Posts by knowan

1) Rice.  Don't use minute rice.  Regular rice (long grain, parboiled, brown, etc) are all cheap.  So they take 20 min to cook instead of 5, they're also less than half the cost of Minute Rice, and it's not like boiling rice is hard.  Also try cooking rice in liquids other than water.  Veg stock, stewed tomatoes with some basil thrown in, one of my favorites is rice cooked in orange juice with some ginger added.  Or add curry powder, a bit of sugar, raisins and top with slivered almonds.  Look at boxes of Rice-A-Roni and try to re-create it at home.  Rice is incredibly versatile.

3) Frozen veggies.  Once again they're way cheaper then tinned or fresh.  In many cases they even have more intact vitamins than the same veggies fresh (basically because they're frozen with a couple of days of being picked, while those "fresh" veggies may have spent a couple of weeks or more being shipped to your grocery store)!

4) Root crops, gourds and Brassica's are all cheap, especially this time of the year.  Potato, carrot, turnip, cabbage, squash, sweet potato/yam.  You'd be amazed at how many different varieties of squash there are, and they're all cheap.

5) Pasta.  I can make a spaghetti meal for 6 for less than 2 dollars.  I used to make the sauce from scratch, but tinned/bottled pasta sauce is much less expensive.  It makes me kind of angry to see how much restaurants charge for pasta, compared to how much it costs to make.  You can make your own pasta noodles from scratch, but it's not very easy, and won't save you any money.  Opt for the convenience of dried pasta, but if you're vegan make sure to read the ingredients list for egg.

6) Soups, stews, chili are all cheap (and low cal).  You can refrigerate, freeze, or bottle your leftovers.  If you're bottling be sure to boil the empty bottles and lids (or put in the oven at 120 Celsius) then add the food and boil/bake them for a little longer (with the cover off).  This is a good way to store beans as well, as they’ll keep almost indefinitely, and what else are you going to do with those empty pasta sauce bottles?

7) Grow your own.  Lettuce can grow in any pot with some dirt and a few seeds.  Rip off a few leaves when you need them and the plant will continue to grow new ones.  You have an almost inexhaustible supply of lettuce leaves.  Kale is the same, but this doesn’t work for spinach or most other greens.  I have a hanging pot with a tomato plant in it, and another with everbearing strawberries.  Looks nice, smells nice and as many berries/tomatoes as I can eat.

8) Breads and pastries.  I bake my own bread, but it can be difficult and intimidating.  Plus you don’t save all that much money.  A pie shell, on the other hand, is easy (roll it between 2 sheets of wax paper sprinkled with flour to make it even easier).  Cakes, muffins and desserts can be made from packages.  It’s way cheaper then buying them pre-made.  Although making them from scratch is cheaper still, packages are a lot less trouble.  Plus you can use egg substitute and soy milk to keep them vegan.

Say the following out lod, using a funny voice (Elmer Fudd impersonation works best).  I can gaurentee that people around you will find it funny:

I am Sofa King Wee Todd Did.

After awhile without eating meat or meat products, your stomach stops producing the enzymes necessary to break down the protien in meat.  If you then start eating meat it can make you sick.

How long does it take for your stomach to stop producing the "meat protien enzymes"?  Your results may vary.  With some people it happens within months, other years, others never stop producing it (which explains why some people can jump back to being omnivores with no difficulty).

The only "negative calorie" food that I have ever heard about is celery.  One stalk has 7 calories and it burns 10 calories to digest it.

But, here's the kicker about "negative calorie" foods.  You body can adjust itself to make its digestion more efficient.  If you eat nothing but fruits and veggies then your body will limit production of certain enzymes and acids and increase production of certain others so that sugars are broken down and absorbed more easily than protiens and fats.  Your gut bacteria will also adjust to a fiber and complex carbohydrate diet.  Your body adjusts itself to become more efficient at processing whatever you eat the most of.

As a side note, this is a cycle.  If you get most of your food from a certain source, your body will adapt itself to process this food source more efficiently.  Then your body will tell your brain that these foods are the best for you and your cravings change.

Vegetarians especially notice this.  If they cut out meats and after a few months "fall off the wagon" and order a steak, that steak will taste disgusting (it happened to me). 

Non vegetarians will notice this if they have a "sweet tooth".  Go cold turkey for a month or two and cut out all sugars and then try to eat just one square of a chocolate bar after a month.  You'll easily be able to limit yourself wheras before you wouldn't be able to stop until the entire bar was gone.

Most jars of PB will say "refrigerate after opening".  I never have, and it has never gone bad on me.

I never used to refrigerate ketchup, but one summer I did have that go bad and I've refrigerated it ever since.

