29 heart warming ideas - rat style

In honour of February, AKA Heart Month, here are 29 gifts-from-the-heart ideas that won't cost a penny, just the elbow grease you'll need to rummage through cupboards, junk drawers, the fridge etc.
Enjoy!

1. Create Valentine's Day notes and or cards only from stuff hanging around your house (strands of tissue, single whisps of ribbons, leftover wrapping paper, wire, nik naks that need some love). Practice making do: if there's no glue, staple; if there's no glue or staples, use a needle & thread etc.
2. When possible, use your legs to hand deliver your expressions of love; your heart will love you; your car will love you; the recipients will be touched by your heart felt
3. Bake something fancy - look up recipes at your local library
4. Cook a pot of chili
5. Babysit a friend's kid(s) for a couple of hours (estimated worth approx $1 million dollars)
6. Write a poem
7. Volunteer alone, or with your family at a Heart Month event
8. Make a fruit or vegetable or animal colage using super market flyers and old magazines
9. Flip through your local newspaper (at the library) jot down couple of 'free happenings' and invite a friend you miss seeing
10. Invite friends over for a tea-coffee-hot chocolate-and pancake pot luck.
11. Donate unworn clothes to charity. Don't overwhelm yourself by trying to do this all in one day. Go through one closet each day of the month. In 29 days you'll have gotten tons done!
12. Bake with your kids - ask them to pick recipes from library cookbooks.
13. Go on a loose change hunt. Think: under the sofa, jacket pockets, penny jars, abandoned-in-the-attic piggy banks, every single coin you find on the street. Use the money for a family treat: pic nic sized chocolate bar, bag of chocolate kisses...I know you can come up with somethin' ;-)
14. Go on a loose sticker hunt. Bring together all the loose pages, half used sticker books, any corporate/marketing freebie stickers and decorate a toy box or a tax filing box. Brighten up something that is screaming out for some fun.
15. Produce a couple of family spa nights - rat style. First ramsack your toiletry cupboards and assemble the odds & ends, half used bars of soap, shampoos, massage oils, face creams, moisturizers, free hair conditioning sachets, half used tubes of toothpaste etc. Next tidy/clean up the bathroom and make it spa ready. Then give everyone a job: put stopper in drain; turn water on; check water temp; add oils/bath bubbles/bath bombs etc; get as many people in at once; take turns getting in and out; wash each other's hair; moisturize each other's hair; comb & brush clean hair; drip dry and then towel dry each other; last but not least, take turns rubbing each other with lotions, oils, creams, and lip balms, don't forget extra love to toe & hand cuticles.
16. Make breakfast on the morning that is normally the toughest day of the week at your home.
17. Make a list of people you have been 'meaning to call'. Call one person per day until all your calls are done.
18. Make a list of people and or institutions (ie library) you have been meaning to return things to. Return one item per day until all items are returned.
19. Make a list of books and or magazines you, your kids, and your partner(s) wants to read and or flip through, then get online and order them from the library.
20. Give extra love to your plants. Trim them. Repot them. Move them around your home so that they get extra light. Talk to them. Sing to them.
21. Go through your CDs, tapes, and records collection. Make time to listen to music that makes you feel good. Offer your family members this same activity.
22. Schedule a neighbourhood discovery walk. Go into that new bakery that you've been 'meaning' to visit (you don't need to buy anything because you've got a packed lunch and a thermos of hot cocoa, simply walk in, check it out, introduce yourself and promise you'll be back); window shop at the local thrift shop; peek in the rich neighbours' yards; look for branches, pennies, lost items; say hi to stangers.
23. Do a week long toy swap with friends you see often; kids love new toys, 'nuff said.
24. Whenever possible, challenge yourself to walk. The extra thumping in your chest cavity is simply your heart's way of saying 'thank you!'
25. Give your lovers, young and old, bear hug after bear hug. Only stop when your arms fall off.
26. Share sleep-in duties.
27. Beg a loved one to babysit your kid(s) at their place for 90 minutes. Use your place to make a quick, but romantic dinner, followed by 'guaranteed' express lovin'.
28.Swap talents with your best friend: s/he sews you some napkins from that leftover fabric that's sitting in your to do pile (yes Mama T, I'm talking to you), you/I bake her some corn popovers.
29. Even if it's arctic like outdoors, take the family for a swim at the local pool. Pack hearty post swim thermos' full of soup, hot chocolate, bags of popcorn, and kept-warm-in-tin-foil-grilled-cheese-sanwiches.

