I found this great post on Yahoo Finance today about David Bach’s Go Green, Live Rich: 50 Simple Ways to Save the Earth and Get Rich Trying. I’m really looking forward to this book as it fits right down our alley of trying to work better with our money and also decrease our impact on the environment.

If the summary is any indication, we may be doing most of these things anyway but it’ll be interestig to see if we can pick up some tidbits. David Bach’s The Automatic Millionaire : A Powerful One-Step Plan to Live and Finish Rich was one of the first books I read after I had my “epiphany”. I really enjoyed it and will probably do a book review on it at some point.

It’s also interesting to read the negative comments about this article. Most of them attack global warming theory. The odd thing about this is that David Bach is not advocating some sort of “socialist” method for reducing greenhouse gases. He’s merely helping some people to think about their own personal impact. Whether it effects greenhouse gas or not is a secondary issue to me. I want to reduce MY impact because I believe it is the most respectful thing to do with the environment, which is a gift that we’ve been given. My consumerism is just another manifestation of the sins of greed and envy and when I waste what I could save that comes from pride.

What do you think about Going Green, Live Rich? Is it just another focus on greed or is it really trying to solve a problem?

Ways to get more fiber in your diet was brought up recently on a yahoo group I subscribe to.  Here is our basic bean recipe. 

I make a big pot of brown rice to serve with this. 

Crock-pot Refried beans

3 cups dry pinto beans

8 1/2 cups water

1 onion diced

1/2 jalapeno pepper, de-seeded and minced (I use two dried chile’s from last years garden but I am sure anything would work, even red pepper flakes or ground cayenne pepper)

3 cloves garlic minced

1/2 tsp cumin

2 tsp salt (sea salt is best but any will work)

1/2 tsp pepper

Preparation:

Rinse beans in colander.  Combine all ingredients in a slow cooker.  Cover and cook on Medium-high for 8 hours.

Drain out most of the water, Mash beans with potato masher (I use our immersion blender), adding back some of the liquid to desired consistency.  Will keep well in fridge for up to 1 week and will freeze well.  You can also add diced kielbasa or andouille sausage if you want meat in it.

Gander has this in his lunch on most days with the rice and some homemade yogurt, it keeps him full.  Oh, and the occasional chocolate chip cookie (his favorite!)

One of the biggest challenges of raising a big brood is the never ending question…what’s for dinner? I was truly struggling with the dreaded dinner hour until about 2 years ago. I started freezer cooking (once a month cooking) with a friend. We started small, we each made 3 main dishes and 1 side. Needless to say, like anything, it has grown into an obsession. For a while before the discovery of gander 6’s allergies I was involved in 2 freezer exchanges and still cooking with the same friend every 2 months. Each of the freezer exchanges consisted of about 6 mom’s cooking enough of a single meal to feed 6 families (about 6-8) servings each. That would give me 15 or so meals in the freezer each month. This was enough with leftovers and one made-from-scratch meal a week to feed us for the month. It was fun to have new dishes to try and I enjoyed the variety. Everyone else missed the goose’s cooking though.

I have a couple of tried and true websites and cookbooks I use pretty consistently.

• www.30daygourmet.com To be honest, I don’t use a lot of recipes from this site, but what I have used has turned out fine. It is a great starting point with loads of information for a newbie to freezer cooking though.
• www.recipezaar.com They have a huge OAMC (once a month cooking) section of recipes.
• My favorite freezer cookbook is: Dont Panic - Dinners in the Freezer: Great-Tasting Meals You Can Make Ahead
• I also like: Dream Dinners: Turn Dinnertime into Family Time with 100 Assemble-and-Freeze Meals
• This one is also very popular with some freezer cooking friends: Holly Clegg’s Trim & Terrific Freezer Friendly Meals: Quick And Healthy Recipes You Can Make in Advance (Trim & Terrific)

