Big flavor, big savings (2)

Pizza is one of the most common dinners for us. It’s super easy to cook (just put it in an oven). It’s fun to decide what kind of pizza to make, depending on your mood. And pizza dough can be used to make garlic bread if you don’t feel like grating cheese. So, this time I want to talk about our pizza dough.

 

URL of the recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/amish-white-bread/

 I talked about our bread in “big flavor, big saving (1)”, we basically use the same recipe, with a little different ingredients.

Ingredients for 6-8 pizza dough:
2 cups of water
1/3 cup of white sugar
1.5 table spoon of active dry yeast
1.5 teaspoon of salt
2 table spoon of olive oil
5 cups of Semolina flour
1 cup of all-purpose flour

Semolina flour is a little more expensive than all-purpose flour. It costs about $3.50 for a bag which contains 5 cups. So 1 cup of semolina is about 70 cents. And 1 cup of flour costs about 12 cents. So, the flour cost for this recipe is $3.62. Total cost for the recipe is about $4.00.

If you make 6 servings of dough out of it, 1doughball is less than 70 cents. By the way, 1doughball is large enough for 2 adults to share for sure.

I was curious how much it costs if we buy pizza dough at shop. So, we went to check it out. The dough costs $1.85 per crust at a supermarket nearby.  

The most important ingredient to make pizza is cheese, right? We can get 1 block of cheese for $2, which is big enough to cover 1 pizza. And let’s say, if we will make a chicken pizza, 1 chicken breast costs about $2. Considering all other vegetables you want to put on a pizza, 1 large sized pizza cost should be about $5 to $6.

We can get 1 small 4 slice pizza for $5 from “Little Ceaser” for $5. But the size is much smaller than our pizza, and has no vegetables on it. When we order almost the same size one from a pizza delivery with vegetables, it costs $12 at least.

We have been looking for easy and yummy desserts. One day we saw a Panna Cotta’s picture in a restaurant.  So we found this recipe, and fell in love! It tastes super rich so that a little piece makes me feel “enough” quickly. Ingredients are simple enough to not scare us away, and cooking time is amazingly short, like 10 minutes!

Recipe URL: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/panna-cotta-with-fresh-berries-recipe.html

Ingredients for 6 cups of Panna Cotta:
1 cup of whole milk
3 cups of whipping cream
1 tablespoon of gelatin
1/3 cup of honey
1 tablespoon of sugar
Pinch of salt
Garnish with fruits as you like (We love strawberries, bananas, and green apples.)

1 gallon of milk costs $2.39 here. And 1 gallon is equal to 16 cups. So 1 cup of milk costs 15 cents.

4 cups of whipping cream is $1.39. So 3 cups costs about $1. Including other cost except for fruits should be about $1.50 for 6 cups. 1 cup is like 25 cents.

By the way, the price of the Panna Cotta we saw in the restaurant was $3.99, which is 16 times more expensive than the cost. Thief! Rip off! Police!

Big flavor, big savings (1)

This is a loaf of bread we started to make.

We got the recipe here: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/amish-white-bread/

Ingredients for 2 loaves of bread:

 

2 cups of water

2/3 cup of white sugar
1.5 table spoon of active dry yeast
1.5 teaspoon of salt
¼ cup of vegetable oil
6 cups of bread flour.

 

I wanted to know how much it costs for 6 cups of bread flour which we use for this recipe.

So, I measured by cup a 5LBs bag of flour which we usually get from a grocery shop. (It costs about $1.69)

One 5LBs bag contains about 14 cups of flour. So, it means that 1 cup costs about 12 cents. When we use 6 cups for this recipe, it costs only 72 cents! And even after adding up all of the other ingredients, it costs only about $1.

When we go to the super market and buy 2 bags of bread, it costs $5. We are saving $4 out of it. Each slice is about a half inch. Our beautiful loaf is nearly same size.

