blog over

well, it seems we've reached the end. this has already gone on at least a week longer than we anticipated. we've shared a lot of special times - that time with the turtle cake where i both laughed and cried pretty much covers the extremes. thank you for your clicks, friends. especially that one hit we got from niger - that was great.

goodbye forever, internet! if you want to continue to follow our adventures, laura will be going to china in august and might blog about that or something. i'm either going to kenya or el salvador and may also blog about that. remember, nowhere is cheaper than the developing world.

we are the cheapions

let's go pick some liberries

thanks to my librarian cousin once removed, i bring you something that is too fun not to share.
way too fun.
library savings calculator.

i was displeased to see that there was a category for "puppets borrowed" and i'm glad my library would never set such monsters loose in my neighborhood.

the calculator says i save $719.40 per month. while i am indeed an avid borrower of books, movies, and CDs, that seems high. however, i am pretty chummy with more than one librarian.

freexercising, exercising with freon

some people pay gym memberships. me, i don't like that. laura joined the jcc when they had a deal where you pay your age and that is your monthly fee. too bad she's 45.
the best way to exercise is to not own a car. if i take the bus to work, i walk 10 min to the bus and 10 min from the bus. that is 40 min of built-in walking every day. if i bike, it is a 40 min ride there and 30ish back. when your transportation is self-powered, you are exercising and getting between places for free (or bus fare, which is free for me).
this is rather general. some people like to "get a workout," sometimes me too. i go running in the night, when it is cool out and the world is smaller (like running through a hallway, only the hallway is the world). i go to the drum circle and dance for 2 hours and sweat like peach, if that's a phrase. next week i am going to do a free 7 day trial at the LA fitness next to my work. many gyms and yoga studios have free trials or introductory offers. once you are introduced, break it off, as you don't want to be the sugar mama in the relationship. the problem is that you may have to endure a sales pitch, sort of a blind date where you can't leave. i plan to show up at 8:20 on monday morning and say that i hoped to make the 8:30 yoga class and when they see the hope in my eyes they will say "we'd love to give you a tour when you're done," and i'll say sure but then just sneak out. this must work.
additionally, dc and other large cities abound with free public pools. swim in them. but definitely shower afterward.
there is free yoga in dupont circle on wednesdays at 6:30. there is a free capoeira class every sunday at 11 on U st. sure, if you are into it and want to study capoeira, sign up for an actual class and support the school.
and always remember that the most satisfying workout is dancing alone in your room to ABBA. if you change your mind on the first in line, honey i'm still free, dancing alone in my room.

I got a flucky!

Getting "a flucky" is a Silver-ism for "I got a great deal!"-- it is derived from "getting off lucky" and it can be blamed entirely on my father, as can most of the strange (read: bad) jokes or sayings I know.

Anyway, my flucky was that I went to Giant with a coworker and when we were checking out I noted a container of cupcakes that had mangled icing but that was otherwise intact and in packaging. I commented that those cupcakes looked sad and then asked what they do with goods like that. She said throw them out. The horrors! I love cupcakes and could not let that occur. I asked if I could have them instead and she said yes. I am now the proud owner of 6 delicious Giant cupcakes. They just wanted to be loved, not trashed, and I can do that for them. 

Fair o' Free

Here's a tip: if there is an event of some sort that you want to go to that costs money, see if you can volunteer instead. I did that this weekend-- I volunteered to ride a segway around and to do information at the Celebrate Fairfax country fair. In fairness (ha!), I actually volunteered because I wanted to ride the segway, not because I was seeking free admission to the fair, but I'm pleased on both counts. For a few hours of riding the segway I got a weekend of free food (they had so many things that should have been submitted to This Is Why I'm Fat the blog- chocolate covered cheese cake on a stick? Really?), a fancy hotel room to myself, and a chance to see all of the concerts for free. Sugar Hill Gang has been reduced to playing country fairs, but man was it hilarious.