Things that are high in salt, sugar, and oil go bad only very slowly.  Same with highly acetic foods.

Saturated fats (mostly from animal sources) are more easily broken down into low density cholesterol (the bad cholesterol).

Your body can synthesize cholesterol from any lipid (lipid=oils and fats) but when given saturate fats it will make the "bad" cholesterol.

Trans fats are unsaturated fats (typically vegetable oil) that have been artificially saturated through a process called hydrolization.  Sometimes they are listed in the ingredients as "hydrogenised vegetable oil" (you'll find that ingredient listed in almost every margarine).

So why turn the "good" unsaturated oils into the "bad" saturated oils?  Texture.  Unsaturated oils are a liquid at room temperature.  Saturated fats are a solid.  Think of a cup of vegetable oil (unsaturated) versus a cup of bacon fat (saturated).

As well, processed meats (such as hotdogs, bologna, pepperoni, etc) have sodium nitrate or sodium nitrite as a preservative and color enhancer.  These are cancer causing agents, which can cause colon cancer.

1) It is ILLEGAL for a bike to ride on the sidewalk.  By law a bicycle is treated the same as a car.  Can you drive your car or motorcycle on the sidewalk instead of the road?  Betcha that would help you avoid rush hour if you could.

2) Cyclists ride 2 abreast because if they don't they get run over.  They ride in "packs" for the same reason.  Riding in a group makes you more visible and less likely to get hurt.  Motorcycles do the same thing (although legally they can't ride 2 abreast, they have to be staggered).

3) Cyclists have to obey traffic lights and stop signs, same as a car.  They also have to signal before turning, typically by using hand signals.

4) In short, in the eyes of the law bicycles are treated the same as cars and therefore have the same rights to the road as a car.

I'm a cyclist and believe me, I use bike trails wherever possible.  I would LOVE to be able to ride on the sidewalk out of the way of those dangerous car drivers, but I can't legally.  I move as far to the side as I can, but have still been run over a couple of times.

The last time I was hit I was on the side of the road and a car comes up behind me.  My wheel was pratically rubbing the curb but he still slowed down before passing  me.  The thing is that he was still passing me, my front tire along his back tire when he decided to make a right turn  WHAMMO!!

I was travelling downhill at about 40 Kph (25 mph).  If I hadn't seen the eyes of the driver of a truck stopped at the intersection ahead of me widen just before the car turned then it would have been alot worse. I was watching that truck because I was approching that intersection and even though I had the right of way bicycles, like motorcycles, are often invisible to drivers.  I saw his eyes widen and his jaw drop just before the car started its turn, and that gave me just enough warning to slow down and start the turn myself so that I hit the car broadside instead of head on, which saved me from serious injury.  Just a bent tire and some road rash after I rolled over his hood.

Another thing a cyclist quickly learns is to check the side mirrors of parked cars for people about to open their doors to get out.  Being door stopped is about the worst thing that can happen, since that one normally makes you land on your head.  Helmets can provide some protection to your skull, but they don't protect you from a broken neck.  I'd rather go under a car's wheels than be door stopped.

Okay I'm lost here.  What's the vegan problem with chocolate?  Milk chocolate obviously isn't vegan.  Does the dark/bittersweet chocolates have refined sugar (refined with bone char)?  Why is carob more vegan than chocolate?

Certain vitamins, such as vitamin A, can harm your liver, but only if taken in excessivly large doses.  That's why they have that warning on bottles of vitamins, expecially childrens vitamins.

The Science:  Vitamins can be divided into 2 groups, the water soluable (such as vitamin C) and the oil soluable (such as vitamin A).  If your diet contains too much of a vitamin, the "overdose" is treated differently depending on if it is watersoluable or oil soluable.

If you overdose on a water soluble vitamin, such as the earlier mention of the way-to excessive 4 grams if vitamin C, your kidneys will filter out the excessive amount and it will be excreted via your bladder (ie, you pee it out).  This is a very efficient process.  So efficient in fact, that it is pretty much impossible to overdose on any water soluble vitamin, it gets filtered out as soon as it breaches a certain threshold, and is not allowed to go any higher, no matter how much you continue to dump into your bloodstream.

So basically it's impossible to take too much water-soluble vitamins, which is why you can buy excessively large single doses.  (Although there's some studies that say that taking too much can cause kidney stones, sorry Inkblue).

Kidneys, however, cannot filter out oil soluble vitamins.  They are treated differently by your body.  Excessive oil soluble vitamins are filtered out by your liver, not your kidney.  However, your liver is not directly linked to your excretionary tract like your kidneys are.  Your liver, instead of "dumping" the excess, will try to "process" the excess.  Your liver will store the excess and try to break it down.

