Ask the Frugal Counselor a question and win her recipe book!

[Mary Webber]

Originally Posted by Looby

Thanks Mary, these have been excellent answers! I hadn't even thought about table decoration making a meal seem fancier. I might be feeling brave enough to host a dinner party soon.

Oh, I am so tickled to hear back, that you actually read my answer, and that it may even have been helpful.
YES!

[happyhepseba]

Hi Mary!

I'm getting married soon...do you have any advice for a young couple just starting out?

Thanks!

[Mary Webber]

Originally Posted by martha in mobile

Hi Mary!

I'm a new poster with a bit of a problem. My preteen has just started noticing that our family is "different" in how we live (we raise chickens for eggs, we recycle [most people here don't], most of my clothes are from the last century, etc.). When she mentions the differences, I don't want to disparage her friends' families, yet I do want to impress upon her the benefits of (and our preference for) the way that we live. I also don't want her to feel a total freak amongst her peers. Do you have any suggestions for reconciling the conservative status quo with our somewhat tree-hugging lifestyle?

Signed -- a Left Coaster living in the Deep South

Oh, I do so well understand your dilemma, that desire to find a comfortable balance between lifestyles that...well, aren't exactly a matched team!

First off, I'm surprised that your daughter's friends aren't already somewhat enchanted with your lifestyle. Any kid who's ever visited our house, from my kids' friends to the little and not-so-little kids who visit nowadays, everyone has loved collecting eggs and visiting the chickens, especially when we get the new chicks in the spring. The kids love wandering through our gardens too. Of course I include them in the way we live, offering a chance to pick raspberries or blueberries, gather flowers, choose their own pumpkin in the fall, etc. I've taught more than a few to cook, knit and sew, no small investment in my own daughters' lives.

Of course your mantra has to be, "Well, this is the way we choose to live, and that's the way others choose to live, and there's nothing inherently right or wrong about either way. THIS is just the RIGHT was for US. (Okay, so even if you do feel there's something inherently wrong with a less-earth friendly, close-to-the-land way to live, soft pedal that here if you can.)

NOW, since I live in Maine and you're in Mobile, I want to be very... tender... how I say this.... If you live in an area where your choices seem to reflect a lifestyle that is not tradition, or respected, not "genteel" or whatever politically correct way you want to put it, well that is when you put some serious effort into finding a few, you only need a few, like-minded families.

In my ten years' of teaching middle school and now substitute teaching in a K-12 school, I've definitely found that the way people live, what they eat, etc. has become much, much less of a differentiating issue among the kids. It seems that many kids now eat according to various restrictions for any number of reasons from ethnic and religious dictates to allergy considerations to personal preferences, even fad diets. And there seems to be much wider tolerance for lives lived in ways a bit divergent from the main stream of the surrounding community.

But the area I really do see continued...hmmmm,how to put this? Well, let's say that clothing remains a herd issue for kids. Yup, that's "herd" not "hard." They may be into distinct fashion sub-cultures such as goth or the newly-rediscovered preppy look, but if there are several kids on that particular bandwagon, it's more or less accepted. You mention dressing out of the last century, and I'm not sure if you're literally serious or not. How you dress is so your business (oh, I know how we do embarass our dear children!), but I urge you to allow your daughter to dress in such a way that she's comfortable with her classmates. Maybe a few of her outfits are styles that are similar to her friends' clothes, but you insist on organic cottons, for example.

I am NOT a fan of fitting-in-at-any-cost, and I probably wouldn't have let any of my girls out of our house with clothes on such as I see the girls wearing today, but any kid finds enough about themselves to writhe and worry over without adding to that pre-adolescent and teen burden of figuring out who they are. What you most want to give them is that solid core, that ability is be centered within themselves, comfortable and strong with whoever they are. The old roots and wings!

[Mary Webber]

Originally Posted by volleyjoy1

A lot of dessert bars call for an 8x8 pan, but sometimes I need more for a larger gathering (or to have some made in the freezer). How can I convert the recipe to a 9x13 pan? I’m afraid to just double the recipe because baking is such a science and I don’t want to ruin the recipe….

Ahhhh, finally, FINALLY, a chance to use that grade school math they told you you'd need someday!

That 9"x13" is 117 square inches, while an 8x8 square pan is 64, and a 9x9 pan is 81 square inches. Another common size pan, the 7x11" comes out to 77 sq in.

