Don't Toss Those Onion Scraps

Like most people, whenever I cut an onion for cooking, I've always thrown away the ends and the dry, papery skin that surrounds the fleshy, edible layers. However, this is in fact a big mistake. Although you cannot eat onion skin, it has a lot of flavor in it. You can keep a bag in your fridge or freezer into which you can put onion skins and the drier outer layers of the onion that you peel off. From time to time you can boil them down to produce a flavorful broth for cooking. Just tonight, I boiled some onion skins along with the bones from some chicken I cooked and stripped for soups and stir-fry. I got a fair amount of broth that filled the kitchen with a mouth-watering scent.

It's now in a stainless steel bowl in the refrigerator, cooling enough that I can pour it into peanut butter jars and put it into the freezer until I need it for soup or other cooking projects. Although some people also put the ends of their onions into the bag for cooking stock, you can also start new onions with them. Especially if an onion is beginning to sprout, you can set the top and bottom in a shallow dish of water and they will produce roots. Once you have a solid root network, you can transfer them into potting soil to establish themselves, and then plant them in your garden. You can harvest them as green onions, or you can leave them to set bulbs. When you harvest them, save the ends and start the cycle all over again. You can also grow an endless supply of green onions from a single bunch of store-bought green onions. Instead of using them all the way down to the roots, cut only the green parts and save the small white bulb to which the roots attach. Set them in water, and they will soon produce fresh leaves. At this point you can either plant them in your garden or you can keep them in water and harvest an endless crop of hydroponic green onions. You can even do this if you live in an apartment, as long as you have a window at which you get decent sunlight and where you either have a window ledge or room for a small table.

Remembering Angel Food Ministries

Over the past few days I've been sorting through some stacks of papers in my office area, in preparation for some repair work that needs to be done in it. As I was sorting and disposing, I came across a number of materials from Angel Food Ministries, a faith-based cooperative food buying system that allowed people to buy pre-packaged selections of food at a reduced price, via the sponsorship of local churches who collected the money and distributed the food. It worked because the parent organization pooled the contributions of hundreds of host sites and thousands of people to buy in bulk, directly from various food companies. Although some of the food came in retail boxes, a lot of it was in very plain packaging, further reducing the costs.

 It was particularly nice because there were no income qualifications, so if you were on the edge or had irregular income, you didn't have to worry about whether you qualified. Since it wasn't a distribution of a fixed pie of goods, you didn't have to worry whether you were taking food from those even more needy than yourself. In fact, because pooling money enabled the organizers to tap economies of scale that individual church food pantries couldn't have accessed, participating actually helped food become more available to the needy, and even made it possible to fund free boxes to the destitute.

And then, in 2011, everything came crashing down. I missed the September order cycle because we were going to be out of town on distribution Saturday, but when I went to their website in October to plan my order, I discovered that there would be no October distribution, and people's money for September was in the process of being refunded. The official explanation was financial trouble as a result of decreased participation, necessitating the discontinuation of the entire program.

However, that story was a fairy tale to comfort us. In truth, the leadership of the parent organization, Pastor Joe Wingo and his family, had been caught with their hands in the till by the Federal government. Several members of the Wingo family would ultimately be convicted in Federal court of various crimes, including money laundering and various forms of interference with a criminal investigation. It was a huge shame to discover that the leaders of an organization that so many deeply faithful people had come to believe in were in fact wolves in sheep's clothing, stealing in the name of the Lord.

 Looking over the materials with the benefit of hindsight, there were some odd warning signs. When I first began participating in 2008, each box of food came with a full-color eight-page magazine that included articles, recipes, and the next month's menus. At the end of 2009, it shrank to a single-sheet flyer with articles and recipes on one side, and the next month's menus on the back. During the last few months of the ministry's existence, it became nothing but a single-sided page of recipes, and the host sites had to print up their own copies of the menu sheet.

 Since the collapse of Angel Food Ministries, a number of organizations have tried to take its place, but none of them have been able to gain the sort of national reach that AFM possessed at its height. In 2018 we were introduced to a program called King Foods through one of the Lenten soup suppers that some of our local churches hold every Wednesday of Lent. Its menus and ordering systems looked very similar to AFM's, so we decided to give it a try and see how it worked out. Unfortunately, they had a catastrophic failure of the walk-in freezer at their central distribution site that month, and while they struggled to get their equipment replaced, they lost the momentum they had, and they appear to have ceased operations after November of 2018. Their Facebook page is still up, but their domain is now parked by GoDaddy.

 It's a real shame.

The Siren Song of False Economy

When the money is tight, the first impulse is to cut back on non-essential spending. However, sometimes things that don't look essential will turn out to be far more expensive in the long run.

