How to Eat on $65 a Week (and Not Develop Scurvy)

I keep running across all of these "how to save a bazillion bucks" blogs these days. 

We have a love-hate relationship. 

The blog's author always posts a picture of herself in a sidebar looking like the all-American girl. Their peaches and cream complexions are probably because, with all of the wholesome recipes and money saving tips they offer, they can go to the spa each morning, leaving the kids with nannies. And they can then hit the gym before lunch. I hate them all. 

happymoneysaver.com...this woman gave us our recipe
for homemade laundry soap at $.02 a load. And she
manages to look stunning while doing it. Damn her.

keephomesimple.blogspot.com...I love this woman's
one-hour French bread recipe. She raises kids, cooks
wholesome meals, and looks like June Cleaver. Every day.

fivehearthome.com...thanks to this woman we have
healthy, no-cook granola bars until the kids find them and eat
them all (their new record--three hours). In case you haven't
figured it out yet, her name is Samantha. Her life is perfect.

Their houses always abound with love. They describe their kids as "sweet, loving, energetic, beautiful," and their past-times usually include reading something (like home-making magazines, but never smutty novels), baking, church, and servicing her husband who is, invariably, her soul mate. *Retch*

And yet, for all of my animosity, I need to thank these blogging ladies because they are the reason we are not eating oatmeal every night for dinner. And they are also the reason, in part, that our grocery bill is so low.  They just have so many darn good ideas on saving a buck. Gotta pay for those facials somehow.

I was talking to my sister this week and she was so impressed at how cheaply we are eating but then, when I explained how we are eating so cheaply, she was repulsed which, of course, means that these tips must be blog-worthy.

How to Eat on $65 a Week (and not develop scurvy)

1. Eat cabbage...lots of cabbage.

. 

Cabbage is frickin' cheap. And you can turn it into cabbage soup, cabbage rolls, cabbage salad, cabbage fritters, cabbage meatballs, cabbage curry. The downside is that it is hard to disguise as anything but cabbage. 

The bite out of our budget: 85 cents apiece. 

Meal value: 3-5 meals can be squeezed from a single cabbage. 

Complaint level: 8/10 due to its gaseous qualities.

2. Use TVP as a filler anytime you serve ground meat.

I know, it looks like breakfast cereal...or cat vomit...depending on your age and level of tact. But it is in fact some kind of dried stuff that, when you add it to meat, makes your food budget go a long way. Like little dried flakes of magic. 

The bite out of our budget: Infinitesimal

Meal value: Seemingly infinite

Complaint level: 0/10 if they don't see it going into their food, 10/10 if they do. TVP gets an 11/10 if they fail to make the cat vomit connection.

3. Sop off the government.

I know, I know...the dole is naughty. But my kids eat a lot. So T and I sat down and calculated that we could save approximately $100 a week if we would just sign them up for government lunch at school. So we did. 

The bite out of our budget: There is free lunch. Thank you US taxpayers.

Meal value: 15/week

Complaint level: 0/10. They like free lunch because it guarantees pizza once a week. We will deal with the resulting obesity later.

4. Sop off the neighbors...then make stuff.

Man, everyone here has fruit trees that they don't pick. Right now, it is don't-pick-your-apples season with a few hangers-on from don't-pick-your-pears season. It looks like we will soon be heading into don't-pick-your-crab-apples season.

The fruits of our latest sopping.

Apple jelly made from the neighbor's apples

The bite out of our budget: Thanks to child labor, nada.

Meal value: 5/week...there's apple fritters, apple jam, apple sauce, apple pie, apple crisp, apple cake, apple slices for snack... 

Complaint level: 1/10. No one complains about dessert, but there have been some complaints about the occasional worm and the rot level encountered when picking. It will come out later in counselling.

5. Shop at Aldi and eschew organics

Not as good as Walmart for entertainment value, but
darn cheap so long as you keep your expectations low.

