Author: Rae

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I’ve Missed the Thrift Store

I got in from a quick trip to the Willow Bunch thrift store. I wanted to drop off a bag of stuff and see the changes. I really don’t need any clothes except for rain gear so all I was actively shopping for was some household and kitchen stuff.

The ground floor was a lot neater than it was the last time I was in, but not much had really changed in terms of where items were located. The upstairs had changed a bit and was less of a jumble of stuff, but, really, the updates weren’t as dramatic as I would have expected based on the Facebook updates. It was very comforting for the place to still be familiar. 🙂

Since I keep hoping to stumble onto lawn furniture, I went out to the sheds to see what sort of furniture was in stock and hit the jackpot. No, not on lawn furniture, but on something else I’ve wanted for Haven since I sort of got running water: a slop sink. They are about $40 at Home Hardware new. I asked about the price, was told that they are $150 new (WHAT?!), so I could have it for $15. Rather than argue that they’re nowhere near $100, much less $150, I commented that the sink was quite stained and covered in paint, I was told $10, which was just about right. 🙂

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(Inside is a little basin the perfect size for washing feet, something I wanted for my Isla casita).

I want to improve my laundry set up this summer and this slop sink fits in with those plans. It’ll be a good place to soak things, hold part of the wash load while the other spins, clean paint brushes, wash produce, etc. I just need to find a big stopper for it and it can drain into a bucket. What a find! The little basin was just $1.50, so it was really worth my time to go out today!

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Culture Shock at the Store

I really had my mind set on going to Moose Jaw today to do a big grocery stock up trip, but I was waiting on some payments, a cheque and a PayPal transfer to be able to do so. The cheque wasn’t in today’s mail and I only initiated the PayPal transfer on Friday, so I wasn’t expecting the funds till later this week. Desperately in need of food, I decided to run to Assiniboia for a few things to tide me over.

On the way there, I had a thought about how much it costs me to drive to Assiniboia round trip, $12, never mind the time that I really didn’t have to waste this week. Why was I being such a moron about this? Just go to Moose Jaw, stick to the budget, and use the credit card. It’s not like I’d have to pay interest on the purchases since they would be paid off in days. But most importantly, I still had work to do today, but I definitely had time to go to Moose Jaw and back. The rest of the week was looking iffy.

My decision made, I still made two stops in Assiniboia. The first was to fill up my five-gallon water jugs, which cost me almost $8. I miss my at home delivery for about 80 cents per five-gallon jug! But I do get the next one free… I made this stop in the morning for two reasons. 1) If the water machine was broken, I’d be able to get water in Moose Jaw and 2) I knew I’d be too tired to stop on the way home.

Last year, I was transferring the heavy jugs to a dispenser and actually did that in Mexico just for the exercise, but I treated myself to something on the way home that is crazy expensive, of poor quality, and hard to find here here and the complete opposite in Mexico:

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Next stop in Assiniboia was the Co-Op gas station for a coffee, which was really an excuse to get change for the parking metre in downtown Moose Jaw (can’t believe I thought of that!). The coffee at the gas station is actually quite good and they have hazelnut creamer, so it’s a nice road trip treat.

The trip to Moose Jaw was uneventful, just a scenic hour of rolling hills. Oh, I love this landscape!

First stop in Moose Jaw won’t come as a surprise, DK Sushi! The food was as good as ever and since the last few days have been extremely lean food wise, I didn’t worry too much about my waistline and ordered whatever I wanted within reason. 🙂 DK Sushi in Moose Jaw is in my top five of best sushi restaurants in the whole of the US and Canada, and I think I’ve been to enough sushi restaurants in the US and Canada for that statement to have some weight. 🙂 How lucky I am that they are the nearest sushi restaurant to me… even if they are 3 hours away round trip!