Maybe some people say that they need “unbleached flour” instead of cheap one. Sure, unbleached flour cost about $3.30 per 5LBS bag. Still, you are saving $3 every 2 loaves.

Plus, the time we need for the preparation for this recipe is just a half hour. After that, we wait until yeast rises and start baking. We can do whatever we want to do in that time.

Recipe URL: http://m.allrecipes.com/recipe/32498/honey-limeade
Ingredients for 1 pitcher of limeade:

1 cup of lime juice

5 cups of water
2/3 cup of white sugar
2 table spoons of honey
Limeade is one of my favorite drinks in America. It’s bitter but refreshing and always sharpens and wakes up your brain.

We can get 20 limes for $1 in one of our closest grocery shops. 1 cup of lime juice takes about 5 limes. So the cost of limes for this recipe is only about 50 cents. Including all other ingredients, the total cost is 80 cents at most.

When we buy a one carton of lemonade (59 FL OZ), it costs about $1.75. 59 FL OZ is 8 cups. If you calculate the cost for 6 cups, which is the same amount you can get from the recipe, it is about $1.30. So, we can save 50 cents each carton.

When I use all of the 20 limes ($1) for limeade, I can save up to $2, which would cover the gas for the return trip from the grocery store!

Though I also like lemonade, lemons cost about 50cents each here, which is 10 times more expensive than a lime. Considering the cost and returns, I am fine with this yummy limeade!

Excercise Report - After 1 month.

Since I left my ex-company, one month has passed. I went to the gym 26 times out of 31 days. And I can already see several changes.

 

Our gym’s treadmill has a calorie counter so I have been checking how many calories are burnt after jogging. Here is the sum up.

When I run 5MPH, with 0.3mile X 2sets, and walk 3MPH with 0.2mile X 2sets (Total: 1mile), I burned about 130calories.

When I run 5MPH, with 0.35miles X 3sets, and walk 3MPH with 0.15miles X 3sets (Total: 1.5mile), I burned about 200 calories.

After calculation, this means that 5MPH jog burns about 140calories per hour, and 3MPH walk burns about 110 calories per hour. (FYI, I am 5’6”, and weighs 150lbs.)

My legs do not look that different, but my arms definitely started to look different. So I put my arms’ pictures which were taken a month ago (Left) and recently (Right).

 

 

I am a guitarist, so my first goal is to get stamina for my arms to play the guitar for a few hours straight. I could actually reach this goal in one month. But this workout has been the first thing I do in the morning, and I practiced the guitar after that. This really made my body tired out and after a few hours of guitar playing my both arms started to shake and I could not even hold milk carton for a while.

So, next month, I am planning to work out every other day instead of 5 to 6 days a week, and take off one day a week to not work out nor play guitar. I will report the result again!

 

 

CUTTING COSTS WITHOUT CUTTING CORNERS

Since leaving the corporate world for a more creatively-fulfilling one, we have been finding new ways to build a healthy lifestyle that won't break the bank! Here is an example of a possible Monday for us now:

