Book Review: An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler

I didn't have to read far to know that I would like An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler. I just had to get to the subtitle, "Cooking with Economy and Grace" and I was already ready to tell people about it. Because truly, if we could all learn to cook with economy and grace this world would be a better, happier, more peaceful place. As it is we're often cooking with McConomy and Rat Race (yup, it took me a whole minute to come up with that). Even if we haven't descended to the depths of McConomy, we're often cooking with either economy or grace, and struggling to combine the two. Adler argues (though she would never use such a word) that the two go hand in hand. In fact, in her way she seems to argue that economy cannot thrive well without grace and visa versa. I would have to agree. To a large extent, to cook without economy is to cook with lots of waste or to cook as a vehicle to show off our excess, neither of which is extremely graceful. And to cook cheaply without a little grace can be summed up in one word: shortening, or two words: industrial farming, or maybe three words: boxed mac & cheese. Anyway, you get the idea.

Adler's book combines philosophy, memory, prose, and cooking. Her philosophy on cooking (and if I had to pin this book down to a genre, I think philosophy might just be it) is that one meal should run seamlessly into the next: today's chicken will be tomorrow's fried rice will be the next day's soup. It was all terribly romantic. 

In fact, if I was to choose my largest criticism of the book, that romanticism might be it. The prose was perfumed, her descriptions of using leftovers might as well have swept the sea breeze through my hair. Yet there was little humor and not so much as a nod toward those days when you're rushing home and everyone's tired and whining and the last thing anyone's in the graceful mood for is a nice hearty appetizer of bean broth (with or without a generous dose of good olive oil and a squeeze of lemon). You know those days. Don't we all? So it would have been nice to at least have a hat tipped to them occasionally.

I had three other problems with the book. The first is a little personal. Adler has no kids and as near as I can ascertain no husband either. That's okay; I'm not saying she must have a family to offer valuable food advice. However, it meant that the only thing you get about cooking for a group (or cooking around other individuals' tastes, for that matter) was a wee bit about hosting dinner parties. Also, it meant no comforting jokes about your husband's pickiness, which is something I always appreciate in a book about food (yeah, I might have to be the one to write that one). 

My second problem with the book is a cross between a critique and praise. There was so much good advice that it was tough to take it all in. It was quite poetic and although she offers a fair number of recipes, they don't come to us in the neat categorical way they would in a typical cookbook. This isn't inherently a problem--at least it's not a problem I'm sure has a simple solution in a book like this--but it did make it a little hard to find a recipe you wanted when you wanted it. 

My final problem was that for every cooking woe, she pronounced a good drizzle of olive oil and a squirt of lemon. I like olive oil and lemon as much as the next guy and truly there's a lot that a little fat or a little acid really can cure, but I thought it was a little over-prescribed. 

Now on to what I liked best about this book: Despite my skepticism about a few of Adler's methods (she begins the book by suggesting that to begin dinner, you get a pot of water on to boil and then scrounge around and find some things to put in it--vegetables, meat, "ends" and that all these things will surely come together into a marvelous whole--see I told you, romantic).. yes, anyway, despite my skepticism I decided to give several of them a whirl. They worked really beautifully. I took some of her advice on "striding ahead" and prepared nearly a week's worth of vegetables from what I had languishing in my refrigerator. They tasted delicious hot that first day, but were also very good on sandwiches throughout the rest of the week or as snacks. This is just as Adler promised it would be and I'll be darned if she wasn't right on. The boiling water method of dinner preparation is still waiting for me to try (though in all fairness, the months I spent living in The Netherlands, there was plenty of vegetable boiling on the natives' part and it always came out perfectly delicious and flavorful and not a bit like the boiled vegetables we tend to remember our great aunts pushing on us), but she also has great ideas on how to eat food we normally expect to be hot cold or with a different sort of spin. She was masterful at taking things you'd normally throw out and adding them to bread, rice, or carb of choice and producing dinner or lunch. 

The part I was most excited about was her chapter on "ends." Ends are the bits of food we normally discard--the ends of vegetables, the green vegetable tops (as in carrot tops), the stems of herbs, bones, etc. Adler has many ideas for how to use them and I have to admit that they are perfectly graceful (and by nature terribly economic). You end up feeling that you will never discard a parsley stem again (though you probably will, but maybe not quite as many).

She also has a chapter on salvaging the foods you messed up. In addition to that, she dedicates an entire appendix to the fixing of burned/mushed/undercooked/oversalted foods that would otherwise end up in your trash compactor. That's economy, of course. And if the redemption of imperfect food doesn't equal grace, I don't know what does.

