Educating the Wheelers

I realize what I’m about to say is an American blasphemy, but here goes:

I hate libraries.

I know, I know. No, really, I know. My mom is even a librarian. And there isn’t a weird childhood “I was competing with the evil libraries for my mom’s attention!” thing going on there, since she didn’t become one until after I was long gone out of the house.

But see, here’s the thing about libraries — You have to bring the books back.

It would not be in any way an overstatement to say we probably have 10,000 books in our house. And our collection doesn’t hold a candle to my parents’. The apple does not fall far from the tree.

The vast majority were purchase used, cream skimmed from the top of garage sales, thrift stores, used book stores, so it’s not quite the financial Armageddon it appears at first glance. But it is still my Achilles’ heel, and I have to be vigilant.

So my mom, librarian extraordinaire, is nudging me along. Her first tip was to tool through my lengthy Amazon wish list and request a few. Apparently, I am one of the longest of the long tail since my county library had only about 20% of what I was looking for. Statewide interlibrary loan was able to find about another half. I’m looking to see if there is a procedure for requesting the library purchase some of the remaining items.

So far, I’ve ended up bringing several books back unread at the end of the two weeks, because with the small kids around, I get to read a bit here, a bit there, and I have some books that it has taken me months to get through. But this change could save a significant chunk of cash, so I’m going to try sticking with it.

This post is a big “shout out” (as the kids used to say) to everyone who only buys boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Because of your preferences, my local grocery store has frequent sales of leg quarters for 59 cents a pound. Fifty-nine cents! For some perspective, tomatoes were 3.29/lb that same day. (Admittedly, it is still the dark night of winter up here. But still…)

A couple of nights ago, I took one of those ~5lb packages and baked it up, then stripped the chicken off and put the bones in some baggies. So what can you do with less than 3 dollars worth of meat?

That night, we had Hillbilly Housewife’s Chicken Fajitas. The next day, we had both Tightwad Gazette’s “Tuna Cheddar Chowder” made with chicken instead and a stuffing and gravy bake. I still had quite a bit of chicken leftover, but decided to make a ground chicken sandwich spread with it. There was even enough to send some home for my folks. (It made a nice breakfast this morning.)

So. Less than 3 dollars worth of meat, 5 meals.

And I haven’t even made stock with the bones yet!