Okay, this what-the-frak-it’s-not-a-Tuesday post is going to be an act of shameless self-promotion. WPMU.ORG has just published my “Hoodwinked: Free WordPress Hosting, Themes, and Plugins” Continue reading
Tag: freebies
Leaf harvest
Autumn has come to an end before I even had a chance to write another seasonal thrills without frills. The asparagus and the rhubarb is starting to die down and the trees have dropped their leaves all over the lawn.
I’ve raked up the leaves in the hope of making leaf mould. Unlike regular compost, leaf mould is easy to make, doesn’t smell, and doesn’t require special equipment. It does, however, require patience. Continue reading
The best things in life are freecycled
My local library has given me access to a lot of mustbethrifty resources. One aspect of thrift that has been cropping up in my reading is freecycling, ‘the act of giving away usable unwanted items to others instead of disposing of them in landfills’ (via Wikipedia). First conceptualised by freecycle.org in 2003, freecycling is a form of hand-me-down via online groups or forums.
A couple of months back, I signed up to the local freecycle group’s mailout in the hope of finding some old sports trophies as wedding decorations, but my first foray into freecycling was a failure: no one replied to my WANTED post, and I spent fifteen minutes every day clearing my inbox of Freecycle spam.
I continued subscribing to Freecycle, however. There was something appealing about nosing through other people’s junk. Continue reading
My dad’s mini greenhouses
Dad is a Jim’s Mowing man. He’s also one of the thriftiest gardeners I know. I don’t think he’s ever bought a bag of compost or a plant; most of his specimens come from seeds or cuttings or are castoffs from other people’s gardens.
I shared some of my seeds with him and he’s been nursing them in mini greenhouses made out of plastic food containers:
The greenhouses help maintain a warm and consistent climate for the seedlings. They also protect the seedlings from snails. Continue reading
Striking betel leaf cuttings
It’s lunar new year this weekend and one of my favourite snacks to eat from the street-festival vendors is bò lá lốt, beef wrapped in betel leaves. I’ve recreated it at home, using Luke Nguyen and Mark Jensen’s recipe (via Secrets of the Red Lantern). Nguyen and Jensen use pork mince and pork fat to enhance the flavour, but Luke Nguyen also has a pork-free version up on the SBS website.
Because betel leaf is a such rare commodity in Melbourne, I’ve struck my own with the stalks leftover from cooking. Continue reading
must be thrifty 
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