DIY iced tea

One of our latest projects is to brew our own iced tea. Iced tea is a healthy alternative to other cold flavored drinks like soda or even juice; it has very few calories, and benefits from the same "superfood" qualities that hot tea does. And it's easy to make yourself!

Our recipe (if you can call it that): bring one gallon of water to a boil. Remove from heat and add two generic tea bags and one flavored herbal tea (e.g. rasberry, ginger peach, etc.). Stir once, then steep for about 15 minutes. Remove the tea bags, allow to cool, and refrigerate.

If you prefer sweet tea, you can add the sweetener of your choice to each glass. It would probably also work to dissolve in some sweetener right after you remove the tea bags.

We've tried it using only generic "TEA" bags, and with a blend of flavored tea, and definitely prefer the flavors. The result is similar to the flavored iced teas sold as soft drinks.

At our grocery store, generic tea bags cost about 2 cents each, and fancy flavored tea costs about 25 cents each, so a whole batch costs about 29 cents to make. If you get a full gallon batch, that works out to about 2.7 cents per 12 ounce serving. Which is pretty cheap.

We'll be experimenting with different flavors to see which one we like best. I also want to try using green tea, like some of the new green iced tea products I've seen.

Bottled the Hefeweizen

We brew our own beer.

Yesterday I bottled a batch of Hefeweizen that had been fermenting for the last month. I'm a fan of Hefeweizens, so I'm eager to figure out a homebrew "Hefe" recipe for my everyday beer. The bottling went smoothly; there were no mishaps and I got all 48 bottles' worth out of the fermenter. This was a batch of MoreBeer's malt extract based Hefeweizen kit. We tried a small sample, and it looked, tasted, and smelled like a Hefeweizen should, so I'm optimistic about the final result after the beer "mellows" and carbonates for a couple weeks in the bottles. I'm especially happy that the banana overtones are noticeable, since that was what I was going for.

Now we don't have any beer brewing, which is unusual. We still have some of the last three batches, plus these 48 Hefes, so I don't think we need to start another batch too soon. It's always challenging to decide when to brew a batch since the whole process takes 5-6 weeks, and we need to have enough empty bottles on hand when the fermenting is done 4 weeks in. Right now bottles are our biggest obstacle since my bottle scavenging has hit a dry spell for the last couple months.

Since this is our first post about home brewing, I'll give a couple references. My primary references are John Palmer's online book How to Brew, and the HomeBrewTalk forum. I get my supplies from MoreBeer.com and O'Shea Brewing in Laguna Niguel.

Selling clutter-books on Amazon

Lately I've been weeding out possessions I don't really need as part of my quest to simplify things. I've been a working student my whole adult life, so I haven't accumulated a whole lot of "stuff." However I have found some things to get rid of: media I don't need or like any more, semi-obsolete computer parts, and materials for hobbies I no longer practice.

Most of these things have very little value, so I donate or recycle them. But a few seem valuable enough that I ought to sell them. I don't have a lot of time or energy for this, so I try to sell this stuff in ways that are fast and painless, even if I don't maximize the proceeds. I've been happy selling books through Amazon's used book marketplace and shipping them with USPS flat rate envelopes.

My process works like this:

• Find the book's page on Amazon, enter the book's condition (e.g. "Used - Good"), and a brief description (e.g. "Crease on cover"), and my price. I usually set my price so my book is one of the cheapest available.
• Wait for an email from Amazon saying that a book sold.
  
• Go to Amazon's page and print an invoice for the book.
• Put the book and invoice in a Flat Rate Envelope.
• Go to the USPS web page and use their "Click'n'Ship" facility to buy flat rate postage and print a shipping label.
• Tape the label to the envelope and drop it in a mailbox.
• Go back to Amazon's page and send the buyer a message with the tracking number.

After some practice this only takes about 5 or 10 minutes per book. I've found it helps to keep a "workstation," with a pile of the envelopes and a roll of packing tape, near the printer.

The beauty of this system is that once it's set up, I can sell books without interacting with customers or leaving the house!

The philosophy behind the blog

Kevin has been extremely good about posting here. I have not, but plan to remedy that. As you may have noticed, we are making a concerted effort to make things ourselves and rely less on the hyper-materialistic consumer machine. What we've found is that making things ourselves is not only cheaper, and more satisfying, but is also easier in many circumstances. With a well stocked pantry or refrigerator, we can start a new batch of yogurt or a new loaf of bread with much less effort than it would take to drive to the grocery store and buy one.

