A good problem to have!!!

Recently, I ran into this puzzling issue. BEB is big on drinking water. He drinks water before he sleeps, after getting up, Before tea, after tea, while heading out, as soon as he comes back...and every 10 minutes in between.

Wow! you would say...I wish I could have this habit! so do I. Drinking plenty of water is good for health and I'm also consciously trying to cultivate that habit myself. So often, while I'm franatically fixing dinner for us, I get this "Honey! could you get me a glass of water". Now getting that glass of water would mean, leaving whatever I'm doing, washing my hands, drying them, finding a glass, filling it and handing it over to dear husband. It looks like a small thing, but when I'm already in a hurry, it used to become an annoyance.

So I had a nice problem to have, but a problem nonetheless.

I would have continued with this state of affairs if I hadn't come across this deal. A pitcher and 4 glasses for $8 at Macys. Suddenly the pieces of the puzzle fell in place. Now every morning I fill the pitcher and keep it in the living room. Whenever I get a chance I refill it, while BEB drinks to his heart's content. Having a pitcher in the room even encourages me to drink more water. Isn't it an elegant solution to a nice problem!

Frugality is not about cheap, its about the choice

I like the frugal way of leading life. I like living light and having less stuff. I like the money in the bank and peace of mind that comes from being debt free. But even with all this I had a very difficult time explaining to myself why should I look after every penny I spent, why can't I buy a few things ( inexpensive) on impulse, why don't I feel right whenever I spend even a single dollar that I could have saved. Very recently I got the answer to this question through a personal experience.

Me and my husband used to go to a nearby trail everyday for biking. It was a great workout, we got to spend some quality time together and it was nice to breathe in the fresh air. It worked out really well from December to April but as summer approached our routine began to change. In summer, the sun would shine even before we could get up and get ready. Most of the days I began to avoid going out once it was even a little hot. Growing up in India and that too in relatively hotter parts of the country, I have this habit of avoiding sun as much as possible. Now the habit has become so ingrained that I can't stand even mildly hot sunshine. I experience headache, parched skin, breakouts and get really jumpy and irritated if I have to remain outside in full sun.
So during summers our workouts became smaller, because I just didn't want to remain outdoors for long. Now, that led to another problem because I was desperately trying to lose weight and reducing workouts was not really an option for me. To solve this problem I started going to the gym at my workplace. We have a nice one at my office and it is free for employees. I got a great workout and could see the impact on my weight. Still, a small issue remained. After tracking my weight for about one month, I noticed this pattern - my weight would steadily decrease during the week, but would climb back to its original place on Mondays. It was easy to see the reason for this - no workouts and an increase in the calories consumed. I realized that my weekends were undoing the whole week's workouts. Biking was not possible on weekends because we would usually get up late and by that time, sun would be shining brightly, making it difficult for me to remain outdoors for an hour or so. I had an obvious choice - taking membership of one of the gyms around here. So we tried a couple of gyms in our area and have finally settled on joining one of those. We're currently in the seven day trial period, but as soon as it ends, we are going to become paid members here. What has it got to do with frugality? Everything.

Had it not been for leading a frugal lifestyle, I wouldn't have been able to isolate needs from wants. Once I had known that I needed a gym membership for my physical well being, it didn't take me any time to make up my mind and add this expense to my monthly budget. Contrast this with the situation when I already had subscriptions of n magazines that I never bothered to even flip through, had paid for the fees of 4 classes that I had left after 2 days, had numerous unfinished craft projects stowed away here and there, I would have had a difficult time convincing myself that this gym membership is different, I really need it and will use it.

Frugality is not about sacrificing, its about choosing and prioritizing. Frugality makes you sift through unending list of expenses and come up with a few that are really important to you. I feel that it unclutters your view so that you can focus your time, resources and energy on the few things that really matter. With this thought in mind I add another twenty dollars to our monthly budget. Here's to a healthy life...!!!

Sprouts: Easy, quick ,healthy, versatile and yummy

Its rare to get all the qualities in a single food and mung bean sprouts easily qualify for this elite club of foods. Rich in Vitamin A, B and C, proteins and many minerals these sprouts could be your shortcut to getting wholesome nutrition.

Available in any Indian grocery store (and in health food store probably), these beans are super easy to sprout and very light on stomach.


I usually soak about a cup of beans at a time. Keep them in a bowl with 1 cup mung and 2 cups of water, the beans usually get about 1.5 times their initial size after soaking, so the bowl should be big enough to hold them.


Within 48 hours you should be able to see tiny white sprouts from the beans and at that point you can drain the surplus water. The sprouts are ready to eat now, but if you give the sprouts a couple more days to grow ( about 48 hours more) they will be tastier.

Depending on the quality of dry mung beans sometimes there are seeds that just don't sprout and remain hard even after all the soaking. if you see some such seeds you might want to pick them, or they will be hard to eat in whatever you prepare with the sprouts. An easy way to do this is to put all the sprouts in a big plate and then inclining the plate at an angle. Because the sprouted mungs are no longer round they will hang on to their place, but the unsprouted ones are still round in shape and they will slide of to the other end of you plate. From my experience I have seen that the bigger the size of dry mung beans, the better their chance of sprouting.

These sprouts can be eaten in variety of ways, and to me they're yummy in all their avtars.

You can eat them raw, or toss a handful in a salad.

You can microwave them in a bowl and add some lemon juice and salt ( and maybe pepper) and they are good to go. ( I personally love this version).

They can be roasted for a minute in a skillet.

You can stir-fry them with some pepper. Add some cilantro on top as shown in the picture. (BEB loves it)

Whatever you do, you can't go wrong with sprouts. Although mung beans are the easiest to sprout, once you get the hang of the things, you could also try chick-pea, grams and other beans.

This is a very inexpensive and easy way to pack more nutrition in your meals with less effort.

Slipping...

My former manager once commented:

"Such is life, you keep juggling multiple things and then sometime they fall off, you sit down for a moment pick them up and start juggling again."

I am feeling that I'm at such a point again where the things have fallen off my hand. I'm trying to remember this conversation, in order to focus that not everything is lost by this minor diversion and that we would be bouncing back soon.

Last week I had this pain in my shoulder which bothered me enough to work from home for 2 days. I am trying to be careful not to let it get worse again, so I'm keeping my household business to a minimum, which means a no breakfast preparation, no exercise and not much other extra activity.

I feel bad about this, exercising was a routine that me and Blue Eyed Boy picked up during last christmas holidays, and I have kept at it with all the enthusiasm I could muster. Top this up with a hearty homemade breakfast, and we had the healthiest routine ever.

But now I am just afraid that if I work for long hours or stretched myself too much, this pain may get worse and I don't want to get there. Plus there is a lot of work to finish before first week of May, that I cannot afford to take leave from office. I'm just hoping that I would be able to insert a wee bit of exercise from next week onwards, but this week we are just getting to the office as early as we can and get out in the evening early so that I can get proper rest in the evenings.

Let's hope that I can bounce back to the healthy routine next week.