Unfortunately, this process is nowhere near as fast as the "dump it" strategy of the kidney.  Your liver WILL break down the vitamin (or store it until it is needed) but it can only do this slowly.  It is possible to overwhelm the liver with too much, in which case it will store it until the storage cells burst (not technically accurate, but close enough).  This causes liver damage, and as the liver breaks down it releases all sorts of toxins into your blood stream and you get sick an possibly die.

That's why you can't get vitamin A in mega doses.  Too much of it WILL kill you.

Now before I scare you off of vitamins altogether, a "one-a-day" multivitamin is calculated to contain at most a day's supply of vitamins and minerals.  So taking one a day can't hurt you.  Taking the entire bottle at once CAN hurt you, but the chances are remote (unless you are a small child or already have liver damage).  You body can take care of a certain amount of "overdose" quite easily.  After all, that's what your liver was designed to do.

And there are some "natural" foods which can kill you from oil-soluble vitamin overdose as well.  A polar bears liver has enough vitamin A to kill and adult human.  Certain fish oils can do the same.

And have you ever heard of ANYBODY trying to commit suicide by taking too many vitamins?

I'm not a vegetarian, but for those of you who don't know courgette is British for zucchini.

Almost all commercially prepared breads have milk in them.  The exception would be most French bread and some Italian bread.

But some of those will have butter, and almost all will have refined sugar (sugar is refined using crushed bones, typically cow bones).

Just chiming in to say that it's not always the men.  I have always been frugal.  My clothing comes from Walmart or after-season sales.  I study the weekly fliers to see where I'm getting groceries this week, and never grocery shop on an empty stomach.  When we were married I took out a low interest line of credit to pay off her credit card debt.  Within a year she had it maxed out again, so I took out a second line of credit.  She kept calling me a penny pincher.

Now that we're divorced (for reasons other than money) in 3 years I've got the debt load cut in half (did I mention that those lines of credit were all in my name?).  She, on the other had, has her credit cards maxed out again and is hurting for money, yet she's got a new TV, eats out regularly, sponges off parents, etc.

I blame it partly on upbringing.  Her parents always bought her what she wanted, while mine always gave me an allowance and I had to pay for things out of that.  After years of having money magically appear for her, she grew used to it.  I always had to save for anything that I wanted.  I can still remember when I saved up enough to buy my own TV for my bedroom.  I was 12 and it took 6 months of scrimping and saving.

I've been trying to teach my kids the same thing.  I pay for their food, clothes, and all school related expenses.  They get an allowance for everything else.  Birthday and Christmas money gets put in their bank account to be saved for major purchases (such as a new video game).   One son gets it and at age 11 has started saving for his first car.  My other son, unfortunately, takes after his mother.  He no sooner gets his allowance then it is gone, usually the same day.

Yup, it's a habit that your body just gets used to.  One New Years I went "cold turkey" and after a month or two of no sweets broke the craving.  I stayed that way for years, until I had kids and started bribing them with dessert to get them to eat their supper.  After awhile of that, boom, the after supper sweet cravings returned.

I've still got them now.  I satisify them with sugar free things (sugar free jello, sugar free hard candies, sugar free pop, etc) and with tic-tac's.  2 tic-tacs sooth the cravings and have only 3 calories.  Sometimes if I'm really desperate I'll have a frosted cerel (mini-wheats, frosted flakes, etc).  Not really calorie wise but at least they have lots of vitamins and stuff (unlike a chocoate bar or baked goods). 

I believe that Newfoundland, Canada is the only place in North America that celebrates Guy Fawlkes night (although earlier someone mentioned Hawaii?).  Anyway, last night I had a fire and burnt a guy (actually a broken scarecrow decoration left over from haloween, but it was the thougt that counted).  The celebration this year was nothing like back in the ninties, when entire rows of townhouses would be set aflame (illegally of course).

Have a happy Guy Faulks/Bonfire night!

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I knew a gorcery store that was famous for that.  Especially when their lean or extra lean ground beef went on sale.  I once cooked up some lean ground beef and drained off the fat and then weighed the fat and it was almost 1/3 of the weight of the entire package!

So try it that way.  Weigh the fat and compare it to the weight of the entire package (written on the label that the ground beef came in).  Extra lean ground beef should contain no more than 5% fat.  Lean 10%, etc.  if the weight of the fat that you drained off is greater than 5% of the weight of the entire package then they mislabelled.

And mislabelling is a federal offence.  The FDA sets the labeling standards for ground beef.  If the store is not adhearing to those standards then they can actually be shut down by the FDA.

Just remember to weigh the fat, not the cooked beef.  The beef will lose moisture as well as fat when it is cooked, so it will definatly weigh less than 95% of the raw weight.