pimenton mixture along with the garlic and bread paste, to create a thick, stewy sauce. Simmer for another 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve immediately.

Got that? It seems rather … involved … to me, but the end result sounded fantastic, so I gave it the old college try.

I went through the cupboard and discovered what we had on hand. We had some ordinary extra virgin olive oil, plenty of slices of whole wheat bread, sweet paprika (I decided pimenton was a bit much - ordinary paprika should do), saffron, red wine vinegar (which we decided to substitute for the sherry vinegar), cumin, salt, and pepper - all of these items can be reasonably expected to be found in the cupboard of a person who cooks regularly.

I then purchased half a pound of spinach for $1.66, a pound of dried garbanzo beans for $1.99, and a garlic bulb for $0.30, finishing out the recipe for a total cost (to us) of $3.95.

I then put the beans to soak overnight with just a tiny pinch of “bicarbonate of soda” … which is a five-dollar term for plain old baking soda. I made the conscious decision to use all the beans in the soup and increase the other ingredients by roughly 50% in order to make plenty of the stew so it could be enjoyed for lunch the following day.

I then set the beans on to boil in a small pot for two hours, adding a cup of water every ten minutes or so. Trust me, if you try this at home, it won’t take this much work - see my conclusions below.

With the beans well in hand, I pulled out the other ingredients and set to work. First, I peeled out the cloves, then I decided I should probably take a picture of the ingredients I used…

I then took 1/3 cup of the oil, tossed in the garlic cloves, and began to brown the cloves over medium heat. This part smelled fantastic - my mouth was watering.

When the garlic cloves were fairly brown, I took out the cloves, then put a piece of bread into the hot olive oil, flipping it after twenty seconds and removing it after twenty more, then repeating it with a second piece. If you waited much longer, the bread started to burn.

I then took the bread and the cloves and smashed them into oblivion. We own a mortar and pestle, but I couldn’t locate it, so I improvised with a spoon, a bowl, and some extra time. Here’s the “mash” I wound up with.

I put the spinach in with the chickpeas and let that cook together for five minutes. Meanwhile, I put the saffron and red wine vinegar in with the still-hot garlicky olive oil, then, confused as to what to do with the cumin, tossed that in there as well. I stirred this up a bit, then added the saffron/vinegar/olive oil/cumin mix straight into the chickpeas, then dumped in the obliterated bread and garlic and stirred, letting it boil for five minutes more. Here’s what it looked like, near the end.

As with many soups and stews, a hearty bread on the side is a good idea. We picked up this loaf for a dollar on sale rather than making our own and had it on the side.

And then, the meal is served!

We had enough stew for all four of us as well as lunch for all four of us the following day with still a fair amount left over. If I were to do it again, I’d make less soup.

Did we like it? I liked it quite a bit and thought it was just right. My wife wasn’t sure at first, added significantly more salt, stirred her bowl, and then seemed to like it quite a bit, having a small second bowl. The children didn’t like it nearly as much, though they both enjoyed the bread.

Our total cost (ignoring fractional items we had on hand): $4.95. Our cost per meal: $0.62. Not bad. But we can do better - and we can certainly make it less involved.

Changes I Would Make to Save Cost and Time
First of all, I’d buy two cans of garbanzo beans instead of soaking and boiling the beans. The dry beans are cheaper and they are nominally better for you than canned, but for most working families, the distinction isn’t enough to make the effort worth it in this case.

Second, I’d cut the saffron. Saffron is easily the most expensive item in the dish and you’re only using a pinch of it. Although it does add a nice, subtle flavor, I think it can be dropped without too much concern.

Third, I’d substitute garlic powder for the cloves. Although you miss the caramelization of the cloves, you also save the work of peeling the cloves, cooking the cloves, and smashing the cloves.

Fourth, I’d use bread crumbs instead of “cooking” the bread and smashing it. Obviously, this change is for similar reasons as stated above.

These changes modify the recipe quite a bit, but it also reduces the cost and vastly reduces the time. Here’s the new recipe, as I’d do it:

Trent’s Moorish Chickpea and Spinach Stew

2 cans garbanzo beans/chickpeas
Garlic powder equivalent to six cloves
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
3/4 cup bread crumbs
2 tablespoons paprika
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 pound spinach, washed and cleaned
Salt and pepper to taste

Rinse the chickpeas thoroughly, then put them in a pan, add 1 1/2 cups of water, and bring it to a boil. In another pan, bring the olive oil to a boil, then remove from heat for two minutes. While stirring the olive oil, add the paprika, the cumin, the red wine vinegar, then the bread crumbs (slowly). Set this aside. When the beans are boiling, add the spinach and allow it to boil for five minutes, stirring a bit. Add in the olive oil mixture, stir, then allow it to boil for another five minutes. Serve, preferably with bread. This should be enough for at least three meals.

