ON BEING FRUGAL
I think being frugal is making the best use of available resources. It’s about preserving a box of gifted apples, mending clothing and extending its life and borrowing books from the library and only buying a copy if you don’t want to give the book back!
Being frugal is not about being mean. It’s not really about money, it’s about resources. It’s about being thoughtful about consuming. Spend less money on things which will be thrown out, enjoy beautiful things in your home, cook most of what you eat from the best ingredients and don’t waste food!
Most days of the week I walk with my 89 year old neighbour. We both grew up on farms where water was a much valued resource and yesterday, after heavy rain, noticed a neighbour’s reticulation was still running. Wasted water!
Using the least water possible was a way of life on the farm where I grew up. It was a precious resource. I have mixed memories about going away to school but one of them was discovering I could fill the bath up to my chin. I could tilt the plug with my toe to let some cooled water out and top the bath up again with hot. Bliss! Then the luxury of letting the water drain out of the bath. We weren’t expected to bucket it out into the garden to water the plants.
I wish I’d spent more time with my Father in his shed. A treasure trove of bits and pieces carefully stored in labeled boxes on shelves, it seemed he could make or repair anything. Jobs he couldn’t do were done by specialists. The saddlier came and took saddles away for repairs, the plumbing for a new bathroom was installed by a plumber and vehicles were sometimes repaired by mechanics but most jobs were done by him. Now I rely on YouTube, online posts and guesswork.
I really like the idea of things lasting for a long time. The blogs showing how people recycle a pair of jeans into storage pockets, aprons, bracelets, shorts and patches for other pairs of jeans are really interesting. I enjoy reading blogs demonstrating ways of getting the most out of what we have or intend buying.
Many years ago my husband gave me a designer hand bag. I adore it! I used it most days a week when I was working. It’s a thoughtful design so perfect for traveling. I still use it. About once a year I treat it with saddle dressing and it still looks new. It is 21 years old, so per use, it has been a really frugal buy. It would have been more frugal if I’d stopped at one but actually I have several much loved and frequently used bags from the same brand. As an aside, I asked two friends if they still have and use 21 year old handbags. Neither do and both said they donate their expensive leather bags to charity shops after two or three years.
Why does using less matter? The only free energy we have is the sun, so conserving energy is a worldwide consideration. Energy production results in pollution, either chemical or heat. Thoughtful use of energy is necessary because some popular energy saving methods actually cause more pollution, such as factory farming resulting in added food miles. Buy food locally produced and trucked to the shop.
Adding to landfill is an enormous problem. Many things disintegrate very slowly and can pollute the surrounding soil, waterways and the air. We should all try to create less landfill by discarding fewer clothes, food and general household waste. Many large Australian supermarkets are committed to reducing wasted food, directing it to gifted meals or compost, plus using less plastics. One of our major supermarket chains has already swapped the traditional polystyrene trays used for meat, fruit and vegetables, replacing them with a plant based product which is compostable.
MAKING STEM GINGER
We found a delicious sounding recipe for pear, ginger and rye cake. Couldn’t find any stem ginger in syrup. The recipe called for both the preserved ginger and some syrup. I found a way to make stem ginger in syrup online. Luckily I had a knob of fresh ginger. It wasn’t the weight recommended in the recipe but that was easily adjusted .
The recipe advised scraping the skin off the ginger using a spoon. Made an awful mess, went back to my usual tool, a potato peeler. Chopped the peeled ginger and boiled it for two and a half hours, just covered in water. Kept an eye on it and topped up the water when necessary.
Made the syrup by boiling equal amounts of water and sugar.
It was soft after two and a half hours, so I strained the liquid off the ginger. I had 130gm of ginger so added 130gm sugar and 130ml of drained off cooking water, brought it all to the boil and let it simmer for five minutes. Left it to cool a little, then packed the ginger into a sterilised jar and covered it with the syrup.
This made very strong ginger and delicious strong syrup. There was leftover syrup when I measured it, so we added some soda and enjoyed a very good sparkling ginger drink.
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Sparkling ginger drink. Delicious preserved stem ginger.
Did you know recent research revealed Australian households annually throw out 2.5 million tonnes of edible food every year? The average household sends about 4.5kg of food to landfill each week.