If I really want you to save money with DIY, I should tell you to buy bulk, right?
Well, I was checking prices for that exact reason on a site dedicated to bulk sales for food services.
Am I going to buy from them?
NOT.
You see, their price for flour is 1/3 more than what I spend at the grocery store.
When I checked a warehouse store site, I got an even worse result. It's flour to buy for emergency stock. It costs over $1 a pound, almost twice what I paid at the grocery store.
So when you try to save by DIY, do the math first and don't waste money just because it's bulk.
Now, the excuse at the warehouse store might be that their packaging preserves the product.
But if you buy your paper-bag flour at the store, and store it inside those black plastic trash bags you only need for pulling out poison ivy because your community won't accept them as leaf bags any more,
Anyway, buy the paper-bag flour at the store, put it in the black bag and put the black bag in any heavy plastic container like a trash can. The flour will stay good up to 2 years.
And if you haven't used it by that point, it will not be good for much.
As I said before, flour that is too old will turn out products like cement.
Plus in a real emergency you won't have any power for baking anyway.
You'll want that flour for after the emergency passes, Gd willing.
So what you really want to buy is matzo. Lots and lots of matzo. Not during Passover, but afterward, about September. Matzo stays good a long time if you don't break the wrappings.
Or you want to bake up your flour into matzo. It won't be any good for Passover, but that's not what you want to accomplish anyway.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Friday, June 20, 2014
Fact-Checking the Torah -- mortgages?
Your assignment for this week was Exodus 23:10-11, and
Leviticus 25:8-13.
Six years you shall sow your field and gather your grain.
The seventh year you shall release and leave the remains
for the poor of your people to eat and what they leave over is for the wild
animals to eat, and do the same in your vineyard and olive orchard.
You shall count seven Shabbats of years, seven years
seven times, and they shall be for you days of seven Shabbats of the years,
forty-nine years.
You shall make the shofar of truah pass in the seventh
month on the tenth of the month on Yom kippur you shall cause the shofar to
pass through all your land.
You shall sanctify the fiftieth year and announce freedom
in the land to all its inhabitants, it is the yovel, it shall be yours and each
man shall return to his portion and his family.
It is the yovel, the fiftieth year, it shall be a year
for you when you shall not sow or reap the aftergrowths or gather your grapes.
Because it is the yovel it shall be holy for you, you
shall eat your produce from the field.
In this year of
the yovel every man shall return to his portion.
When somebody lends money with land as a security, they have
at most six years to produce enough from the land to pay the loan back. There is no “awl in the ear” in the case of
real estate; the land has to go back to the owner. That is the meaning of “release”, shemittah,
in the first set of verses.
Now we get the 50th year issue, the yovel. Not only do bondsmen have to be released and
return to their portion, the land also must not be indentured. If somebody took out a bond on himself in the
3rd year of a yovel cycle, his first chance for release is
after year 6 and he must be released in year 50. If land was bonded out, the bond expired in
year 7 of the yovel cycle, the first shemittah in that cycle.
Yovel years have not been designated since the
Assyrians took the northern kingdoms into captivity because the majority of
Israel’s descendants have not lived in the Holy Land since then.
We already discussed that a bondsman was not the
bondholder’s to do with as he pleased; he could not batter or murder the
bondsman with impunity, violate the sanctity of his marriage, and so on.
With land something similar applies. The wording of the bond controls what rights
the bondholder has. If any feature of
the property is NOT described in the bond, the bondholder violates the bond if
he does anything to affect that feature.
The classic example is trees. If
the bond doesn’t refer to the trees, the bondholder must not flood the real
estate for rice and he can’t plow so close to the tree that he would cut the
roots.
An example of this case is in Genesis
23:17-18. It lists the trees that were
part of the property Avraham bought, as well as the cave. This passes complete rights in that land to
Avraham.
Mortgages had specific purposes in
Jewish law and that’s next week’s lesson.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Bit at a time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 1:21
Genesis 1:21
כא וַיִּבְרָא אֱלֹהִים אֶת־הַתַּנִּינִם הַגְּדֹלִים
וְאֵת כָּל־נֶפֶשׁ הַחַיָּה הָרֹמֶשֶׂת אֲשֶׁר שָׁרְצוּ הַמַּיִם לְמִינֵהֶם וְאֵת כָּל־עוֹף
כָּנָף לְמִינֵהוּ וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים כִּי־טוֹב:
Transliteration: Va-yivra elohim et-ha-taninim ha-g’dolim v’et kal-nefesh
ha-chayah ha-romeset asher shartsu ha-maim l’minehem v’et kal-of kanaf l’minehu
va-yar elohim ki-tov.
Translation: Gd created the
great serpents and all living soul that creeps with which the waters swarm for
their kind and all winged flier for its kind and Gd look for it was good.