In short, it was a great read on food, economy, and grace. I've bookmarked a booty load of recipes and plan to dedicate a couple of posts this week to a few of the things I gleaned from her wisdom.

Book Review: American Wasteland by Jonathan Bloom

Maybe you're getting old when a 308 page book about food waste gets you excited. Or maybe the book was just that good. The title and subtitle of this book read American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food. That got my attention. Throw in some cover art with a bird's eye view of a trashcan made to look like a plate and I was hooked. And I hadn't even gotten to such compelling chapter titles as "American Farms: Growing Waste, Selling Perfection" or "A Cold Case of Waste."

Jonathan Bloom begins his book with his definition of food waste: food which was once edible, but has been made inedible through our neglect or misuse. It doesn't include rinds, seeds, etc., or food that was just bad to begin with. He then proceeds to tell us just how much of this perfectly edible food we waste. It's a little shocking. And yet, if you've ever eaten at your child's school cafeteria or had a look around at a restaurant or maybe taken a gander into the back of your refrigerator, it starts to seem not so terribly shocking after all.

Bloom estimates that we waste nearly 50% of our food--enough to fill the Rose Bowl each day. Of course that's not just from the leftover pot roast and the bag of cilantro we allowed to go bad. Bloom follows America's food from farm to plate, stopping at a couple grocery stores and restaurants along the way. In his journey he takes note of edible food never harvested, edible food rejected because it doesn't meet industry standards for size, uniformity, and/or beauty, edible food sent away by the truck full from stores because it fails to meet the store manager's standards for loveliness or freshness, edible food culled from our grocery store shelves because it is either blemished in some small way or because it is getting close to a sell by date, edible food discarded by the ton from restaurants and schools because leftovers cannot be used the next day (either by law or per the standards of restaurant chains) or because patrons have wasted much of their over-sized plate-fulls, and finally--of course--edible food wasted by us in our own homes because we failed to use it, failed to save it, or failed to find it in the abyss called refrigeration.

In the course of his journey Bloom makes an excellent--and not too politically one-sided--argument about why we should care about food waste. And throughout the book he gives plenty of ideas about what we can do about it--some already being implemented by stores and restaurants and some that Bloom feels should be implemented (and would be if he were "king of the forest"). These ideas begin with a discussion of the way hunger and excessive food waste co-exist in our country and extends into a discussion of many of the things that are being done and can still be done by charities, farms, and businesses to distribute some of our excess food.

Furthermore, Blooms ideas for how to solve the problem of food waste extend far beyond feeding the hungry. The book includes ideas that range from making sell-by versus use-by dates less confusing to consumers to using the methane gas produced by food in landfills to power stuff that needs powdering. His last-chapter is packed with various ideas about how food-producers, schools, businesses, and governments can make food more, well, usable.

And yet, even with all of that, one of the best things about the book is that Bloom never takes himself too seriously. Come on, if you've ever read a book like this, you totally know what I mean. They can get heavy. And depressing. And a little preachy (or a lot preachy). Don't get me wrong. The man's got a mission. And he cares about food waste. And he really really wants it to improve. And he does a darn good job of making the reader want it to improve too. The book is full up with information, statistics, and ideas. But Bloom isn't afraid of a joke here and there. He's not above a little self-effacement. He's not even above hitting the scroungers table on a college campus and scrounging with the best of them (and by scrounging I do mean eating the free leftovers of the other students). It's kind of refreshing in a book like this.

The one thing I would have liked to have seen more of in American Wasteland is this: more at-home tips for at-home folks. There was plenty about what grocery stores, landfills, and the government could do. I understand why. I understand that these are big venues and that if one of them changes something, then big change is on the horizon. That's not a bad thing. Nor is it a bad thing for us to get involved in changing the businesses and government around us. However. However, I guess I'm inclined towards tips for the little guy. No, it won't save the earth if I in my modest house manage to waste less food. But to my mind, part of the problem with waste in America is a problem in the attitude of average Americans in their average kitchens. We have ceased to reverence our food (and apparently, some of our money as well). Bloom points this out, which is partly why I was so disappointed when the let's-make-some-changes chapter at the end included so very very little time giving to the individual and the changes we can make. I believe that there are plenty of changes we can all make. As respectable cheapskates it is, after all, our sacred duty. Less waste means less money spent. After reading Bloom's American Wasteland I realize that it means less of other problems too.