I know, you're going to say that we are probably setting ourselves up for chronic diseases later while simultaneously destroying the planet, but buying conventional saves in the short run, and right now we are all about the short run. On top of that, Aldi, according to a number of hardcore, money saving bloggers, is nothing less than the devil's work. 

But Aldi has my heart because, if you are not overly picky about labels, the mountains of pre-packaged foodstuffs that you have to navigate around to find the bargains, and the fact that you have to USE YOUR OWN BAGS **gasp** it is cheap.

Signing off from the world of "ain't got no money"...

Povertingly yours,

Rachel

Soccer Chicas

Last month, just before leaving Oman, I witnessed a group of girls discussing a bizarre phenomenon. It was odd really and the girls could not get their heads around it. They had observed that all of the non-Omani women they had met that summer were good at sports. The Omani women, in contrast, with the exception of a tiny handful, were just awful at anything having to do with a racket, a ball, or a bat of some sort. Even moving faster than a slow stroll was too much to ask for some. The girls were puzzled.

As they sat and conversed about how strange this was and pondered how this could be, they asked one another, “What strange forces are at work?” (Okay, they didn’t say exactly that, but you get the idea).

“I have heard,” one of the girls suggested, “That Omani women are just more delicate.”

All of the girls nodded their heads. “It is the heat,” another replied.

And then they all sat and nodded their heads some more. End of conversation. Yes. It is the heat and the delicacy of that nationality. That was their end conclusion.

I watched them and was also completely flabbergasted. But I was thinking about how strange this conversation was and, further, that they had drawn upon this conclusion so automatically and without any sort of apparent demonstration of critical thought upon the matter.

In spite of images like this--

Thanks to www.sail-world.com for the image of the
Oman Sails All Women Team at work.

And this from the 2014 Olympics

Shinoonah Salah Al Habsi (in the middle) in the Summer Olympics, rockin'
the Daily Mail. I hope Reuters doesn't mind that I borrowed the image.

And the others you get to see if you do a search on "Omani women sport image", the girls (or at least the ones I talked to) don't see themselves as people who need to be or even can be physically active.

Fast forward a month and here I am in the good ol' US of A. Tian must have been feeling lonely for some mom time as now I see her for all of two hours each day. She invited me to come to one of her soccer games. Wow. I must be the coolest mom in the world if my teenager wants me to come watch her do anything.

Because I was totally flattered to be invited to a middle school sporting event and because I am only minimally employed (okay, I am pretty much totally unemployed), I said that I would come and watch her team play. 

It was amazing.

This is what girls look like in America when they grow up with the expectation that they will move their bodies.

Look! There is Tian at the end of the bench! Go Tian!

They end up taking it for granted that they are supposed to move their bodies, and they just do it. They play like little soccer demons every day of the week and go to bed wondering what they will do with themselves after soccer season is over at the end of September because they love playing the sport so much. And then they hear that there is an indoor winter soccer league and subsequently quit whining at their mothers all the time.

After my month-ago-conversation, I am eternally grateful for the belief that girls can and should play sports here.

And so is Tehva.

Shipping Cats from Oman to the USA--Step 3

Step 3 is involving getting the cats booked on an airline. Let me tell you, getting a straight answer out of the airlines regarding whether or not they ship cats as hand luggage, checked luggage, or manifest cargo only is like trying to get a cat to roll over and play dead on command.

Our first forays into this part of cat export were ridiculous. Etihad and British Air both swear up and down on their websites that they love animals and take the greatest care in shipping them, but when push comes to shove they really want nothing to do with the family pet. Or at least that has been our experience.

And since we are flying those airlines, that is where we put our initial forays into information gathering. Etihad's pet representative hung up on us after spitting, "NO! NO PETS!"

British Air gave a long convoluted answer, the end of which was, "Even though we representatives sound like we are British, and even though your ticket says you are flying British Air, you are actually flying American Airlines. And they don't fly pets through London. Have a lovely day."

And how can you be angry at someone who wishes you a lovely anything?