Oh, and most importantly-- I got to play with sugar gliders. They are being sold as pets and Caitlin wants to get one and name it Johannes Kepler. They are amazing. Look them up and then purchase them and keep them in your pocket. I was unsuccessful at getting any for free-- that was a cheapion fail of the weekend, but it's ok. All things considered, the weekend went quite well.

Addendum: Caitlin requested/demanded a picture of a sugar glider be added and I am happy to oblige. Also, the hotel had a closet full of snacks that you could take for free- Jake and I left w/ a purse full o' candy bars, drinks, and chips. They are now in our cabinets at home. Foard, please note that this means that we have snacks in the house right now-- and that they arrived for free. Count it. 

yard sale valhalla

this weekend all of the houses in dc vomited up their lesser used contents and put tiny price tags on them, or didn't. i don't really need anything as i am moving out in july and leaving the country. however, at the top of my block i saw a dude sitting in his yard surrounded by stuff and i asked if he was moving out very slowly or having a yard sale. yard sale!

i took his 3'x3' mounted cloth painting of shiva the destroyer. i took his double airbed with pump. i took his two fancy moleskine notebooks, empty except for a few lines of arabic. i asked him why he was getting rid of a a pack of 12 AA batteries minus 1 battery. he said he didn't have anything that required batteries. i took them. for these items i gave him $20.

2 hours later (strategy) i returned to fetch the airbed cord. he was packing up and told me i could have whatever. i took a mostly full box of nyquil. i took a mostly full stack of DVDRs. i took a dvd player. i took a calculator, a bunch of drill bits, and a fancy liquid hot/cold my-neck-is-sore pack. for these items i gave him a nice smile.

do i need all of these things? no, definitely not, except for shiva the destroyer being the first thing i see when i wake up. the rest of the stuff i can distribute amongst family and friends who are in want of them.

come get your nyquil! (on closer examination also contains dayquil and mucinex. trifecta achieved)

today i made bread. like the hippo cake that wanted to be a turtle cake, it turned out the bread wanted to be flatbread. i had to yield. oh well still bread.

recipes are nice suggestions

when you follow recipes exactly, delicious viands result. laura and i never do this. i am currently learning how to make bread by trial and error. thanks to the healing power of yeast, most of my errors (didn't come home one night and bread rose for a total of 36 hours) turn out to be bread anyway. here's how we might use a recipe.

me: laura, i just cooked 3 pounds of canary beans
laura: what are canary beans
me: i don't know let's go to the internet
google.com: "creamy canary beans curry"
me: click
website: "recipes from a vegan kitchen"
me: uh oh vegan almost unclick but there are nice pictures, scroll
website: "dissolve creamily in your mouth"
laura: mmm?
website: use one cup of canary beans
me: we'll round up to 3 pounds
website: onions turmeric coriander cumin garlic ginger chilies coconut milk lemon
me: let's go to bestway and get coconut milk (my favorite ingredient) and 12 lemons for $1
laura: i don't feel like going, it's night
me: i don't care

voila. more than 3 pounds of curry. maybe we'd make some rice too even though laura always whines about it. anyway, if you have a good set of spices and always have onions and garlic around, you are set. our house came furnished and one spice left in the drawer was slap ya mama. it was love at first slap. we ate it on everything until it recently ran out. we just ordered 12 8 oz canisters. this was $35. they are not all for laura and me, but i think this intense financial commitment will signal to you how important this spice is to us.

also, i actually do have some dried canary beans - wanna make curry laura?

one more gem for yall if you haven't seen it: depression cooking with clara

Other boons

Caitlin actually free-cycled dirt this weekend. I think that should be mentioned here. We took a lovely walk through rock creek park and stopped to look at free things on the way. At one house she saw a dead plant in the street, noted it to be dead, and almost kept walking-- until she realized that she could rip the plant out and take the plant's dirt home. This is important for two reasons:

1) It seems stupid to buy dirt. It just does. Even if you need it for gardening, you're still paying for dirt

2) We walked by some chumps who were unloading all of their expensive (and purchased) garden items when she was carrying her bucket full of free dirt. She felt smug. 

