Money and Eating Peanut Butter Sandwiches

Reading my blog, people might get the impression that I’ve never had to worry much about paying my bills. With the exception of a few months in my early thirties when I was on crutches and couldn’t work and a few months after my husband's stroke when we had major cash flow issues, that’s essentially true. But both my husband and I worked a lot---had two or three jobs/careers/businesses each most of our adult lives. He was raised on a farm with parents who went though hard times and learned early on never to turn down work if you knew how to do it and he could do a lot of things. He was a tool and die maker by trade, but in the Army Reserves he learned how to drive and maintain heavy equipment which he loved doing, thus he came to own a parking lot maintenance company on the side, making more money with that than he did with his GM job of 35 years. And while I never made much money by comparison I never had expensive tastes or spent above what was coming in.

Following Don’s street sweeper, frontend loaders and snowplows around town with my yellow flasher going was part of my life for decades, and so was helping to fill pot holes and lay down yellow lines and---the biggie---I plowed snow for 17 years. Thankfully, after three years of asphalt patching he dropped that aspect of the business. That’s an awful job, so when you see a crew out working in the streets have pity on them. The heat coming off that asphalt makes you punchy, not to mention it sticks like snot on everything you’re wearing and you have to throw out clothes faster than you can buy them at Goodwill. 

Don tried to get me to learn how to run a frontend loader but I put my foot down and refused to do it, but another woman on our crew was more than willing to learn. It was a match made in bragging rights heaven. She was the first woman in town to do that kind of work and she needed the self-confidence it gave her. He loved shocking all the guys he came in contact with the fact that half his snowplow crew were women. Back in the ‘80s that was a big deal in a male dominated field. Don claimed women were better because we followed instructions and the guys he hired wanted to do things their own way. And, Ohmygod, it was true! The stories I could tell about pissing contests....

Anyway, because I’ve never really had to worry about paying my bills and still having money left over to eat and play, I’ve become obsessed with making as much as I can during my downsizing because I’m worried once I move and my expenses increase---that continuum care place I’m moving to is not cheap---I’ll end up eating peanut butter sandwiches the last week in every month. I’ll need to be on a budget for the first time ever. I take solace in the fact that many of my frugal living blogger friends seem to find budgets and bargain shopping to be a fun challenge rather than a blood sport. And I'm wrapping my head around the fact that there's a difference between being fugal and being cheap. I don’t want to become a person who steals sugar packets from restaurants and toilet paper from gas stations. I dated a guy who did those things before Don came along and I couldn’t stand his cheapness. He was living frugal but on other people’s money. Waitresses for example never got tipped no matter how good the service. Most of us work hard to get ahead and it isn’t right to justify stealing goods or services like he did. That’s not to say I’ve never stolen anything; when I was 12-13 years old I stole a small, ten cents cross from a dime store and I still have it. It’s made out of a clam shell and it stares up at me from my jewelry box, reminding me that a little humility is not a bad thing. We are all imperfect human beings. 

Back to making money as I downsize. Sometimes time is more valuable than money. I had a lot of stock left over from when we had booths in antique malls and were vendors at gas & oil memorabilia collector’s swap meets and shows. Gas stations, during their heydays of trying to market their way to the top of the heap put out a lot of freebies like mirrors, combs, match books, note pads, car window hooks, coin and toothpick holders, poker chips, charms, key chains, ink pens, tokens, games, calendars, thermometers, sewing and first aid kits, maps, etc. etc. We’re talking the ‘30s through the ‘50s, before the drinking glasses most of us remember from our childhoods came along. That’s the kinds of things I’m currently e-Baying. If I had all the time in the world, I could e-Bay my heart out but I can actually see the end of my old gas & old stock and the end is looking good to me. So I’ve started selling stuff in groups of 20 to 50 and I'm giving the swap meet vendors some fun bidding wars. I picked out the stuff that goes for over $50 a whack to sell individually, but stuff under that are going in what is known as junk drawer lots. The most I’ve gotten for a junk drawer lot is $148 but that translates into eating less peanut butter sandwiches at the end of the month. Hey, wait a minute! Sometimes I actually like having peanut butter for dinner, especially when I fry the sandwich and it includes banana slices and bacon. ©

The Widow's Kitchen

I eat out a lot and it’s a good thing because I’m a failure in the kitchen. My meal planning and grocery shopping skills are non-existent. If you follow the ‘Living Richly in Retirement’ blog you’ll know that Barb posts a lot about budgets, buying on sale and planning and to understand my approach, just think the opposite of what she does. I don’t follow sales nor budgets. In fact I rarely look at the price on grocery items. In my defense, I’ve never had to feed a family of hungry kids and before my husband’s stroke, we spent our entire adult lives eating the main meal of the day in restaurants. It worked better for our crazy schedules, thus my cooking skills are not honed to perfection like most women's my age.