Two of the most common false economies are skimping on health care and on vehicle maintenance. However, there are other false economies. For instance, people buy cheaper cuts of meat and end up wasting them because they don't know how to cook them properly. This situation can become even more complicated when buying for a family, because some family members may flatly refuse to eat unfamiliar foods. Food that will only end up scraped from plate to garbage can is no savings.

Unfortunately, false economies are not always obvious, and often we realize them only in retrospect. For instance, there are times that it may look financially prudent to repair a vehicle, but in fact it just traps you in a vicious cycle of nickle-and-dime repairs to the point you can't afford to get rid of it. Trying to get by with inadequate or inappropriate equipment can be another ugly false economy.

The best thing we can do is try to learn from other people's mistakes so we don't repeat them.

Gearing Down, part 7 -- Personal Care

Personal care expenditures are one of those things where it may be easy or difficult to reduce when confronted with a sudden financial reverse. Obviously, if you are one of those people who routinely spends hundreds of dollars on hair styling, manicures, pedicures, facials, high-end makeup and the like, it may be painful to give them up, but it is possible to realize substantial savings by making the sacrifice. However, if you're already in the habit of using off-brand soap and shampoo from the dollar store and trim your own hair when it starts showing too many split ends, it's going to be difficult to squeeze much savings out of this area, for the simple reason that you don't want to fall into the trap of false economy.

Personal hygiene is an important part of physical health, and especially when you're in bad financial straits, you really don't want to become ill with preventable problems. So essentials such as soap, shampoo and toothpaste, things that enable you to maintain basic cleanliness, need to stay on the shopping list somehow.

It may be possible to make things last longer by changing your habits of use. For instance, do you usually run a bead of toothpaste the entire length of your toothbrush? Although advertisements usually show toothpaste being applied in this way, since it is more aesthetically pleasing (and helps sell more toothpaste), you generally can get an effective cleaning and decay protection with a lump about the size of a pea or kidney bean.

Also, it may be possible to get free samples here and there that will help you stretch your own supply. For instance, our dentist generally gives out free toothpaste, toothpaste and dental floss with every visit. If a family member regularly travels on business and stays in hotels, they may be able to bring you spare bars of hotel soap and bottles of hotel shampoo. (One trick if you're staying multiple nights at the same hotel is to hide the used soap and shampoo before leaving in the morning. The maids won't throw it away, so you can use the rest for your second or third stay, and will put out fresh soap and shampoo, which you can save and take with you at the end of your stay).

If things get really desperate, some food pantries and other charitable organizations also give away personal hygiene items. So there is never any reason that you should have to go without the fundamental basics of personal hygiene, even if you have to give up some of the creature comforts of personal care that you've been accustomed to. It may mean needing to know where and how to ask and require the humility to be willing to ask, but there is always a way to make sure that you are clean and presentable.

Gearing Down, pt 2: Clothing

Coping with a sudden reduction in one's financial circumstances is not easy. We speak of buying habits because they're just that, habits. Things we do automatically. We go into the same stores and buy the same familiar brands. Having to change to make less money stretch further requires conscious thought, not just automatic responses.

Fortunately, clothing may be one of the easier things to change our habits on. Unlike food, we generally don't buy clothing on such a regular basis. Unless we're in a line of work in which we wear through clothes on a regular basis (construction and other manual labor positions) or are required to keep up with the latest fashions (media jobs are notorious for this), clothing purchases often can last a year or more. Seldom-worn special outfits like a good interviewing suit may well last a lifetime.

Still, clothes will not last forever, especially garments we wear on a regular basis. So when faced with a financial downturn that looks to last for months or years, we need to have a strategy for maintaining our wardrobe at a minimally acceptable level.

One important technique for keeping clothing costs low is to buy second-hand. Thrift stores such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army often will have garments that are practically new. Some of them may even be so new they still have the original tags from the high-end stores where they're purchased, although this sort of happy find is most likely at a store that's near a wealthy area where stores will dump unsold merchandise at the end of the season and take the tax deduction rather than store it and risk that it is no longer in fashion the following year.

Of course there are some things that should never be bought second-hand. Personal protection and safety equipment should always be bought new, since you have no idea what used equipment may have been exposed to that may have compromised its ability to protect you. Shoes are another thing that should always be bought new, and not just because of the possibility of transmitting diseases such as athlete's foot and toenail fungus. As we wear our shoes, they mold to the shape of our feet, and will no longer fit anyone else's properly.

The second important thing to stretch one's clothing dollars is to maintain the clothes you have in order to make them last as long as possible. When you have the money to casually replace worn or damaged articles, you don't have to worry about things like care labels or proper storage. Now that you need to avoid unnecessary purchases, you  need to pay attention to things like the temperature of water in which to wash your clothes. Also, consider how to store clothes so that they do not become stretched or distorted, or pick up stains or odors from a drawer.