Happy February!

scrapyard chili - a rat style essay

Homemade vegetarian chili has always been one of those meals that feeds my belly and my heart. Definitely one of my favourite comfort foods. I normally make chili from a combination of food scraps and staples from a last minute dash to the grocery store or corner gourmet market.

This scarpyard chili recipe, inspired by my year of the rat 'illuminations', is all about using up 'dated' freezer veggies, abanandoned-squishy-lookin' veggies in the far corner of the crisper, cupboard excess, and leftovers.

In order to maximize your time, and most importantly your cooking enjoyment level, give yourself three days to prepare this chili. Hear me out, and you'll see the humongous benefits to the long prep time.

Here's how this recipe came to be:

Day 1
I opened the cupboards to declutter. I grabbed two bags of legumes that had outstayed their welcome: a 450 gram bag of organic green lentils; and a 450 gram bag of organic red kidney beans.

I dumped the whole bag of lentils in a large pot and covered them in water; I dumped the whole bag of kidney beans in another large pot and covered them in water.

Next I made room for these two pots in the fridge, where they stayed overnight. The longer the soak, the less time they need to cook.

Day 2
Dumped the legumed water from each pot; washed the kidney beans, put them back in the big pot, added water up until the max line, added a fistful of sea salt, put the lid on and brought them to a boil. Once they boiled, I turned the heat to low and simmered them about 40 minutes. I use to own a pressure cooker which cuts your time down to about 15 minutes!

Once the kidney beans had cooked and were soft, I ladelled them out into a strainer so I could re use the hot water for the lentils (remember, I'm a frugal/enviro nut rat). Since the water had already boiled I simply put the lid on the pot, simmered the lentils for about 20 minutes, then they too were cooked.

Dumped the lentils ontop of the drained kidney beans, quick rinse then put them in a big pot and back in the fridge until the next day.

Day 3
Ramsacked the freezer, crisper, cupboards and top of the fridge. Once everything was on the counter I put the timer on, it was 5:34pm, by 6:07pm beautiful chili was being ladelled into dinner bowls!

This is what was done:

poured 3 tblsp of oil in a large pot
heat oil on med then added 3 chopped onions (the ones that had no hope in hell of surviving one more day)

once onion was translucent added 1 medium potato, diced small (this potato was part of a trio, and she needed salvation)

after a couple of minutes added 1 large zucchini, diced small (she was fresh, I love biting into fleshy veggies in my chili)

after a couple of minutes added 3/4 roughly chopped yellow pepper (poor thing had almost shrivelled into a skeleton) and 5 roughly chopped large garlic cloves (kind of rough lookin' dudes)

after a few minutes added 1 large carrot, which I grated using the large grate side

after another minute or so added 796ml/28 fl oz can of crushed tomatoes, plus 2 tblsp sea salt, plus 1 tblsp cumin

raised heat to high until sauce began to boil, once it boiled turned it down to medium and added 9 cups of the red kidney bean and lentil combo, plus 2 cups of frozen green peas, plus 2 cups of frozen corn, plus half a large can of frozen tomato paste, plus 1 or 2 cups of water.

Once it was bubbling I turned it off, had a taste, sprinkled a tiny bit more sea salt over it and dug in.


Splitting the tasks up over a three day period will give you a sense of accomplishment that only cooking from scratch can.

If you love to cook, you know that you can add more stuff, less liquid, meat, shredded cheese, even more legumes, more spices, leftover soup, stir fry, in fact, anything that you don't want to throw out. You probably don't need my recipe because you've winged your own kick ass chili creations. But I'm sure you'll appreciate my goal which is to share a recipe that I created out of the abundance in what 'seemed' like bare cupboards.

If you don't think cooking is fun, or get stressed by cooking large batches of food you've come to the right place. I'm not here to judge, I just want to help those who are looking for ways to use up food products before buying more.

