Recession Busters: Food, Fun & Frugality

Avoiding eating out at restaurants and instead cooking inexpensive meals at home is one wonderful way to save money during the recession. Clara, a 94 year old woman whose parents raised her during the Great Depression, has many great recipes posted online. I watched a video of how to make her father's favorite meal, Couscous Stew, and have posted the link below.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OPQqH3YlHA&feature=player_embedded


This recipe is not very difficult to prepare and the ingredients are not costly, which makes it a valuable recipe for recessionary times.


A few recession busters which I have heard about lately. Many small businesses are growing even during this recessionary time. Banquet Tables Pro LLC received an award for being a great recession busting home business. The company focuses on the time post-recession when corporate parties and banquets will be booming.

There are several tips to saving money during a recession which I have found to be helpful. Limit eating out to once or twice a month, and go to reasonably priced restaurants when going out. Try to go to the grocery store only once a week, and use coupons at the grocery store, many of which can be printed online. It is important to converse gas and carpool when possible. Try to avoid going to the movie theater and instead renting movies at home. Enjoy going to the library and checking out books for free, rather than spending money on buying them. Life can be a little smoother during a recession if you use your resources wisely.

A Consumer's how to # 44 how to & make

I enjoyed exploring the sites Ehow, Wikkihow and Instructables. My favorite site though is Instructables, because I found lots of interesting receipes, especially Indian receipes. I watched some videos and learned some really good Indian receipes.I am sure I could use these receipes for my cooking.

Post # 43 - Buying and Selling

1.I enjoyed exploring the sites listed. I checked out Craigslist, Ebay, Amazon and Etsy. I have used Amazon and Craigslist before. I have purchased things through Amazon and sold a few items through Craigslist. My family uses Amazon all the time, especially for electronics. The prices are very reasonable, and the items are shipped directly to my house. My favorite site though, is Craigslist because it has a lot of interesting items. It is very convenient because you can find items from any city you are in and get really good deals. I had never heard of Etsy site before, but I really like this site. Because it has some nice handmade items which might be good for some unique gifts.

2.PayPal, seems like is safe and convenient method of making payment. I could use paypal because me and my family buy oftenly on the internet. It seems safer and easier than entering your credit card information with any new company. We recently bought few things and the website listed paypal as the preferred method of payment, but I didn't have an account. I will probably sign up for one soon.

Post 30-Spring Cleaning,Don't clutter up expensive cyberspace

I don't have anything to clean out on the s drive. Janet showed me how to place a file on the s drive, so I practiced that. I cannot see myself using this much. I moved my p drive folder from staff p drive to my own account. I also cleaned out the sent mail folder in my e-mail. I will continue working on keeping myself organized.

Post 29 - Spring Cleaning, E mail

I am so excited, after completing this exercise, I only have less then 10 emails left in my account. I originally had 60 emails when I started. I always felt I might be needing them, so they kind of piled up on me. But since we were doing this as a work- related activity, I felt pretty good about spending some time on this. I created new folders for emails I wanted to keep, renamed a couple of them, and just had a great time getting organized. From now on, I will make an effort to take action on emails in a timely manner and delete anything not needed.

Post 28 - Spring Cleaning , take a load off your drives

GTD-Getting Things Done. I like the idea of making GTDs easy to store and track the information you need to complete the tasks. I thought this exercise was pretty interesting as I am always trying to find ways to organize my paperwork. I always write my personal appointments and special events in my diary. I signed up on the "remember the milk" site. List reminders and plan your time can always be done at this site. I looked at the google calendar also, and it's really good. But I still like my paper calendar and my small diary, it is easy to manage.

Week 10 - Post 23 The End

I can't believe that I finished all my 23 things on time. Every week was kind of exciting and stressful, never knowing about the next assignment. Every Monday Naomi would set up the lab for us and help us with our assignment. I learned quite a bit. I don't believe that I actually did all the new things on the computer that my kids tell me about. Flickr was my favorite one. It was fun downloading pictures. I liked facebook too, and looking at my daughter's pictures. I had fun playing around with Avator also. It surprised me that after doing a few assignments, I was feeling comfortable with technology. Technology is amazing, and how much stuff you can do on the internet is beyond my imagination. I don't think that I am going to use everything I learned because I won't have that much time. Even if I use a few things, I think going through this training is worth it.