Letters in this lesson:
Vocabulary in this lesson:
יִּבְרָא
|
He created (aorist)
|
תַּנִּינִם
|
Serpents
|
גְּדֹלִים
|
Big, great, large
|
רֹמֶשֶׂת
|
Creeps
|
כָּנָף
|
wing
|
With “big” you see another example
of things dropping out.
Singular
|
Plural
|
Gender
|
גָּדוֹל
|
גְּדוֹלִים
|
Masculine
|
גְדוֹלָה
|
גְדוֹלוֹת
|
Feminine
|
Notice that back with meir,
only the masculine singular had a vowel under the initial gimel, other
than shva. Also notice that in
the verse, g’dolim is written chaser while in the table it is
written plene.
Most translations have “whales”
instead of “serpents,” but that’s because the Septuagint put kitae, the
root of “cetaceans.” The Septuagint used
a lot of words that aren’t supported by the Hebrew. But that’s a different project.
Another place where taninim appears
is Deuteronomy 32:33, and it is used in parallel with p’tanim meaning
cobras. Parallel means comparable or
alike in some way and whales are not at all like cobras. Here, too, the taninim creep and
whales cannot be described as creeping.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Garden -- after the monsoon
I was worried that my manual (not gas or electric powered) lawn mower literally wouldn't be able to cut it.
The grass.
After two weeks' growth.
And about 6 inches of rain in 4 days.
Normally I don't mow at all during our usual late-summer drought and at that point, it's nothing to let the lawn go 2 or 3 weeks without mowing.
The grass goes dormant and doesn't grow at all.
But with all that rain last week, I could almost see the grass growing.
Well, I put on my big girl panties Sunday, thankful that the humidity was low, and got that grass mowed off.
I went over it twice because it still looked a little ragged after the first time.
But I survived. My joke is, if I do that in this weather, I'll melt into a greasy spot on the pavement.
No melting.
Monday, with 80% or so humidity, I cut the long grass around the edges early in the morning.
Other consequences: I am working on my 3rd pound of snow peas from the garden and I think I have at least a pound of green peas to shell and eat. My neighbor really admires my snow pea vines and I offered him some, but he does square-foot gardening and he has his own issues eating all the green peas that he grew.
We should all have such problems. And we would if everybody who had some turf would dig part of it up, lay down some compost, and put in something diverse, like veggies.
But I digress.
The mustard greens are about to bolt so I picked a lot of that to get some last greens before they go bitter. Hint: anything you let flower, the leaves get bitter as soon as the flowers bloom. Same for dandelions.
Also the flowers that I planted right before the monsoon started are sprouting, the calendula first.
My zucchini look good and I think I see some flower buds so that's encouraging. Have to keep the bunny from eating them.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved
The grass.
After two weeks' growth.
And about 6 inches of rain in 4 days.
Normally I don't mow at all during our usual late-summer drought and at that point, it's nothing to let the lawn go 2 or 3 weeks without mowing.
The grass goes dormant and doesn't grow at all.
But with all that rain last week, I could almost see the grass growing.
Well, I put on my big girl panties Sunday, thankful that the humidity was low, and got that grass mowed off.
I went over it twice because it still looked a little ragged after the first time.
But I survived. My joke is, if I do that in this weather, I'll melt into a greasy spot on the pavement.
No melting.
Monday, with 80% or so humidity, I cut the long grass around the edges early in the morning.
Other consequences: I am working on my 3rd pound of snow peas from the garden and I think I have at least a pound of green peas to shell and eat. My neighbor really admires my snow pea vines and I offered him some, but he does square-foot gardening and he has his own issues eating all the green peas that he grew.
We should all have such problems. And we would if everybody who had some turf would dig part of it up, lay down some compost, and put in something diverse, like veggies.
But I digress.
The mustard greens are about to bolt so I picked a lot of that to get some last greens before they go bitter. Hint: anything you let flower, the leaves get bitter as soon as the flowers bloom. Same for dandelions.
Also the flowers that I planted right before the monsoon started are sprouting, the calendula first.
My zucchini look good and I think I see some flower buds so that's encouraging. Have to keep the bunny from eating them.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Outdoors -- most popular
I had the most popular yard on the block for a while there.
It was because of the mulberry tree, plus the bird bath.
Robins, starlings, cardinals, catbirds, sparrows, squirrels, all came to eat the mulberries.
For the first couple of weeks they didn't get much.
The mockingbirds took it over. They had a chick to feed.
Well, now the chick's tail feathers have grown out and while I see him around, he no longer keens for his parents.
I think they have a nest full of eggs somewhere else.
And what mulberries are left, the other birds are now getting.
Of course, the robins have a hard time of it. They're about the same size as mockingbirds, but they're muscle-heavy where the mockingbirds are more gracile. (look it up)
So the robins weigh down the branches.
So do the squirrels. For as long as I ignore them.
Can't let those squirrels think the pressure's off just because the mockingbirds aren't beating up on them any more.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved
It was because of the mulberry tree, plus the bird bath.