We did a pretty solid job on Friday making a cheap pizza dinner. The doughs that are available at Giant or Trader Joe's are both delightful and cheap (and usually there is a whole wheat variety). Plus, Emma left an enormous thing of half-and-half in our fridge and we managed to use a lot of it to make it into a cake-- and the cake was all the richer for it.

a possibly useful list

this list from the simple dollar shows where to get free equivalents of popular software. the most interesting ones (to me) are the programs for taxes and language learning.

i am glad to see many open source options on there! the economist also has a feature section on open source software in the latest edition. i have had ubuntu for a year or so and i like it a great deal. i also use picasa, open office, AVG, GIMP and audacity.

my dear brother bryan is in india right now converting the Microinsurance Academy to open source software, starting with open office. check out his blog here.

stop smiling it is time to clog

you know what was awesome about this weekend? EVERYTHING.

you know what was costly about this weekend? NOTHING.

the folk festival was overwhelmingly fabulous. get yourself on the google and find one near you, they tend to be free and wholesome and unique. i'm thinking about the july 24-26th one in Lowell, MA. this weekend i saw Berber music, West African music/dance, a 4 year old playing the bones while his dad accompanied on guitar, honky tonk, zydeco, smile-less clogging, Bulgarianpalooza, a great Townes Van Zandt cover by a string band, what didn't i see is more like it. it was ideal in all ways. the smithsonian folklife festival is also coming up in dc, GET PSYCHED FOLKS

another great feature of the weekend was a barbecue/clothing swap. everybody cleaned out their closets and brought huge bags of clothes/shoes/a gold belt. after eating a glorious barbecue feast, we organized clothing by type (top/pant/dress/skirt) and size (roughly) and then everyone did a rough survey and picked out their top choices. to pick, we played it like a football draft, except not boring. then we counted off 1-11. each person went through and picked an item. when #11 had gone, the order reversed and the 2nd round started with #11, snake-style. this frenzy of trying-on and seeing other people wear your clothes better than you went on until we grew quite exhausted. the leftovers will be donated to dc's dress for success or goodwill. do this with your friends, you probably already do it with your family. it is great fun and immensely useful....and also free. my coworker called it a frock swap. that is funnier.

by the way, i have heard the rumors that this blog "is good advice maybe if you're a hobo" and i resent that, and also appreciate it.

it's the freakin weekend lets square dance

a prominent blogger known only by the handle "acaciao" (probably portuguese) informs us of the fabulous, free washington folk festival this weekend in glen echo park.

looking at the schedule just for saturday i see an old time string band, a family that plays celtic music, tibetan lute, acoustic blues, sea shanties, swedish music, bayou cajun band, nyckelharpa?!
oh NO there are puppets i will examine the map upon entrance to avoid these puffy demons.
romanian dance workshop? yes. bulgarian folk dance? eh maybe
flexible steel swords
yurt
banjo
razz'm jazz'm
steel orchestra
linda fang (fang)
klezmer

i am overwhelmed with joy. laura, whatever we were planning to do, i am doing this now. if anyone wants to join, i will be biking there, it is a lovely ride from georgetown along the canal/capital crescent trails.
THIS IS LIFE

let us never speak of this again

some of you may recall the beloved stego cake. we recall it every few days. justin's brother, who is interested in marine biology, had a birthday. so we said, let's make him a hippo cake! (better than a fish, ew). we had many ingredients to work with - devils food cake, leftover brownies, leftover buttercream icing, leftover cupcakes, and white icing with assorted food dyes. as we assembled the hippo, we found that we were actually making a turtle, so we changed course. this is the result.