Okay so check the chart below and decide... make a double batch of a recipe intended for an 8x8, bake it in a 9x13 which will make it extra thick? Make 1 1/2 batches intended for an 8x8 and bake in a 9x13, coming out a little thinner? Do the double batch and put a bit of the batter into a few cupcakes? Make a double batch and eat any extra batter? YES!

Baking capacity chart:

9x13 = 117 sq in of baking capacity
8x8 = 64 sq in
2 8x8's = 128 sq in
9x9 = 81 sq in
7x11 = 77 sq in
11x17 = 187 sq in This is the pan I use for my big-batch cooking, and I do a
lot of quantity cooking. It's 2 1/4" deep.

Now, did this make any sense?

[Mary Webber]

Originally Posted by happyhepseba

Hi Mary!

I'm getting married soon...do you have any advice for a young couple just starting out?

Thanks!

Great minds... Someone asked earlier about food/menu advice for newlyweds, and your question is certainly related to that whole general topic. So, please first go back a bit and check out that discussion. Please feel free to come back with any other, maybe more specific, questions I might be able to try to answer.

General advice... Truly, really, honestly, put-yourself-aside-once-in-a-while be committed to the survival of your upcoming marriage. It seems as though when I talk with young couples, well, they're holding some parts of themselves back... I can't figure out whether there's some pattern of parental divorce in their background that makes them doubly cautious, or maybe they're not going to fully commit to their marriages until they see how it's working out (that's really BACKWARD thinking!) or maybe some other dynamic is at work.

Let me throw a few cliches at you, ones that just happen to be true and worth taking to heart. "We" comes before "I" in wedding. Making a marriage work IS work, very hard, often challenging, and occasionally even bitter, hard work. Building a strong marriage can also be way wicked fun, to say nothing of centering your whole existence and sustaining your very soul.

So, I wish you strength, courage, laughter, and most of all, I wish you love.

[sweetcarolin1103]

Hi Mary,
I have 3 boys who are teens, any advice how I can instill in them the importance of frugalness and healthfulness? They would rather eat fast food...
Thanks

[Mary Webber]

Originally Posted by DarlingMe

Hi Mary,

This is such a fun idea. I’m glad I have the opportunity to ask you a question directly.

I live with an eleven year old and a five year old who are both really interested in cooking.

However, due to their age difference, their skill sets are very different.

The eleven year old can make delicious cupcakes entirely on her own (okay – some help with clean-up is required.) And, the other night she made fried potato patties while we were making a big Indian meal. She enjoyed cooking with the adults and her potato patties were a great addition to the feast.

The five year old is enthusiastic, but she’s five. She loves to sit on the counter and watch whoever is cooking, but at times it’s a battle to keep her fingers out of the bowl (especially when her sister is making icing) or to stop her from eating the raw ingredients. She enjoys stirring and really wants to help.

I’d love to know some recipes or meal ideas that would be good for both the kids – ideally something that the five year old can participate in, rather than just being told “no, put that down, get your fingers out of the butter, stop touching the cupcakes, etc.”

And, to further complicate my question, we are four adults and the two children, we don’t eat a lot of meat (maybe chicken or fish once a week) and the eleven year old won’t eat cheese. We do eat lots of vegetables, grains, beans, pasta, and tofu.

I’m not expecting the girls to make entire meals; I’d like to start them with smaller dishes that would make an impact.

I’d love to hear any and all suggestion you have, Mary.

Thanks!

OH, but I do love cooking with kids! It's not easy to let kids loose in your kitchen. As cooks, they can be so messy, come up with some truly weird concoctions (which yes, they do expect you to sample), and try your patience in entirely new ways. BUT, there's so much they can do in the kitchen, and as they get older, their involvement can really be helpful.

Kids in the kitchen - Safety and cleanliness are the major concerns with safety being paramount. We have a duel-fuel stove, gas burners and an electric oven. With the open flame of those burners, I inspect my little cooks carefully for loose clothing such as floppy sleeves, long and flying hair, and footwear. What!?Becausethe littlest kids in my kitchen often use a step-stool to reach the counter, I want to be very sure that whatever's on their feet isn't going to cause them to slip, throwing a hand out for balance. I also want to be very sure their tender feet-tops are covered in case of spills.

