Leftover Turkey Ideas: The Turkey Burrito

Almost a week later, and I’m almost done eating the turkey.  All that remains is the turkey carcass in the freezer that will be made into broth this weekend.  I had a stroke of genius on Monday that resulted in the amazing Pilgrim-Mexican fusion dish that I like to call the Turkey Burrito. 

Take about 2 cups of the scrap turkey meat that is clinging to the bone, white meat and dark meat, and don't worry if the meat is a little tough.  Add to a saucepan with a can of tomatoes with the juice.  I like the ones with the jalapenos in them.  Add a dash of paprika or red pepper (powder, not flakes), cumin, and lime juice (1/2 teaspoon or so if you want to measure).  Set the saucepan to simmer on low for 30 minutes, stiring occasionally and adjusting the heat to make sure it is not boiling, but still staying hot enough to steam.  When the majority of the liquid has evaporated, add half a can (1 cup) of vegetarian refried beans and stir.  Voila!  Burrito filling!  Stuff a tortilla and add cheese, more veggies, and rice if you'd like.

Getting Life on Track

Since my husband left on a trip this week, I decided that this would be a good time to start to a new diet and exercise regime.  Why not.

The things that I have going for me:

• Complete control of the cooking and food shopping. 
• Fewer demands of my time to keep me from exercising
• Full command of the DVD player for exercise videos
• No one except the cat to see that I look ridiculous while doing sit-ups
• After two runs to Trader Joe's, a fully stocked kitchen of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, low calorie frozen entrees and premium organic snacks.  Good tea and good coffee so I won't be drinking my calories.
• Close proximity to trails for running and biking, a weight set in the basement, exercise videos and on-demand workouts, and the Wii EA Sports Active, so the cat can mock me.

Things I don't have going for me:

• I'm lazy.
• I get bored easily
• Chocolate is yummy.
• I'm missing my partner - the one who senses when I'm stressed out and in over my head and swoops in to rescue me from myself, or doing the dishes, bringing me a cup of coffee to help me walk up, or just give me a hug while I'm preparing some type of bland fish and veggie dinner. 

That last one is going to be a hard one to get over.

Sunday Morning Papers: Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Oh, fluff pieces on deal shopping!  People being maced at Wal-Mart to buy a $200 flat screen TV.  Debates over whtether it's fair for workers to give up their Thanksgiving dinners to sell toasters for $4.99.  Who will be having free shipping tomorrow on Cyber Monday?  And, the backlash of why people are stupid to wait in the cold for a $30 Blu Ray player.

Why should people care?  Because of the simple fact that consumer spending accounts for 2/3rds of GDP according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  With the remaining third coming from government spending and private investment, this is a critical portion of the American economy, especially with banks sitting on capital and talks of Draconian budget cuts to Federal spending.  So whether or not you bought some $10 sweaters on Friday morning may seal the fate of whether this is a recession or a depression. 

Solution to a Midwestern Problem

Without a doubt, a strange moment occurred in thousands of households across the Midwest on Thursday.  Guests arrived for Thanksgiving Dinner, and were promptly asked by Aunt Sally to remove their shoes.  The moment of panic struck - are their holes in my socks?  Did I get that pedicure?  Do they smell?  I'm not sure why this always amazes me - I've been taking my shoes off at relatives houses since I was little.  Of course you always take your shoes off in winter - don't track the snow in.  It never occurred to me that people in other areas of the country would leave their shoes on until I lived with a pair of New Yorkers.  Then I had to vacuum more often.

A couple years ago, one of my husband's cousins brought slippers to Grandma's house for Christmas.  Genius!  Still... didn't think to do anything except pack extra socks.  I had thought about bringing extra shoes in a plastic Jewel bag like I would when I was 5, but then when you are lugging presents and a pair of pies, there's no way to carry them.  I've gone whole weekends at my InLaws with cold feet, annoyed that I forgot to bring slippers and startled that their shoe-free house policy with which I have been acquainted for a dozen years has not changed.  Then, Groupon delivered the perfect solution - foldable purse shoes!

You have no idea how excited I was about these. 