Finally, even when clothes become worn, you may be able to repair or repurpose them. This may not be possible for all clothes. For instance, if maintaining a professional appearance means having clothes that look new, it may not be possible to wear clothes that have visible patches or other repairs. However, for everyday clothes or for things such as undergarments and socks which are not in the public view, being able to make some judicious repairs can be a good way to get another week or month of life out of a garment.

Goodbye SHARE Food of Central Illinois

Illinois and Indiana residents who had been getting monthly packages of discount food via Peoria-based SHARE Food of Central Illinois received an unhappy surprise at yesterday's distribution yesterday. As a result of shrinking participation levels combined with rising costs of food, fuel, and other essentials, they are no longer able to sustain their operation and will be closing their doors at the end of the year.

December 18 will be the last monthly food distribution. After that time, there will probably be a clearance sale at the Peoria distribution center to get rid of the remaining food.

This is an unfortunate loss for families who had been relying on SHARE packages to make their food budget stretch further. However, this does not mean that we are completely out of luck. Most of the area served by SHARE is also served by AngelFood Ministries, another faith-based discount food-buying system working on pretty much the same lines. The Bit o'Blessing box is roughly equivalent to the SHARE unit, but there are also larger Bread of Life and Bountiful Blessing boxes available, as well as various specialty boxes.

Money Saving Advice for the Rest of Us

Are you tired of the oh-so-helpful advice on saving money that keeps showing up in magazines, the sort that seems to assume that you're one of those people who spend money like water? Something that will be useful to those who are already living pretty tight, but need to figure out how to live even tighter?

A friend of mine just posted some information on new ideas on ways to save money at eHow. Take a look and see if any of them are useful to you.

Skills for Survival

When times are good, it's often easier to simply replace something that breaks. The time and money it would take to repair it have their value too.

But as things get tight, being able to repair things when they break can free up the money you would otherwise use to replace them so you can put it to something else. And when you're really struggling just to make essentials like food and rent, being able to fix something is the difference between being able to make it last a few more months and having to go without altogether.

For instance, what do you do when the switch on your table lamp starts to go bad? Or when a sock develops a hole?

The Time to Plan is Now

You know the advertisements that show the house being torn apart by the flood or hurricane or whatever disaster, that says "Now is not the time to plan." If you haven't planned out what to do in an emergency, you're going to be panicking too much to think straight when it actually happens.

And it's not just the big, catastrophic disasters like tornadoes and hurricanes and your house catching fire that you need to plan for. Especially when money is tight, planning ahead for the little disasters can be just as critical.

For instance, what would you do if you walked out the door tomorrow and discovered that your car wouldn't start? What backup plans to you have for getting to work on time, or to whatever other obligations in your life require the transporting of your physical presence to another location? How would you go about getting your car fixed so that you can get to those places by your own resources again?

For people for whom money is always there to fix whatever problems arise, it's easy enough to call the shop to have the car towed, then call a cab to get to the office. But when things are tight, having to pay a towing fee and a carfare means that money won't be there for other vital expenses. This is where doing some advance planning can really help, because you know who you can approach to ask for a ride without getting your head bitten off about presumptuousness, and you'll know someone who can fix your ride for a price you can afford.

What other crises can cost a lot of money to deal with when they arise, if your only recourse is to grab the yellow pages and hunt up the first name of a shop that deals with it?

Don't Waste Your Health Care Dollars

If you think you have the flu, don't waste your time or your money badgering your doctor for a prescription for antibiotics. Flu, including the current swine flu, is caused by a virus.

Antibiotics only work against bacteria. If you do develop a secondary bacterial infection as a result of your body being weakened by influenza or another viral infection, antibiotics will help those secondary infections. Until then, taking antibiotics will not help keep you well, and in fact may lead to worse sickness. First, the excessive or incorrect use of antibiotics can lead to the development of resistant strains of bacterial illnesses, so that the antibiotics won't work when you really do need them. Secondly, antibiotics purge all the bacteria in your body indiscriminately, including the helpful bacteria that are normally resident in your gut and help you gain nourishment from your food.

So save your money for medicines that will actually help you get and stay well.

Staying Healthy in Hard Times

You've probably been hearing about the swine flu outbreak that's spreading around the world from Mexico. Especially if you're without health insurance or afraid you soon may be losing your employer-provided health insurance, the thought of rapidly spreading deadly illness will be particularly terrifying. How will you pay for care if you get sick?

First and foremost, don't panic. Fear can lead us to do counterproductive things, even harmful ones. Remember that even if you have no money, there are still ways to obtain essential medical care. Most cities have free clinics that can provide some basic health care, and there is at least one hospital at which the emergency room will treat anyone with a life-threatening illness or injury, no matter their financial situation.