Over the past week, my wife, my children, my parents and I all went on vacation to the Dallas/Fort Worth area (we had planned a longer road trip, but we made an on-the-fly decision to just stick around DFW). While there, we visited family and saw a large number of sights and events in the area.

Before the trip, I collected suggestions for free things to do in the area from both readers of the site and on Twitter. The response was pretty surprising, with lots of great suggestions thrown our way. I collected all of the ones suggested by multiple people, selected the handful that I was sure would be a hit with my family, and we tried out several of them.

So, here are the great free things to do in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

Free Things We Enjoyed
Here are the four free things we really enjoyed on our trip. We tried several things, but these stood out from the pack.

Pioneer Plaza

Pioneer Plaza is a beautiful park in the middle of Dallas that features a life-size bronzed cattle drive - three cowboys herding a lot of cattle across a stream. The setting is beautiful and the sculptures are fantastic.

We wound up spending almost two hours here, even on a hot summer day. We admired all of the bronze statues, walked across the stream a few times, and my children petted a horse ridden by a Dallas police officer. It would have been a perfect place to have a picnic had we been more prepared.

You can find out more about Pioneer Plaza from the Texas Trees Foundation.

Dallas Farmer’s Market

What can I say? I love farmer’s markets. There are tons of fresh food samples, opportunities to buy delicious produce at a very low price, and almost always a surprise or two. The Dallas Farmers Market, on the quiet Wednesday morning that we were there, was sparsely crowded but had a lot of vendors happy to talk and offer samples of all kinds.

In the picture above, my daughter was discovering that she loves watermelon - she was trying a (free) piece of yellow watermelon. We wound up buying quite a few fruits at the market, which provided afternoon snacks for the family and some breakfast food as well.

You can find out more about the Dallas Farmers Market at their website.

Dealey Plaza
This is the area where President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. You can stand outside the School Book Depository and observe the route that Kennedy took. There’s also a lot of public works projects in the area, built in the 1930s.

Although there is actually a very nice museum nearby in the School Book Depository, I found that the actual setting outside the Depository had much more of an impact. I walked along the route that Kennedy took, absorbed the area, and thought about that tragic moment.

Wikipedia has an excellent entry on Dealey Plaza.

Fort Worth Stockyards

Over in Fort Worth, we visited the Stockyards. While there are a lot of shops in that area, there’s also a ton of free things to see and do - walking around the stockyards themselves, for starters. There are several free special events each day as well.

The highlight, though, was seeing the longhorn steers being leisurely driven down the street by three or four cowboys (pictured above). My son loved this part and kept talking about it for days afterward.

This is a great way to spend most of a day in Fort Worth. You can find out more at the Stockyards website.

Things Recommended By Two or More Readers
Here are five free activities recommended by multiple readers that we simply didn’t have time to make it to on our trip. All of these sounded like quite a bit of fun - and we would have likely done all of them had our trip been a few days longer.

Jazz Under the Stars
Each summer, the Dallas Museum of Art has a free concert series - in 2009, this series is called “Jazz Under the Stars.” Each Thursday at 8 PM, people gather at Ross Avenue Plaza, spread out blankets and picnic baskets, and enjoy a free outdoor concert by some very good jazz ensembles. More information is available at the Dallas Museum of Art website.

Crow Collection of Asian Art
The Crow Collection of Asian Art is a beautiful art museum located in the Dallas Art District that several readers raved about. It’s right in the heart of the city and features a stunning collection of Asian art, both historical and modern. Outside, there’s an extensive sculpture garden, which includes 20 statues from the French masters. Find out more at CrowCollection.org.

Farmer’s Branch Historical Park
This is a large collection of historical buildings from the 19th and early 20th century, maintained in a state as close to the original as possible. For people into folk history, this is apparently an exquisite place to visit. You can find out more about the Farmer’s Branch Historical Park here.

Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center
The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center is a spectacular concert hall with extremely impressive architecture and acoustics. Built by I. M. Pei, the Center also features one of the best pipe organs in the United States. Check it out at MeyersonSymphonyCenter.com.

Thanks-Giving Square
This is an open area in the center of downtown Dallas dedicated to the idea of giving thanks as a universal human value. The location features an interfaith chapel, a stunning courtyard, and an impressive array of nature and art. Find out more about it at ThanksGiving.org.

Believe it or not, our summer vacations for the next five summers are penciled in right now. For each of those trips, I intend to do the same thing: ask around for free things to do, try out as many as I can, and report on the ones we didn’t make it to.

Recently, I’ve been reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book The Black Swan. Most of the book has to do with economics and mathematics and is not very relevant to personal finance at all, so I won’t bother doing a detailed review here. However, there are two pieces of the book that I think are worth talking about, so let’s dig in.

The Black Swan and Your Emergency Fund
The basic premise of The Black Swan seems like common sense: life is full of unexpected events. Big ones (like, say, 9/11), medium sized ones (like, say, a career shift), and small ones (like, say, your daughter wetting her pants just before you’re about to leave on an errand).

The Black Swan argues that our minds use a lot of tricks to hide these so-called “black swans” (his term for largely unpredictable and rare events) from us. We need to see the future as at least somewhat predictable, or else we wouldn’t bother making many plans at all. So, when we reflect on our past, it seems much more orderly than it actually was. Also, when we think about the future, we imagine something much more orderly than what will happen.

This idea makes a lot of intuitive sense to me. I know that quite often, when I think about the past, it does seem like an orderly progression of things. However, when I look at old diary entries and old videos, I see that there were actually a lot of “black swans” floating around. I didn’t see The Simple Dollar’s success coming at all, for one. When I went to college, I didn’t see myself working for a slightly eccentric German fellow who would basically set up my first career for me and also taught me how to pack effectively for business travel - he was a black swan.

Given that, I think there are a lot of things one can do in their own life that will prepare oneself for the arrivals of black swans of all magnitude.

Learn a wide variety of skills. I don’t just mean transferable skills, either. Know how to make things. Know how to build things. These skills will come in handy over and over again, often in unexpected ways.

Live frugally. I believe that’s one of the underlying messages here - frugality is a great economic and personal advantage. Knowing how to always maximize one’s resources makes one much more able to survive great changes in life - and also gives the person the ability to build up resources (as mentioned below).

Minimize your future costs. If you can use your money now to invest in things that will reduce your costs in the future, do it. The fewer resources required in the future to maintain your way of life means that fewer “black swans” can disrupt you.

Have a large, stable emergency fund. Having a large amount of cash reserves makes it possible for you to ride right through any small and medium-sized “black swans.” Your car unexpectedly dies? Not a problem. A career opportunity comes up? You can jump at it. You lose your job? Not the end of the world.

Have a good “opportunity” fund, too. Sometimes the unexpected comes along and it requires you to have resources. For example, there’s a large chunk of land near our house for sale. If it suddenly makes a nice drop in price, I’ll jump on it. If I happen to see the owner sometime soon, I may negotiate. It’s been up for sale for quite a while, so something nice may happen soon - not quite a black swan, but a good example. A real “black swan” might be that a neighbor is in a pinch and puts a sign on his car that says “$5,000 or best offer” and you can walk over there with $3,000 in cash, snipe it, then resell it for $5,000 with some footwork.

In short, keep some resources at hand, make yourself more useful, and minimize what you’ll need in the future.

The Black Swan and Investing
One particularly interesting point in The Black Swan comes when Taleb briefly discusses investing. His suggested portfolio for taking advantage of black swans is very unusual, yet it makes some sense.

He advocates putting 85-90% of your investment money into something extremely stable, like treasury notes. The other 10-15%, invest it in the riskiest things you can find - things where a black swan might make it go crazy.

So, let’s translate that into dollars. You have $10,000 to invest. You put $8,500 of it into treasury notes, which return 2% annually. You put the other $1,500 into Bangladeshi startups (for example).

At the end of the year, even if you lose all of the Bangladeshi money, you still have $8,670 - your total loss is only 13.3%. On the other hand, let’s say that your Bangladeshi startup goes bonkers and you get a 900% return on that investment, turning $1,500 into $15,000. You now have $23,670 - a 136.7% return.