I guess Dr. Scholl's also has these shoes, but markets them as flats you can wear when your heels start hurting.  But can we go back to portable winter house shoes?  From Indy to St. Paul, our long regional nightmare is over!  We can leave our wet snowy shoes (and socks depending on the height of snow to height of boot) at the front door and still have cute things on our feet!  OMG - Patent Leather!  Sequins!  And you fit in the purse I'm already carrying!  Where have you been my whole life?  And why isn't this being marketed to Midwesterners as portable house shoes?

On Puritans and Pilgrims

Today we celebrate the bounty of the harvest, and give thanks that a bunch of religious zealots left one theocracy to start their own theocracy, and then the number of theocracies in New England turned out to be ungovernable, so we started a country with no official religion.

Then the religious right took over the Republican Party in 1999...

Still, when the Puritans of Boston could not get along with the Pilgrims of Plymouth in one tiny geographic area, and neither liked the official Church of England or the Catholics or Roger Williams or uppity women, you have to wonder if religious factions might be a good thing for democracy.  If no one religion has a majority, then people are forced to talk to each other on non-religious terms.  At least I'd like to believe this.

Low-Cost, High-Utility Christmas Presents

When I got married, one of the more unexpected presents that we received was the church cookbook from my husband’s Great-Aunt.  At first, I did not think too much of it, and as an elderly woman in a small rural town who probably does not shop online, there’s probably not too many options.  However, as I leafed through the pages, I found that what I was given was really a family recipe book.  My husband’s father’s family has been attending that same church for over 100 years, and each recipe appeared to be authored by aunts, cousins, second cousins, grandparents, and even nods to women who would have been the DH’s great-grandmother or great-great-grandmother.  The gift cost $15, the profits went to Senior programming at the church, and I have what may have been the most thoughtful gift we received for our wedding. 

I share this to illustrate one point – low-cost Christmas presents (or, any presents) will just look cheap if they are not thoughtful.  Thoughtful presents are thoughtful, even if they did not cost a lot of money.  The best gifts are meaningful presents that will be valued by the recipient, a concept that relates to the Economics term of Utility.  It’s not usefulness, but that can be a component, but utility refers to the satisfaction received by the end user.  Applying this concept to gift-giving is apt: Maximizing the happiness of the recipient while minimizing the costs to the consumer (you) is the goal.

Yes, buying your nephew a Wii may fall into this category if you score a deal on an excellent bundle.  Mom probably just wants you to come home.  Maybe bring a pie.  Your brother will buy his own electronics.  So what DO you get them?  The answer is something thoughtful. 

One of the things I love to give are photos.  Ready to reduce your father to tears?  A picture of your trip to Cooperstown when you were 5 in a holder that incorporates a signed baseball by Stan Musial will do it, and your sister who bought him a home theater system is going to have to hear about the time Grandpa took Dad to the game in St. Louis and they came *this* close to catching a Stan the Man homerun ball throughout the rest of the evening.  If you have even the slightest twinge of sibling rivalry, you will understand the importance of such things. 

A good place to start is a nice list of frugal gifts.  Use these with caution, though.  I thoughtlessly chosen gift from a list like this will not be doing anyone any favors (little utility for Aunt Marge).  It may stir some creativity.  If you are reading this post today, then you have the ability to take an okay present and knock it out of the park.  Figure out the recipient (maybe someone newly married, or a college student living on their own for the first time), and start asking family members for recipes.  A good starting point is Thanksgiving Dinner.  Who makes the pies?  Who makes the green beans?  Is there a secret to the turkey?  Get these recipes together – print them out on cardstock (or Avery Index Cards with a preset recipe card template) with a story on the back about the recipe & how long it has been in the family – and put them in a nice box.  The best part is with other people in on the gift, those around you at Christmas will have a vested interest when your niece opens it up.

How to Win Black Friday

Yes, the day after Thanksgiving will have some great sales.  How do you find them?  And, is it really a good deal?  I'm awesome at shopping this day, and if you are looking at scoring some good deals that day, I hate to say it, but you are starting too late.

