Waste not, want not...

HALLIE EPHRON: I knew I’d been in lock-down for too long when my toaster caught fire and I went running around looking for… my camera.

As someone who once pooh-poohed Facebook, it’s now my life line. After dumping said toaster in the trash, I did not jump onto Amazon and search for the best price for a replacement (free shipping!) I went to the web site of my local hardware store and paid what they were asking plus shipping. Because I want local businesses to still be there when we all crawl out from the bunker.

Besides, what else am I spending my money on? I’m not eating out, not driving anywhere, living in my sweats, and appreciating the bounty that comes with a once-a-month Peapod order that I have to get up at midnight to snag. 

I’m determined to use every scrap, stem and skin of the food I’m lucky enough to score. This week I froze an overripe banana. (Someday: banana bread.) Cut off the rotten half of an apple and made a dessert  crumble with the good half, some frozen berries from the fridge, and Lucy’s Granola. Counted tangerines before I ate one, to be sure they’d last until my shopping order comes next week. And filled yet another plastic bag with… plastic bags, trusting that some day I will feel comfortable actually going to the supermarket and putting my accumulated bounty in their recycle bin. My freezer is packed but organized  because knowing what’s in there and when it went in is critical to getting through a month between food deliveries.

However, this orderly frugality does not go so far as an article in the New York Times suggested, dying my clothes using food scraps. Yes, you can dye a cotton T-shirt with the water you cooked beets in… something which I had long ago inadvertently discovered to be true. That, my friends, is a bridge too far

How have you changed your habits in lockdown, and have you found your outer limit when it comes to waste-not want-not?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I am trying to think of this as amusing,when it really isn’t. But I am riveted by sell-by/use-by dates, and am eagle-eyeing which container of precious milk Jonathan is about to open. 

“We have to eat THIS lettuce first,” I say. “And we’ll eat half the green beans and freeze the rest. Each person gets half a chicken breast, not a whole one.” 

Alexa,weirdly, is my go-to. “Alexa,” I’ll say out loud,”How do you freeze carrots?” And she knows. I have never blanched more vegetables in my life.

I know I told you about growing green onions from the snipped off roots. Which worked, briefly, and then smelled. HORRIBLE. I don’t  recommend it.

(HALLIE: Here's my scallions, grown according to Hank's directions... jury is still out.)

I have concocted all kinds of dishes from leftovers, leftover grilled chicken with roasted carrots in mustard sauce--make enough for two meals, freeze half) , penne with grilled brussels sprouts and lemon zest. (DItto on freeze-half.)  I made croutons from frozen hot dog buns left over from last July.

 I really grimaced when we ran out of capers (I know, first world, but we had them before) and WITHOUT THINKING,  I dumped out the caper juice. And then I  thought--NOOOO! I could have done something with that!  I am still hoarding egg yolks, which I truly think is your bridge too far, Hallie.

And I am swooning with sorrow over having to throw away the nice plastic bags that the delivered groceries come in,because YOU NEVER KNOW.  (And I have frozen browning bananas, too. In the freezer, next to the egg yolks.) 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I have long had some extremely frugal habits, inherited via my mother, who got them from her mother, who made it through the Great Depression with three daughters and a husband whose business failed - and see, now we’re entering another such period (my vote for its name: the Biggest Recession) and three lifetimes of rinsing tin foil and reusing paper bags pays off!

I’m spending more on groceries, because I used to comparison shop, and load up on sale items and day-olds, and now it’s just “what do they have that we want” at Target and at a once-a-month run to our local grocery store. But I’m amazed to find I still have way more money in my account than usual I’ve never thought of myself as a consumer - I don’t shop for fun, and I thought I kept a pretty tight hold on my pursestrings, but it’s eye-opening to see how much more I have when I can’t go to the movies/eat out/casually grab a pizza/meet friends for drinks. 

I’m saving seeds from bell peppers and butternut squash, which I can plant in seedling pots (already hoarded) with potting soil (ditto.) I’m growing carrots from the cut off tops like Hank - Hank, what do I do now they’re sprouting greenery? And I’ve cut up a ragged pair of pajama bottoms and an old t-shirt into still more rags, so we can save the paper towels for truly gross stuff, like when one of the cats barf.

Our big re-use is with cardboard boxes. We’re getting far more deliveries than usual, with fits hand-in-glove with the Maine Millennial ramping up her eBay business. (She sells books, magazines and model kits she inherited from her uncle.) Every single box delivered to our house is used to mail out another delivery to someone else’s house. Sometimes, she cuts down the big ones or makes a larger one out of two smaller boxes. So I guess I should say there are FOUR lifetimes of Great Depression behavior in action at our house.

RHYS BOWEN: I live with a man who grew up in the war years! I’ve had to stop him from rinsing out and hoarding every glass bottle since day one. We certainly are not wasting any food, keeping the freezer full. I ordered green beans and they delivered 4 pounds! So John blanched and froze most of them. I ordered ground beef and they delivered five pounds so we’ve been working our way through that. But I’m not growing onions or dying old clothes!

I find I don’t think of the cost of any food I order. We’re not eating out/ driving so saving money. And I find I don’t want to buy clothes etc. I see ads for a cute dress and think that I have too many clothes already. How boring we’ve become. And of course not spending money on travel. My only splurge is a Yamaha keyboard so I can play piano.

JENN McKINLAY: I am on deadline. I do not have the free time that frugality requires. Plus, I have teenagers, so (said in Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess from Downton Abbey voice) “What are leftovers?” Three pounds of chicken for fajitas last night and there wasn’t a scrap left. I had to apologize to the dogs. LOL. I am very frugal by nature (Scottish) so there’s not much that’s changing around here.

We are hardcore recyclers, composters, and reusers of stuff. One of my post deadline projects is to repurpose an old bed frame to fence in the garden, which has been expanded this year, so there’s that. 

LUCY BURDETTE: We have decided to head north soon for the summer (and who knows how long after), so I’m using all the things in the freezer. A LOT of chicken rice soup that I made in case we got sick. We had it three days in a row last week and we are sick of that soup! I also see some mashed sweet potatoes--will they be worth eating? And Hank’s egg whites. Sigh. I think they are going to have to go because I’m done with baking for now…

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Although my mother grew up during the Depression she was not particularly frugal in her food shopping. Although she loved consignment shops and charity sales, I never saw her save a coupon or plan a food budget, and she loved to buy expensive seafood in particular. These habits I am afraid she handed down to me, sigh, and now with the online ordering I think I'm spending more money on food than ever because you never know what you are actually going to get..

HOWEVER, I'm not spending money on much else. No clothes shopping, no meals out, no hair appointments, no manicure/pedicures. I haven't even spent much on the garden this year, which is normally my big spring splurge. And of course, no travel. I am trying to save every last bit of everything, and stuffing the freezer with leftovers.

HALLIE: So how about the rest of us? Have your habits changed in lockdown? Are you scrimping or splurging... or both? If you're feeling flush, donate to your local food bank. There's a lot of folks out there with much bigger issues than how to tie-dye T-shirts with beet juice.