What we haven't spoke of is what caused this shift in our thinking-- from one of running with the pack mentality of consumerism to a life of voluntary simplicity and frugality. Living in Orange County, CA has definitely tinged my outlook on life in a variety of ways. We are surrounded by wealth, excess, narcissism, and selfishness every time we step out of our front door, and have chosen to create a world of our own that is decidedly dissimilar from the rest. We hope to one day live in a place that more closely echoes out ethos, but for now, we are making the best of it.


We would also be entirely remiss if we don't mention the book that really started it all for us: The Simple Living Guide, by Janet Luhrs. This book really taught us that every day you have a choice about how you want to live your life. Voluntary simplicity can take many forms for different people, but for us, as a young couple just starting out, it means that we will never aspire to the "keeping up with the Jones'" mentality that traps so many people in this country in debt and despair. We hope to give you all some good tips for doing the same.

One nice thing about media PCs

We use "media PCs" -- regular computers in the role of media appliances -- instead of conventional electronics like TVs, DVD players, and TiVo boxes. I'll probably describe our whole setup in a future post, as well as sketch out the trials and tribulations of running a multi-node MythTV setup.

Recently the DVD drive in our living room computer has had trouble reading a lot of discs. I think it's worn out. I tried rummaging for a DVD drive in our housing complex's electronics recycling pile but didn't find anything, so I'll probably order the cheapest drive I can find on Newegg.

This made me realize a hidden benefit to using media PCs instead of consumer electronics: it's possible to repair and upgrade computers. Consumer electronics like DVD players are not designed to be serviced and replacement parts are not available, so if we owned a regular DVD player instead of our media PC we'd have to throw the whole thing away and buy a whole new DVD player (about $75 new). Instead we only have to discard a 5.25" DVD drive and buy a new one (about $20 new, and easy to find used or even free).

When I set up our media PCs it seemed like a pure extravagance, but it turns out that we exchanged a need for "throwaway" products for equipment that can be maintained easily and cheaply. So maybe using maintainable equipment like old PCs is defensible even when it's overkill for the task at hand.

I wonder if this is true in other areas -- for instance, using an industrial-grade stove or clothes washer that's designed to be kept in service for a long time.

Homemade yogurt: batting .500

Yesterday we succesfully made homemade yogurt. We used a simple recipe based on the one in The Tightwad Gazette, by Amy Dacyczyn:

1. Mix a quart of milk with 1/2 cup dry milk powder.
2. Heat to 180 degrees F.
3. Cool to 115 degrees F.
4. Whisk in 2 tbsp store-bought yogurt with live cultures.
5. Incubate at 110 degrees F for 4-8 hours.
   

A few days ago we made a valiant first try that utterly failed. Following Dacyczyn's advice, we used a heating pad on "low" to keep the yogurt warm during the incubation step. However when it was finished Amanda noticed that the yogurt was at room temperature -- not 110 degrees. And, I completely forgot to add the milk powder. The result was a batch of milk with a slight sour taste. Ooops.

Yesterday we tried again, but this time I remembered to add the powder, and we set the heat pad on "high." This batch turned out to be actual yogurt! It was a little runnier than store-bought, but in retrospect I had doubled the amount of milk but forgot to double the amount of dried milk. I plan on using the prescribed proportion of milk powder next time, which I think will yield a thicker consistency.

At our grocery store, organic milk costs $3.50/half gallon (5.7 cents/oz), and generic plain yogurt costs $2.79/32 oz (8.7 cents/oz). We typically use about 40 oz/week, so making our own yogurt saves about $1.20/week and gives us an "upgrade" to organic. Not a huge sum, but a buck's a buck. There's also a convenience factor, since the store containers never last the whole week, but we can make a homemade batch in whatever size we want.

Boglehead investing

I am a "Boglehead."

Generally, a "Boglehead" is one who invests in accordance with Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), using predominantly Vanguard index mutual funds, as espoused by John Bogle. In some contexts, though, a "Boglehead" is a participant in the Vanguard Diehards (aka "Bogleheads") forum.

That's a lot of mumbo-jumbo, but the gist of Boglehead-style investing is to:

• live below your means and set aside money every month to invest
• commit to a risk/reward level based upon your need for growth and ability to withstand market volatility
• translate your desired risk/reward level into an asset allocation, which is a breakdown of what kinds of assets you should hold. For example, "30% US stocks, 30% non-US stocks, 10% real estate, and 30% bonds."
  
