eat! craft! live!

:: photo friday :: twin toddlers

To see more from the twin shoot, head over here.

cashew tamari dressing

Just over two months ago, I hinted that I'd be blogging this recipe for my favorite salad dressing. (I was pretty obvious.) Favorite salad dressing, you say? Salad dressings aren't usually the kind of thing people tend to talk about with the same reverence as, say, a good brownie recipe or anything involving cheese. (Or is that just my group of friends?)

Until they've tasted this dressing.

It's that good.

I seriously love this stuff. I went on and on about it in my previous post, but I'll just reiterate here how amazingly delicious this stuff is. You know how when you bake a cake or cookies or brownies you maybe lick all the batter or dough off the spoons and bowls even though you know you shouldn't because of the raw eggs and stuff? I do the same with this dressing. I'm not even kidding.

(As a side note, when I was a little kid I always thought you weren't supposed to eat the raw batter because of the baking soda. I thought it was something like how your stomach is acidic, so don't eat raw baking soda...like how vinegar and baking soda react? I thought you'd have a volcano in your tummy. Yeah. Kid logic!)

Anyway...dressing! I was first introduced to a version of this dressing at Mother's in Austin. I tried the house dressing on a whim, I hadn't actually heard anything about it, and it was delicious! It may have been the first restaurant salad I had ever completely devoured. This is the only salad dressing I have ever craved. I tried to find a way to buy it when I moved away, but alas, none was found. I googled and googled but had trouble finding anything I could definitively identify as that dressing. So I gave up on it for a while. Another google search after many months finally resulted in finding that there are actually a few different semi-well-known "cashew tamari" dressings. But oh how different they were! I found a few recipes that sounded like what I wanted and ended up with this one.

Give it a try. You won't regret it!

Our humble ingredients...

cashew tamari dressing
adapted from somewhere though I can't at this point remember where

• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup unsalted cashews
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 3 tablespoons tamari

Combine all ingredients in a blender or in a cup for an immersion blender. Blend until emulsified but don't make cashew butter out of it! It will only take a few seconds. There should still be bits of cashew visible. Drizzle over salad. Enjoy.

You can adjust the amount of tamari to change the level of saltiness. I like things pretty salty. You may need less! Another note on salt - do not use salted cashews. Not unless you REALLY LIKE SALT.

Mmm...tamari...

Note: I have an immersion blender that came with a cup that has measurements on it - makes measuring out the oil and cashews super easy! Just add the 1/4 cup oil first, then dump cashews in until the liquid rises to 1/2 cup.

Our humble ingredients...combined but not blended...

See the bits? You may like your bits larger! I wouldn't go any smaller or you'll have cashew butter. Though if that's how you like it...

Yum.

:: photo friday :: yarn time!

Also a sale...use code SNOWDAY at checkout to save 20% - because we need to pay the rent!

I am just like you. Part 3: Why? And the future.

This is part 3 in a series. Read the first part and the second part.

Well, this is (probably) the last in the series and I'm posting much more quickly on the heels of the previous post than I did before, largely because I don't want that last post to be out there too long without me explaining why I did this. I feel like it sounds...kind of pitiful, oh woe-is-me, but it was definitely not intended to be. (Nobody has told me this...it's just what I think. I actually got a tremendous amount of positive feedback. It was wonderful.)

Anyway! Why did I write this little series containing an honest look at our financial life? Well, the idea first came to me as the Occupy Wall Street protests were just getting started and I was reading a lot of stories from average people that sounded a lot like mine. Then things started snowballing from there... We had a book club at work where we read Caitlin Shetterly's memoir Made for You and Me - it was so similar to our own story that many places had me in tears. I wept for them, for us, for all the people who were losing their homes, their savings, their sense of dignity and purpose. (It's an excellent book, by the way, read it if you can.) At the book club, perhaps a third of us had experienced situations not unlike hers where we found ourselves jobless and dependent on family and friends. There were young people who were experiencing it firsthand and older folks who were seeing their children go through this (and often housing them too). There was some talk on Twitter about how people don't talk about this kind of stuff and it seems that folks really appreciate when someone shares their honest story. So I decided to share! If it makes one person out there feel a little less alone in their situation, then I will be satisfied. It certainly made me feel less alone - thank you for all your tweets and comments and messages!

