It's the time of year when the floods start falling from the sky and when I cannot manage to get my feet warm or dry. Oregon winter. Ugh. What makes a prolonged day on campus a little less cold and drippy? A hot cuppa! Of course, a regular mocha habit is not exactly the cheapest of indulgences, so here's how to enjoy your hot drinks on a budget.
Most important: bring a reusable mug with you to campus. I am the worst retainer of travel mugs (I broke one in a fit of rage and misplaced the other), but I am determined to hang onto the one that I got for Christmas. A travel cup is excellent for bringing drinks from home, which are infinitely cheaper than even filter coffee on campus. If you are buying on campus, every EMU run shop on campus (including the Knight library) offers a 25 cent discount to anyone who brings his or her own cup. Bonus!
If you don't have a mug of your own, but like to drink a lot and pay a little, consider buying a Giving Mug at the Duck Stop in the bookstore. They are $9.99, you get a coupon for a free drink, and you can get a 16 oz drink for the price of a 12 oz every time you use it. $1 of each sale of a mug goes to the Moss Street Children's Center to support childcare at UO.
A little trick I learned: If I bring a tea bag in my lunch, plus my travel mug, I can get hot water at the library coffeeshop for FREE, and I've got a steaming cuppa that cost me pennies instead of dollars.
Mondays and Wednesdays are usually when I find myself dragging on campus. Lucky for me, that's when the Duckstop offers $1 coffees! On Mondays, they offer a $1 12oz that has twice the caffeine of regular house coffee. I only had the supercharged drink once, but I tell you, I was a GENIUS for hours afterward! On Wednesdays, they offer $1 house coffee in any size. Travel mug discounts may not apply at the Duck Stop, because I have never been offered one when buying my $1 coffees, but that may not apply to all drinks.
In this stormy weather, let's tip back a cup of liquid sunshine on the cheap!
Showing posts with label Foodstuffs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Foodstuffs. Show all posts
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Fall Harvest=Savings!
It's fall! It's cold! It's rainy and muddy! That means it's a great time to go to the out of doors and participate in the harvest, that special experience where the earth starts decorating with tasty things to eat, and we get the benefits. That was a little less poetic than I was going for...
This weekend I went to Detering Orchards. A trip requires a car, so if you don't have one, talk up the trip a few weeks before with car-bearing friends. It's on Coburg Road, past the town of Coburg, keep going, enter Linn County, and when you think you should turn around, keep going. On weekends it's crowded with children, but sometimes they have free apple pie and ice cream. Score! Once there, you and your friends grab big five gallon buckets and head for the trees. Most of the rows are labeled with the type of apples. Now, here's the trick to getting the most fruit for your dollar: windfalls. There's a discount if you pick your apples up off the ground, and you should really have no trouble finding rot-free apples. My roommate and I filled up two buckets and paid $16.50.
Now I've got to have an apple processing party for myself. My cousin scoped out some mason jars from a free box, which are reserved for apple sauce and maybe a few jars of chutney. I'm using this website as a reference for all my canning needs: Ball Canning and Preserving I've got my own food dehydrator, but since that one got send home to my parents', I'll be borrowing most of my preserving things from Grandma: food dehydrator, big canning pot, jar lifter, peeler/corer/slicer (these things are amazing!) and jar rings. The only thing I'm going to have to buy out of this deal are the apples and flat lids for the mason jars. Preserving means they won't go bad before I eat them, and I'll have tasty applestuffs through the winter! My after Halloween plans: grab all the unused/discounted pumpkins I can and freeze the pumpkin for pies!
This weekend I went to Detering Orchards. A trip requires a car, so if you don't have one, talk up the trip a few weeks before with car-bearing friends. It's on Coburg Road, past the town of Coburg, keep going, enter Linn County, and when you think you should turn around, keep going. On weekends it's crowded with children, but sometimes they have free apple pie and ice cream. Score! Once there, you and your friends grab big five gallon buckets and head for the trees. Most of the rows are labeled with the type of apples. Now, here's the trick to getting the most fruit for your dollar: windfalls. There's a discount if you pick your apples up off the ground, and you should really have no trouble finding rot-free apples. My roommate and I filled up two buckets and paid $16.50.
