Retirement — I’m almost, but not quite there yet. Eligible, but yet ready.
So, the flyer on the cafeteria wall grabs my attention and embeds itself in the “interested section” of my consciousness. I’m hooked by an idea. “Join your coworkers on a bus trip To go shopping in New York City.”
Hey! We can practice being retired! All the senior centers put together special bus trips! We can pretend that this is one of those
trip! So, off went my $40 check the the gal who is organizing the trip. What the heck; it would cost me more to park in “the City”, although twenty
years ago I thought nothing of driving into Manhattan and trolling for a free space on the street.
When we got to New York, we found ourselves on the edge of “Little Korea”. Though it is comprised of just a few blocks, it does offer our favorite food, so we looked for a good restaurant and dug in.
Unfortunately, the restaurant didn’t get the message about our ’senior class trip’, and took all but a few dollars of our food allotment; but, it was worth it!
We got to visit Macy’s — something my wife has always wanted to do. We also got to see “Phantom of the Opera” on a couple of discount matinee tickets. After the show, our day was over and we returned to the bus.
Watching the bus driver deal with traffic was enough to convince me that despite the limitations of a scheduled trip like this, I do not want to drive to New York on my own. And, it’s not just a matter of age! I used to drive into the city at least once a month when I was in my twenties. Sure, age affects your ability to do things like that, but traffic seems at least twice as bad as it once was.
I’d consider taking one of the discount scheduled buses to the city. Or, perhaps, drive to one of the close-by cities like Jersey City or Newark and take a train the rest of the way. It would be a little more expensive but I wouldn’t have to deal with either the traffic or the huge parking fees, but we would be on our own schedule and can linger when we want.

You’ve really got to be creative to eat on the cheap and enjoy it. Make yourself aware of the bargains that abound and you’ll walk away satisfied — even stuffed — with excellent victuals.

A frequent example, one that’s pretty well available country wide, is Olive Garden’s all-you-can-eat soup and salad, on their lunch menu. Not only is the salad top grade, but so are the soups: usually chicken gnocchi, vegetarian minestrone, zuppa toscano (creamy sausage soup with potatoes) and pasta fagiolo.
One thing you’ll enjoy along with the food at O.G. is the waitstaff. They are pleasant, outgoing and eager to please — something you don’t always see in a waiter or waitress. Here’s another unusual aspect of the O.G. waitstaff: we’ve gotten to know the staff at our local Olive Garden on sight, if not by name. Many of them have been there for years, something you don’t often see at restaurants: more often, you’ll see a fresh set of faces with each visit. What difference does that make? It tells you that the management appreciates the staff and shows it, and so the staff is happy, with the result that they treat us — the customer — well.
Prices will vary from one O.G. to another for various reasons, but we’ve been paying around $18 for our soup and salad lunches with coffee for the two of us. My girl will usually have two bowls of salad and most often just one, though occasionally two bowls of soup. As for me, she’ll “tchh-tchh” me for having a third bowl of soup and a third bowl of salad every time.
When you think about it, the waiter probably works harder for the all-you-can-eat meal with refills of salad, soup, coffee and (yum) breadsticks, than he/she has to work for a conventional meal. With that in mind, and considering the always excellent service, we usually leave more of a tip than when we order a meal.
If you haven’t tried Olive Garden, recently or ever, go to www.olivegarden.com and find one near you. You can check out their menu at that site, with prices, for your local O.G.  If the Soup and Salad lunch deal doesn’t appeal to you, you’ll find their entrees reasonable, and all that they offer is great. And, if you are traveling, we’ve found that they are consistently good, no matter the location, so keep them in mind as you bounce around the country!

I signed up for a special package deal through my cable company 25 months ago: Cable, Phone and Internet for only $99 per month for two years. It seemed like such a great deal at the time, since the alternatives were either slower or more expensive and one check to one provider seemed so attractive. Of course, I ignored the fine print that told me that the “free” (and addictive) Digital Video Recorder was only free for the first year. When I noticed the $16 monthly rental on my bill 13 months ago, I called and groused about the DVR charge and how slow my internet connection seemed to be. My next feat of sales resistance resulted in keeping the DVR for another year, adding some kind of warpspeed option and an additional package of channels so I could watch FoxBusinessNews. The chap I spoke with was a Macintosh fan (I do Macintosh support for a living) and so we had some rapport established. After about about 15 minutes of ranting about the PC’s he has to use he signed me up for another $20 per month, with my knowing that this would all come home to roost in a year.

Well the second year is up – and the roost is full! My first bill just arrived and I have to pony up $170 per month to keep the service.

I won’t.

I’m looking for suggestions on how to cut costs and separate as much of my services as I can.

We used to spend a good hour of each evening, after returning home from our jobs, preparing our evening meals. Saturdays and Sundays, we often spent more time preparing more elaborate meals. Think about it . . . over a year’s time, that amounts to at least 465 hours each year, considering the extra hundred or so on weekend cooking!

We gave it a lot of thought and researched methods of cutting our meal prep time and came up with a very obvious solution. I say “obvious” mainly because it should have been; however, it took an article in someone else’s blog to remind us that by doubling the amount of food prepared each time, and therefore doubling the number of meals prepped in the same time, we cut our cooking time in half.

Some trial and error is necessary to refine your technique, however. If you knew me personally, you’d realize that I have a problem with food: I eat too much of it. So, making a double batch of dinner, also doubles my temptation to overeat. That challenge can be overcome, though, by immediately packing away the 2nd meal — it’s not ironclad, but it adds a layer of security, so to speak.

One hurdle to overcome is the fact that just doubling ingredients gives you two batches: not so. Certain seasonings, notoriously salt, should not be doubled (try 1-1/2 the original amount). Others can be more than doubled, like garlic, or stock. Err on the side of caution and taste as you go.

There’s a cookbook around, called “Cook Once Eat Twice”, which gives you a recipe for the second meal in which you modify the leftovers and create an entirely new meal from it.. Not all of the combos appeal to us, so I sometimes try to modify the rerun myself. Today’s roast chicken can become tomorrow’s chicken pot pie (using low fat additions, of course) Take some of Sunday’s pot roast, cubed, and add it to some beef stock and frozen or leftover veggies, throw in some barley and a bayleaf, and you have beef barley soup. Bigger cubes and more barley and you have beef barley stew.

Some great ideas come from a menu/meal planning service called E-Mealz (www.e-mealz.com). They provide, at a cost of less than $5.00 per month, a weekly meal planner that includes shopping lists! When you sign up, you select any one of several categories. I’ve tried a couple of them, including one designed for WeightWatcher’s fans (not endorsed by WeightWatchers), a low-fat category, and one which just prescribes meals of ‘general’ type. Many of the meals may be called “comfort food”, to my way of thinking. Some of the meals are downright ingenious, like one which takes simple broth, chicken chunks, veggies and other simple ingredients, to which you add a few flour tortillas, cut in strips, and PRESTO you have quick and easy chicken and dumplings literally in minutes.

Each week’s E-Mealz edition gives 5 or 7 recipes for dinner and gives a consolidated shopping list, so that if there are two recipes calling for 1/2 pound and 3/4 pounds of chicken breast, it’ll tell you to buy 1-1/4 pounds of chicken breast.

As soon as I figure this blogging thing all out, I’ll be providing links to many of the things I’ve referred to.