More than that, I hope I'm contributing in my own tiny way to a growing dialogue about what is happening in this country right now. In the grand scheme of the history of humankind, yes, we have it pretty good. Really excellent you could even say. Even compared to the majority of places on earth right now...we're doing fantastic. We are not in the midst of a civil war. I have plenty of access to fresh water. I have a roof over my head. I have heat, though we certainly keep it colder than I'd like in our house these days... I have enough to eat. I don't have to contend with wild animals, 16 hour workdays, brutal dictatorships, landmines or any number of other awful things. I have the luxury of sitting in my heated house, with my wireless internet and typing away on my laptop. I know. I get it. But in a country that tells you that if you work hard and get an education, you will be "successful?" When so many people are doing just that and...failing? (At least temporarily.) Knowing that I'm lucky compared to so many other people in the world may help me keep perspective, but it doesn't make paying the bills or rent or putting food on the table any easier.

And that's part of why I feel so frustrated.

I feel like I did everything right. I was told certain things growing up - if you're smart and work hard, you will be successful. I am smart. Smarter than the average bear, I'd say, if you don't mind. I took all those AP classes in high school, did the honors program during college and graduated with honors. Did well in grad school. I'm always learning new things of my own volition. I read. I consider myself relatively financially savvy. (But when you don't have anything to work with, it's hard to make some of those smart financial decisions. Have a nest egg! Right.) My smarts have allowed us to subsist on less than we might have otherwise. I credit my willingness to learn how to make stuff - clothes, dishwasher detergent, bread, granola - with saving us quite a bit of money over time. I use my brain to navigate the world of coupons, money-saving deals and government programs - and that last one is no small feat, trust me.

And I like to think I work pretty hard too, though of course I always feel like I could be working harder. I've always had a job (or two...or three) or have been looking (hard!) for one. I worked more hours in college than most people I know, but usually not at jobs that were any good for my future career. Money held me back there - I could never take those unpaid internships that many of my peers held in order to further my career-related skills because I couldn't afford to be not earning money for that length of time. (Or reducing my paid-work hours to the degree I would have had to in order to do both. I did eventually find one paid internship in college, but it was short-lived.) I consider myself very lucky just to have been able to attend college and grad school at all, trust me.

But if I'm smart and I've always worked hard...what gives? Am I just unlucky? Is there something wrong with the system? Is there something wrong with me? Was I lied to my whole life? How come, at a time in my life when I thought for sure I would have everything all figured out, do I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing or how I got here?

I can't, with any surety, answer those questions. I will say that I know I've made some bad decisions in my life and that I'm far from trying to blame my problems on anyone else in particular. For instance, I quit a job once because it was so horrible that when I pulled into the parking lot in the morning, I would start to cry. I didn't wait to find another one, even though that would have been the responsible thing, because I just had to get out of there now. As it turns out, I didn't find anything for a good long while. Should I have waited? Probably. And I know that I've purchased things I shouldn't have on credit just because I wanted them. Who hasn't? The drudgery of budgeting every penny can really wear you down and I truly believe that everyone needs a little treat every now and then. But how big a treat? Are we talking a latte or a PlayStation? My recent splurge was to order two scarves that I probably shouldn't have. But we couldn't afford gifts for Christmas and my birthday is coming up so I decided to spend the $20. Should I have done that? Financially, no. But it was good for my peace of mind and I'll just have to deal with the consequences. Another of my downfalls, not exactly a decision, is that I'm horribly socially awkward. OK, maybe not horribly, but I don't have that certain something that some people have that allows them to succeed in spite of their inherent idiocy. I always sort of assume that the fact that I'm not a blathering idiot will be clear to people, but that's not always the case and I have a really hard time advocating for myself when I think it should be apparent. (I really need to get over that...)