1) Wake up.
2) Make a breakfast of one big omelet to share, fixed with 2 eggs, turkey bacon, and tomatoes and basil from our potted, indoor garden by the window. With herbs and veggies growing right here, we've just saved around $1.30, plus the petrol to go to the grocery market!
3) Answer emails.
4) Begin making bread to use for sandwiches at lunch time... allow dough to rise at least 1 hour...
5) Perform at least a 20-minute workout with a DVD from the library. Saved on the cost of purchasing a DVD or online program subscription! Also, now pumped up to face the day!
6) We work. At least 8 hours, but usually closer to 11 hours a day. This is a freelancer's world! Gotta pay those bills!
7) In-between working, continue with bread recipe... divide dough into 2 pans and allow to rise another 30 minutes... then bake at 350F for 30 mintues...
8) Once bread cools, slice and make sandwiches for lunch! Just saved again by not eating out, and by not wasting time or fuel to leave the house! Also saved on bread for the next two weeks or more. One loaf at the grocery store is $2.99. With this recipe, you get 2 loaves for around $1.00!
9) Answer emails again.
10) After or in-between working, we go for walks, shop near our apartment, or ride our bicycles to the library for a re-stock of books, CDs, and DVDs! All of this means exercise, cleared minds, detoxed bodies, and- my personal favorite- MORE BOOKS. The whole trip will also make a minimal dent in our wallet!
11) Make dinner. Kei and I cook by color. Different colored foods contain different useful nutrients. So a common meal for us is Donburi (fish/meat and veggies over hot rice). Usually we toss together diced chicken breast, carrots, broccoli, red pepper, zucchini, corn, purple cabbage, and onion in a pan with cooking sake, soy sauce, and chicken broth. Once the chicken is browned and the carrots soft, we serve over hot rice! Very delicious and very healthful!
12) We relax in the evenings, which is a big relief at the end of a full day. Zzzzzz.....

* Amish Bread Recipe here: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/amish-white-bread/
* A good base recipe for Donburi: http://www.justonecookbook.com/recipes/beef-donburi-with-shiso-garlic-soy-sauce/

Setting up daily Routines

Routines

It is really difficult for me to control myself when you stay at home all day long. There are TV, DVDs, always foods in the fridge, and chips in the cabinet…. If I lose to these temptations, I will keep falling and never get what I want. But I believe that there are several ways to avoid being stuck in this downward spiral. “Routine” is one of my answers. So, I want to talk about what I am trying to do.

1: Schedule

I am a “time freak”. I don’t know if it comes from my home country, Japan, but I am one of the strictest persons about time I have ever met. (I never met someone who was complaining about time more often than me.) Even when I meet a very close friend, I still seriously try to arrive at a meeting spot at least 10 minutes before. All of my employers said to me I never got late for work. It is easy to say, but tougher to actually do it especially in Chicago area where we live. (Blizzard, bad drivers, a lot of road constructions, and my “grandpa” car which could die in any situation.)

So, “making a schedule” is like something I would do as my hobby. Please see an example.

I want to do music for my life. So my schedule is focused on music life. If I fail to stick to the list, especially about music-related matter, I feel disappointed. It is like I betrayed the trust of my family. So during each activity, I do my best to concentrate, not touch any temptations or just sit on a sofa.
In the morning, I do more physical music practice because I am definitely a “morning type” person. And I learn about creative skills in the afternoon until 3pm. After music routines, I am trying to learn something new to level up my ability. 

2: Check List

This is my “routine check list”. Each item came from my handwriting notes in red on the schedule or ideas I came up while I was working on the list. I maybe will put more or delete some of them later, depending on how I am doing. But when I finish each activity on that day, I check it to make sure of missing nothing. Every time I make a check, it gives me a little happiness. I found out that I can do everything much faster once I memorized the whole list and learn an effective way. For example, I can do arm workout while I am working on legs to save time.

3: How do I feel about these routines?

When I started this list, it took a longer time for everything and I got tired sooner. But I could feel clear improvements in only 10 days.  I can wake up in the morning more easily. I can jog more and faster in the morning and stay awake all day. I started wanting to do this list more naturally. I can feel the rhythm every morning…  This feels great!

I know that to decide routine means that it cuts the possibilities of other stuff out of the list. But, it only takes about 30 to 40 minutes to kill the “Stretch and workout” list and almost half an hour for the “Guitar routines”. I still can get a lot of time to do other activities. If I really want to do more stuff daily, I can put them in the list, too. If I don’t feel like it, then it’s not my high priority.

