Leftovers

If anyone tells you that the holiday season is a time of excess, point to your frugal management of food. Yes, some meals may seem extravagant, but thanks to iceboxes, cold weather and other preservation methods, nothing need go to waste.

All parts of the turkey, for example, have a use. The meat can be eaten as soon as it is roasted, or it can be smoked, dried or pickled and stored for later use. Turkey bones can be saved and added to soup for flavor, or boiled further into gelatin for broths and desserts. The large feathers can be made into writing instruments; the pin feathers can stuff pillows. One may also boil the beak and feet to the same purpose as bones, or dry them for use as back-scratchers. It is a little-known fact that the turkey head also makes excellent wolverine bait and, once caught, the wolverine can protect your valuables (after you have tamed it).

Likewise the fruitcake has a myriad of uses: door stopper; theatrical curtain counterweight and ship ballast, among other things. I knew a woman in Nome, Alaska, whose concerned relatives back East always sent her a good quantity of fruitcake to carry her through winter. When fuel grew low, she would toss one on the fire. It would usually burn for a week.

What may seem like excess could also merely be a misapplication of Wizard Water^© to stretch a meal. A little flour and a few drops of Wizard Water added to turkey drippings, for instance, can more than quadruple the available gravy. Only try this if you are expecting a lot of guests, though. A widow who lived alone once added a little Wizard Water^© to a 10-quart pot on her stove, thinking that would be adequate, but the pot overflowed. If she hadn't been wearing a bamboo bustle she might well have drowned before she floated into the yard. (She was not a wasteful woman, either; she sold the excess gravy to a bricklayer who used it as a sealant.)

So never look at your holiday dinner as an extravagance. If anyone criticizes the quantity of food you are serving, show them the cold storage room that you have built of stacked fruitcakes sealed with congealed gravy, containing all your smoked turkey, quill pens, pillows and back-scratchers, well-guarded by your trained wolverine.

copyright ©2010 Laurie J. Anderson, all rights reserved.

More on Frugality

My wife is very frugal and now insists that I keep a notebook and write down everything I purchase, in the belief that I will reduce my spending. It hasn’t quite worked out as she had hoped, however. Now I only buy things that I can spell.

We have a lot of beer, beef, and beans, but we are very short on flower.





Copyright © 2010 Laurie J. Anderson. All rights reserved.

Frugality

My father’s father was a farmer and a frugal man. One year it got so hot that his corn started popping off the stalks right out in the field. They popped with such force that the kernels blasted holes into the sugar cane crop in the next field. His sugar cane then started to leak sap at a steady pace. He was in a quandary. Crows were feasting on the corn, but in the time it would take him to gather up the corn, his cane field would become a mass of syrup. Which crop should he save? He couldn't afford to lose either one.

He solved his problem by sweeping all the popped corn into the cane field and then rolling the corn in the syrup. It gradually formed a sphere the size of a barn. Folks came from miles around to gawk at the giant popcorn ball, and he began to charge a fee for samples. He finally sold the thing to a circus sideshow for twice what the separate crops would normally bring.

From this he taught us two valuable lessons:

• Never overlook the possibilities for any product, and
• Never walk through a corn field on a very hot day without some kind of head protection.

(Some of my family call my grandfather “granddad”, but to me he’ll always be “grandpop.”)

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A New Musical Instrument

I’ve invented a new musical instrument, a combination of bagpipes and banjo. The “Baganjo” is a wind-string instrument that should fit in well with both military processions and front porch picking sessions. It will appeal to the frugal who are musically inclined, because it combines two instruments for the price of one.

It will also appeal to merchants seeking to identify folks who are willing to buy just about anything.

It takes certain skills to play, however. You need good coordination to pluck the strings that operate the chanter pipe-holes. Also, musicians of these instruments must sometimes resort to threats of nonstop performance in order to assure payment. Therefore, you will need strong lungs to keep the bag inflated while you stay ahead of an angry mob.

copyright ©2009 Laurie J. Anderson, all rights reserved.