So why did I title these pieces "I am just like you?" Because I am. The regular, average "you" of middle-class America, if such a thing exists anymore. I walk down the street wearing decent clothes, a nice haircut and respectable looking shoes with my adorable toddler in tow. I carry a gorgeous handmade bag, that I bought years ago and saved for. I drive an ordinary older car. I accessorize in this wintry time with beautiful hand knit hats and scarves and mittens. You would never look twice at me. You wouldn't see me and think, "She's poor." You would see me and think...probably nothing at all. Or if you're a knitter, maybe, "Hey, that's a nice pair of mittens." But probably nothing at all. (You wouldn't see me and think, "She has money" either, but that's a different story.) I feel like I fit in with my friends, though I know some of them "have" substantially more than we do. It usually doesn't bother me until it comes to doing something with or for our similarly-aged children and I can't afford to do it. I know I'm not alone - I've talked with other mamas who are equally unable to send their children to expensive classes or daycares, much as we all might like to. But it doesn't make it any easier.

So what does the future hold?

I have no idea. Ideally, M will finish school and land a great job. I would love to work more but I would also love to spend as much time as possible with my kiddos. If it's a matter of paying the bills, and daycare doesn't eat up all my paycheck, I will have to accept that I may have to work more hours, if I can find something. If we can get by on less (which I think we can, because, well, we are) then I will continue working part-time and momming part-time. I know that we have family and friends that won't let us starve or be homeless and for that I am eternally grateful but I am always so hesitant to "take advantage" even though I know they are more than willing to help.

If we only could ask.

--------------------------------

There are a number of great books to read about this issue. I prefer personal narrative types, like Caitlin Shetterly's memoir that I mentioned above, or Barbara Ehrenreich's Bait and Switch. (Or any of her other books, for that matter...) There are others that are slipping my mind at the moment. As someone said to me about the previous post, people don't really understand until they hear personal stories. Especially stories from friends. We never think it'll happen to us or to people we know. But it does. Every day.

This website has been making the rounds on Facebook recently and it's worth mentioning. It makes you take a hard look at poverty and what you need to do to make it through a fictional month. Our budget is really quite close to that in reality and the questions addressed are things I at least think about, if not actually deal with, on a daily basis. Take a look. It may be eye opening.

Then there's this post on Why You're Always Broke. This is exactly the kind of post that pisses me off. Yes, this may be why you're always broke if you're a twenty- or thirty-something with no kids and a decent job. It's not that the reasons given aren't valid - they totally are - but they are just so superficial. It barely scratches the surface of why people are broke. And it leads off with the tired old "Don't buy that morning latte" suggestion, which...really? We've all heard that a million times before. If you are in a situation where buying that morning latte is really all that's making you broke? You're not doing so bad. They are good suggestions and we practice every single one. But let's go deeper people!

I'll be doing a follow up post soon about ways that we save money...it will probably include things on that list! But I hope that I'll be including some more substantial things you can do as well. And it certainly won't be titled "Why We're Always Broke" because the answer to that has nothing to do with our coffee consumption and everything to do with our paltry income and our current inability to increase it.

To everyone who wrote to me and left comments or tweets - thank you for your support! And to those of you in the same or similar situations - hang in there! There's not a lot else we can do but be there for each other.

Hugs.

I am just like you. Part 2: Present day.

This is the second in a series. Read the first part here.

I've let this stew for a long (long) time, as you may have noticed. While it's true that other things did get in the way - the holidays, etc. - I've just been putting it off for fear of...well...what people will think. It's hard to admit to some of these things. But my aim in putting it out there is that it will make it easier. For myself and others.

From this point on if you've read my blog carefully, you'll already know parts of the story.