Which is why I've decided to dedicate some time on this blog to reducing waste, to more carefully using the food we have. It'll be a Week Without Waste (or maybe a month--we'll see how much material I've got). We'll have recipes for leftovers and some tips for how to use as much as we possibly can. For starters check out American Wasteland or Bloom's blog Wasted Food.

American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food by Jonathan Bloom

Book Review: Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half by Annette and Steve Economides

Cheap Eat Challenge: Watch as my family of 6 eats on $6/day (or at least shoots for that range).

In their book, Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half , Annette and Steve Economides (yeah, that's their real name; I know; I was surprised too) share ways that their family of 7 eats on the very cheap.

These people are pretty amazing. They eat on $350/month and with that feed five children who are, gasp, teenagers. This is impressive, even to me. Teenagers are one of those things that frighten me. I believe all husbands should be handed to you with a label stamped: "Warning: Teenagers may ensue." Of course no one would pay attention. It's just one of those things that seems so far away when the nurse hands you a tight little wad of pink baby. Anyway, that is not what this book is about. It is about eating on the cheap, even when teenagers (yikes) are involved.

So, how do they do it? I was really excited to find out. I knew I wouldn't cut my grocery bill in half, but I hoped to shave off an extra $20 or so.

The book gave good solid advice:
Learn to cook.
Plan your meals.
Shop less frequently.
Shop only a few stores.
Buy stuff on sale and store it.
Use coupons when you can, but don't worry about going crazy if it's sucking all your time.
Plant a garden if you can.

They also had recipes in the back--some I wanted to try and some I didn't. Which seemed really real family/real food to me and I liked that.

Additionally, they gave advice about what appliances might be the most useful to a cheapskate, ideas about when to go new or used with things like kitchen appliances, and how to make the most of your food money in that way.

Some of this was valuable, if just for reminder's sake. However, the problem with good solid advice is that it tends not to be the freshest thing you've ever heard. Generally speaking it was stuff I'm already doing. Generally speaking it's not stuff I feel people need a book to know. Generally speaking, people already know, for example, that to save money they need to plan their meals. They just don't.

When you got into the nitty gritty, you got some tips that were a little fresher, but they were also significantly more difficult and in my case at least, significantly less appealing. Which isn't to say they were bad suggestions. I thought they were good suggestions. They just passed a threshhold and went into the zone of things I was usually unable or unwilling to do.

Here were a few of the more intense money-saving ideas:
-Grind your own meat. I concede that I'm just so uninterested in doing this, that I just won't. I don't doubt that it will save you money and I bet it tastes fantastic. I just won't do it, but I imagine some will.
-Shop once a month with a mid-month pit-stop for more produce. This is not a bad suggestion and I do do this on a small scale (1 or 2 big shopping trips, with small weekly ones thrown in for milk or produce), but one advantage of teenagers (hurray, there is one) versus small children is that it's just not reasonable for me to give up 4 hours (and that's after the planning and coupon clipping) to do a major major shopping trip each month. I could hire a babysitter or choose an afternoon Kip would be home, but I do not want to. If you're a young (okay, young-ish) at-home mother, you will understand that you don't want your "me" time to be spent in a Walmart. It's just more reasonable to take my kids with me on shorter, but more frequent trips. They learn (sure they do--they learn to beg for disgusting otter pops, that's what they learn); I survive; and the faster I get out of the store, the better it is for all. In this way, they do keep my spending checked. If allowed to wander alone through the aisle of the store, who knows what might happen. I'd probably come home with an elephant to butcher and then grind up in our new meat grinder or something.
-Take one day a month to prepare a significant amount of your food and then freeze it. They prepare about 15-20 or their meals ahead of time and freeze them. Wow. It takes a whole day to do and a chest freezer to store it, but then it's done. Again, this isn't a bad suggestion, but with small children it's tougher to do. Also (and again), I don't want to. It struck me as a suggestion that would be awesome for people who don't really like to cook, or who don't like to cook on a daily basis. I actually really enjoy cooking and--usually--I enjoy the ritual of doing it every evening. That said, I did decide to give it a try with a few meals or with portions of meals. It'd be really nice to have a pizza or two frozen. And maybe even some casseroles. Not for every night, but maybe 3-5 for some of those crazy nights. Or for times when you needed something to give to someone else, but don't have extra time to prepare something. And that would be much easier to do than preparing nearly a month's worth of meals in a day. Instead, you'd just make an extra casserole or pizza on casserole or pizza night, then you wrap it up tight and freeze it in its pre-cooked state. Also, I think it's a great idea to cook, say, double the spaghetti sauce or double the ground beef and freeze the unused portions so that on a night when you're trying to throw something together, you've made it really easy to do so.