Knives just don't belong in a child's hands without the very closest supervision, and even then any knife should be carefully sized to the child's hand and the food being cut should be carefully considered. Nothing slippery or too tough, nothing so small that the fingers holding the food are in the way. While slicing a banana into good-sized chunks can be a kid-doing chore for little ones, slicing strwberries is for an older kid to do.

Cleanliness for young cooks isn't just a lovely idea, it's an extension of the safety issues, and is certainly a health consideration. "Did you wash your hands?" we ask as they're pulling the step-stool up to the counter. "Oh, yes, see, my hands are still wet," they answer earnestly. STOP! You know what that really means...they swooshed their hands through some water, maybe glanced at the soap, swiped at the towel, then hurried out to join you.

Teach them to wash their grubby little paws the right way! A nail brush for those fingertips, special attention to the areas between the fingers expecially at the bases of those fingers, and particular care scrubbing the web between thumb and fingers. Don't skip the wrist area either. It's not as if this takes any great amount of time, but it's the start of an important good habit.

Every summer, we do a one-week Gram and Gramp Camp for grand-kids Baxter, 10, and Katie, 7, and they do love to cook, to experiment, in the kitchen during that week. Now, Katie can be right in the middle of making her usual chocolate wacky cake, hop down to pat Sara Jean, the kitty who's just wandered into the kitchen, then go right back to her cooking. NOPE, not happening! I insist she go through the hand-washing routine all over, and mind you, I'm not some clean freak, but I do find this effective. She quickly stops any side-bars that will necessitate a re-washing of the hands. Very matter-of-fact, quick and so much easier than reminding her seven million times, "Don't pat the cat when we're working with food." Ahhh, the awesome teaching power of consequences!

Kids cooking - I've found so many kids' cookbooks to be gimmicky, and while the cover may be most appealing, unless you can take the time to really peruse the contents, start young cooks with a blank book. Most of what they'll want to make will be things they've had at home or at a friend's house, so they can start building their recipe collection, their cooking repertoire, with those dishes.

Although cakes and cookies seems to be favorite learn-to-cook foods, soups and salads are also good choices. Even the youngest cook can help with these. Neither really requires any exact measurement, the ingredients can be very varied and there's a lot of leeway in how uniform the ingredients are and how it all goes together. And both offer nutritious additions for the family table. For soups, putting the ingredients into a crockpot, letting it simmer all day and then presenting it - with a flourish of course -at supper, well, just watch the kid cook glow! I especially like soup making because you can use leftover chicken for example, they can put all the noodles they've ever wanted in the pot, they can remark to you a billion times during the day, "Hmmm, my soup really smells good, doesn't it?" and they'll eat new stuff if they've cooked it!

Salads can be incredibly...creative, shall we say... in a child's hands. And it's in their hands literally so be sure they do their washing-up very thoroughly before any salad making. Your five-year-old can add fresh, small, whole fruit (such as blueberries), dried fruits, or nuts/seeds to a fruit salad. Your older daughter could easily make main-dish salads for supper using a pasta or potato base. And she's at a perfect age to be making breads to go with that salad. Yeasty bread sticks (her little sister can knead the dough), drop biscuits, and lots of quick breads can easily be managed by an eleven-year-old.

Now, backing away from specifics, some general adivce especially for dealing with the aspiring cook, the one who's always begging, "Can I help?", the easily distracted one, the always-sampling one. Kids love role-reversals, so I often help Katie with her cooking projects instead of the other way around.

With her good and growing reading skills, she delights in directing me as to what ingredients to get out of the cupboard, she often lets me "help" her with the measuring, she loves to use the wire whisk but if the mixer is needed, I'm called upon. YET, when all's said and done, she totally feels that she has been the head chef, the cook-in-charge of whatever it is we've whipped up.

During Gram and Gramp Camp, we have a girls' night to cook and a boys' night, suppers that are planned, prepared and presented by the respective "teams." The menu is a state secret, security is at the highest level, the opposite sex is not allowed near the kitchen, and we vie to serve the most wonderful meal. It's a terrific way to get kid cooks focused on the fundementals, not just the fun and fancy extras, of meal planning.

I'm so psyched that your girls want to cook and that you are encouraging them.
What a gift to ALL of you!