Basically, Taleb’s argument is that, as I mentioned above, there are many more black swans out there than we initially believe there are, so one should take them for a ride without too much exposure to risk.

My feeling is this - if you have enough risk tolerance in your investments to put them into stocks, there’s some logic in using Taleb’s investment ideas. It puts a floor on the worst case scenario and gives a lot of upside.

Much of the rest of The Black Swan suffers from the same condition that befalls Taleb’s other books - lots of good ideas, but also lots of ego and self-congratulation. It’s thought provoking, but at times you want to go wash your hands.

My three year old son loves to go to the grocery store with Mom and Dad. He wanders around with us, listening to our discussions about which products to buy, and quite often expresses his own opinions. He’ll remind us that he loves V8 Fusion (our preferred fruit juice, since it’s 100% and also is half vegetable juice) and often dallies for a long time near the Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers, as I noted two years ago (and depicted as well):

As we shop, we make tons and tons of little decisions along the way. Those decisions, on their own, seem inconsequential.

Should we buy the bulk can of diced tomatoes or the smaller can?
These tortillas feel softer, but they’re way more expensive - is it worth it?
The free range whole chickens are on sale! Should we stock up?

A choice one way or another here might save us a dollar or cause us to spend a dollar more. In the eyes of many people, it’s an inconsequential decision - just make it and keep going. One dollar doesn’t make a huge difference, right?

The problem is that each little buying decision you make is deeply tied to other buying decisions, whether consciously or not.

How so, you might ask?

All of our buying decisions are based on a set of principles in our head, ones that are often so well-grounded that they don’t even pop up in conscious thought.

Here’s a thought experiment to help you see what I mean. Imagine a product you would never buy in a grocery store - pork rinds, maybe, or perhaps insanely potent hot sauce. Now, what about that product would cause you to not buy it? You’re likely to pop up an immediate simple answer - I don’t like the taste or it’s unhealthy - but on other purchases, you’re quite willing to overlook that principle for other reasons.

In truth, when we make a decision to buy in the grocery store, we’re trying to reduce a big set of principles and inputs down to one split-second decision. And often we feel we’re completely justified in that decision - and we move on with life.

It is very easy to tease apart each little buying decision, tell yourself that it doesn’t really matter that much and that it’s okay to splurge, and then essentially ignore your final tally when you get to the checkout because each decision was justified in your mind. Doing that, though, is a game that will, time and time again, put your wallet in the hurt locker.

So, what can you do to overcome this problem?

The easy methods are the shopping list and the meal plan. Making a shopping list in advance of your visit to the grocery store simply serves to reduce the number of decisions you have to make. This, of course, leads you to making fewer bad decisions.

But that’s just the start. Once you’re in the store with your shopping list in hand, commit to three more things.

First, simply do not put anything in your cart that’s not on your list. Your list, if it’s thought out at all, should have everything you need for your meals for the next week. If you see something you feel like you need or deserve, jot it on the back of the list for next time.

Second, mark any items that you’re not simply searching for the cheapest version of. On our list, I like to put a little X by any item that I don’t intend to just buy the cheapest version of. For example, with diced tomatoes, the various brands and cans are identical in terms of ingredients, so we usually just get the cheapest version. This, again, reduces the number of opportunities for poor impulse decisions in the store.

Third, if you have specific brands in mind (because of coupons or because of previous buying experiences), put those on your list, too, along with the size. For example, we usually have a big stack of coupons for V8 Fusion (100% juice, half fruit and half vegetable). So, instead of just writing “fruit juice x 3,” I’ll write “46 oz. V8 Fusion x 3″ on the list. In other words, if you make the list more specific, you further reduce the number of potential impulse decisions in the store.

Using all of these techniques, you’ll end up making just a handful of in-the-moment choices in the grocery store - and with fewer potential decisions, you have fewer chances to make poor ones. The end result? A cart full of items that you actually want and a much smaller grocery bill.

One of the biggest reasons I like living where I do is that two or three times a summer, someone hosts a block party. The format is pretty simple - bring a side dish, grab a plate, fill up, and talk to people. Yet, I know from watching the hosts, the actual hosting can be really frenetic - the hosts often look completely frazzled, even if everyone else is having fun.

Block party. Photo by jeffk.

I had planned on having a block party early this summer to celebrate the release of my first book, 365 Ways to Live Cheap, but the release date wound up being substantially earlier than I expected. So I decided to push the idea off until the release of my second book (which I anticipate to be late next spring).

