Mary Beth Writes

This probably never happens to you. You buy fresh cilantro (or parsley or basil or whatever herb you think you need) at the grocery store. You come home and stick it in the vegetable drawer in your refrigerator.

Two weeks later you throw away the plastic bag of green slime.

It occurred to me several months ago to ask the Internet how one ought to store fresh herbs. 

Bring home the bunch of whatever you bought. Cut an inch off the bottom. Put it in a glass of water. Put the plastic bag OVER the top of the bunch. (I don’t know why). Put it in the fridge.  (I advise in the corner on the top shelf to help the glass stay upright.) Use what you need from time to time, change the water, and return it to the fridge.

It stays fresh for weeks!

How does this save hundreds of dollars per year?  Well, when you are having tacos or spicy Asian soup and you need cilantro but your cilantro has turned to sludge – what do you do?  You either give up on cooking and order in a $20 pizza. Or you drive out to your grocery store (gas is not free). While you are at the store you pick up a few more things you need. Voila!  Hundreds of dollars per year needlessly spent because you do not have fresh herbs at hand.

Also, here is another way to save money on cilantro the way I did just yesterday. I had friends to lunch. I served dal soup, which is cooked with mung beans, ginger, and turmeric. When one serves this, they are supposed to have fresh cilantro available to sprinkle into the soup.

I forgot to put out the cilantro.

If you need cilantro today, I have some.  

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 Why “Mindful Chickens”? We are frugal so that our retirement savings will last as long as we do. At the same time we try to consume responsibly so that our choices have the least negative impact on our fellow humans and on our earth and its creatures.  Cheep, Cheap!

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Frugality Hacks or how I saved $64,000,000, so far.

I read the ‘frugal things I did’ letters in other people’s huge and interesting frugality blogs. I figured I could list some of the ways I saved some money this week (this life). I’m pleased to say I saved about 64 Million.

Quarantine Diary #645 - Granola

Two recent tweets : Someone named Kate Harding tweeted; “What haunts me is that I am not just smart enough for so many people to be this much stupider than me.”

And from Di, Obstinate Hoper; “I’m starting to think of pandemic caution like labor: buckle down during peaks, relax a little between them. Hang in there, folks. It’s a damn long labor.”

Frugal? Road Trip to New Mexico

If our finances were stretched we wouldn’t have gone to New Mexico. We are doing fine despite the advice that says one ought to retire with a million dollars in the bank. Imagine that.

1. We and, at this point, about half the nation, have had our Covid vaccines so we felt safe and ready to see something new. However, we traveled to a place where they had worked WITH the effort to fight this pandemic. This limited our choices and is the #1 reason we didn’t go to the Badlands. How we spend $ is our power.

The Mindful Chickens are Wordy Today

Other people call them “frugal things I did lately”. I call them Mindful Chickens because they are about:

  • Being Cheap (cheap, cheep).
  • Being thoughtful about how choices affect our community and our earth.
  • Paying attention to the constant tumble of dollars and choices.

This is my collection of wise choices and dastardly schemes from the last two months.

ONE: Our electric toothbrush/water pick would no longer hold a charge but a new one costs more than $100. Len took it to the battery store where they replaced it for $15.

Mindful Chickens - Plastic & Hunger 12/20/2020

I went for a walk on Wednesday and saw this mitten on a sidewalk. When I was at the same spot on Friday, it was still there, so I brought it home because it is a hand-knitted kid mitten, ya know? Any knitters out there interested in making it a mate, so that we could give it to a kid in my community or your? It's 7" from top to ribbed bottom. 

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The point of “Mindful Chickens” is to spend less money while being mindful of the environment and our human values. We can try, right?

Holy Mackerel! Mindful Chickens 12/12/2020

Yamiche and Weijia licking out the mackerel bowl this morning.

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I said I would write “mindful things” we did this week. The agenda of “Mindful Chickens” is to spend less money plus be mindful of the environment and our other values at the same time. Sometimes, one of those purposes wins over the other, but we can think before we spend, right?

1. I cut my hair. This is not a particular skill of mine, but I can do it well enough to not look like the Pittsburgh Paint Dutch boy.

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