Then, it was time to spend beaucoup bucks. I’d like to share with you how I plan for big shopping runs like these. I use an app on my iPhone called Our Groceries. I have been using this app since I had an iPod Touch (six years) and can’t believe it’s still free. There are ads, but they’re not intrusive and you don’t see them if data is turned off.

I use the app to keep track of everything I need to buy regardless of if it’s to be bought in Assiniboia or Moose Jaw. I have a list for each store and categories that are not list (store) specific. When I lived in Yukon and was doing supply runs for my friends, I would use the categories to keep my friends sorted within each store. But now, I use the categories for things like produce, household, and meat.

Here are some screen shots of the app. First, the main screen, where you see my lists, which are by store. The numbers represent the number of items I need to buy at that store. As you can see, I didn’t get everything on my lists today!

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Inside each list is everything I want to buy at that store, sorted by categories:

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As you can see, I didn’t do too well with dairy and meat. A tub of yoghurt that is 2CAD in Mexico was 7CAD here (SAME BRAND)…

My first stop of the day was M&M Meat Shops to get chicken breasts. That was the most important thing on my list and would determine how much I had left to spend in the other stores. Chicken breasts wound up being $6 off per box, so I got four boxes, essentially getting a box free!

As I shop, I just tap on the items I’ve added to my shopping cart and they get removed from my lists and saved for the next time I want to build a list. But what if a store doesn’t have what I need?

I organized my shopping by likely least to most expensive. So after M&M, I went to Dollar Tree (yes, there’s a Dollar Tree in Moose Jaw!). There, I was able to get household things like freezer bags, plastic wrap, and bleach, for very cheap compared to even Walmart. But there were a few things I couldn’t find. What I would then do is tap the little (i) next to the item to bring up this screen:

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That would then let me select another list for this item. So what I didn’t find at Dollar Tree got moved to my second to next stop’s list, Walmart.

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Some stores don’t categorize things the same way, so I can also change the category of an item:

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What a great app! I would be lost without it when I have to do big shops like these. I just build my lists as I think of items. Over the years, my list of items in the app has grown and I rarely have to type out the entire name of an item before it pops up.

After Dollar Tree, I went next door to Bulk Barn, the most wonderful store on the planet. There, I could buy just as much as I wanted of everything from brown rice to nuts to flours (kamut and multigrain today) and spices. Instead of spending several dollars each for containers of cumin, tumeric, basil, garlic powder, and more, I could spend 30 cents or 80 cents or 50 cents on just the quantity I need to get me through the summer. I normally spend a lot on nuts in this store, but I was on a tight budget, so I restrained myself. I was pleased to be able to buy almond butter and tahini in bulk, too, for much cheaper than I pay through mail order.

By the time I came out of Bulk Barn, I had already spent a third of my budget for the day. On to Walmart, which is just a normal one in Moose Jaw, not a Super Center with a big grocery section. I got paper goods, found Rustoleum rubber coating for my roof (all appendages crossed), and got a bunch of canned goods.

Next stop was Super Store. I usually like to buy my groceries at Safeway, but after hearing so many people tell me how much more expensive they are than Super Store, I decided to try that first. I really don’t like Super Store, finding it overwhelming and the selection in some areas lacking, but grocery prices in Canada keep going up and I really need to start paying attention to my pennies at the grocery store.

My Super Store experience started off shakily since the produce quality and selection was dismal. There were no Brussels sprouts and the onions were worse than the ones in Assiniboia were last year (and that’s saying something). I almost abandoned my cart in the ‘Mexican’ aisle full of Old Paso crap, but persevered for a bit and was rewarded with an increasingly full cart as I started to be able to cross things off my list.