4: My experience

I read a book called “Outlier”. And there was one sentence, “No one who can wake up before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich.” This reminds me of the founder of Panasonic, Mr. Konosuke Matsushita. He was said to be a “person who never sleeps” in his business life.  He wrote in his book that he did not sleep (instead of “could not sleep”) because he enjoyed his life so much. He felt sleeping was like a waste of fun. French military leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, a great inventor, Thomas Edison, and a successful businessman, Andrew Carnegie, were all “short sleep” people. This attracts me a lot to waking up early in the morning to do what I want to do before people wake up.

I started setting up an alarm clock at 5am when I started my routines list. But I got used to it, and now wake up before 4:30am. It’s a little hard to move out of bed immediately, but I think the key is “smell” and “stand up (not sit down)”. Whatever smell you love really helps you let your brain start to work quicker, and if you keep standing up then you have no choice but wake up.

When I wake up, the first I do is stretch my legs and arms in front of the balcony window because I can do stretch even though my brain is not working. I don’t think of anything, just feel the pain on my stiff body. And this pain also helps me to become more awake.

What about the balcony window? We have a small balcony garden in our apartment, and the scent from herbs and flowers is one of my favorites. This stimulus to my nose really works to get me awake.  If I need a drink, I would rather take orange juice than milk or water, because juice has a stronger smell and it gets my brain moving.

The first week of waking up early was VERY dull. At 10am, 2pm, and 6pm…. I just got so sleepy and could not focus on anything. And 9pm was the worst. I felt like a zombie, and could not even remember what I did before going to bed. I did not think like this before, but now I feel it is okay to take a short nap like half an hour. After a nap, you feel sharp and get concentration back. I found it better than to stay awake not being able to focus on anything.

A week after I started, my body started to get used to it. Also thanks to the “working out while my brain is still sleeping”, my body got a little by little more physical power to stay active for longer time, not being like the living dead.

 

 

 

 

Good job, Dollar Tree!

Cutting living cost is always our wish!

A few days ago, one of our neighbors told us that a "Dollar Tree" opened 10 minutes walk away from our apartment. So we went there to check it out. And we figured out that it has a lot of good offers for our daily needs!

We immediately started taking pictures of stuff we often buy at other grocery stores (from eggs to toilet paper to batteries). And we went to big grocery stores like Meijer and Target to compare the prices.

The result was that the dollar shop has surprisingly better deals on various items. Below is a list of the best prices on common household purchases! Any space marked in gold beat the dollar store price!  

Please let us know if there are other items you would like us to research!

 

 

Nice to meet you all from Kei.

Hello, thank you for visiting our blog!
My name is Kei. Kel and I started this blog when we decided to leave the corporate life and chase our forever-dreams. Here, let me introduce myself so that you can see who I am and what this website is about.
I was born in Japan in 1982. I am 100% pure Japanese.
When I was 19 years old, I was looking for an English teacher who was interested in Japanese language. So I put information about myself onto the website called Japanese Pen Pal. A few days later I got emails from around the world. I suddenly got more than 20 email friends. And one of them was my current wife, Kelly. We exchanged emails for years, and when I travelled to Toronto, Canada, to study English, I decided to visit her in Chicago, Illinois, USA. We hit it off there, and now we are married and live together in an hour outside Chicago.
I love cooking, studying foreign languages (English and Spanish for now), gardening, working out….. But my biggest interest is always about music. I have been composing and arranging music with acoustic guitar, and I wish to improve myself well enough to play in public and see the audience smile. I love studying, listening, and playing music because music is a language which can play a role as a bridge between people around the world. I want to play music to connect people with different cultures and nationalities. I want to play Japanese music to American people, and American songs to Japanese people, so that we can feel closer to each other and get deeper understanding.
For me, music does not come up from nothing. When I feel sad, I hear a sad melody. When I smell rain, I hear raindrops. Music is coming from everything that I experience.
So in this blog, I want to talk about anything I would like to do to make one step closer to my goal, becoming a “bridge” as a musician. Hopefully, it branches many topics and we can share opinions, ideas, and thoughts with you!
Thank you.