snadblog

A friend of mine used to sell Tastefully Simple products as a side job. The stuff is geared towards fast and easy cooking, and most items only require that you add one or two ingredients. The results are usually very tasty and easy to make. Last year I tried their Bountiful Beer Bread mix and was awestruck by the results. The bread itself was quite tasty, but what blew me away was how it was prepared. You dump the dry mix in a bowl, add a bottle off beer, stir it, plop it into a loaf pan, and bake it. That’s it! No other ingredients required, and you have a loaf of actual fresh-baked bread in under an hour. I bought another box of the mix and stuck in my pantry, where it has sat forgotten for months.

Yesterday I was looking through an issue of Woman’s Day magazine and a recipe caught my eye. It was for 2-Ingredient No-Knead Beer Bread and I was intrigued. This recipe claimed that the only ingredients were self-rising flour and beer. That’s… it. Flour and beer. And you get bread out of it? No way! I looked more closely. It was self-rising flour, which can easily be duplicated by adding a little baking powder and salt to regular flour. And the beer would add the yeast, sugar, and moisture. It’s just crazy enough to work.

Then a little bell went off in my head as I remembered the Tastefully Simple bread that was so similar. I searched my pantry and found the box of TS bread mix and looked at the ingredient list:

1. Enriched bleached flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, enzymes, ascorbic acid, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid),
2. sugar
3. leavening (sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodiumbicarbonate, monocalcium phosphate)
4. salt
5. dextrose

So that’s flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and more sugar. The only difference between this mix and the recipe I’d found was sugar. Actually, there’s another difference: the cost. Setting aside the cost of the beer, the WD recipe costs about a quarter. The TS mix costs $4.99 plus shipping plus tax. I don’t know whether to be horrified at the scam Tastefully Simple is pulling off or be in awe of the fact that they’re up-selling flour so well.

This morning I made a batch of bread using the WD recipe. It was fast, easy, and gave great results. It made a loaf of bread with a crunchy crust and a spongy, chewy, fluffy interior. Very yummy, especially when spread with some cream cheese. Dennis tasted it and was amazed at how much it tasted like beer. He even nodded eagerly when I mentioned I’d used Blue Moon beer and he said “I can totally taste it!”

The question is, how did it compare to the TS version? I admit that it’s been a while since I had the TS bread, but from what I recall, the two tasted quite similar. I think the WD recipe could use a little more salt and I might add some sugar, too, which I think would make the crust a little softer. I may even make a batch of each kind and compare them side by side to be sure.

Next time you want a snack and have a beer and some flour laying around, stir ‘em up and make you some bread. And next time you consider an order from Tastefully Simple, think twice.

Oh, one more thing… the TS mix claims that you can use any carbonated beverage to make the bread; it doesn’t have to be beer. I can’t help but assume the same would hold true for the WD recipe. A substitution like that would make this recipe suddenly suitable for kids. As easy as it is to prepare and as huge as the payoff is for such a short wait time, I’m sure any kid would love to make a whole loaf of bread all by herself! (I’ll have to try it out on my pretend kids…)

If you’ve ever shopped at Amazon.com, you know how great it is when the items you’re buying are eligible for free Super Saver Shipping. Just spend $25 on items sold directly by Amazon.com, and your shipping is free. If you’re anything like me, you also now how horrible it is when your total order is just shy of the $25 limit and you’re faced with two choices: either pay for shipping, or add something else to your order.

The problem with adding something else to your order is that it’s hard to find something that fits these three criteria:

1. you need it
2. it’s inexpensive
3. it’s sold by Amazon.com directly

Today I purchased an item that cost $22.99 — just $2.01 short of the minimum. Standard shipping for this item was going to be $5.58! I would much rather add a $2 item and end up saving $3 off the total. So, I began the quest to find something useful to add to my cart.

Boy, did I hit the jackpot! I found this roll of Henkel Duck 3/4-by-650-Inch Crystal Clear Tape for $1.11! Everybody can always use extra tape — especially with the holiday season coming up. And $1.11 is a perfect price for adding just as many bucks as needed to your total to bring you over the limit.

I added two rolls of tape to my order which brought the total up to a satisfying $25.21 with free shipping. Not bad at all.

Many of you will be happy to learn that we’ve found a new solution to our drinking water problem.

I checked into High Bridge Springs’ home water delivery program, and found it to be surprisingly affordable. They offer several cooler rental options, and we went with one that does cold and room-temp water, for $10 a month. The 5-gallon jugs that go in the cooler are $5.95 each. They exchange empty bottles for new ones every 4 weeks, and our first guess is that we’ll use 3 jugs in that time (we’ll adjust the number later if necessary).