I left off with us hightailing it out of Texas with a belly full of tiny baby, a UHaul truck packed to the gills with us, all our earthly possessions and two very unhappy cats...

We stayed with friends when we arrived in Maine. And as much as I loved living with them, and would do it again in a heartbeat if I had to, having 4 adults, 3 children and one baby-to-be under the same (small-ish) roof was a little intense for us, having just moved from our apartment where it was just us and the cats. (Oh yeah, in addition to the people add in two cats and a dog. Plus, chickens and ducks and turkeys and a sheep or two, but they're outside so do they really count?) We moved into our own place a few months later and here we remain to this day. We're fortunate that our landlord is a little lax and didn't check our credit or jobs or anything, since we didn't, well, have any. We used our unemployment to pay the rent and qualified for MaineCare for health insurance for me and baby-to-be, but not M.

Things haven't changed much. M has only been able to get a few temporary jobs and so decided to go back to school to hopefully improve his prospects. I started a job working from home right before E was born and have been doing that ever since. In addition, I was lucky enough to get a very part-time job in my field (wow!) when she was about 7 months old. That job has increased in hours over the past year but I'm still only a half-time employee. I love my job. I love the people I work with. I make decent money, per hour, but since I only work half time, it doesn't add up to quite enough to pay (all) the bills. The yarn business brings in a teeny amount, mostly just enough to be able to sustain itself, pay for unexpected bills or an occasional indulgence. The photography business has barely brought in a cent. (Yet! Tell your friends! Please!) And now M is trying to maneuver around his school schedule and find a job that will work around it, or switch his schedule up to make full-time employment work. So, again, I find myself living off student loans, credit cards and my meager earnings and relying on various forms of government assistance.

Hi, my name is Laura and I receive food stamps.

That's another one of those things nobody talks about - help. We don't talk about how broke we really are and we don't talk about who or what is helping us through. (And God forbid we have to ask for help...but that's another story.) I know a few people around us are aware of the fact that we get food stamps. (Which aren't actually stamps at all - the money comes on a preloaded debit card that you swipe just like any other at the grocery store.) But it's not common knowledge that we receive this assistance. And, frankly, without it we would be either very hungry, more in debt, or...something. Our food stamp money covers about half of our food expenses in any given month, more if we need it to and can be extra frugal. (I'm tempted to do a project to see if I can stretch it to cover all our food expenses...stay tuned...) We do not eat lavishly. We do eat fresh, organic when possible, local food. But I am fairly food-savvy and can cook well, which helps. Heck, you've seen my blog - the recipes here, especially in recent months, are pretty inexpensive. I don't tend to use exotic ingredients, or even much meat. (Meat is expensive, yo!)

Our other main source of financial assistance is health insurance. Like I mentioned before, we qualify for MaineCare, which is the state of Maine's insurance program for us po' folk. Without it, I don't know where we'd be. (Well, besides completely uninsured...) They paid for all of my prenatal care with E, her birth, and now for all her well-baby checkups and miscellaneous doctor's visits. M and I are covered too, for the time being*, but as relatively healthy adults, we don't make nearly as much use of it as she does. If I had to pay for insurance through my job, it would cost me well over half what I make to cover our whole family. Even just to cover E and I, it would mean a hefty bill. Between that and daycare, I'd be spending more than I make. I am eternally grateful for the MaineCare program, despite its drawbacks and difficulties and I sincerely hope that it can continue to help my family and others like us, while we need it. I have high hopes for getting off food stamps, but insurance is another issue. Without a major change in our situation, there's no way we could afford it on our own. Hopefully that change is coming sooner than later! We're working hard to make it happen, but it doesn't seem any closer than it was a year ago.

Despite it all, I feel lucky. We're all in good health, we can (so far) afford to keep a roof over our heads and stay warm. Thanks to food stamps, we can eat relatively decently. We live near my family and they are all in relatively good health. I don't feel like I'm lacking for much, as long as I don't put my wanty pants on.

