One Chicken, Two Pots

Did you know you could make your chicken work twice? You can -- and so can ribs, or any roast with bones. After you cook the roast and eat it, save the bones. Just keep a gallon plastic bag in the freezer, and throw the bones in there after each meal. When the bag is full, empty it into a slow cooker, and add

• one onion, cut in 1/8s
• 2 carrots, cut into cube-ish chunks
• 2 celery ribs, cut into large chunks
• a couple of bay leaves
• 6 peppercorns
• parsley if you have it
• 1T of white vinegar
• water to fill the pot (about a gallon)

Cook this on low for 6 - 8 hours, or till it looks and smells like chicken broth. (The vinegar is in there to leach the calcium and gelatin from the bones -- you won't taste it, and it makes for a wonderfully rich stock.) Free soup!

Love means never... having to feel pain?

Intense feelings of love use the same parts of the brain that pain uses. So preliminary research shows that when you're feeling madly in love, you are less likely to feel physical pain.

Love takes up where pain leaves off, brain study shows

Maybe this is why a break up hurts so much? Because you're now feeling pain you haven't felt in a while?

The study also shows that distraction alleviates pain, too. This is something you can use. Next time you feel pain, enumerate sports that don't use balls -- or think of your favorite food, or your happy place.

Fruit for the picking

If you walk your neighborhood regularly, you'll begin to notice fruit trees in people's yards. When it comes harvest time, you'll notice that many folks don't bother to harvest what's  literally in their own front yards.

If you ask, most homeowners will let you pick from their trees. I've picked apples (for eating, pies, crisps, cobblers and apple butter), lemons (for juice), oranges (for eating and marmalade) and grapefruit (for eating and juice). Carry a folded up plastic bag, the kind you get from the grocery store, with you at all times!

A few weeks ago, I did this, and got enough apples to make a quart and a half of apple butter -- probably 10 - 15 pounds. Here's the recipe.

Wouldn't you rather walk out doors than in a gym?

The standard recommendation is to walk at least 30 minutes a day. But walking, done right, is thrifty as well as good exercise.

I walk just about daily -- and many of my walks are for errands. By combining my exercise with my errands, I save time as well as money.  I walk to

• the grocery store (actually several, depending on what I want)
• the bank (for deposits, mostly, like any good saver)
• the library (check the library before you buy a book)
• the drugstore

And if that were all I needed at the gym, I'd save on gym membership, as well. All you need is the occasional pair of sneakers. 

A further benefit of walking is that you get to know the neighborhood and perhaps even your neighbors. More about that, and how that can help you be thrifty, tomorrow!