My other issue with the book was that they were still shopping the same old factory-farmed meat, cheese, and milk. Yes, it's cheaper, but sometimes better or more right just trumps cheap. Sometimes. Additionally, although they were careful to prepare fairly nutritious meals, I felt their were less fruits and vegetables and more meat on their plates than is my personal style.

In conclusion, if you're already pretty tight with your money, I doubt this book has too much to offer. But if you're just embarking on your road to cheapskatery or organization (in order to live cheaper) the book probably has more to offer you (including several recipes and charts that might be useful if you were wanting a system of your own).

And in case you couldn't tell, I haven't been paid or reimbursed in any way to read this book.

Book Review: How to Shop For Free by Kathy Spencer

In her book, How to Shop for Free: Shopping Secrets for Smart Women Who Love to Get Something for Nothing, Kathy Spencer shares her method (and her madness) for using coupons to whittle her weekly grocery bill down to $4 or less. She also shares tips for getting medicines, clothes, and other commodities for free or nearly free.

And when I say that she shares her method, I mean that she gives lots and lots and, did I mention lots, of information. Which was one thing I really liked about this book. Honestly, I was a little surprised at how very many resources, tips, and perfectly legal tricks she gives about how to save. Admittedly, I approached the book as a bit of a cynic, expecting a few mediocre tips--things that a normal and busy kind of girl like myself either already does or could never ever do (and don't worry, there were some of those too). Apparently I've become jaded by books and articles promising to teach me something "new" and "fresh" and then rambling on about how in order to save money I should re-evaluate my car insurance, or fire my housekeeper, or not shop while I'm hungry--you know, that kind of thing. But this book really was full of nuts and bolts. So even though my cynicism wasn't entirely overwhelmed, I certainly did appreciate that.

Let's start off talking about why I was a cynic/skeptic:

1. We eat relatively few processed foods. This is as I think it should be whether the food is free or not. I see very few coupons for foods other than processed ones and therefore couldn't see myself benefiting too much from couponing.
2. In my town, there is not a store where coupons can be doubled or tripled. There are no CATalina deals (the type of deal where if you spend $30, they'll reward you with 10 or 15 "dollars" at the cash register--money that can be applied to your next shopping trip at that store).
3. It seems that all the coupon queens spend hours upon hours clipping, searching, researching, and shopping. I don't have the time for that. I have small children who usually shop with me (whee, fun). And even if I could save $20/week, that's sure not worth 10 or even 5 hours of work clipping and sale-matching.
4. I've been looking to match coupons to sales in the area (thereby scoring a lower final price) for a couple of weeks now and find that my internet coupons and the stores in our area rarely if ever match up on even one item.
5. I don't love to shop. I would never do it every day. Or for hours at a time. Or go to more than 3 (which is pretty much an absolute maximum--did I mention I shop with small children) stores in a day.

So, what exactly did I glean from this book? Plenty. For example, did you know...

1. Manufacturer and store coupons can be used together.
2. If you use a buy one get one free coupon (that's, say, a manufacturer's coupons), the free item is still technically purchased and therefore if you've got another store coupon for buy one get one free, you can get them both free.
3. CVS and Walgreens have a rewards type program where you can buy things, thereby earning "bucks" for the amount of what you spent. You can then use those "bucks" the next time you shop to buy more (though different) things that have "bucks" attached. In this way, you can keep buying and stockpiling without spending anything as long as you stick to those products that are spitting out the "bucks." These products are supposedly advertised each week.
4. You can buy coupons on eBay. Well, technically, the coupons are free and you buy for the service of having them clipped for you.
5. Peelies--those coupons stuck to other goods in the store--can sometimes be used without purchasing the item they're stuck to (read the fine print before peeling it off to be sure).

Those were all things I didn't know or didn't get or couldn't have possibly conceived (coupons? on eBay? how do the sellers make any money?)

We'll get to some things I plan to try in a minute, but for now...

With so much new and interesting information, how have I managed to hang desperately to pieces of my original skepticism? Well, I'll tell you...