After much pursuing, calling, and actively seeking answers, we have discovered that in our haste to leave Muscat at the end of the summer, we booked ourselves on the wrong airlines.

KLM and Lufthansa are the way to go when it comes to flying with cats. Anybody else is not.

So since Etihad and BA/AA apparently hate us because we have cats and want to take them when we go, we had to go outside our booked routes to find someone who will ship our cats as manifest cargo.

Cost: Just the cost of sitting on hold on the phone, only to be snapped at. Let's call it 2 OMR, because it never took anyone too long to say NO CATS.

Hassles?: Yes. See above.

What to expect?: Expect to have to do a lot of leg work to get answers. Or just let it go and book Lufthansa or KLM.

Timeline: 2.5 months prior to departure

Shipping Cats from Oman to the USA--Step 1

You know what just ain't out there? Information about shipping cats from Oman to the USA. So you know what I am going to do for you all? I am going to track this venture from point A to point Z for you.

Step one 
The export process began with getting the felines checked over and immunized, which we should have been keeping up on more thoroughly but weren't. They needed a valid rabies shot to get in, and we opted for feline leukemia as well, just so that they would be shipshape.

Since the cats involved are one-step-removed-from-being-wild-bin-diving wadi cats, they had to be sedated throughout this process because the whole wrapping them in towels and speaking soothingly to them thing just wasn't cutting it. The sedation, which I highly recommend for difficult to handle animals and small children, seemed to get wrapped into the cost somehow--one of the miracles of modern veterinary medicine in Muscat.

Arm ripper # 1--Harry

Cost: 80 OMR/cat, including a quick physical, a blood test, deworming pills, rabies immunization, feline leukemia/HIV immunization, sedation, and the individual attention from a vet for 45 minutes. And we got some new nifty stickers in their record books.

Hassles?: None. The vet was very clear and helpful with all parts of the immunization process, even calmly explaining that, although both cats looked dead after he had sedated them, I should not get my hopes up (he didn't say that really, but I said it to myself...yes, bad, I know).

What to expect?: Going to the USA, expect to have the vet react with relief. Shipping cats to the US is reported to be a streamlined experience. Here's to hoping.

Timeline: 3 months prior to departure

What Comes of Not Knowing About Jackets

Today Tehva showed us why we need to go back to America, if only for a little while. Today we discovered that Tehva does not know how to put on a jacket.

The girl can read like a demon, swim with the fishes, and walk barefoot for miles, even on 120 degree plus plus plus days. But she cannot get a jacket on without the sleeves of her sweater riding up to her armpits.

Tian was startled at this revelation. “Mom! What is wrong with Tehva? Why doesn’t she know how to put on a jacket?”

Duh, live in the Middle East much?

She can't put on a jacket, but she knows her stuff
when it comes to mummifying chickens

Every summer for the past four years we have gone to the USA, and each summer, the kids are released upon American society. Short of the fiery religious debates in which Tian has engaged her Sunday school teacher, and the Hitler-esque manner in which Tehva has bullied and bossed the neighborhood kids there, they have generally done well.

She's fine...just fine...keep saying it...

Okay, so Silas’s continuing inability to tie shoelaces? And Tian’s inability to speak to an authority figure without pointing out every single error in logic or technique? Both are probably related to the homeschooling and the mamsy-pamsy way in which I deal with them on a daily basis. And who needs to wear closed-toed shoes in the desert anyhow? But generally I feel that they will effortlessly merge back into mainstream America without a hiccup when we return to ‘Merica. Or at least I hope.

Each year I have left the USA to return to Oman thinking that my kids are fine…that they will be fine upon the imminent return, because when you are ex-patting it, this is always somewhere within your thoughts. It sometimes even surfaces to dominate your thoughts for short spurts. But in the day-to-day of living and learning here, it is also easy to bury this thought, especially as the time away becomes more prolonged.