Second, remember that prevention is the best medicine. There are many ways to avoid becoming infected in the first place, including such basics as regular hand-washing and avoiding people who are ill. You may already have cut back on driving in order to reduce gas costs, but it will also help you avoid being exposed to people who are ill.

Eating healthful foods and keeping rested may seem easier said than done. After all, it seems like crap carbs and fats are always cheaper than good, solid fruits and vegetables, and if you're working three part-time jobs in an effort to keep ahead of your bills, sleep's one of the first things to get sacrificed. But this is a good time to jettison the junk foods you piece on without even thinking about and cut back to only those foods you actually eat as part of a meal, with a plate and silverware. And you may want to re-examine some of your non-work activities and see if some of them can go by the wayside without too much pain.

And you might just find that you feel better even without a looming pandemic to spur you on.

Penny Wise and Dollar Foolish

When times are tough, it's tempting to cut down on everything. However, cutting out some expenditures can actually cause bigger expenses in the long run.

For instance, don't skimp on the routine maintenance on your vehicles. It may make sense to take your car to the cheap oil-change place instead of the dealership, but don't stop getting the oil changed altogether, unless you want to risk ruining the engine altogether.

Protect Your Glassware -- and Your Hands

There are few things more frightening when washing dishes than discovering that a glass has broken in the sink -- the hard way. One of my brothers still has a scar on his hand where he cut it on a broken glass while doing dishes.

To protect your glassware from being broken in the sink, fold a soft towel into the sink before you drain water into it. The towel will cushion the glassware as it is moved around, and will help protect it should one piece slip from your hands and fall back in.

Too Convenient

One way to save is to avoid making purchases in the convenience stores attached to gas stations. The merchandise in them are often grossly overpriced compared to the same items sold at mass-merchandisers such as K-mart or Wal-Mart. For instance, the two-pound bag of sugar at the local convenience store may well cost as much as a five pound bag in the grocery store. They count on making their money on people who don't plan ahead and find themselves short of some necessity without the time to get to the grocery store.

If you find it excessively tempting to buy a bag of chips or a candy bar as you pass by the convenience store shelves to pay for your gas, use pay-at-the-pump whenever possible. Then all you will be buying is the gas you actually need.

List-ease

Making a list beforehand and sticking to it while in the store is an excellent way to control impulse spending on shopping trips. However, there's no need to buy expensive pads of list paper. You can make your own list paper simply and easily.

Simply take a sheet of scratch paper that has one side still blank. Fold it in half. Fold it in half again, then fold the resultant rectangle in half. Cut along the creases, and you will have eight small, narrow sheets of just the right size to make a shopping list.

Life after Death for Pantyhose

Don't throw away pantyhose that have seen better days. Unless they've completely disintegrated, you can cut away the panty section and braid the leg parts around a metal coathanger. This will provide protection from staining or rough spots for fragile garments such as silk blouses. Because nylon knits dry quickly, you'll be able to hang a damp garment on such a hanger without worrying that you'll cause the metal to rust.

The Energy Vampires

Did you know that your appliances can be using electricity even when they're turned off? Most modern electronics maintain a low-level "trickle charge" in their circuitry so that they will come on immediately instead of needing to warm up like old-fashioned televisions and radios. However, if you're not going to be using them for several days, it makes sense to unplug them to save that electricity.

Power adapters for cellphones and other rechargeable devices also draw power when plugged in, even if the actual device isn't plugged into them. Similarly, an extension cord left plugged in and coiled up but with nothing plugged into it can draw a surprising amount of current to maintain an electrical field within its length.

Waste Not, Want Not

They're so small they seem to slip right away without your even noticing them: the little bit of catsup in the bottom of the bottle, the lonely heel at the end of the loaf of bread that lies around until it grows green with mold, the leftovers that get tossed into the trash when they're still perfectly edible. But over time, their cumulative effect is like a slow leak in a tire that eventually leaves it completely flat.

One of the things that really sticks in my mind about all my relatives who lived through the Great Depression is their ability to make sure those little bits and pieces got used up. Not just food, but everything: the crumb that's left when a bar of soap is almost used up, the last bit at the end of the roll of wax paper which is skinnier than what you need it to cover right now, you name it.

Why? Because in those desperate days, being able to squeeze every possible speck of use out of things often meant the difference between squeaking through and being left without an essential survival item. If you had no money, you couldn't just dash to the store when you ran out of something, so being able to make a passable tomato soup by putting water into the catsup bottle and loosening up those last clinging tablespoonfuls might well mean the difference between eating and going hungry that night.

As things grow tighter, it's time to think about where resources are slipping away unused and start getting hold of them. Every time you can eliminate a bit of waste, whether by keeping better track of perishables so they don't spoil before they're eaten or just learning ways to reuse leftover odds and ends, it's like having that much more money free to use on other things you may need.