1. In Evansville Indiana if you plan to eat some fresh produce with any frequency (and possibly even if you don't), you will never ever shop for free. As I said earlier, there are no stores that double or triple coupons and there are no CATalina deals (reward money when you spend a certain amount that can be used to shop at that same store the next time). Spencer buys most of her free meat and produce with CATalina money. I simply can't.
2. Because of this, the question remains: How much time with I have to expend clipping coupons, researching sales, going to different stores, removing children from car seats (over and over and, oh--the torture, over again), driving, and actually shopping in order to save some money on certain processed foods we do use (such as pasta) or toiletries? I don't yet know. If I could save $20-$50 for a few hours planning, that's totally worth it to me. If not, then it's just not. I plan to give it a try this month and find out. I'll let you know.
3. Printable coupons expire faster than newspaper ones, making the whole newspaper thing not necessary, but helpful if you're looking to pair coupons with store sales.
4. She plugged her blog a LOT. That's fine except that each time I went to her blog to try to get the amazingly helpful information I'd been promised, there just wasn't a whole lot there. For example, she kept talking about this fabulous database for coupons. You just search the coupon you hope to find and if it's out there anywhere and not expired, someone will have posted it. She even encourages you to start your couponing quest by searching for a buy one get one free coupon and trying to match it to a sale. I did just that. Not a single buy one get one free coupon listed. Then I searched Ghiradelli, which I'd certainly love to buy more cheaply. Nothing. In fact, the whole page of listed coupons was just that--a page. And a somewhat lean (yet processed food) page at that.
5. You've got to be willing and able to stockpile to make it work. I'm willing to stockpile, so that's not a problem for me, but I know others wouldn't or couldn't because of space limitations.
6. Even if you did manage to shop for free--meat, dairy, and produce included--you're not going to be shopping local or buying animal products from animals that have been humanely raised. Well, maybe once in a very blue moon if you live in a trendier city with trendier coupons. But still not often.
7. To coupon like Spencer does, you have to have a lot of time and heaven help you if you've got small kids with no one to watch them while you shop. Shopping for free is Spencer's job (and was even before she made a name for herself by doing it). She spends a lot of time doing it. I don't have a problem with that--per her estimation she saves $60,000/year, which isn't a bad salary. But if you already have a job or if you're an at-home mom with small children and hobbies besides shopping, you'll be hard pressed to find the 20-40 hours to shop for free (and that's if you live in an area with all the couponing perks).
8. I still don't love to shop. This method, especially the more advanced things like getting clothes for free--they're for people who love to shop, who go to the mall all the time, who'd rather be in a store getting a great deal than doing anything else. That's just not me.

That said, I do think some of her tricks of the trade can be adapted to those with less time than I have and I totally plan to try some of her stuff to see if I can save some money and maybe even start to score some of our basics for free.

What do I plan to try?

1. That CVS/Walgreens thing where you get the rewards bucks and are careful to apply them to another thing with rewards bucks, thereby never spending anything and getting lots of things for free. I'm not expecting bags of organic apples or anything. But some toilet paper would be nice. Or toothpaste. Or even some new eyeliner. I have a CVS and Walgreens very close to my house. I pass them constantly. All I'll need to do (theoretically) is have a quick look at their ads to determine what the rewards deals are ("Extra Bucks" at CVS and "Register rewards" at Walgreens) and then run in and get them, take home my rewards bucks and return another day to get the next rewarded item they've got. It sounds simple. We'll see if children in car seats cooperate.
2. Buy coupons online. I mean, how easy and awesome does that sound? No buying 4 Sunday papers. No clipping. No coupons for a bunch of stuff you'd NEVER use. And lots of coupons for stuff you would. I had a quick look at eBay the other night and found a package of 20 coupons for $1/pasta. The coupons cost about $2 (and that included shipping). Even if that left me with $.50/pasta package, that's a pretty good deal (not to Spencer maybe, but to me) and over time it would cut down my grocery bill. I plan to make a list of all the processed foods I do buy, or might buy if they were cheaper (pasta, chocolate chips, spices, peanut butter--oh help, the peanut butter we consume, yogurt, etc...) and then search for coupons for those items on eBay to see what turns up. My hope is that lots of coupons packages will turn up for lots of things we use. We'll see how that pans out in real life and I'll let you know.
3. Pairing store ads with coupons. I've been casually trying. I'm going to give it more of a go in the next few weeks and see what happens.

My goals?

1. To save $20-$50/month for an hour or two of work.
2. In order to make it worthwhile to me the savings will have to really trump those from my beloved Aldi. For example, when I can get a box of cereal at Aldi for $1.59, it's not worth it to me to make another stop at another store to get a box that, after coupons, is $1.49. Smiling tiger on the front of the package or not.

Skepticism aside, this book was brim-full of ideas and info. It might be worth a trip to half.com or amazon. It's well worth a trip to your local library. Which, for the record, is where I got mine. I haven't been paid or reimbursed in any way to read and review this book.