Robins, starlings, cardinals, catbirds, sparrows, squirrels, all came to eat the mulberries.
For the first couple of weeks they didn't get much.
The mockingbirds took it over. They had a chick to feed.
Well, now the chick's tail feathers have grown out and while I see him around, he no longer keens for his parents.
I think they have a nest full of eggs somewhere else.
And what mulberries are left, the other birds are now getting.
Of course, the robins have a hard time of it. They're about the same size as mockingbirds, but they're muscle-heavy where the mockingbirds are more gracile. (look it up)
So the robins weigh down the branches.
So do the squirrels. For as long as I ignore them.
Can't let those squirrels think the pressure's off just because the mockingbirds aren't beating up on them any more.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved
Monday, June 16, 2014
Knitting/jumper -- adding yarn
I know, I know, I should have told you weeks ago how to join new yarn in when you're not doing Fair Isle.
It's a lot easier.
Knit as far as the end of the old skein or cone of yarn, all but about 3 inches.
Now start the next stitch but don't pull it through.
Now take the starting end of the new skein or cone and wrap it around the needle on top of the old yarn.
Now finish the stitch, carefully, so that there's a tiny tag of the new yarn sticking out ON THE INSIDE of the piece.
Now carefully knit with two pieces of yarn until the old yarn is finished.
The tag end of the old yarn should be ON THE INSIDE of the piece.
Go back to where you added the new yarn in and pull the tag end on the inside just a little to lengthen that tag end. It will reduce the chances that first stitch will unravel.
Now keep on with your knitting.
Next week I'll tell you how to finish the armholes.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved
It's a lot easier.
Knit as far as the end of the old skein or cone of yarn, all but about 3 inches.
Now start the next stitch but don't pull it through.
Now take the starting end of the new skein or cone and wrap it around the needle on top of the old yarn.
Now finish the stitch, carefully, so that there's a tiny tag of the new yarn sticking out ON THE INSIDE of the piece.
Now carefully knit with two pieces of yarn until the old yarn is finished.
The tag end of the old yarn should be ON THE INSIDE of the piece.
Go back to where you added the new yarn in and pull the tag end on the inside just a little to lengthen that tag end. It will reduce the chances that first stitch will unravel.
Now keep on with your knitting.
Next week I'll tell you how to finish the armholes.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved
Sunday, June 15, 2014
DIY -- bagels
A bulk food website wants you to pay $5 a dozen for Lender's plain sliced bagels. That's before you add the shipping costs, of course.
I made bagels one Tuesday. It took about an hour, less than any kind of bread (but see later when I post on English muffins).
I spent $1.60 on the flour and $0.38 on yeast, plus negligible amounts on sugar, salt, and oil. Oh yeah, and water.
Those other $3 that the website charges are for petroleum fuel to run the factory and the trucks and other transportation, for chemical dough conditioners and preservatives. And a tiny amount to pay the employees.
And there's high fructose corn syrup in them instead of plain old sugar.
I used sugar because I didn't want to put any shelf space into keeping malt syrup around, and at any rate I can't find malt syrup in my local store.
You could use honey instead of sugar if you have a thing about refined sugar.
Then I ate my first homemade bagel split, buttered, with homemade blackberry jelly on one side and homemade raspberry jelly on the other side.
I ate my second one with homemade lox and homemade yogurt cheese instead of cream cheese.
I froze some of them and defrosted two to eat on Shabbat (yesterday).
I think it was Mare Winningham's character in St. Elmo's Fire who, when she finally got her own place and freed herself from her over-concerned parents, told her friend Rob Lowe about getting up in the middle of the night and making herself a peanut butter sandwich. "And you know what? It was the best peanut butter sandwich in the whole world."
And it really was.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved
I made bagels one Tuesday. It took about an hour, less than any kind of bread (but see later when I post on English muffins).
I spent $1.60 on the flour and $0.38 on yeast, plus negligible amounts on sugar, salt, and oil. Oh yeah, and water.
Those other $3 that the website charges are for petroleum fuel to run the factory and the trucks and other transportation, for chemical dough conditioners and preservatives. And a tiny amount to pay the employees.
And there's high fructose corn syrup in them instead of plain old sugar.
I used sugar because I didn't want to put any shelf space into keeping malt syrup around, and at any rate I can't find malt syrup in my local store.
You could use honey instead of sugar if you have a thing about refined sugar.
Then I ate my first homemade bagel split, buttered, with homemade blackberry jelly on one side and homemade raspberry jelly on the other side.
I ate my second one with homemade lox and homemade yogurt cheese instead of cream cheese.
I froze some of them and defrosted two to eat on Shabbat (yesterday).
I think it was Mare Winningham's character in St. Elmo's Fire who, when she finally got her own place and freed herself from her over-concerned parents, told her friend Rob Lowe about getting up in the middle of the night and making herself a peanut butter sandwich. "And you know what? It was the best peanut butter sandwich in the whole world."
And it really was.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved
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