laura and i decorated the cake while justin was at the gym. when it was finished, we felt sorry for it and laughed heartily. i laughed so hard that i cried real tears. we have ambitious plans but we always make hideous things. when justin saw it he said it wasn't as bad as he expected. justin's brother smiled at it when we showed him. here is a close up, detailing the turtle's festive expression and party hat.

we also made bacon cups, which were justin or laura's idea, i don't remember. they cut bacon strips in half and wove (ewewew) them together into a latticed cup: then they baked the cups in muffin tins. we chopped some arugula and put some blue cheese dressing on it and halved some grape tomatoes and voila:
these are the pools of grease remaining in the muffin tin after baking:
it was an exercise in creativity and trans fat tolerance.

ikea had some kind of sale, so they offered free breakfast. we attended and sang a lot of ABBA. in the future we will try to blogwrite about free events we plan to attend so others may partake as well. if you change your mind on the first in line, honey i'm still free, take a chance on me. ABBA has made some stunning contributions to the world of music videos. i encourage participation.

for lunch today (we are back in DC) i went to negril, a lovely jamaican eatery with a few dmv locations. i got a giant container of rice and peas (beans) with chicken gravy ($2.95), which comes with a salad. i splurged on a big ol piece of coco bread ($0.85), which was doughy and unhhh. i ate about half of the rice and will eat the rest for lunch tomorrow.

in completely unrelated news: The Complete Guide To Finding & Winning Travel Grants

nothing is hard with a layer of lard

the cheapions are on the road. and by the road i mean we flew to atlanta. we are visiting our comrades.

we went to a 4-D "movie" (ad) at the world of coke

we learned how to make brownies from the bronze man

the polar bear attacked us

we made new, smiling, asian friends and balanced them on our backs

this was all at the world of coke, which was having its 2nd anniversary. normally tickets are $15, which is absurd for an hour an a half of ingesting marketing. however, laura and justin woke up early and got us $2 tickets to celebrate this occasion. i personally don't like soda and i like marketing even less. there was a tasting room at the end, but no toothbrushes.

we also visited the atlanta botanical gardens with justin's free guest passes that had been mailed to the previous tenant of his apartment. this too would have been a $15 admission fee.

laura made a friend (finally)

we made french onion soup and homemade bread

with the vidalia onions that justin got on sale

although the carter center was closed, we poked around the gardens and found ducklings and goslings/little emus. there were also ducklings near the botanical gardens. atlanta city of lings.

we have been surprised here by the fact that everyone drives everywhere. buses are not used. it is not a walking city as everything is spread out.

tonight we are going crazy on a cheese and chocolate fondue.

Can hummus go through security?

This question came about when Caitlin and I were presented with a glorious burden-- Owen's mom brought us a ton of amazing food at 10:50 last night...(she is leaving for Turkey) and we're leaving for a week in Atlanta tonight. Oy. Look at the bounty!

Most problematic for me was the entire box of cupcakes from CakeLove that you see pictured with Caitlin (in the headdress from the Asian festival).

Ultimately we packed gigantic meals (lunch and dinner) with as many perishables as possible and brought the rest of the things to work. Cheapion Justin also suggested to us that if we wanted to freeze things, we should leave them in the fridge overnight first. He even had science to back this up: since freezers are very slow, which makes the ice crystals larger (which destroys food), it's better to lower the temperature as much as possible before freezing to speed up the process and cut down on crystal size.

