How to Pinch a Penny

In today's world where food, movies, and countless other purchases are just a click away, it's hard not to spend money on items that you don't necessarily need. I personally fall prey to websites that allow you to "click-and-pay" all in one swift tap of your finger on the screen. Do I need the two-bowl Le Creuset set in a beautiful deep, inky blue? No, probably not but "Click!" and it's on its way to my home in only a matter of days. 

With a wedding on the way and a need to save for ribbons, cake, shoes, and numerous other marital accoutrements, I find Carla's advice on "How to Pinch a Penny" particularly useful. She wisely suggests the following:

Don't buy anything new if you can help it. Write what you need on a list, and then watch and wait. You probably don't need it all anyway. Never buy on impulse. Buy only what's on your list. If you see something you like, go home and think about it. If it was really that good, you can put it on next month's list. Attend auctions and yard sales; go to secondhand stores. If you can't find a bargain, wait.

Spring Cleaning with Homemade Cleansers

Spring has sprung and we all know what that means. It's time to scrub those floors, wash those windows, and partake in the annual ritual known as Spring Cleaning.

As a type-A, hyper-organized person, I find this process cathartic and love seeing the finished product of a home rid of dust, grime, and old clothes. What I don't love is the cost and harsh smell of many of today's cleaning solutions.

Happily, Carla's readers come to the rescue with various homemade cleaner tips that will keep your wallet full and your house smelling like springtime daisies, not chemical cleansers.

Here are a few of my favorites that will give you great Spring Cleaning success:

• To clean painted walls Lynn Woodworth writes: "I use a mixture of 1⁄4 c. turpentine, 1⁄2 c. milk, and 2 T. liquid soap, dissolved in 2 qts. hot water. It gives a nice finish to flat or semi-gloss paint."

• To clean the refrigerator use a weak solution of baking soda.

• To polish rust from copper or silver use a paste of water and wood ashes. Or use half a lemon sprinkled with salt to clean copper...Repeat until you win. Carefully dry afterwards to prevent more rusting.

Eat Those Veggies!

Peaches. Raspberries. Pears. Name any kind of fruit (except maybe tomatoes) and my mouth will water. As a child, my love of fruit even compelled me to hide the juiciest, ripest pieces from my family, ensuring that they would be all mine later and solidifying my reputation as the "Fruit Bat."

My fruit hoarding tendencies might signal a problem, but an even greater difficulty lies in my absolute disinterest in fruit's counterpart, vegetables. If you mention broccoli, cauliflower, or spinach, you won't even get me to turn my head. The most you'll illicit is a slow, drawn out yawn. This doesn't bode well for my body that needs the vitamins hidden within the bright red, green, and orange exteriors of vegetables.

Since I can't possibly be the only vegetable-averse eater around, many of you will be pleased to know that Carla Emery has a bounty of delicious vegetable recipes in her book. The one I found to be the most alluring (who doesn't love lasagna?)is below and will soon have you eating your veggies too.

Spinach Lasagne Make a batch of marinara (tomato sauce) and a batch of white sauce. Steam 1 lb. spinach until barely tender. Then chop it coarsely and combine with the white sauce. Also steam 3 large sliced zucchini. Now, into a 9 12-inch baking dish, spoon a thin layer of tomato sauce, a layer of uncooked wide noodles, one-third of the tomato sauce, a layer of half the zucchini slices, and half the spinach mixture. Then repeat noodle layer, tomato sauce layer, rest of zucchini, and rest of spinach. Finally, top with a last layer of noodles and the remaining one-third of tomato sauce. Bake at 350˚F covered for a half hour and uncovered for another half hour. Let stand before serving. From Ruth of Bonaire.

Thinking of Raising Chickens This Year? Take This Advice From Carla Emery

Early last summer, my uncle started a new project: raising chickens. Against the idyllic backdrop of his Maine farmhouse and with his childhood farming experience in mind, the endeavor of this now suburbanite man and his family seems less out of the ordinary, but it was none-the-less an exciting learning experience for all involved.

That July as I gazed down at the 100 plus yellow, brown, and red chicks rustling about and pig-piling their fluffy selves into cotton-ball-like nests, the furthest thing from my mind was the reality of where their final resting place would be. However, accepting that your chicks are destined to land on your dinner plate, providing you with many a delicious meal throughout the year, is a crucial part of poultry planning prep. Just how many chicks will you need? What chickens are best for broiling? And can you save on bargain breeds?

If you're starting out by buying chicks (my uncle mail-ordered his) here are some helpful tips from Carla Emery on how many and which types to buy for your family.

Chicks for Meat How many days a year do you want to eat chicken? Once a week? Order 50 quick-growing birds to be raised and processed for the freezer as soon as they reach the target weight. Twice a week? Make that 100 of them. Or, if you're not used to thinking of it by the bird or have a small family, 15 chickens per year per member of your family is a conservative estimate. Remember to include the cockerels from your laying stock (if you're getting straight run) in your count. Lane Morgan ... : "A 10-12-week-old Cornish cross is big. Our family of 4 gets at least 2 meals out of it, which affects menu planning and butchering quotas."

If your interest is to get birds for roasting and frying, the broiler breeds are a shortcut to that end. Or try a straight run of a heavy breed. You may get offered a great bargain in cockerels (generally Leghorns). Don't jump at it unless you have lots of virtually free food to give them.

It might be called something like "Super Bargains" or "Assorted Surplus." It takes so many more pounds of feed to grow a Leghorn to eating size than it does a broiler breed that the money you save on Leghorn cockerels at the outset is more than offset by the extra feeding expense. Such lightbreed cockerels, if not bought by the uninformed, will end up in dog food or livestock food or ground up for fertilizer.