The next time you roast any meat, save the juices. They’re very good for giving a “zing” to something that would otherwise be horribly bland, such as mash potatoes.
And that’s another thing many people have learned and shouldn’t: that any kind of “food reuse”, whether it be eating leftovers, using the roast’s juices to spruce up your mash potatoes, or even making menus with the idea of using specifically-made-leftovers in another dish (one day you make squid in ink sauce, a couple of days later you make black rice) is somehow unacceptable. Many people freak out completely when they see that done in a home, never mind a collective kitchen. Why? So long as the meatballs which appear in Friday’s spaghetti-and-meatballs are sisters to the ones served on Wednesday and didn’t leave the kitchen, what is the problem? One of perception, that’s all, and misguided perception at that.
And the huge interests people typically pay on the loan they take to buy a house is also money gone for good. Let’s assume you invest what the average homeowner spends on interests, repairs, taxes, etc… over, say, 20 years : you can very well come ahead of him when comparing your egg nest with the value of his house (and if the housing market was making perfect sense, both options would yield the same result). In fact, I strongly suspect that renting is, on average, a better option financially because people have a purely psychological desire to own their place, which makes me think they’re probably paying a bit extra along the way to fulfill this desire.
Weirdly enough (at least over here) rental costs don’t match closely buying costs, making the decision of owning vs renting, from a purely financial point of view, highly dependant on where you live. Although in fact, this decision is rarely taken on a purely financial basis, I believe.
“Owning is better than renting” (often based on the argument you advance : money gone for good) is common wisdom, but common wisdom isn’t always wise.
What is really a thing? Keeping meat juices to use later in another dish? Most certainly. Squids in ink? Yes too, but that quite specifically Spanish. Black rice? No clue, but I see no reason why it wouldn’t be a thing. Or at the contrary are you asking if the idea that you shouldn’t reuse left overs is a thing? Most certainly too. People seem to have become very squeamish and paranoid about food preservation and tend to throw away anything that hasn’t been eaten right away.
The “no leftovers” thing - is that really a thing? I can understand not eating something that’s been sitting in the back of the fridge for a month, but really won’t eat leftovers from dinner a couple days later, or even a day later?
I’ve run into plenty of people - myself included - who frequently forget to work the leftovers into meals and therefore end up throwing away the nearly sentient food three months later - but that is more of “once its in tupperware, I tend to forget it” thing. And since our household isn’t near any sort of financial edge where maximizing food use is important for budget…it isn’t formost in my mind.
I don’t know if it’s a “thing”, but I have heard people complaining about having to eat the same leftovers after a few days. Now, whether this translates into not eating them at all, I don’t know. But it could result in people spending a bit more than they absolutely have to at the grocery store just so they don’t end up eating the day meal every day of the week.
Personally, I’ve found that some food just doesn’t taste good after it’s been frozen. Maybe it’s the kind of plastic containers I use or the quality of my freezer, but stuff tends to comes out freezer-burnt and gross. Which means that I tend to keep the quantity of my cooking down to whatever will last a three or four dinners. I could probably save money by cooking more meals than this and freezing them, but the savings just aren’t worth it to me.
This is so true. For a lot of homeowners, their house is their “baby” and they (understandably) want to play with and take care of it. Which means spending a lot of time and money at Home Depot and Lowes. Not to mention, filling rooms with furniture and decorations so that every square foot is livable. Nesting isn’t a cheap hobby.
While researching the downsides of homeownership, I stumbled upon the personal account of one regretful homeowner. One thing that reasonated with me was his observation that now that he owned a garage, he felt obigated to use it because otherwise it would be a “waste”. The same with the big yard. So his weekends are now filled by working on DIY projects he really doesn’t want to do and never thought of doing when he was renting. To me, that’s the tail wagging the dog. I don’t want a possession dictating my behavior and spending habits.
Oh, I have. My husband won’t eat leftovers for more than 1 day after the original meal was made in many cases. I’m not talking about the, “Thanks for the noble experiment but that sucked” kinds of meals, but stuff he ate happily enough the first time but disdains later. There are some notable exceptions - barbecue, jambalaya - but he’s pretty firm on not eating stuff for multiple days.
Not wanting to eat the same meal for days is a “thing”, but I believe the original post was not about the euivalent of eating roast chicken for three days in a row but about the euivalent of roasting a chicken on Sunday and using the leftover for chicken tacos on Monday and then making chicken soup on Tuesday and freezing it -that sort of thing. Which I’ve never heard anyone voice opposition to- plenty don’t do it but it’s not because they’re opposed to eating the same protein for three days in three different meals. **clairobscur **seems to be talking about people who think food is unsafe if it’s not eaten almost immediately , and that’s a third and different issue
One is to reuse leftovers creatively - i.e. things like “rubber chicken” which gets you a week out of a chicken without feeling like you are eating the same meal over and over again. (My favorite rubber chicken week: http://cheaphealthygood.blogspot.com/2009/02/1-chicken-17-healthy-meals-26-bucks-no.html - and she missed making soup). Rubber chicken weeks are common enough to find, you can do the same thing with beef or pork. Making a huge pan of hamburger hotdish and then eating it every day for a week gets old fast. Eating chicken one day, chicken fried rice the next, chicken chili on day three, a chicken pizza on day four and chicken noodle soup on day five isn’t the same meal (but uses the same base leftover).