During the process of thinking about the party, I stopped by and had a chat with a person who had recently hosted one. He told me that it was (a) surprisingly expensive and (b) a lot more work than he expected it to be, but it was very worthwhile because it gave him an opportunity to meet so many neighbors - something I find very valuable, too.

So I resolved right then to plan out a frugal block party. If you’ve ever wanted to host a block party but have been thrown off the scent by fear of the cost and time investment, here are the tactics we’re using to trim both factors without reducing the fun.

Buy Only the Basics - But Buy Far in Advance As soon as you’re sure you’re going to host a block party - even before you set a date in stone - make a shopping list. The earlier you make a list, the longer you have to shop for the items - meaning, the more time you have to find huge sales on the items you need to get.

The items to look for are pretty simple: paper plates, silverware (I prefer biodegradable corn plastic silverware), napkins, and cups. Over a long period of time, it’s easy to find each of these items on sale somewhere.

Invite a Neighbor or Two to Co-Host This enables you both to serve as hosts and be involved in the meeting and greeting of everyone, but split the costs and effort in setting up, hosting, and tearing down.

Estimate High on What You Need Estimating high will cause you far fewer headaches than estimating low. The items that are left over can be saved and used again for other occasions, whereas if you start to run low on items during the party, panic will ensue and difficulty will follow - including high prices because you couldn’t shop around. Of course, if you’re buying in bulk, this likely will not be a problem.

>Rely on Guests for Side Dishes and Some Beverages Preparing a flyer for the party is key - and on that flyer, be sure to highlight some key information - your address, your phone number, and also a note to bring a side dish.

As for beverages, you can set out a few beverages in bulk - like water and tea - in self-dispensing jugs with cups, but if other beverages are desired, you should note this for guests who might come.

Depending on available seating arrangements, you may also ask guests to bring their own lawn chairs. In some neighborhoods, there will be a plethora of options - picnic tables and the like. However, you may want to have backups for some guests.

Borrow Equipment Don’t hesitate to ask the people you know well if you can borrow some items for the party, such as extra chairs they might have, extra tables, or even their grill. The more items you can borrow, the fewer items you have to invest money in for such a limited use.

What About Entrees? This is going to be an experiment in cooking for a large group, so go with something you can prepare easily in large quantities. I almost always think sandwiches are a good idea. Have bratwursts, hot dogs, and veggie dogs (for any vegetarians) - or have burgers (beef and soy options). Another option - pulled meat sandwiches.

Along with these, you’ll need to buy buns in bulk, as well as condiments. Again, plan this as far in advance as you can, so you can seek out bargains.

Get Cheap Help A big reason that you’re having this party is so that you can meet neighbors and build relationships, not run around on small errands. One good solution is to hire some neighborhood help - and one great solution for that is enlisting any teenage children that live nearby. $10 or $15 is a small price to pay to have someone making sure that there are no emergency needs or other things, keeping beverages rotated, and so forth, leaving you to actually meet and greet people.

The Week Before Clean! Clean your garage. Clean the yard and make sure it’s mowed two or three days before the party. Clean any portions of your house that people might use for the restroom - and also in event of rain. It’ll leave you feeling refreshed and more prepared.

The Day Before Borrow equipment from neighbors and store it in your garage. Begin thawing anything that needs thawed. Make sure all equipment that you’re going to rely on is in proper working order - fire up grills and so forth. Doing this now will save you a lot of money and stress compared to putting it off.

The Big Day Something will go off wrong. Expect it. Don’t stress out when it happens. Recognize that it’s just part of life, and make do as best you can. If you’re prepared for this, you won’t react with strong emotions and you won’t be drawn to throw money at it just to solve it.

Also, plan to cook so that a large batch of food will be put out thirty minutes after the start time. This gives the on-time arrivers plenty of time to mingle, get side dishes set up, and when people start going through the food line, the first batch won’t sit out there for long. I find that putting food out when people start arriving usually means many people just eat and run and many other people end up eating food that’s sat out for a long time.

The biggest thing, really, is not to panic. Something will go wrong. Don’t worry about it too much. Spilling a beverage won’t ruin everyone’s day. Nor will being fifteen minutes late with the entree. No matter what, don’t throw cash at the problem - just solve it calmly, with what you have.

Any other frugal and/or time-saving suggestions for block parties?