[Mary Webber]

Originally Posted by CMack

Dear Mary,
Welcome!
I have about a one-quarter acre plot of land that I would like to devote to raising crops that are fairly easy to preserve. I would prefer drying and freezing methods to canning, with perhaps tomatoes being the exception, and would like to put up enough to last a family of four from one harvest to the next. I plan to grow organically and would like to stagger the harvest times so I’m not overwhelmed with preserving everything at the same time. Specifically, are tree fruits such as cherries and apples the better choice, over say blueberries and raspberries, for maximizing the return on the space with the minimum of time? If you had to limit your choices to 5 fruits and vegetable varieties for these criteria, what would be your top choices? And, how much of each would you recommend planting? Is one fruit tree enough? Or do I need three? Five?

Also, are there any nut crops that can be grown successfully in zone 5?

Phew!! I know that’s a lot to ask, but any advice you can give to help me get the most out of the land would be much appreciated!

I’m so glad you introduced me to Wise Bread, and that I can now find you here! Lots of great, useful information!

Thanks, Carol Mack

Hi Carol,

I'm sorry to be a bit in getting back to you, but man, you've got a lot of questions here! A couple of days ago I answered a question about keeping the harvest, and I think if you go back and check that, it'd give you a few good ideas. Both of the books I recommended have all kinds of planting/yield charts etc. To those two books, I'd also add the Ball Blue Book, available from the canning jar company, inexpensive and updated frequently, it offers excellent information and recipes for both beginner and seasoned gardener.

Where to start...without writing a book here! Maximizing your garden/growing space and extending your harvest are both possible, with varying degrees of success of success of course. Going vertical with anything you can - cukes, green beans, peas - can free up a lot of ground. Growing tomatoes, espalier-fashion along a fence can really reduce the amount of room those plants need, too. But the biggest thing we're trying this year - and so far, it's been terrifc beyond anything we expected! - is growing stuff in 2 1/2 and 5 gallon buckets. This is not only a great garden space-saver as we can move and place the buckets in various places, we're also hoping it'll prove to be a great season extender.

In early September, we'll set up the small (5x8'), portable greenhouse we use in the spring for seedlings in a south-facing and somewhat sheltered spot. We have tomatoes, peppers, cukes and potatoes in buckets, and will add lettuce and radishes (at least) in the fall, hoping to get an additional 6-8 weeks harvest time. That may be overly optimistic, but it'll be fun to see how it works out.

Nut trees for Zone 5? Considering the many many micro-climates within each growing zone, especially here in New England, I'd really hesitate to recommend any, suggesting instead that you rely on the wisdom of your local garden center. We did have butternut trees when I was growing up in central Massachusetts, and we do have a walnut tree here in Maine, but local advice on this one is best.

I'm sure I've missed answering something here...just let me know,okay?

[Mary Webber]

Originally Posted by melaroe

When is it a good age to tell your child(ren) about their parents' income, expenses, and household budget in order to prepare them for real-life?

This is a great question, one that concerns many young families wanting to teach some money skills but without worrying that all their private information may be tossed around casually at the playground. And, although I don't think you had this in mind at all, this is an equally touchy question at the other end of the family life cycle, when parents are aging and their finances may need to be discussed with their children too. Approaching that conversation is seldom easy.

You want to give kids enough age-appropriate information so that they will be aware of and responsive to the family financial situation without giving them too much information, info that may unsettle or worry them. Believe me, if your kids have two eyes and two ears, they already know plenty, especially about any tensions around money in your household.

When kids start getting an allowance, another whole topic, they should also be made privy to family financial info, access that can increase as their ages and allowances do. I can't imagine giving kids any precise income or debt figures, but rather an overview of what any income needs to cover (percentages are really effective here, and don't laugh, but kids totally get pie charts!), the difference between fixed and variable expenses (how much control you have over each is important for them to understand), the value of both short and long-term savings, and other topics as they come. Kids will ask good questions, and you need to answer them in such a way that you reassure them if they seem worried, without over-answering. They don't need to be co-opted into management decisions, at least until mid-to-late teens.

By the teen years, some serious learning should be well underway. Managing a checking account. The costs of credit. The responsibility of having credit cards. Some investment basics (you can start at a much y0ounger age through websites such as www.Kiva.org which facilitates micro-loans worldwide).

There's so much more we could cover, but I hope this gets you started. Some time I'd like to address the later-life parent-child conversation for those of you who may be facing that issue.

[queenoftheclick]

Entertaining is a bit difficult for me. My in-laws love to come over (late) and as soon as they come in they want to eat. Do you have any suggestions for an easy hot appetizer that doesn't involve dipping (they are double dippers) or the frozen food section of the store.

Thank you.

Marlene