You should look up huitlacoche. It’s. So. Delicious. Totally vegan too 
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Mascarpone is actually not a cultured cheese! It’s just cream + lemon juice cooked over some heat together.
That being said, nope, love me all the cheeses… 10 is not enough. (I would sing a different tune if I could’t digest them.)
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Fascinating thread. I have an instant pot, but had no idea I could bake potatoes in it OR use it as an air fryer with the right lid!
I’m also interested in those almond crescent cookies. @NewGig. I am trying to make almond extract by soaking slivered almonds in vodka for 4-6 months. But it doesn’t seem to be working. The almonds aren’t giving off much flavour. It’s been four months. They were last checked a couple weeks ago. Hmmm…maybe I should check again. The almonds were older when I started the process, though they had been kept in the freezer to stay fresh. Anyways, I’m thinking of giving up on the almond extract and using the almonds in other food. Not sure what to do with vodka with a very weak almond flavour to it. Maybe bake with it anyways?
Otherwise today’s meals were simple. Hm freezer meals for lunch and supper. Lunch was seed crusted chicken and supper was beef stew.
I honestly cannot tell if you are fucking with me, or not.
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Almond Crescents
1.25C toasted ground almonds
1C unsalted butter, softened
1/2C sugar
1 t each vanilla and almond extracts
2C unbleached flour
Toast almonds. Grind.
Cream butter. Gradually add sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Add extracts.
Stir in flour and nuts, mixing to blend well. Form into ball and wrap with waxed paper. Chill for 1 hour.
One teaspoon at a time, shape dough into crescents 2-3" long. Put on ungreased baking sheets about 1" apart. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes or until golden.
Freeze if desired or store tightly covered at room temperature. Defrost frozen cookies to serve.
If taking to a party, Carry to party in container they were stored in and arrange on platter when there.
Source: Marian Burros, You’ve Got it Made: Make-Ahead Meals for the Family and for Cooperative Dinner Parties.
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That’s part of my charm haha but no I am not fucking with you! It’s widely eaten and I absolutely fell in love with it the first time I ate it. I’d describe it as the closest thing to vegan foie gras possible. It’s rich and buttery but also pungent and earthy. It’s like melted minerals and fat but magically it’s all just…a corn disease.
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Perdue Farms is having their freezer filler sale. So if anyone wants to stock up here’s the link:
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Wow, great deals! If I had an extra freezer I would totally stock up. Let us know what you get! 
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Nah I’m not getting anything this time. I’m good on my stock as well.
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Ok so I’ve been doing all sorts of planning and thinking and researching the last couple of days because I realized I messed up my estimates for buying a house.
Money and emotions rambling, long!
I forgot to include PMI in our monthly costs, so I thought our monthly costs would decrease if we bought and now I see that’s not the case. (Note: Using an FHA loan is the only way we can afford to buy.) I also didn’t understand that an FHA is an ARM and I just learned about how adjusted rates work. If I’m understanding correctly, the highest interest an FHA ARM can go is 5% so I’m now using that max number as my baseline to make sure we can afford the payments.
I was thinking our monthly mortgage would be like $1,700 but instead it will be a max of $2,110 ($300k house) which is even higher than our rent now. I felt a wave of crushing disappointment and embarrassment at all of it (along with, if I could work full time too, if we were both able and could bring in checks and weren’t single income, if my medical costs weren’t so high, if I hadn’t had to leave my job, if we were like everyone else, this wouldn’t matter…etc.).
Anyway, I briefly felt Very Sorry for myself, lol, and like Life Was Hard and Unfair because I thought oh man, this is impossible and we’re not even able to hit $1k cash savings each month so there is no way this will ever happen. Renting forever is also problematic here because costs are rising, so I got a little bit twisted up feeling like I’ve done a terrible job at all of this and have spent too much and will be doomed to live somewhere I really don’t like.
Then, I decided to look at the bigger picture and here’s what I figured out as the actual facts:
$5,410.64 net a month
$64,927.68 net a year (not including bonuses)
If we save $1,000 a month cash we are living on $52,927.68 a year (not including bonuses, biggest ever was $6k)
We will be saving overall (including retirement and employer contributions) $1,693 a month.
This is $20,316 savings/investing a year.
This puts us close to our initial $50k year spend FIRE goal, which we should hit in 2037, three years after becoming millionaires. AND, this part isn’t even accurate anymore, because all of that is based on my husband’s salary numbers from 2020. And it was based on the assumption that he would never make any more money than he did at the time. So probably we will hit those numbers even earlier.
What all this means, to me, is that actually we’re doing astonishingly well all things considered. It also means that decreasing our cost of living is actually not that important. We can afford to pay a $2,110 monthly mortgage, and it will secure our place in the city and help us build equity. I already have an emergency fund of about $10k saved for emergency house repairs, that’s outside of the mortgage savings. The house will be filled with compromises because of our budget, but it will be OURS, and it will be wonderful, and I will make it a home.