There are two main ideas that guide my shopping:
1.  It's not a deal if you are buying something you don't need.
2.  Your time and money are finite resources, so you may need to sacrifice one for the other in limited quantities.

The first step is to figure out what you need to buy.  Make a list of everyone for whom you will need to buy something in December.  The list should be exhaustive.  Include people at work, hostess gifts for parties, and neighbors in addition to the usual suspects.  I would start making this list in September for two reasons - first, if you have kids, syncing your holiday plans to the school year is natural, and second, setting aside money from each paycheck for 3 months will give you the cash you will need without having to resort to credit cards or layaway.  Otherwise, finish this list on November 1.  The date you should not start is Thanksgiving.  You will probably forget someone, or worse, you will start planning purchases for someone you have already bought a present for.

Already bought a present for?  This is step 2.  If you raided the Day After Christmas sales last year, drag out the box.  Did you really buy that candle set for your aunt, or did you want it for yourself?  Could that lotion basket really be given to your boss, or would it be a better hostess present for your old college roommate's ugly sweater party?  Did you buy knick-knacks on a business trip to Cincinnati for your brother?  Where did those go?  Or, were you going to treat someone to an experience - take them out to dinner, get sports tickets?  Help them move?  Step 2 is to pare down the list to just those people for whom you still need to purchase a gift.  Remember Rule 1: It's not a deal if you are buying something you don't need.

Step 3 - Figure out where you will be shopping.  Are you going to be at your aunt's house on Thanksgiving and will be swinging by the KMart on your way home?  Will you be staying within a 10 mile radius of your house, or will you be making a special trip to a regional shopping area?  The importance to deciding on where you will be shopping is to figure out which stores are in that area.  Perhaps you will change your plans based on the deals that you find, but 90% of the time, altering your plans within a few days of Thanksgiving will violate Rule 2 - sacrificing one deal for another, or adding more time to your day to save $5. 

Step 4 - Research.  Find the ads as soon as they are leaked, and go through them with a fine-toothed comb.  Sure, look at the big ticket items, but also keep track of the smaller things, like memory cards for cameras, warm winter accessories, wrapping paper, and ribbons.  Write down anything and everything that's going to tempt you, along with the times by which you will need to buy them.  Hint:  Anything on the first page will sell out in 5 minutes, and you may need to be there 6 hours before the store opens.  Then... are these really deals?  Can the items be found in the first week of November for the same or similar price (she says... writing on her netbook that she bought for $197 on Nov. 6 that has more memory and a larger screen than the one that will be at Target for $157 on the day after Thanksgiving).

Step 5 - Plan A and Plan B (and Plan C and Plan D).  After figuring out what the best deals are, start assigning deals to people.  This is where you need to keep Rule 2 in mind.  You cannot be at all stores at the same time.  Prioritize the big deals for the big recipients.  Come up with back up plans.  So, if you want to get a digital camera for your brother at one place at 4am, have another idea just in case you show up too late to cash in.  If you can get that camera elsewhere for $10 more, but also get a deal for your sister, then you need to sacrifice that $10 to get both deals... or...

Step 6 - Divide and conquer.  Get a buddy, divide the list, reconvene for coffee at 7am post-shopping.  I like to go shopping with Mom.  I'm at Sears, she's at JC Penney.  Make sure you have your exhaustive lists ready with extra gloves and wrapping paper and cheap socks.  It's less crazed if you check out once at each store, not once for the doorbusters and another time for the good deals, etc.

Step 7 - Sleep in.  Not finding deals?  Then stay home!  If you are planning on making gifts, you don't have to go out!  If there's nothing you can think of for your gift list, stay at home!  If the total savings on the list is $40, then stay home!  I personally enjoy finishing my list on the Day After Thanksgiving, mainly because there is a festive energy without the hurried sense of despiration that comes with weekends in December.  But, if you can't find what you are looking for, then you still have a month to make something happen.

Happy Shopping!

Long Term Economic Policy

There is no way that the Super Committee is going to reach an agreement by the deadline.  Fortunately, there is also no way that the automatic cuts are going to go through, at least not in an election year.  Phew.  Because if you live in a Medium-Sized Midwestern College Town, Department of Education spending pretty much supports your town's economy, and any cuts in that means that I may have to resort to poll dancing in my spare time instead of blogging.

