Mod post

[jamethiel]

Hi there! We've had a whole heap of new members come along. Welcome!

I've had some privacy concerns raised. From now on, membership is on moderated status. Also, please make any posts with personal financial details f-locked (I won't force you to, but some community members can't participate without that. Something to keep in mind. I won't be posting f-locked as there has to be something for folks who are just watching the community to read.)

Please let me know if you have any other suggestions for the improvement of the community!

Upcoming attractions:
A challenge a month. The first challenge? Cook dinner (or don't have take-away) every night for a month.

Also, I'm going to do another goal post.

Comments

[sporky_rat]

Cook dinner (or don't have take-away) every night for a month.

I'm into that!


Also, I'm using Budget for the Mac (the free version) as my financial software.

[jamethiel]

eeenteresting. I'll look it up! I use a good old excel spreadsheet which has worked for me for 6 months or so, but I could always try something else.

Do you have any food allergies or preferences? I'm really lactose intolerant myself, so nothing I cook tends to have dairy except for butter.

[juliet]

I'm vegan so know all about dairy-free cooking :)

Dinner in this house is home-made most of the time, but normally by my partner who sometimes gets home late & goes SCREW THIS I'M GETTING CURRY. (Happily this affects his budget not mine; but I've started cooking more often now because I don't want to eat takeout that often.) When I'm staying over with my other partner, for a while he was mostly relying on takeout, but has gone back to cooking again now. We have Weekly Pizza Night, which I wouldn't want to miss :) but I might go for "every night other than Sundays".

[sporky_rat]

Lactose intolerant and my partner is allergic to raw tree nuts/veggies.

I'm really liking this program so far - I put all my stuff in the 'envelopes' and I can mark the debits with what they were for, where they went, and other bits like that. Very nice...and color code-able!

[kyrielle]

Oh, gah, lactose. That's so me. I <3 recipes where the only dairy is milk, because I can tolerate the lactose-free milks just fine, so I can cook with them too. I found a pretty good sour cream substitute (I haven't used it in a recipe where it needed to be heated, though, and not sure how it'd do there), if you can have soy, and you can usually get decent butter substitutes.

But if a recipe calls for cheese, I have to decide if it's worth the pills (and the risk of misjudging how many I'll need), and if it calls for heavy cream or yogurt? Yeah, I just walk away.

I am a sad, sad duck: I do not care to cook clam chowder from scratch, so I adore Campbell's clam chowder. Why? Because they are too cheap to put real milk products in. Most of the others I have seen (...which, I concede, are TASTY...) have condensed milk. Urgh. Campbell's doesn't, they rely solely on the milk you add...and I can add lactose-free milk.

[jamethiel]

The worst thing is? I LOVE DAIRY.

To be correct, mine's actually slightly more of an allergy than an intolerance. Lactose free milks set me off too. I just say lactose intolerance because if you try to explain that it's an allergy people look at you blankly. They think it might be the casein but that doesn't explain why I'm mostly okay with butter. The specialist wanted to do all sorts of funky tests on me but when I looked at him and said "Why? What's the treatment? What will it do?" couldn't come up with an answer except for "Well, there's no treatment, you'd do what you've always done which is avoid it but don't you want to know what it is? Also, TESTS!" I suspect he has an inappropriate relationship with the test results. (I think he wanted to write up a test case in a medical journal about me. It appears to have been set off by giardia and anaemia and specialists get all excited by the intersection between parasites and the immune system. And I support that excitement, I do! Except when it involves me being poked with needles.)

But I can have sheep's milk/yoghurt/cheese though! Can you tolerate those? Apparently it's tolerated by 90% of lactose intolerants. I... would not recommend sheep's milk even if you can get it because it's quite robust in taste, but the cheese is awesome!

I was a sad panda, last night. I went to the supermarket with my housemates and they had lime curd and I was all \o/ because LIME CURD. And then I read the ingredients and it had skim milk powder. :(

I just hate the people who say "Oh, you can have a little." because they read it in a book somewhere. No. No, I can't. And unless you want me to take up your bathroom for three hours, you don't want me to.

[kyrielle]

I love dairy too. And ack - I'm sorry. Lactose intolerance is slightly easier to correct for than the allergies, usually. :/ (Though I know a woman with lactose intolerance so bad that the pills aren't helpful and she has to avoid drugs with lactose in their carrier base, even in tiny amounts.)

I'v never heard of the sheep's products. I'll have to try and see, because omg I would love a cheese I could use with no fuss, or even less fuss.

I hear you about the people who want you to try it. I can have a little (VERY little), or even a moderate amount with pills, but not everyone can, and some things either the pills don't help me or they don't help enough. I loathe pizza from new places because it's a crapshoot as to pills, but the pizza from one chain that our gaming group uses weekly, I know exactly how many pills per slice. (It took weeks to get it just right, which I'd rather not do again.)

[journeys_end]

I like the idea of challenges. I'm normally very good with my budget but the last few months have been one expense after another (still no consumer debt, though!), challenges would be a great way to get back on track.

Cooking dinner is easy :). I already have to do that for health reasons (low salt=no takeaway). I know this isn't a recipe/food comm but I'd love to hear other people's ideas for budget-friendly cooking and shopping, especially when trying to accommodate specific needs since the gluten-free/low salt/organic etc. foods are more expensive.

[jamethiel]

Also, recipes never go astray!

[journeys_end]

LOL! Very true, especially when you have a short attention span when it comes to food like I do :D.

[indywind]

Maybe if we keep the recipes corralled so they don't run wild... Like a few tagged posts, maybe sticky or linked in the sidebar, which people can refer to, or add more recipes, whenever the topic comes round.

Possible topics of posts or tags might be like:
Cheapest possible good nutrition
FrugalFood Vegan
FrugalFood Carnivore
FrugalFood All-Natural/Organic
Food sharing & community sourcing
FrugalFood allergen-free
FrugalFood basics, tips & tricks

What do y'all think?

Indy (owes an introduction I guess)

[jamethiel]

I think, to be friendly for noobs, I'll do a post once a week. But people can add recipes to that. That way it's an ongoing project.

I'll need to think about the tags. I will have distinctions between vegan,vegetarian and omnivore. But a lot of my soup recipes can be vegetarian with one substitution (vegetable stock for chicken stock) and vegan with two (olive oil for butter)--surely people can adapt stuff for their own purposes!

[red_trillium]

I like the idea of a challenge but it would need to start after tonight because I picked up pizza on the way home. I think I'll try something slightly different and try to avoid buying coffee for a month. I usually make my own at work but at least once a week manage to buy coffee as a 'treat' for myself. I do take my own cup & get a discount & buy regular black coffee instead of lattes most the time but maybe I'll try to avoid it at all.

And maybe I'll talk to my wife about not eating out for a month and see if she'd be up for it.