How do you save on your GAS/HYDRO/FOOD bills ?

A suggestion for cheap produce:

Buy up loads of peppers, carrots, turnips, onions and celery on sale. Use what you can, and just before they turn, chop up the rest a freeze them in lunch baggies. No need to parboil.

They're still good for soups, stews, mexican dishes and curries.

Saves money and when you're in a rush, time.

I'm burning hardwood pallets.

Burned a few in the past because they were lying around. And have noticed some funky places that burn a lot.

But I got fed up with the oil prices. Started burning more wood. But ended up with little wood for this year, because of the nature of the number one employer around me the woods industry. [Long story. But no, its not because its all being sold to the city. There isn't any being cut. High prices. Go figure.]

Anyway, I got systematic how I do it.  The softwood pallets I doubt they are worth it. But the hardwood ones, its actually VERY cost effective. All costs and time included. And I only have a station wagon and live 45 minutes to hour plus from where I get the pallets.

 Somebodt want to remind me some time and I'll post a how-to thread. And this would be easiest the bigger the city you live in or around.

Short answer.

Only a percentage of pallets get re-used. And the smaller the volume of the business [as you get further away from big box] the fewer pallets are re-used.

And the hardwood ones are less likley to be re-used. They are tropical hardwoods for products shipped primarily from Asia. Or low grade oak and other woods for the unbelievable volume of product out of the US.

That's right. I said pallets mad out of rain forest cutting. [The lower grades from the milling.] What a tragedy. But if there aren't burnt, they go to the dump. And burning them replaces trees that would be cut.

They are high quality fuel. and already partly processed. They'd be FAR higher quality compared to what else you have available for firewood on the West Coast.

Hmmm. So you can't even get the spices? Or dried lentils, split peas and such?

I wonder if it's legal to ship the spice packets? 

That SO bites

 TV Parkdale, you can get small packets of everything here, no bulk, and they are expensive. We get many from the Superstore when we go to the city.  We bought spices like premade curries, cumin, saffron, cardamom, coriander, turmeric  etc, in bulk before Nanaimo's East Indian bulk store closed, so we still have some remaining. I buy ginger fresh and dry it myself, and we grow fennel, anise, mint, as well as other herbs we dry. tried growing ginger in posts but could not get it to grow beyond the beautiful bamboo looking  leaf and stocks it has. I also make my own mango chutney, as well as drying mango's to make a mango powder, and have been trying to make a date one, but with no success, with a flavour that I like.

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 Nope, no dried chickpeas, split peas come in small bag only enough for 2 meals and I buy bulk organic whole wheat flour at health food store. Ran out of wheat in whole grain form to mill, have to go back to SK sometime soon and get a few more bags.

Make our own yoghurt at a fraction of the cost and it is way better than any type of store bought. Also make my own tandoori spice out of black peppercorns, coriander, cumin, whole cloves, tumeric, paprika, cayenne, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Thanks for the recipe. But doesn't habitant pea soup have pork in it?

________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"

Yoghurt last for a long time when homemade. Though we go through a lot of it.

You bring the milk, whatever type your using, to a boil, and I mean just to a boil, very slowly. Then you cool it quickly, by submerging cooking pot and milk in cold water, (do not get water into milk) to body temp, stirring the milk cools it more quickly, so when you stick your little (clean) finger into it, you cannot feel either hot, nor cold.  If it feels cool you have to reheat to a boil.

Meanwhile you put, either 2 tablespoons of natural yoghurt, or a capsule of acidophelus (opened and poured in) a ltre jar, pour the warm body temp milk in, give it a stir put the lid on and you then keep it warm (we put ours into a cooler lined and covered with towels, but if making less, just wrapping the container in a towel and leaving on counter is fine) for 6 hours and then refigerate. Once you have made your own you will never go back to store bought. Plastic containers make yoghurt taste bad actually. We make about 8 ltres at a time, but you can make any amount you want.

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No you do not need the acidophelus to make yoghurt, you can use 2tble spoons of plain/natural yoghurt per ltre jar. A good kind of yoghurt though, like Olympic. You get the caps at a health food store in the refrig section, as that is where you have to keep them, or the bacteria dies. They are about 15 bucks per/90 caps. So I would go with good yoghurt for a starter unless you plan on taking them as a suppliment. You can also get the st8 powder acidophelus, no caps and you need about 1/2 tsp with that type.

Mason jars are excellent for making yoghurt, thats all we use.  Just save enough from made batch of yoghurt to start a new batch, when needed.

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Yes, a tiny yoghurt would work just fine, plain of course.

 You do not eat yoghurt all the time?  You should be having it daily, at least 4oz.  You can mix anything you want into it. It is all I use for veggie dips etc.

___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"

Ultimately, it's a bloody sin to keep on populating the planet this far north, where heating of any sort is an unconscionable burden on the whole world. 

Ideally, space-sharing works best.  I've grown to love living in a house, which is considered small by most standards, but in my little town it's standard for single people and couples with no kids to stay in their house, where 4 or even 5 people should be able to live.  Having said that, I recognize that I should be in a townhouse or an apartment, which are the most effective in terms of cost and pollution and consumption of resources.

Even more ideally, there should be a system of grants or tax breaks  to enable house-dwellers who are not bound by work to stay in the frozen north, to shut their house and migrate south for the 2 or 3 worst months.  Physicians will tell you that older people who are in relatively good health would benefit from such a plan, since they are at the highest risk for complications from broken limbs and hips, and also for cardiovascular conditions aggravated by the stress of relentless cold.  Someone should sell the idea to their provincial gov't, because of the savings such a subsidy would represent. 

Families could be encouraged to subsidize such trips, too, as part of a wellness and prevention program.  For the cost of heating  and electricity for a house a person could pay for a  shared efficiency in Arizona or Florida.  There could be charter buses and perhaps even special rates on wholesale rentals.   Clothing's a tad cheaper, too.

I got this off Virgin Mobile's new site, Screw You Recession.ca 

Marketing from an adolescent perspective, kids are encouraged to submit money saving ideas, and there's a recession meter panic widget.

All joking aside, that's actually where I learned about Freecycle.org and that site looks amazing - hopefully that's the new economy our children will inherit, a place where good karma is currency.

Um...  Its about gas prices and the thread has the word Gas in it?