Yes, and he is also fine despite appearances

Life here moves quickly (thus no blog post in, like, a million years) and we are left with little time for reflection on such questions as, “Will my kid be a freak when we go back home?” Additionally, the answer is "Yes for a little while" and so no one wants to discuss it much.

The generally harmless peer group--or at least two of them

In spite of the freak factor, it has been a relief to let the grip of the home society melt away. For four years, I have not had to worry about my kids’ clothing or style choices, the contents of their lunch boxes, their test scores in relation to their classmates’ test scores or anyone else's, their peers (I know them all too well), their safety within an institutional setting, or the quality of the material that is theoretically making its way into their little heads. I have not had to worry about supplementing activities or boosting instructional time. And I have certainly not have had to worry about the implications of Silas not knowing how to tie his shoes, or Tian angering the wrong instructor.

I highly recommend it, y’all.

But in other ways, this squirming away from the grip of American society has left me, actually all of us, on the outs. I no longer know what is cool and what is not. I have no idea anymore about what my children should be able to do according to the Standards or the Common Core. I don’t know what has come of the FDA’s strangle hold on school lunch programs. I don’t know whether Tian’s constant use of the word, “Mank” to 

Totally mank. Totally.

describe unpleasantries is totally weird or totally in in the USA.

In the four years here, they have gone from being children who fit a certain mold—the one dictated by society and by me so that they would be more apt to conform to society’s wishes—to being something of culture-less individuals. And while there are certainly rules that must be followed in Oman (What do you mean I can’t wear my favorite sleeveless top now that I have boobs?) as everywhere else, in many ways we have been beyond the reach of those rules.

But that is all coming to an end. The countdown has begun.

Nothing Says Summer Like...

Nothing says summer in the USA like the smell of skunk, freshly discharged, wafting on the warm breeze. In Oman, we occasionally enjoyed the musk of fox, but it was always faint and could only be enjoyed while hiking in the mountains. To experience it required an intentional jaunt out into the hills. In the USA, though, skunkiness requires no effort. It simply comes, lingers, and moves on...most times.

My parents have an unloved black and white cat who is so despised that she has never even been given a proper name; she is just LK, short for Little Kitty. She drools, cries, eats, and poops--that is the grand sum of her existence, or was until tonight when she ran into the house, having recently angered a skunk enough to cause it to spray. Her. Directly. Unfortunately, the awareness that she had been sprayed didn't come until the cat had not only entered the house and run upstairs, but had also enjoyed a brief cuddle at the hands of my mother who is, as all know, a soft touch (and now a smelly one as well).

Between the cat and my mother (who was now covered in skunk goo, too) the house is eye-wateringly acrid. We put a pan of vinegar and cinamon on the stove to boil, which made the house smell of rotten Easter eggs, tried a boiling a pot of coffee, which merely added to the spoiled Easter breakfast effect, and then gave up, turning our collective attention on the cat.

Looking on the internet at http://www.ohmygodmycatstinks.com/ revealed that this sprayed cat phenomenon is fairly rare, since most cats are smart enough to avoid being sprayed, but when it does happen to the rare idiot you should douse your cat in something acidic, let it soak for five minutes, rinse, and repeat as necessary. We mixed a paste of baking soda, vinegar, and dish soap and smeared it on the cat, let her soak and--she still stank. Attempt number two: tomato juice.

VIDEO SOON TO FOLLOW HERE

This also required a soak, but the reality of inflicting this upon a cat does not allow for a soak cycle and so she went right to the rinse cycle. Really tomato juice wasn't too successful either.

OTHER VIDEO SOON TO FOLLOW HERE AS WELL

If you happen to run into us within the next week, please be kind, especially to my poor mother who must cook a church supper, supervise entering teachers, be seen at soccer camp with the kids, and attend a professional conference within the next week, all while smelling strongly of skunk. Yes, she would be the one who is covered in a dusting of perfumed powder with a strong overlay of skunky. She is already a little bit sensitive about the odor issue so just smile, nod, tell her you didn't notice anything at all and then move on.

And would anyone like a black and white cat?