But we economize in almost every way. We almost never go out and when we do it's with a coupon or somewhere cheap. We rarely travel. (My Rhinebeck trip was my big trip this year and the whole thing cost me less than $200.) Most our gifts are homemade, which I would probably do anyway. I make most of our bread products. I've started making our own yogurt too. We don't buy breakfast cereal, but instead make our own oatmeal and granola. I cook almost all our meals from scratch, using aforementioned inexpensive ingredients. We cloth diaper. We don't have cable or smartphones. We have one cell phone that has prepaid minutes, for emergencies, which costs us about $40 per year. Yes, per year. I only get my hair cut once or twice a year. The vast majority of E's clothes, toys and other items are hand-me-downs and/or gifts. We don't buy books, but go to the library. I make our dishwasher detergent. So when I hear suggestions to save money by, say, not buying that morning latte? I get a little frustrated.

Because even though I feel pretty lucky, sometimes I start to think about our financial situation and I get all stressed out. I wonder when, if ever, we'll have enough money to just be able to afford to buy, say, a new pair of shoes when we need them. (And I do mean need, not want.) Or if I'll ever not have tens of thousands of dollars of student debt hanging over my head. (I currently owe more than 3x my annual salary.) Or if we'll ever get that credit card paid off. (I have high hopes.) Not to mention big picture things - will we ever be able to afford to buy a house? Give E the things she needs and wants as she gets older? Get a new(er) car? Save for retirement? Meet any of our life goals that remotely involve money? Those are questions I can't answer and they make me nervous to think about. We are one large car repair or unexpected health issue away from really and truly not being able to make it. As it is, I'm rather thankful we don't own a house and therefore don't have to worry about losing it...

How many people are in the same situation? Uncountable numbers, I'm sure. I know I'm not alone, but sometimes it feels like it.

Stay tuned for the next installment - why? And what does the future hold?    

*For the time being, we are covered under MaineCare but the governor is working hard to change that. We are exactly the people who will lose coverage if the proposed cuts go through.

pinata apples, anyone?

I get a lot of PR people contacting me about various things, most of them entirely irrelevant to my interests/this blog/my location. (Hey Austin PR folks - I moved away 2.5 years ago! Just, y'know...) But once in a while, something catches my eye and I actually pay attention! This is one of those occasions. How could I pass up free apples?

The apples are called Piñata and this is what they have to say about them:

"Piñata is a cross between England's Cox's Orange Pippin, Russia's Duchess of Oldenburg, and the classic American apple, Golden Delicious. The best attributes of these three varieties combine to make Piñata, an apple that is crisp and juicy with both high sugars and high acids, and a subtle tropical finish."

And you know me, I wouldn't actually blog about them if I didn't like them. They were really quite tasty! We ate them fresh, me and little E, though apparently they are good for cooking too. And the most recent apples I've been getting from the supermarket have been rather mealy and dry and a little long in the tooth, so it was refreshing to get some nice, crisp juicy apples this time of year. (Though M did mention it seemed to take advantage of modern logistics, this sending two apples in a little padded box through the mail...)

But we were glad to have them! E devoured them, but she isn't exactly an apple connoisseur, so... I thought they were crunchy, crisp, surprisingly juicy. They were a nice mix of sweet and tart. I'm not a huge fan of the "Delicious" family of apples myself, so there was something that I didn't exactly love about them, but really they were quite good and I will definitely make a point to seek them out this winter!

My only real complaint is that they are only licensed to be grown by one grower and I'm not really sure how I feel about that...but frankly I don't know enough about the apple industry to have any sort of adequately educated opinion about it, so take my words with a grain of salt!

The apples are tasty - give 'em a try!

Find them here...

chicken & rice enchilada casserole

This casserole is seriously the least photogenic thing ever...

But it is so good! I promise.

