If you find yourself at the grocery store and you find yourself buying coffee and you find yourself buying coffee out of those bins (which I should take pictures of so that you know EXACTLY what I mean) with the little pull levers that release the whole beans into the paper bags: STOP!  That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t buy that coffee as much as it is to say this: beware the funky flavored crud.

I had company in town and I didn’t purchase them the high end [high quality but not high priced] stuff I usually buy because they don’t like it (I offer and they generally refuse it).  But I did buy them what was supposed to be 10% Kona beans because I’m nice like that.  Except that the lemurs that put the coffee in the bins put the kona (read: hawaiian beans are in here) next to the hazelnut flavored coffee.  Note the word flavored.  That word should be a big warning sign.  They should label it, “Death star coffee flavored like hazelnuts so that the death will be sweet.”  But they don’t.

If you buy coffee that is supposed to be just plain coffee flavored out of the chute next to the flavored death star stuff then spill a little of the beans into the bag and then smell the beans.  Your nose should be able to tell if miracles have happened and your kona coffee smells like coffee or if the evil siths of hazelnut have taken over and your imported beans are really just polluted with bad ju-ju.

Save your money on the coffee that’s been polluted, report to a store manager that the devil responsible for putting the coffee in that chute should be chastised heavily, and then buy something else that may not be what you wanted, but will not be polluted.  Unless of course you’re into flavored coffee, in which case by all means just dump the arabica beans into the bag and proceed with your business.  I’m embarrassed to have written this post because I prefer home roasted coffee if possible.  But I’m a coffee snob and I have to deal with that burden every day.

This morning my girls scanned the newspaper ads.  My five year old identified coupons and with great glee declared, “Mommy is going to love this ad, it has coupons!”

We’re definitely a coupon oriented family now.  Its because it comes part and parcel with personal finance obsessions

I had written about freezing your pillow if you have allergies when this blog started last year.  Since then I’ve had various people link in looking for some sort of technique.  I guess I assumed that everyone would know to do the following:

1. Remove the pillow case from the pillow (if you have no case on the pillow skip to step two)
2. Acquire a plastic bag such as a kitchen wastebasket trash bag and hold it open while making sure that your head goes nowhere inside of the bag to avoid suffocation
3. Insert the pillow into the plastic bag making sure that it fits in smoothly and is comfortable.  It’s going into the freezer so we have to at least be humane about the pillows placement in the bag
4. Clear out space in the freezer that is big enough to squish the pillow into.  You may consider turning off the ice maker and removing the ice tray if that looks like it may fit some of the space of the pillow.  If you have a firm pillow you will probably want to fit the pillow in a width wise direction rather than causing lots of tension in a depth wise orientation, it could open the freezer and reduce the effectiveness of pillow freezing.
5. Freeze the pillow for a work day while you’re out earning money
6. Remove the pillow from the freezer and bag about an hour before you go to bed so as to let your head lay down on a warmish pillow
7. Sleep well

Dear Power Company,Sorry for the huge increase in power consumption last night.  Neither myself or my wife happened to shut the windows in the front room when we went to bed and as the temperature dropped to around thirty-four degrees the heater ran all night.  Fortunately we caught it this morning and all of the temperatures appear to be balancing out as well as a reduction in heater use.Doh!Randy Petermanhttp://www.watchmymoneymaker.com

I read this quote from Merlin Mann…

 Starting a blog to solely make money is like learning ventriloquism to meet girls.

… and it reminds me why I do this: I enjoy it.  In the last couple years folks have moved from being employed to self-employed bloggers and I think its great.  It just doesn’t happen to be my personal aspiration.  I barely make a cent on this blog and I love doing it.  What do you do for money?  What do you do for fun?

My credit score is evil because at present it is 666 :)  Proof with the screen capture of the most recent credit score as reported by my bank.

I realized that I was a bit of a junky when I was at the Denver International Airport and I saw a guy sitting, waiting in a seat for a plane… and I thought it was Dave Ramsey.  It wasn’t, but I had to take a double take.

How do you know you’re a junky?

My wife and sister came up with the idea of the Pantry Survivor competition wherein they would attempt to go to the store once in an entire week (at the beginning of the ’stunt’) and then combine that with whatever was already stashed in the pantry to create meals for the family for as long as possible.  The super-challenge in all of this is that it is four adults and two children (plus one on the way - no, not us, my sister).  As previously stated somewhere my sister and her husband are staying with us until they can move into a new condo they’re buying.  So the food needs to feed the whole family and last as long as possible until they just have to go to the store.  The competition stands to see what they can create, what they can make stretch, and what they can concoct out of substitutes as needed.

The first step was to organize the pantry and make sure that there was an inventory.  My sister handled this, which was good because we had a pretty crazy pantry.  I unfortunately only have pictures of the post-organizing results.  My sister, whom I will refer to as ‘Preggers’, had a pad of paper and listed item-by-item what was in the pantry and fridge so that when she and my wife went to the store they could only buy what was needed for some basic meal preparation.  Preggers is actually a great cook, as is my wife, so this isn’t a huge challenge because they have a lot of ideas between the two of them.  The challenge is that they had to have enough of a plan to have bought enough food at the store to complement what we already had to make up enough meals to last a targeted ten days with one meal having company of another family of three.

Day One:  Smoked Pork ‘Que
Alton Brown of the food network enticed me to put together my own frugal smoker last year and so we smoke meat every couple months.  This last week we smoked some Pork Butt and it has been a cheap way to add protein to salads, sandwiches, and in this case, a barbecue pork sandwich.  I have directions and recipes for those who are interested - just shoot me an email to randy@watchmymoneymaker.com.

Day Two: Chicken Pot Pie a la ‘Preggers’
My sister made a tasty variation on chicken pot pie, but instead of making an actual pie, she made a chicken soup type dish and some tasty, tasty crust rounds with a cookie cutter. You placed the soup in the bowl and garnished them with the crust ‘cookies’ (not sweet, but oh, so tasty. Have you noticed I think they’re tasty?).  Preggers did a great job with this dish, but since she made it up I have no recipe.  It did contain white pearl onions which are one of my favorite soup ingredients.

By the time anyone reads this we’ll be on day three with a week left to go.  I don’t know what we’ll run out of, but I’ll post the results as we go through the experience.  I challenge you to try the same and see if you can clear out any old ’stuff’ that you have in your pantry to keep your budget frugal, and your frugal budget interesting in the kitchen.

This could totally apply to debit cards for those of you who, like me, are not huge fans of the credit cards.

Please Don’t Taste My Credit Card!

I have noticed that the employees who have to handle my plastic often are careful with the card to avoid looking like they’re doing bad things with it.  However, there’s always a nut somewhere