I only had about $130 left to spend at this point, so I tallied everything up as I put it in my cart, switching between the Our Groceries and calculator app on my phone. I stuck to my list, second guessed every decision, and skimped on meat and dairy to come in at $143. Whew. This was in no way a ‘stock up’ cart. I’ll need a top up on a lot of things quickly. But at least the pantry basics of vinegars, oils, sauces, and condiments were in the cart as well as enough dairy and meat (in combination with the M&M chicken) to last me a while. There really isn’t anything I can use to cook up a storm and make up a huge batch of anything. I’m going to watch the Co-Op fliers and get missing items, like ground bison, there. I actually found things at Super Store that are cheaper at the Co-Op. Co-Op does do sales very well and now that I have all my basics, I can look forward to a ‘ten for ten’ sale to get some really good deals on certain things.

My favourite bit of Super Store was their ethnic foods aisle. Tucked into a corner was a proper supply of true Mexican foods, including, almost out of sight, bags of Maseca corn flour for making tortillas! I was so pleased when I found this! The bag was about $5.50 and will make a lot of tortillas, a much better deal than the $5 bags of tortillas I was buying last year!

Next to the Mexican groceries was a Middle Eastern shelf with everything from za’atar to tahini to stuffed grape leaves and more. I was very impressed!

All that said, I won’t be going to Super Store again except to get specific items. I didn’t find their prices that much better than Safeway, their selection was much smaller, they didn’t have good deals on meat, and their produce was dismal. But at least I didn’t come out of there feeling that I got robbed (too badly) or that I had wasted my time.

It was getting really late when I came out of Super Store and I had spent my budget, so I postponed the trip to Canadian Tire and the visit to Safeway for more produce (I did find frozen Brussels sprouts at Super Store, which will tide me over). I stopped at McDonald’s for a black iced coffee, the one thing that is way cheaper in Canada than in the US (1.30CAD here for a medium versus about 2.50CAD for a small in the US!).

The drive home was lovely and I made one last stop in Assiniboia. I hadn’t had any luck at Dollar Tree or Walmart in finding containers for my spices, so I decided to try our dollar store, which is huge. I found suitable containers there at a good price, so the stop was worth my time.

I got in around 6:00 and spent a bit of time unloading and putting things away. I had plugged in the freezer before leaving, so I stashed some things in there even though it’s rather silly to pay the power to run it with so little inside it. I need to get cooking!

As a final note, I was really grateful for my iPhone today. It’s not only Monday, but the first of the month, so I got several client emails today about invoicing and availability, all of which I was able to respond to promptly thanks to the Mail app on my phone. A summer project will be to set up the ‘FileMaker Go’ app on my phone so that I can consult my invoices while out of the office. A client wanted to cut me a cheque today, but I couldn’t send her the invoice right away. She said she could send the cheque without the invoice if I could give her the invoice number, which I didn’t have. I made my best guess about the number, but when I got home, I realised I was two numbers off and gave her the number for an invoice I made for another client. Thankfully, that other invoice hadn’t been sent yet, so I was able to switch the two around. I’m starting to wish I had a PA to handle this kind of stuff for me. 🙂

That’s it for today. It’s been a very long one and I have heaps of work to do tomorrow and in the next few days. Whew!

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Making Tortillas

My neighbour Caroline sent me home with her barely used tortilla press the other day. Today, she came by with a giant container of corn flour and a recipe, so I decided to try my hand at making tortillas!

The recipe for 16 to 20 tortillas is super simple:
2 cups corn flour
2 cups boiling water
1/2 tsp salt

Mix in a big bowl until you get a ball, cover with plastic wrap, and let sit for an hour. Then divide into 1 1/2 inch balls that you press and then cook on a hot griddle/cast iron pan/comal.

So here is her press:

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It has a hinge on the side. You open up the two halves, put a ball of dough in the middle between plastic (to prevent sticking — she uses two halves of a Ziploc bag), press firmly to flatten the ball, peel the resulting raw tortilla off the plastic and plop it into a very hot frying pan (I use well seasoned cast iron, so I don’t add any grease) to get this:

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Rather impressive looking for a first attempt, no?