Living in Texas for ten years, I really had a serious love affair with Tex-Mex. We made it at home, ate it at gatherings, went out for it not infrequently. One of the great things about it is that it's cheap, so going out for dinner was never a spendy affair. Which also means it's cheap to make at home! Beans, rice, tortillas...the most expensive part of your meal will be (optional) meat and possibly salsa or another type of sauce. Oh, and cheese. But really, you can't do without cheese...

My favorite thing to get at restaurants was always enchiladas. Hot and steamy, dripping in cheese and smothered in various sauces and filled with a wide variety of tasty treats - beef, chicken, cheese, corn, roasted veggies, fish - you name it! But enchiladas made at home were never quite...the same. Largely because it's a giant pain in the ass to roll all those little, prone-to-breaking corn tortillas around impossibly small piles of filling and squash them all into a pan for baking without letting them fall apart or lose their fillings.

*sigh*

So after making a batch or two of "regular" rolled enchiladas and deeming them too much hassle, we developed this enchilada casserole! Basically you take the tortillas, sauce, cheese and "fillings" and layer them, then bake until melty and gooey and delicious. This most recent time, M made it and he put down a layer of slightly seasoned rice on the bottom of the pan before layering everything else over it - I was wary at first, but it turned out really wonderful so I'm including the rice option here. (Typically, the rice would be on the side...)

Additionally, this casserole is infinitely adjustable. Don't eat meat? Skip the chicken. We frequently do, since meat is expensive. (Leftover chicken is perfect.) Add corn or other veggies. Make your own corn tortillas! (We actually usually do this - corn tortillas are really super easy to make. This time, we just didn't have time, hence the prepackaged Chi-Chi's.) Use canned beans for convenience or cook your own dried beans. Add more or less cheese as it pleases you. The only thing I recommend you do not skimp on is the enchilada sauce - a dry enchilada, or in this case casserole, is a sad, sad thing indeed. Also, get an enchilada sauce you really like, since the flavor of the casserole really rests on it. (We have limited options here in Portland, Maine...Old El Paso it is.)

chicken & rice enchilada casserole
an eat! craft! live! original

• 1 recipe slightly spiced rice (see below - optional)
• 1 package corn tortillas (ours had 10)
• 1 28 oz. can enchilada sauce (we prefer green, but you can use your favorite!)
• 12 oz. grated colby jack cheese
• 1 15 oz. can black beans (or use dried and cooked beans)
• 1 small onion, diced
• 1 chicken breast, fully cooked and shredded (optional)

If you are using rice, spread the rice in the bottom of a 9x13 inch casserole (or similarly sized) dish, then top with a small amount of enchilada sauce. If not using rice, put a thin layer of enchilada sauce down anyway. Follow with half the beans, onion and chicken, if using. Cover with 1/3 of the cheese, some enchilada sauce and half the tortillas. Repeat with the remaining beans, onion and chicken. Cover with another 1/3 of the cheese and more enchilada sauce. Layer remaining tortillas on top, cover with the rest of the enchilada sauce and the remaining cheese. Bake in a 350° oven for about 20 minutes or until cheese is melted and casserole is bubbly. It's not pretty but it sure does taste good!

slightly spiced rice

• 1 cup white rice
• 2 cups chicken broth (or veggie, or water and bouillon)
• 1/2 small onion, diced
• 1 tablespoon butter or oil
• optional seasonings: dried cilantro, parsley, cumin, chili powder...the possiblities are endless!

In medium saucepan, melt butter or heat oil over medium high heat. Add onion and saute for a few minutes until onion starts to soften. Add rice and saute briefly, until rice is coated in butter or oil. Add broth or water and bouillon and whichever seasonings you desire. Bring to a boil, give it a good stir, then cover and simmer on low, undisturbed, for 15 minutes.

A side note - M wanted me to note his "pro tip" for getting the tortillas to fit pretty much perfectly: put down four, as shown, then cut the 5th one in half and cover the expose corners. You're welcome.

:: photo friday :: completely random