Finally, in response to Foard's question on the previous post- no, we do not snack. It's not a snacking household. This is less about being cheap and more about having no will power.

caitlin update: for lunch today i will eat a tomato and a mango.

use the internet

as we all know, the internet was a bit of a game-changer, especially for a person interested in goods, services, people or faxes.

cheapions reader hris (name changed to protect identity) sends us the following link which offers specific portals for advance-stalking free summer events, including festivals:

this is the link

cheap happens because of a) advance planning, like a fishing cat stalking its prey, or b) you happened to walk by.

please note that a fishing cat is different from a cat. let it never be said that i compared advanced planning to a cat stalking its prey.

caitlin update: there is really only one important takeaway from that link, and it is festivalfinder.com, which has the same information as festivals.com. i have already populated laura and my google calendar with the arlington blues festival, dc caribbean festival, smithsonian folklife festival, dc sacred festival (10 min walk from our house, not sure what it is, who cares though). laura is volunteering at the fairfax county fair in some sort of segway-riding position for which she has had to train. this is a brilliant cheapion move as it involves free segway riding, free fair admission, free meals, and one creepy guy asking her to dinner.

pour some sugar on me na na na na na na

one faithful skimmer of our blog suggested that we devote a blog post to the litany of praise we have received.

"you guys are ridiculous ahahhaha"

"i have added you to my google reader"

"stellar"

"deeply impressive"

"My ridiculous sister made a blog about how cheap she and her friends are" - laura's brother

"it is funny"

"very nice blogspot" - caitlin's dad

"you should make a post including critical praise that your blog has received"

"a signature example of what meticulous, fun loving, extraordinarily neurotic wunderkinds can achieve"

Our first reader question

Emily Cousin (the very obvious nickname Caitlin gave to my cousin Emily) has a question for the Cheapions! We didn't even know we would be providing this service, but we shall be! Thanks, Emily Cousin!

Emily's question is what she should do about moving to Arizona. She is relocating from DC and is not sure whether she should move her stuff by driving (estimated cost: $1200), flying and then hiring someone to move her stuff (estimate flight cost: $500, plus cost of people shipping things), or perhaps whether she should sell her things and buy new ones or just rent furnished.

My advice is to sell things on this end either to an incoming tenant, via craigslist, or via yard sale. You can also try selling things on facebook to friends who are coming to the area. You can use that money to buy things on the other end, but your goal should be to craigslist surf for the first two or so weeks you are there-- it should be pretty easy to get a free bed, couch, and some other key thing (though no foosball tables are ever available on craigslist- we know from frequent searching) and you can use the money you made selling things in DC to cover the cost of a zip car or uHaul for moving your free things around.

caitlin update: kind emily, first consider: do you really need to move to arizona? it seems like a pain in the ass. if you insist, i also advocate selling any furniture that is not dear to you. i suggest that you patrol the rideshare section of craigslist. sometimes people need their cars to be driven places, and arizona is a place. a preliminary search for "arizona" reveals no hits, sadly. additionally, isn't it hot in arizona? if so, you certainly won't need furniture, especially wood furniture, which may burn. this is my advice.

Festival Frenzy

Our friend Zack emailed us 8 months ago to set a date to hang out and this weekend was that day. Lucky for him, he inadvertently chose a day full of festivals. We hit the zoo, the National Cathedral, a great yard sale, and the Greek Festival all before 3 PM. The Greek Festival was unfortunately a bust, since the line for gyros was more as long as a marathon (that's the closest I could come to a Greek joke, pitiful I know) and the gyros were $9!! What?!

We then made our way to the Asian American Heritage Festival-- Fiesta Asia-- down near the mall. This had moderately priced Asian food, and, in the tourist area, had many free samples. We tried candied pineapple and candied gooseberry, fortune cookies, tea, and pineapple cookies. Caitlin also found herself a headdress.

Final note from the weekend: I bought pipians to see what they were and, upon grilling them, have discovered they are not noticeably different from green squash. Still, a fun adventure w/ food.

caitlin update: laura also secured us a papaya. it was the best, ripest, most luscious papaya in all the world. the texture was perfect and soft and orange. however, it tasted like throw-up, undeniably so. if you kept eating it the throw-up flavor would ebb, but then return. this was our experience with the papaya. we also tried grilling some but that didn't change it much. more like hot vomit then.