This was nothing like the tortillas I get at the tortilleria in Maz. Neither is better or worse, they are just different. The main difference is that these are cooked in a cast iron pan, so they are crunchier and have brown spots (the best part). But I usually heat up my tortillas anyway and get close to this result.

The colour is also different. These came out very yellow, like tostadas. The tortillas I get at the tortilleria are beige.

Finally, these were a little bitter. I think the flour might be a little old, or it’s just not the same flour used in the tortillerias. It definitely has a much more pronounced corn flavour. They are going to make killer totopos (fried tortilla chips)! I want to repeat the experiment with proper Maseca brand flour to see if I get closer to the tortilleria tortillas.

But the final verdict is that making these was most definitely worth my time. I didn’t like them much on their own (bitter), but were really good slathered with a little leftover tomato sauce! They are a little fluffy in the middle and feel like wheat bread under tooth (!).

I scoffed at the idea of a tortilla press, but it really is labour saving. Imagine the work and space that would have been needed to roll out the dough into a semblance of a circle!

I only made three tonight and saved the rest of the ball of dough for tomorrow morning. Making tortillas is a lot less work than making flat bread with flour and I look forward to making mountains of them this summer. Considering the price of crappy corn tortillas at the grocery store, the time spent will be worth it!

So yay for Caroline for giving me a chance to try this out before buying Maseca!

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Settling In

I’m slowly getting back into my at home routine. Most of my neighbours have been by to welcome me back. It’s nice to know I was thought about in my absence!

We had good weather on Tuesday and most of Wednesday, so I took care of outdoor chores, including most of the laundry, mowing the lawn, and nearly finishing the emptying of the truck. I got my exercise on Wednesday going back and forth to C&C’s every couple of hours to let out the dog and spend time with him and the cats. The dog’s dinner is a bit ‘complicated’, so Caroline had me over Tuesday night to show me how to put it together and I ended up being invited to stay for dinner!

It started to rain on Wednesday night and was cold last night. I set the furnace for 55F (after running it before bed to make sure it was working) and it kicked on around 4:00 this morning. I also ran my mattress pad warmer on low all night, so I was cozy.

Thankfully, we’re climbing out of this as we march into June. If we get a normal summer, this should be it for nasty weather. *all appendages crossed*

I’ve discovered that my roof is leaking worse than ever and have committed to a major assault of it this summer. Both Dicor and Eternabond have utterly failed me, so it’s time to look at household solutions. The big problem is that all the products recommended to me are not available locally, which explains in part why this project is going on so long.

At this point, I really don’t care about structural damage to the overhang (ie. weakened wood and delamination) because I’m not planning on moving Miranda again. Remember that she has an aluminum frame construction, so leaks get contained. I know the walls and roof are weak, but they’re fine for just sitting here. Once I know the roof is thoroughly sealed, I want to do some cosmetic work in the loft again to mask the water damage, but I don’t plan to take anything apart.

Work is picking up and May should end with enough money in the receivables for me to just scrape through June without dipping into savings. This includes a large amount of money outstanding from May that I only managed without in May thanks to everyone’s hospitality (I would have been sleeping in the truck in sub-zero weather otherwise!). It was an unexpected situation since both of those clients have always been reliable. One forgot to drop the cheque in the mail and the other nearly got stiffed by her client and only just managed to make them produce payment. In fact, that payment dropped into my PayPal as I was writing this! Yay!

The big personal project right now is putting together my grocery list for when I go to Moose Jaw next week. One of the unexpected realities of ‘maintaining two homes’ is that I have to start my pantry over each time I move from one to the other. I can’t keep food in Miranda over the winter and don’t want to have to ask C&C to store too much and I can’t store anything in Mexico because of the humid climate.

So I’m finding myself having to start over in both countries with condiments, spices, and other foods that normally don’t get replaced regularly. I brought some food to and from Mexico and it was a huge pain making sure nothing spilled. A lot of what I brought down in the fall got spoiled sitting in a hot truck for days on end. So I don’t plan on bringing much down this fall, unless I end up just doing the trip in a week.