The issue at hand is the concept of Long Term Economic Policy.  When the economy imploded in 2008, Henry Paulson and George W. Bush jettisoned their Neoliberalist Economic Policy that allowed Lehman Brothers to collapse, for Keynesian economic policies that did succeed in preventing the United States from embarking on an economy based on bartering for loaves of bread.  Guess what?  It worked.  Portions of the bailout even created a profit for the government, which is mitigating the failed financial investment in Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae.  It's a classic Keynesian maneuver, that when the private sector fails to invest or spend money, then government steps up to supply spending that will try to even out the dip in a recession, especially by keeping people employed longer than they would have been otherwise.  To me, the stimulus package was not large enough, and the government sold their interest in the banks way too soon without making permanent changes to the structure of these institutions.

The problem is that sound Keynesian economic policy triggered by telltale signs of underemployment equilibrium, was replaced in knee-jerk fashion by the idea that the government should be run like a corporation and debt is bad.  Policies that allowed deficit spending to grow the economy (and then, debt becomes a smaller portion of GDP due to the growing size of the pie), were addressed in crisis mode, when the crisis truly was that unemployment was creeping towards 10%.  If the Super Committee does cut spending, the economy will contract, and debt as a percentage of GDP might start to reach Italian levels.  (Okay... it's not THAT bad...)

Even more troubling is that a number of Tea Party politicians who pushed through the debt ceiling deal is that they truly believe that government doesn't play ANY role in the economy.  Or, that they heard that Hayek and the Austrian School said that the economy is too complicated to mess with, liked that, and can regurgitate this line on Sunday Morning Talk Shows.  (To counter with Ostrom, just because an institution is complicated, does not mean it is not efficient.)  There seems not to be any idea about real economic policy behind their actions.

We are not Europe.  We have one currency, one Federal Reserve Board, and one Treasury Department.  We could have one regulatory agency if we actually wanted to regulate anything.  The problem is that we can't pick and choose long term economic policy every year.  We have to stick with something for more than one election cycle.  Even Nixon and W. ended up going with Keynes, kicking and screaming, so why not give that a 4 year presidential term to see how it shakes out.  We did elect a President to lead... and... where is he?

Turkey-induced Inflation

The American Farm Bureau Federation is reporting that the cost of your Thanksgiving dinner is increasing 13% this year, with the largest cost increase of the meal being the turkey.  I see two possible ways to combat this cost.  First, find a wild turkey on the side of the road, hit it with your car, butcher it, and save a lot of money.  Otherwise, buy a smaller turkey and serve a ton of vegetables that are cheaper per pound than the turkey.

Personally, I'm just in charge of bringing a dessert for Thanksgiving, so a $6.99 pumpkin cheesecake has already been purchased at Trader Joe's, but I'll still make a traditional dinner sometime this upcoming weekend.  I may just make a small bird, my grandmother's stuffing recipe, mashed potatoes, the Apple-Orange Cranberry Sauce recipe from Williams-Sonoma, and my mom's cherry pie, for which she was named Cherry Pie Queen of Northern Illinois in 1962.  If money is an issue on Thanksgiving, then maybe it's only worth making those dishes that make you feel wrapped in the flavors of childhood instead of trying to make every harvest-inspired dish under the sun.

Against Climate Change Before He was For It

Shout out to my husband for remembering that this video existed:




Don't worry - Newt is not going to sabotage his campaign by doing something so stupid as to believe in scientific thingys when there's a perfectly good conspiracy theory to be had.  Conspiracy theories work much better when you are trying to connect with today's Republican base.  Today, Newt is worried about United Nations Agenda 21 and what that means for Americans.  If you already believe that the United Nations is a shadowy organization that is hell-bent on the destruction of the United States, then the fact that they weighed in on climate change in 1992 is especially troublesome (assuming your premise is true).

So, Newt was in favor of action on climate change, and now that type of action is part of a global conspiracy.  The Republican Primary just gets weirder and weirder every day.