Scavenging

Office bounty has been the name of the most recent game. My office had an open house and tons of leftovers and only limited fridge space-- so I made myself available to selflessly take home many types of cheese, spreads, salami, and more. We lived off of that food with great delight for nearly a week-- especially since I even managed to bring home lettuce later in the week to make goat cheese salad.

Yesterday also featured free dinner from the DC EITC Volunteers potluck-- can't beat that.

caitlin update: it was not a potluck. we understand that the word "potluck" means that you must bring food. there are rules, donny. this was a celebration of our service. we arrived early and demolished the strawberries (there were only 8 or so).

The moral of the story, if you can call it that, is that it's May and we have spent less than $15 for both of us on groceries... and we're going away next week... oops?

willkommen bienvenue welcome

for the past two weekends, we have attended embassy open houses. weekend one was non-EU countries, and although they were cultural and educational and pretty, only bangladesh had ample free food. we did have to sit through a brief talk on how the people of bangladesh were entrepreneurial and hardworking, and how bangladeshi stocks were undervalued. serbia also had some egg bread and cheese egg tart bread and hazelnut chocolate which luckily laura dislikes. i also enjoyed the garden at the serbian embassy.

the importance of planning in the great success of these quests cannot be underestimated. with our map and laura's list of open house descriptions with food opportunities highlighted, we were able to maximize cultural and culinary intake and minimize line-standing.

we made friends at the embassy of sri lanka.

on weekend two, Euro weekend, food was more plentiful. We breezed through Luxembourg at 10:01 am and immediately queued for Greece, the holy grail. What a beautiful spread. Yogurt and honey, ouzo candies (gross), bread and olive oil, cheese pie, feta with little greek flag toothpicks, stuffed grape leaves, olives, and then an adjoining room full of pastries and cookies and baklava! when our compatriot Niketa arrived we went through the buffet again. We are friends of the Greeks. The following picture is actually from Bulgaria, but the happiness lingers.

for me, the real jackpot was the netherlands. the people were tall and welcoming, and they gave me stroopwafels. niketa and laura and i each took two, and luckily i enjoy stroopwafels most vehemently and niketa and laura donated theirs to my cause.

i guess next time i have to take some pictures of laura. at the EU commission to the US they made us fill out an irritating quiz to get a free tote bag. we also got miniature pocket size books that detailed our fundamental rights in the EU.

we were overwhelmed with success. and on weekend two we didnt make no fool mistake of eating breakfast beforehand. LEARN BY DOING

gastronomy economy: a photo history

pledging love to sweden

million meatball challenge

mmm beans

also beans

our crowning achievement
the stego cake

Finding recipes

Yesterday we googled "i have 3 bananas help" to try and find any recipe that was not boring ol' banana bread. We found no suitable recipes and proceeded to combine things in a dish willy-nilly style.

caitlin update: that is not true. we did nothing willy-nilly. i put in orange triple sec, hazelnut liqueur, orange zest, and yeah maybe a little port wine i am trying to get rid of. but everything was done with intention and foresight.

make new friends and keep the mold

this is what we look like. we are friendly, see? i am caitlin and she is laura. we are roommates and sometimes friends.
people tell us we are cheap. they say, how do you eat when you spend $100 a month on food for two of you? the answer is legumes. legumes and scrounging.

we investigate the tough questions, e.g., is the cost of transportation to a free ice cream tasting greater than the cost of a pint of heath bar crunch at the 7-11 on the corner? is this a fennel, or maybe a leek? it was a fennel. and a blenderfull of it exploded and scalded my leg.

Embassy prep

Finding free things often requires advance planning. To that end, we have readied ourselves with maps of the European embassies, which are having an open house tomorrow, as well as description of the food all of them well provide. And, because we're no dummies, we learned from our last venture and are going to go to Embassy row right away and (this part is crucial) not eat beforehand. Last week we were fools, this week we are good to go.