I bought a freezer last summer, so my plan is to go to Moose Jaw and buy as much as I can to fill up the freezer and then do a little topping up in Assiniboia or Willow Bunch each week for fresh produce. Part of the shopping will involve cooking up tons of food over a couple of days so that I really don’t need to think about food for the rest of the summer. I don’t have any lucrative contracts lined up, so it will mean very long hours to make the money I need. Being able to just go to the grainery and pull a meatloaf or whatever out of the freezer at the end of a long day will be a blessing.

I wish I had a bigger budget for this shop (I think I can just squeeze in $400, maybe $500 if the exchange rate remains favourable, which really won’t go far), but if I put it off for July, a month will have passed and it really won’t be worth the effort. I really don’t want to do another substantial shop in Assiniboia either. That $80 really didn’t go far at all and I’m already wishing I could go back to town and buy more food for the weekend!

Another thing I dealt with this week was contacting SaskHealth to let them know I’m back so they can issue me a new health card. An email from them just dropped into my inbox informing me that the chance has been satisfactorily processed. I haven’t found anything on their site that says I can’t ask for an extension every year, so I’m going to try again in the fall. If I succeed, I can leave in October again and go spend some time in Utah before going to Mexico. Otherwise, I’ll have to leave in November and make a run for the borders.

So that’s all the big news out of Haven this week. 🙂 Now, I’m off to work. I did a full day yesterday and it should be full days from here on in… I keep telling myself that every dollar I make is about 12 pesos right now and 12 pesos goes waaaaaaay further than a dollar so I better hang on to my dollars and spend them as pesos! 😀

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Morning at Haven

Ah, there’s nothing like opening the front door in the morning to survey your very own 5,000 square feet of land. The birds are chirping, the sun is shining, and it’s going to be a gorgeous day!

My first night at home was good, but not as spectacular as if I had gone straight from Mexico to here. I’ve had many equally dark and quiet nights since I left Isla a month ago and certainly more comfortable beds! My bed isn’t bad, but I really do need a topper, which I’ve discovered means deeper sheets, so it’s really a more pricey project than I had a realised.

I fell asleep reading on my iPad last night and woke up flat on my back nearly eight hours later with the tablet on my chest. Too funny!

There’s so much to do in the next weeks. I still have mountains of laundry to wash and tons of bags and boxes to unpack. Miranda needs a good dusting and cobweb removal. I have to finishing set up the kitchen and work on my grocery list for Moose Jaw.

Outside, I want to finishing cleaning up the shed floor and then paint the inside (I think I have enough exterior paint left to do that), then set it up like a proper shed so that I can empty out the cabin and start thinking about what I’m going to do to make it a liveable space. In the meantime, I’d settle for a cleaner and more functional laundry space (my washer still works great!) because the cabin is a mess. I can’t get to the freezer or even the lawnmower. Oh, right, lawnmower. I might try to get to the lawn this afternoon. The grass is really tall!

Work is apparently incoming later today or tomorrow so it’ll be time to figure out what sort of routine I want with that. I think I’ll do five intense days a week and two shorter ones. My government contract is done for the year, so I don’t have anything lucrative lined up, just steady stuff with piddly pay. Better than nothing, but I need to dig for something juicier.

My budgetary focus for the summer is the trip down to Mexico in the fall, as well as my first month or two there, rather than the property. I have lots to keep me busy here that won’t require spending a lot of money, so I’m just going to enjoy being in my own space and puttering around. C&C are doing more work on their house, mainly roofing so that will occupy some of my time, too. I’m really not worried about being bored! I intend to savour these quiet contemplative days knowing that I’ll soon enough be back to the hustle and bustle of my Mexican abode. Talk about the best of both worlds. I continue to be in awe of myself for somehow managing to create this unbelievably amazing life!