Money - Financial Savvy

Here I am making incremental progress on getting rid of my various types of debt. I'm trying to be good - spending my money wisely, paying the right bills at the right times, ever conscious of my income.

But, time to time, I slip up.

It starts with living in NYC, where everything is more expensive. Buying lunch a couple of days a week will kill a good budget. Needing a last minute gift for a friend, plus dinner and drinks out, will derail you for a month, if not longer.

Luckily, I have finally gotten over the first hurdle. I have eliminated just enough of my debt that it isn't strangling me, just incredibly heavy. And I've been able save just enough that if I have an emergency purchase, I won't be eating ramen for week(s).

But this last week, I still found myself in the danger zone. I had over-committed my dollars. So when I got to the 7th, I already had no cash left. I needed my next paycheck, badly. But had to wait until the 15th to get the cash injection.

This is where having even the tiniest savings account helps out, as well as having a linked line of credit. I was able to use a little bit of savings and a smaller bit of credit to get by. (I paid off the credit the next day, when I got my paycheck. I still need to set up a savings program to refill my savings.)

Two things I'm doing in the long run to keep this from happening again:

1) My husband and I are reconfiguring our bill paying.

I'm moving from paying the rent and utilities from my account to our joint account with both of us transferring a monthly sum to the pot. This will help me by making my variable budget amounts into fixed amounts. I will know exactly how much I'm spending each month every month in bills.

This also allows me to reconfigure my bills entirely. I have set aside a certain amount of money each pay period for paying down debt. And I recently cleared one debt so I had set new amounts almost across the board. Now that I ran into this "glitch" I will reexamine and reset the amounts so that I don't encounter this again.

Better budgeting makes for better finances.

2) Cooking smarter dinners and bringing lunch to work.

I started cooking more and specifically bringing lunch to work more often. I was really in the groove for a while there, bringing lunch 4 times a week, with a treat day once a week. But I've been so busy that cooking was infrequent, let alone making sure there was enough left over for lunch. But now I'm making it a priority again. So far, so good.

Experiencing Architecture - Inside a Synagogue

I had a new experience last week. I went into a synagogue for the first time.

I had arranged to attend a talk given by an author I admire. He discussed his new book and writing. It was an interesting talk and I will definitely be picking up his new book, when it is in paperback.

But really sparked my interest was the space. I had never been inside if a synagogue before. I've been to German Lutheran churches, Protestant churches, Catholic churches, nondenominational churches, and more than a few other religious buildings. But never a synagogue.

This one was clearly a 20th century structure that was being renovated piece by piece. It faced the street corner in an inviting way. The interior was like a piece of pie with the seating and balcony radiused out from the center pulpit (I don't know what they are called in Judaism).

On both of the side walls, there was one large stained glass and one smaller. Thanking my Christian upbringing and design education, I was able to identify both Old Testament stories depicted in the larger windows even though one of the windows is really dark.

Moses in the river

Can you tell what this is?
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Adam after eating the apple

It was really lovely being in a religious building that I wasn't familiar with. I have always been very interested in other cultures and religions. Once at Easter, I was there only one to attend Easter mass with my friend's mother. (My friend didn't even come along!) I think this interest in the structures that religions build is also spurred by my general interest in architecture. I love seeing how a physical space can reflect an ideology (corporate, religious, or otherwise).

I also know first hand how a space can affect your experience of it. One of my favorite religious spaces is the LA Cathedral. Down the street from the Disney theater designed by Frank Gehry, the Cathedral is the opposite in every way. The Cathedral has a feeling of being built up over time by the sands, with the inside like a dark cave that opens up to a light filled cavern. This experience is very reflective of the Christian belief system.

I didn't get that level of connection to the synagogue, but you could still feel the spirituality and history. It was a lovely experience.

Jewish school across from Synagogue

Another interior shot

Cooking - Vegetarian Night

Sometimes I know exactly what I want to make for dinner. Other nights I succumb to laziness and ask my husband what he wants for dinner. Normally, his response is generic. "Meat." Which equates to chicken breast in our house. Or maybe a turkey burger. Or he says "Pasta".

The other night my husband requested "something veg" for dinner. Since the end of last year, he has been more conscious about the amount of animal products he consumes, so this has become a more common request.

It's also a request I find easier to fill in the winter, as I have several very good vegetarian lentil stew-type recipes.

But, it's summer, I don't want to use the oven, and I had no idea what to make.

This is when Pepperplate comes to the rescue.

A while ago, I was searching the internet for a specific recipe. I had some combination of ingredients in mind and wanted a recipe follow. This happens to me a lot. So I ended up finding all these recipes that sounded good, but didn't quite fit the bill. And to save all that research, I put the best of the lot into Pepperplate.

And one of those recipes came in handy.

Scrolling through my list of recipes, I came across Spaghetti with Asparagus, Shiitake Mushrooms, Lemon, and Chives. It was perfect. I wasn't really looking for a pasta recipe, but, since our usual response to vegetarian is our standard pasta, it isn't shocking that it's what I settled on.

Now a few changes I made:

• I don't ever have shiitake mushrooms. Without going horribly out of my way, I wouldn't know where to get them. But I did have half a carton of regular white button mushroom in my fridge. Those would have to do.
• Also, my husband dislikes when his food is too lemony. (Ignoring his homemade lemonade, which even I think isn't sweet enough.) So, there was no way I was going to include lemon juice and peel. I only used the juice.

Things I made a point to stick to:

• I did buy vegetable stock and chives for the recipe. The vegetable stock was worth it. It provides a color and earthy flavor that you can't get from other broths. The chives weren't as important. Maybe I didn't add enough, or my chives weren't as fresh (read: flavorful) as they should have been, but they didn't add much in terms of flavor.
• I don't always follow cooking directions to a T, but this time I stuck pretty closely to the original directions. The dish turned out great, so I wouldn't do anything differently next time.
• The butter is also crucial. Definitely use it (mixed with oil as per the directions) to cook the mushrooms AND use it to thicken the sauce at the end. Nothing but real butter - I use unsalted - will do.

The result? We will definitely make this again. We ended up eating the whole pot, which usually happens with vegetarian posts. It was tasty, tasty, tasty.