The other is to make enough to eat one more meal, not an entire week. Or, if you are the kind that will eat week old leftovers, have two leftover creating meals at the start of the week, so you can alternate.
And freezer burn is the death of many leftovers. I’d rather just make enough to eat on Monday and revisit it on Wednesday and be done.
I roasted a pork loin last night for the very first time, and I feel very grown up! Last night I ate tacos, which I plan to do again tonight and tomorrow. Then it will go into a couple of sandwiches. After that, I hope it’s all gone.
Not to mention the higher risk of unemployment that comes with home ownership. I own a house, but I’m not foolish enough to think of it as an investment. It’s a place to live and I recognize that it comes with a cost. When I calculate my assets the mortgage is a debit but the equity in the house is not a credit.
I don’t think it’s particularly unusual not to want to have the same thing for dinner a couple of days in a row. I certainly don’t. I might eat straight-up leftovers for lunch, but it’s rare that I will eat the same dinner two days in a row. That said, I do try to incorporate and be creative with how to use the leftovers for follow-up meals (see Dangerosa’s reply re: “rubber chicken”), or simply freeze lunch-sized portions, label and date them, and try not to forget about them.
Although, if it isn’t (and I tend to think about three days of a single type of meat is enough, so I hope so to), if you don’t want to throw it away, chop it up fine and then freeze it in small bags (suck as much air out as possible). Throw into eggs on Sunday with hashbrowns.
Or add it to your “soup stock bag” in the freezer. The taste of the stock from that bag isn’t predictable.
OK lets talk renting vs buying.
A couple of assumptions:
Both renter and buyer have the same monthly rent/mortgage.
How does not appreciate in value
30 year term @ 5% interest
As you can see I gave the buyer a really bad loan.
The buyer pays approximately 0.005368 times the value of the house every month.
The renter and buyer both pay 1.932558 x the value of the house over 30 years. But for the renter that money is gone and the buyer still has the value of the house so they in effect paid a little less than the value of the house in interest. Assuming a marginal tax rate of 15%, the buyer gets just under 14% of the house value back in tax deductions.
Let’s put some hard numbers to this. For a $200,000 house monthly payments are $1073.64, the renter pays $386,511.57 in rent and the buyer has paid $186,511.57 in interest which after deductions is $158,534.83. Not accounted for is that the renter may have there payment be less than the mortgage payment anf the buyer do have extra costs associated with the house. The difference between rental and buying cost work out to just over $633 per month.
So in this scenario, the combination of reduced rent and house cost would have to be over $600 per month for the renter to even begin to talk about saving money AND remember we assumed the house didn’t appreciate at all. Assuming housing prices rise 2% per year without compounding the difference at the end of 30 years the homebuyer net spending is a grand total of $66511.57 in interest and that doesn’t even count tax deductions making the monthly difference over $880 per month. With tax deductions it is over $960/mo that need to be covered by lower rent & increased home costs.
Have you accounted for the fact that some states have a tax deduction for renters? My state does. Renters get up to $2,500 a year as a tax credit.
You failed to calculate maintenance costs for the buyer vs. renter - as a renter I don’t have to pay for roof repairs, furnace repairs, hot water heater replacements, and so forth, all of which my current residence has required over the past 15 years. Yes, over time it does come out of the rent but I don’t have to pay directly for those costs, which can be thousands or tens of thousands at one hit. For people on a fixed or low income smoothing out monthly costs and making them predictable may be important, vs having to come up with thousands of dollars on short notice, perhaps at high interest rates, or not being able to raise the necessary funds and winding up living in sub-standard conditions.
Renters also often have other services included in their rent, such as snow removal and lawn mowing which are also worth time and money.
These sorts of things are why, at a certain point, my parents sold their home and became renters - they were no longer physically able to keep up with home maintenance and by renting those tasks were taken care of in their monthly payments. Far better for them to pay a “penalty” and live in a place that was properly cared for than to insist on remaining in a house deteriorating around them.
While home ownership makes sense for the majority of people there are certain categories - the elderly, disabled, very poor - for whom the benefits are less certain.
Ummm . . . actually I did. So when I say that a homeowner has a net payment of $660 less per month, what that means is that looking at the numbers the homeowners spend less money than the renter even with up to $660 in extra costs every month. So if I spend less than (let’s say) $8000 per year in taxes, repairs, etc. I am actually spending less than a renter paying the same rent I pay as my mortgage payment.