I was very fixated on the idea of getting a mortgage that was lower than our rent, and upping our savings rate to a super high number. I think some of it was keeping up with the joneses, in terms of saving and building wealth, and mostly the joneses in my head! I see now that actually we are very on track for buying a nice little place when our lease is up, for staying planted where we are and building some permanence, for continuing to enjoy all the luxuries and extras we have now, for hitting FIRE at a young age, etc.
I’m already not working outside the home, obviously, but one of my biggest drivers in all this is (in addition to my own security) to make it so my husband doesn’t have to work when he is older. I would love for him to be able to gradually shift to part-time, retire early, enjoy life, get a recreational degree (he’d love to study physics). He’s given me so much and I feel like I am the steward of all his hard work.
It’s a huge responsibility, and I want to do whatever I can to make sure his effort pays off, because honestly if I decided to spend 100% of his income and told him he had to keep working forever, he would do it. If I demanded a vacation every year, he would say yes immediately. If I told him he had to get a second job so we could get a nicer house, he would do it without question. When he made minimum wage he worked 11 hours a day, 7 days a week, because that’s what it took. He has never, in all our years together, questioned a single purchase or even asked what it cost. When I buy something for myself he congratulates me, “good for you baby! I’m so glad you got that for yourself!”
I have absolute free reign with our money. He wants me to have everything I want so badly that he will say yes to anything I want. I think that and how much I love him and appreciate him is part of why I got so furious with myself about messing up the PMI thing. I so want him to see that his work has given us this amazing life. And then I felt embarrassed for being so ungrateful in my feelings, you know, thinking “oh this is so hard, we can’t get the perfect place, etc”.
I feel a LOT more positive now! Even at the worst interest rates, even without more salary, even with my medical costs, even with luxuries like restaurants and exotic groceries and nice clothing, we will make it! <3 Whew! Thanks to anyone who muddled through all of that.
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I love all of this so so much.
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You are always #relationshipgoals 
Mortgage and savings
We have different salaries/budgets/etc. but also decided to buy a place last year for similar reasons. It’s more perfect than I could have imagined (for us) even though we did have to make some compromises and it’s not “perfect” for everyone.
We are in a spendy period of life right now and other than automatic retirement savings + mortgage payments we aren’t really saving. It was really freaking me out at first. BUT. Like you, we spent a long time getting a head start on retirement savings and building up cash for a down payment that’s separate from an emergency fund. Now is the time to put that plan into action. I was trying to hold onto your mindset of “save $1000 per month” after we bought a house but that money is now going partially towards a mortgage that is higher than our rent and partially towards funding house projects, including slowly replacing furniture that we’ve moved from apartment to apartment over the last 10 years that we never liked in the first place. (For the record, I have not gotten a new dresser yet, am still looking for something perfect that’s under $2K 
)
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One of the things for us buying (both times, lol) was the quality of life for the dollar is higher in our markets. Also, you’re paying down the principal and building equity so there’s a fair chunk there- for us, $760 from a $2100 (ish) payment this month was toward principal.
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Also, gosh, several of those paragraphs could have been about SirB and I. I feel so much responsibility toward our money and toward buying his freedom.
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That’s so wonderful to hear <3.
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I was really struggling with the quality of life thing because we can’t afford to buy something as nice as we’re renting. But I think when I look at the whole picture, it is worth it. And honestly we could afford something bigger and nicer if we moved a lot farther out but to me that’s not worth it. I’d rather stay in the city and “downgrade” in lifestyle in exchange for securing our spot here, if that makes sense? The equity is a really good point too. I had honestly almost forgotten about that factor since I’ve been so consumed with the other moving parts.
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Also PMI is not forever. You two seem really great together and I love reading your posts.
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So, you might have answered this earlier/elsewhere, and totally fair if you just don’t want to get into it, but…
Why is this so urgent?
It seems like the choice is framed as “buy now with FHA/ARM/PMI” or “rent forever”. Is saving for another year untenable?
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I think that’s a smart choice. If/when you still live there 5-10years later and have more money (equity/retirement/savings) you can chose to start upgrading the place or sell and buy something a little nicer.
I’ve shared before that our condo has a pretty nicely upgraded (but older) kitchen which makes me very happy because we cook as much as you do.
Our bathroom is very much not upgraded and you have to squeeze through the space between the door and the toilet to get into the shower. The sink is outside the bathroom with cheap falling apart cabinets and carpet (yuck!). But, it’s worth the tradeoff for now! If we’re still happy here after 5 years I will start saving to renovate it.
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Thank you <3 we hit the jackpot in the love department. I have been reading about getting rid of PMI. It seems like you have to refinance to a fixed rate mortgage to do that? I haven’t looked into it too deeply yet since it’s a ways away but it’s a good reminder!
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