Hard times call for drastic measures. Budgets are tight, and I realize I have cabinets full of condiments and ingredients waiting to be used. I’ve decided that it’s time to get creative. Utilizing an intial budget of $10 a week, I am resolved to craft tasty meals for one person each day, based around the notion that if I have to spend anything on ingredients that day…it will not exceed $2. Because of sites like AllRecipes.com, I’m inspired to come up with some creative plates based on as few ingredients as possible, yet be healthy and filling. Who would have thought something like Pad Thai Noodles, Garlic Parmesan Macaroni and Fried Rice could be found from my own cupboards yet still be deliciously homey?
This week I spent a total of $11 at the local grocery store. Milk, eggs, 2 boxes of pasta, an onion, a bag of peas and carrots, a jar of Ragu tomato sauce, 2 heads of garlic, and 8oz of shredded parmesan. I already whipped up my standard fried rice based on one theme ingredient: a can of whole water chestnuts. It turned out like my typical fried rice (garlic, onions, eggs, peas and carrots, pepper, garlic salt, dash of fish sauce and sweet soy), except I’m thinking I should have sliced the chestnuts for a more homogenous crunch throughout. And being the type of person who ends up making more than usual, I have enough leftover for another day! Yay me!
Good news, my Asahi Zuru passed the scratch test…it’s still alive. I just had to scrape various limbs and twigs to find the tender green living layer beneath the thin bark to know that the maple was still alive. I can’t wait to see it leaf out in spring.
Well, living in an apartment certainly has not quelled my fancy for gardening. I bought an Asahi Zuru acer palmatum 5-gallon specimen late October 2008 from Forestfarm. In the transport, it went into shock and dropped all its leaves. I potted it and left it in my shady patio, and all winter long I made sure to water it weekly. Of course now that it’s February, and the weather has become pleasant again, I’m filled with dread and anxiety that I am stuck with another skeleton of a Japanese Maple. This weekend I’ll be inspecting the tree for deadwood and will do some careful pruning to hopefully ease the burden on it. I found some very good cultivation and pruning guides at Davidsans and Oregonlive.
I’ve also been shopping around for Calla lilies to try on the patio. Both PacificCallas.com and ZCallas.com appear to possess a good selection of bulbs to try. I’m thinking I’d like to find some red and orange flowering varieties to go with my red salvias. But the blush, pink and white of the japanese maple begs for some calla coordination as well.
Also, another upside to my shady patio: I can now give caladiums a try!
Who would’ve thought I would be resurrecting the gardening section of this site?
I didn’t get to sample much of the local cuisine on my trip to SC this weekend, but I did manage to consume something that had “Charleston” in its name. Apparently it’s a signature dessert on many a Charleston menu…so it must be decidedly very “Charleston-ish”. Charleston cheesecake seemed to be largely caramel-based, something apparently found in great abundance in South Carolina. The cheesy creaminess had a dark brown sugar cast to it, caramel pervades the entire dish. Something I was pleased to find out: Charleston cheesecake pairs wonderfully with strawberries.
I’m in awe of the newly redesigned WordPress 2.7.1. The import of old posts went smoothly. Installing plugins is now such a breeze! The mass ‘port of the old blog into the new site is largely complete. Thanks to the following MySQL snippet that I used quite heavily, I’ve cleaned up most of the links referring back to the old host and old domain. Gotta love MySQL.
UPDATE table_name SET column_name = REPLACE(column_name,"original_text","replace_text")