You might wonder how to begin freezer cooking. I usually start by looking through my stack of favorite cookbooks and websites. Depending on the season we have some favorites. For example as we are heading into warmer weather I am thinking about things that can be put in the crockpot or grilled outside, marinades are really good for this. I recently started a freezer cooking binder where I keep my favorite recipes printed off the Internet as well as notepaper with my monthly list of freezer meals and where they can be found (the name of the cookbook, page,etc). This has been a great help and certainly streamlined things. Once I have a few ideas I start watching the ads for sales on meat, which usually narrows down my recipes. I won’t be making 3 chicken recipes if I can’t find chicken breast on sale somewhere for example. I have become strict with myself and try not to buy chicken breast unless it is below $2 a pound and when it is I stock up the freezer. I usually email back and forth with the ladies I am cooking with until we all get our recipes decided. We all try to keep our numbers of beef, chicken,pork,soups,marinades,etc. as even as possible so we don’t have 6 beef meals and 3 soups.

On cooking day everyone is usually at my house by 10:00 am and we are usually finished by 4:00 pm. Depending on whether we have little babies that need attention or are 9 months pregnant which does happen amongst my crowd more often than not, we sometimes make a meal or two ahead of time to make the day go more smoothly. We usually stop for a quick lunch somewhere in the middle and we all share in the clean-up.

I am back to cooking once a month with my dear friend who has 4 little ones in her brood. We have similar cooking tastes and styles and really enjoy our Saturdays cooking and chatting. My sister-in-law has since joined us to help cook for her brood of 5. So I still get plenty of meals in the freezer and more time to spend cuddling, reading or playing outside with my brood in the late afternoon.

He is risen!

Just wanted to drop a line to let you know we’ll be back online today or tomorrow. We’re still recovering a bit from the Triduum. It was all terrific but after Holy Thursday night “Last Supper”, then Friday night communion service and Tenebrae then preparation all day long for the Easter Vigil, which lasted from around 11pm to 5:30am, well, we need to recover a bit.

The souls feel great, but the bodies feel worn

… your “sporty” car is a minivan.

… you buy your beef in half-cow increments. (Hey, it’s cheaper that way!)

Over at The Sun’s Financial Diary, Sun has a post about the anniversary promotion from myFICO that allows you to get your FICO score at a 25% discount. Look toward the end of the post. This is a really great deal.

Also, if you’re wondering what determines your FICO score and what it is all about, I found this great guide on myFICO.

In summary:

• Credit scores are used to determine your ability to pay for your loan.
• The FICO score is based on:
  • 35% payment history
  • 10% Types of Credit in Use
  • 10% New Credit
  • 15% Length of Credit History
  • 30% Amounts Owed
• This guide gives great tips on how to keep your score in good shape such as:
  • Keep balances low on credit cards
  • Pay off debt rather than moving it around (whoops, we have done this one too often!)
  • Do rate shopping within a short period of time. This helps the FICO system to determine whether you are really shopping for rates or desperately casting about for new lines of credit.

We have not checked our FICO yet as we didn’t want to spend the money and we didn’t really think we’d be in the market for new loans. Our mortgage shopping has gone without a hitch so far so I’m not too worried (not to mention that Goosey has always been very good at paying bills on time.) However we did use a FICO estimator just to get an idea of where we stand.

… you get excited over cheap 25lb bags of Pinto beans at Sam’s club.

Since mid-October or so, Goosey and I have been maintaining a price book. We have found that the price book has been one of our most effective tools in fighting food costs. As our brood grows in age and numbers our food costs are beginning to increase. To keep on top of it, we have used a price book. Here’s what it has done for us.

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My herd has arrived!

For those of you who can’t tell what that is, it’s a handful of Eisenia fetida, red worms, red wigglers or whatever you like to call them. We like to compost and we’ve used red wigglers before. This is our newest herd.
You’ll note some white in that picture. That is shredded junk mail, finanical documents, etc. which will be eaten by my worms. I’d like to see some thief put together my information after it passes through the gut of a worm! Hah!

I also challenge you, intrepid reader, to find any other blog on the Internet advocating such innovative and eco-friendly methods to prevent identity theft!

Do you have any interesting methods for preventing identity theft?