I'd be delighted to help anyone make copious amounts of a their own signature scrapyard chili. Please leave a comment with your questions/concerns, and I will gladly help you.

Toiletries, rat style

This is what is left of my precious aromacreme; I adore this product because its oils, which include almond and ylang ylang perk me up, no matter how brutal I'm feeling, and most importantly it 'conceals' my underarm odour.

The last chunk set me back close to $30, and it was worth evere s-i-n-g-l-e scent. Now I've got to use up all the other toiletry products before I invest again.




I don't have a car, so I'm always pushing our child-snacks & supplies-heavy double stroller all over the place, often in a hurry, so I produce tons of sweat under my arms. Aromacreme works on its own, but now I've got to combine at least three products to get similar results. It's a bit more work but I'm excited because I'm $30, if not more, closer to $100,000.

Anyone else have 'rat style' stories to share?

rat-like thought

"Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good,
behave yourself and never mind the rest."

Beatrix Potter
1866-1943, Author and Illustrator

Source:
Bob Proctor
Insight Of The Day

Creating Wealth, Rat Style

Urban Mama asked herself over and over, losing m-u-c-h needed sleep, 'how am I, personally, going to generate $100,000 for our in-the-works house addition'? Hmmm, oh yeah, ask a rat. So I google 'year of the rat' and read words like 'hard work', 'activity', 'patient', 'shrwed', 'ambitious', 'inventive'. 'Ambitious' and 'inventive', I like those qualities, so I ask myself to start immediately. Act now...

Of course I begin in the kitchen. So last week we worked our way through odds and ends from the cupboards, the freezer, the fridge, and lo and behold we feasted! And we will feast!

I soaked organic green lentils, and organic kidney beans, which have turned into a gorgeous vegetarian chili. In the pot were frozen organic green peas, frozen corn, 3/4 of a wilting/seeming hopeless organic yellow pepper, and sea salt from a bag which had slipped to the back of the cupboard. We now have about 8 weeks worth of protein packed chili...I'll gladly share the sneak-peak-from-my-cookbook recipe if you leave me a comment.

The kids rejoiced in two nights in a row of Soy Delicious chocolate ice cream bar desserts; the four had been lying around since the summer addiction we'd put to rest. We brought out the popsicle mould and made our own guava treats for Friday night's dessert. The kids were over the moon, delirious, happy, with their very guava popsicles.

We ate four very frozen, very forgotten looking organic banana waffles, which by the time the'd been toasted and lathered in no name maple syrup were dee-li-cious!

Friday morning I baked 2 dozen Apple Cinammon (spelt) Muffins for jr cookies monster's preschool snack; though for the kids' sake I labelled them 'Apple Sugar' Muffins. The apples, 3 of them, organic too, were schredded and doused in fresh organic lemon; all of this produce had been using up prime real estate in the crisper since December when the clementines came into the house. Delicious muffins, and as you can see, lots of appley goodness.

Friday night I marinated some leftover steamed tofu and a fresh block in a tamari-ginger dressing; and we had two nights worth of mouth watering protein.

I strip searched last year's expense envelope for two health food store receipts; found them and got nine dollars and change for four cans of organic adzuki beans that were not up to par; I returned six boxes of no name q tips which were a great deal, but, the q tips themselves are flimsy and break apart and don't do the job right the first time.

In a pile of '07 receipts I found 3 x .40 cent coupons for a fruit/veggie juice the kids love, plus, another $1 coupon for a juice I like. Coupons are valid until Dec '08!

Yesterday we went to the museum for the fourth time since getting our ROM family membership* - amazing cultural deal! It was a sunny but cold to the bone kind of day, so everyone with kids seemed to think it was a good idea to be there. It looked like insanity when we first walked in, with its mile longish line up, but, with our memberships we avoided this and were face to face with a stuffed cheetah in minutes.

Will continue to breastfeed baby girl past the 17 month cut off plan, which means she'll consume less bottled beverages. Will crank the miser switch to 'maximum' when it comes to watering down the kids' juices.

Next up: selling excess clothing, shoes, sporting equipment, household items with no use.



*$119 for the year; so far we would have spent $80, so we need to go 2 more times.