Now I've got to have an apple processing party for myself. My cousin scoped out some mason jars from a free box, which are reserved for apple sauce and maybe a few jars of chutney. I'm using this website as a reference for all my canning needs: Ball Canning and Preserving I've got my own food dehydrator, but since that one got send home to my parents', I'll be borrowing most of my preserving things from Grandma: food dehydrator, big canning pot, jar lifter, peeler/corer/slicer (these things are amazing!) and jar rings. The only thing I'm going to have to buy out of this deal are the apples and flat lids for the mason jars. Preserving means they won't go bad before I eat them, and I'll have tasty applestuffs through the winter! My after Halloween plans: grab all the unused/discounted pumpkins I can and freeze the pumpkin for pies!
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Food Stamp Flop: (hopefully) Part 1
Knowing that my financial need for this school year and those to come will far exceed my means, I submitted an application for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Progam, SNAP, also known as food stamps. Filling out the form was easy. Oregonians can apply online here http://www.oregon.gov/DHS/assistance/foodstamps/foodstamps.shtml. But when I got to the DHS office, I was in for a big disappointment.
The restrictions on food benefits for students are strict. A student can only receive SNAP benefits if they are:
A full time student working 20 hours or more a week
A single parent with a child under 12
A married parent with a child under 6
Working any hours of work-study
Ah, there it is, my weird student situation rearing its ugly head again. Since I already have a degree in English, I'm ineligible for work-study (and most scholarships). But I'm not a graduate student, so I can't work a graduate teaching position. Therefore, in addition to paying out the wazoo for school, I also can't eat.
The worker at the DHS office was cold. As I failed to hold back tears wondering how in the world I was going to afford to eat, he passed over a list of places that hand out food boxes and told me it wasn't his decision. Them's the rules. I was really counting not having to worry about where I would find my next meal. It took a hit to my pride to admit that I needed government help, and finding out it was all for nothing is depressing. I don't know how any full time student can manage to work 20 hours a week and still get good grades like I want.
I'm not taking the denial lying down. I'm going back with my employment verification and financial aid in hand, and writing my elected officials to explain how unfair this is for independent students without help from their parents. I encourage other students in this situation to do the same.
Meanwhile, I'll have to stop by Kesey Square in downtown Eugene for Food Not Bombs, free food every Friday at 2pm and pull my weight for church dinners at The Gathering Place in Springfield on Sundays at 5:30. This blog may turn into a lot of "eating well on the cheap."
The restrictions on food benefits for students are strict. A student can only receive SNAP benefits if they are:
A full time student working 20 hours or more a week
A single parent with a child under 12
A married parent with a child under 6
Working any hours of work-study
Ah, there it is, my weird student situation rearing its ugly head again. Since I already have a degree in English, I'm ineligible for work-study (and most scholarships). But I'm not a graduate student, so I can't work a graduate teaching position. Therefore, in addition to paying out the wazoo for school, I also can't eat.
The worker at the DHS office was cold. As I failed to hold back tears wondering how in the world I was going to afford to eat, he passed over a list of places that hand out food boxes and told me it wasn't his decision. Them's the rules. I was really counting not having to worry about where I would find my next meal. It took a hit to my pride to admit that I needed government help, and finding out it was all for nothing is depressing. I don't know how any full time student can manage to work 20 hours a week and still get good grades like I want.
I'm not taking the denial lying down. I'm going back with my employment verification and financial aid in hand, and writing my elected officials to explain how unfair this is for independent students without help from their parents. I encourage other students in this situation to do the same.
Meanwhile, I'll have to stop by Kesey Square in downtown Eugene for Food Not Bombs, free food every Friday at 2pm and pull my weight for church dinners at The Gathering Place in Springfield on Sundays at 5:30. This blog may turn into a lot of "eating well on the cheap."
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