So 15 gallons of water for a month will cost us about $28. That’s about $1.86 a gallon, including rental. If we end up going to 20 gallons, it’s $1.70 a gallon. We were paying about $1.50 a gallon for the Nestle bottles. Okay, so we’re not saving money with this new solution, but we’re not spending much more either, and it’s still SO worth it! Why?

It’s ridiculously convenient, for one thing. I hate buying water at the store and having to lug it to the car, then into the house, then into the fridge. Second, I think there will be a lot less wasted water, because we’ll drink what we dispense, versus having half-full bottles forgotten in the car. Third, do you know how cool it will be to be able to make a pitcher of Kool-Aid from good water and have it be cold already? Finally, we’re helping the world by cutting back on plastic production/consumption and supporting a local business. Oh, and the water tastes good, too :)

So choosing whether or not to go with this service boiled down to two things: would we use it? and where do we put it? Dennis and I talked about it and decided we could pretty easily adapt to it, and will re-use existing plastic bottles when we need our water “on the go”. We’ll probably get a few “real” water bottles, too, which Dennis promises he won’t lose. As for storing the cooler, there was really only one place it could go that didn’t interfere with anything else — in the tiny unused corner of the kitchen. There is no outlet there, though, so I’ll have to do some clever snaking of my camouflaged (white) extension cord around the corner to the outlet, but I don’t think that will be a problem. So the decision was made. Let’s do it!

I signed up on Monday and we got our first delivery on Wednesday. So far, it’s going great :)

P.S. Highbridge Springs doesn’t list prices on the Web site, but they’ll email you a spreadsheet if you call to ask about them. If any of you are interested, let me know and I can forward the pricing spreadsheet to you.

I hate folding socks. I hate doing a laundry load of whites and ending up with a pile of mismatched socks that have to be sorted up and paired together. There are always extra socks (or missing ones, depending on how you look at it) and it’s rare that you match every sock to its mate and end up with a perfect pile of pairs. And since socks wear out eventually after a while, there always seems to be one or two that need to be tossed out.

So I developed The Sock Program.

The Sock Program eliminates all of these laundry problems by forcing all of your socks to match each other, and to wear evenly. But how does it work, you ask? Let me illustrate with these simple steps:

1. Throw away * all of your typical, everyday socks (keep the special occasion ones)
2. Purchase 12-18 pairs of new socks, ALL of which are in one (or two) style(s).**
3. Wear your new socks as needed.
4. When the socks are beginning to show signs of wear and need to be replaced, return to #1.

Now why is this a good plan?

• Fewer choices:
  When you do laundry, all of your socks will be the same one (or two) style(s), and will be very easy to match up with each other. You can grab ANY TWO socks from the pile and they will match! You will never have more than one (or two) orphaned socks with no pair! The difference this makes in laundry folding time is unbelievable.
• Consistent wear:
  Because you purchased all of the socks at the same time, they will all have even wear. You’ll never have to search to find a “new” sock to match with a “new” one, or an “old” with an “old”. They’ll all look the same, all the time.

I’ve been using The Sock Program for more years than I can remember. I love it and will never go back. In fact, I’m just reaching the end of a sock cycle right now (thus prompting this post), and am currently in the process of throwing away the last round. I’ve got a bag full of new white socks at the ready, and I can’t wait to dig in.

“Yes, but…”

Not convinced? I realize this won’t work for everyone. If your sock selection is pretty boring (like mine), it will work well. But if you love to have lots of different colors/styles of socks, you can’t do this (Hi, Tabitha). You’ll also have problems if the lifestyle you lead just doesn’t lend itself well to evenly-worn socks.

Case in point: I can’t convince Dennis to use the Program. He is a sock hoarder and has dozens and dozens of pairs, and he won’t let me throw them away. Even if I could get him started, though, I don’t think it would work for him. He puts wear on them very unevenly — sometimes a pair will turn orange from his cheap workboots, sometimes they’ll be stained with mud from a 4-wheeler ride, or sometimes they’ll stay white after a more normal day. Either way, there’s no intermixing of his pairs of socks come laundry time. You have to find the right mate for each sock, and it takes FOREVER to do. It just makes me realize how awesome my own socks are! ***

* I highly recommend that you wear the socks one last time before throwing them away. Then instead of tossing them in the hamper, toss them in the trash. Why throw away clean socks?

** I buy “Hanes Her Way” brand — 12 pairs of crew socks and 6 pairs of no-show “bootie” socks

*** I know. That’s an awfully weird thing to say.