So what to do I eat? I wing it mostly. When I’m hungry I open the refrigerator or freezer and stare inside. When I’m not on a ‘winging it’ kick, the sum total of my planning consists of taking something out of the freezer at bed time and putting a notation on my planner for the next day such as: ribs in the crock pot by 12:00 or cook salmon for dinner. I usually have chicken, pork, salmon and beef in the freezer---cut up and packaged in single cooking and serving sizes. I only cook once or twice a week but always on Sundays. I also like to bake scones on the weekend but that only happens once or twice a month. Before I got on the scones kick, I baked artisan breads---my only claim to kitchen fame. When I’m winging it I get by with Stouffer’s or Eat Well freezer-to-microwave meals. Heck, I've even been known to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for dinner. Once in while I’ll make chili or soup, eat part and freeze the rest for later. For breakfast if I don't have scones I'll make oatmeal or cream of wheat or I'll have an Atkin’s Protein Drink if I’m going out for lunch later.

I might be an old dog but I can learn new tricks. Recently, I’ve discovered how to make chicken wings in the crock pot. I’m having them later today in fact. But with all my crock pot cooking I cheat. I’m using a half-a-pack of Tavern Wings Seasoning Mix. Oh and I’ll cheat with soup as well. I like Bear Creek mixes that I’ll add something extra to…like ham cubes to the bean mix. I used to make chicken soup from scratch using a rotisserie chicken carcass but I got so scared that I'd chock on a bone that I quit so now I just cook an extra chicken thigh occasionally and add that to a Bear Creek mix. But nothing is better or easier than a rib-eye steak marinated in a half-a-pack of McCormick Grill Mates Brown Sugar Bourbon mix or pork ribs in a crock pot with Maple Sugar Ribs Seasoning Mix. Sugar? Oh, yes, it’s probably my favorite food group, but sadly we can’t eat it three times a day, seven days a week. 

Vegetables. I can hear the healthy eaters ask if I get that food group into my diet. I buy salads and eat them at least once a week under protest. I cook fresh cauliflower, broccoli and snow peas weekly and fight the dog for eating them raw right out of the refrigerator for snacks. And I always have organic carrots and potatoes in the refrigerator to add to the crock pot or to cook in the microwave. If you’re going to buy anything organic, it should be the root vegetables because they contain more pesticides than vegetables that grow at the top of the plants. We once knew a farmer who grew carrots for a large cannery back in the day when it was still legal to use kerosene for week killer. He told us to smell the carrots in the supermarket for a hint of kerosene and he was right, you could smell it if you were looking for it. They've outlawed kerosene used this way in most countries now but I’ve never forgot that lesson so when organic carrots and potatoes came along I jumped on that bandwagon. Experts will tell you the same thing about organic root vegetables being worth the extra cost, while the others not so much.

And fruits? I’m glad you asked. I buy three bananas every couple of weeks. I buy strawberries in season and I alternate buying red raspberries and blue berries every other week year-around. I buy three pounds of apples in the fall and make apple sauce with them in the spring. I don’t like apples but they're my winter security blanket. It's a quirk I'd explain if I could but I've can't.

I love reading blogs like the one mentioned above. I know if I ever have to tighten the reigns on my grocery spending, I’ve got a lot of room and a road map for improvement. On the plus side, I don’t waste food. I grew up in a household that respected the privilege of having food on the table. We ate left overs every Friday night---things like hash made from left over meats and fried mash potato paddies. Mom served bread pudding, too, made with stale bread and by far bread pudding is still my favorite comfort food. And I never leave food behind in a restaurant. I put an ice pack and an insulated bag in the car for take-out boxes when I know I'm going to be eating out that day.

There you have it, my widow’s kitchen expose. All my shameful and embarrassing secrets have been unmasked and, yes, I know my haphazard approach to eating is not healthy. And for sure, no old duffer is going to set his sightings on marrying me for my cooking skills and I'm okay with that. However, if I ever meet Guy Fieri from the Food Network, he'd better be wary of me setting my sights on him. I do love a man who can cook. ©