• hold a small number (usualy 3-7) of low cost index funds, in proportions consistent with your asset allocation
  
• "stay the course:" stick to your plan regardless of what the markets are doing
  
• occasionally (e.g. once a year) rebalance the mutual funds so they don't move too far away from your intended allocation
  

I like this method because:

• Academic research says it works well; I'm an academic researcher, so I take this to heart.
  
• It requires very little ongoing time or effort. After the initial effort of deciding on an allocation and opening the accounts, all your decisions and legwork are finished. You can set up future investments as automated transfers, at which point the only work is an hour or so every year to rebalance the funds.
• There are few decisions to make, so I don't wind up second guessing myself and regretting "mistakes," as I would with a more active approach.
  
• I can do 100% of this over the internet.

I could go on and on about this stuff, but I think it's been covered thoroughly in blog-space. The aptly named Boglehead's Guide to Investing is an excellent primer on all things Boglehead. If you don't mind wading through forum posts, you can get a lot of the same information in raw form by reading the forum's Reference Library area. Vanguard's Plain Talk series also covers the same ground.

Crockpots are great

Man, crockpots are great.

Crockpots are a rare "quadruple crown:" simultaneously cheap, healthy, time-efficient, and environmentally sound.

Every crockpot recipe we've tried so far follows the same pattern:

1. Throw a bunch of vegetables, spices, and maybe some meat, into the crockpot
2. Stir it
3. Set it to cook for 8 hours on low, or 4 hours on high

Aside from a couple simple rules, like leaving it closed the whole cooking time, and not under- or over-filling it, you can pretty much experiment with whatever ingredients you want.

It's cheap because recipes tend to be mostly inexpensive vegetables, and the slow cooking process makes inexpensive meats more tender and flavorful than other forms of cooking. It's possible to make an entire recipe out of stuff from the produce section (plus spices), and you can "get away" with using a lot of cheap ingredients like potatoes or canned tomatoes. We tend to get about 10 servings per recipe, so the cost per serving is pretty low. Leftovers are great, which helps us avoid eating out for lunch. And crockpots themselves are cheap; about $20 new, and perennially available at thrift stores and garage sales.

It's healthy because it's a low-impact way of cooking from scratch and incorporating lots of vegetables. I'll readily admit that home-cooking a healthy meal every day of the week is impractical for a lot of people, myself included. A typical crockpot recipe takes 20-30 minutes to prepare and makes enough food for several meals. Also it's easy to mix and match ingredients, so we've been substituting low-fat and "superfood" ingredients when possible.

It's time-efficient because you get so much food for so little effort. What's more, the cooking can happen unsupervised, so you can start a recipe before you go to sleep or before you leave for work, and wake up/come home to a hot, cooked meal.

It's environmentally sound because, again, you can use a minimal amount of meat. When you cook from scratch it's easy to use all organic food, and you waste very little packaging. Finally the crockpot throws off much less waste heat than an oven or range.

So far we've found a few recipes we really like, and only one that was truly bad. Our favorites include Chicken Tikka Masala, Chicken, Chickpea and Apricot Tagine, and Chicken and Dumplings. Next time I want to try a Manhattan-style salmon chowder filled to the brim with "superfoods," and I'm embarking on a quest to fine-tune an authentic New England clam chowder to soothe my Yankee homesickness. We'll see how that goes.

The requisite introductory post.

We thought we'd start off our blog with a post describing what it'll be about and who we are.

As you may've noticed our subtitle is "frugal bon vivant lifestyle." The "frugal" part means simple living in all its forms: choosing to reduce or eliminate expenditures of money and time that aren't fulfilling, and leaving room for expenditures that are. The "bon vivant lifestyle" part indicates that we try to live up the finer things: good food, spirits, time with friends, and travel.

We, the authors, are a young couple living in Orange County, California. Living in Orange County presents some challenges to living a frugal bon vivant lifestyle: it's a sprawling suburb with a very high cost of living. The general culture here is pretty image-focused and materialistic, and the area doesn't have many of the funky-college-town mainstays that would help us out. We're trying to make the best of it; to find the hidden gems and to work the system. We hope that our findings will be useful to other locals, and more broadly appeal to anyone who finds themselves in a place that's too expensive and too boring.