Found it at Boston Gal. She’s a peach!

More details are available at ING. Of course there’s a lot of rules and conditions, but it’s worthwhile for new accounts.

I’ve been very happy with my ING account and the fact that they offer short term CD’s in any amount. I am a terrible saver and being able to lock up a few hundred dollars at a time means I won’t go out on a wild shopping spree since I have the cash in hand.

If you need a referral, please email me at mapgirl [at] rangers [dot] org.

EDIT: Someone complained without leaving their name or a way to communicate. Their criticism was invalid since I later realized they thought I was talking about the generic Korean word for soup, ‘kuk’, instead of ‘jook’. So nevermind and just enjoy the soup and beware the Internet.

I could open a fast food place called Mapgirl’s Jook Joint. (I’m quitting my job any minute now to open this place…) This is for Caitlin at Clutter2Cash & Madame X at My Open Wallet

Jook. That’s the Korean name and I think the Chinese name too. My Cantonese-American girlfriend from college calls it jook. I think I’ve heard it for Mandarin as well. It’s a rice porridge made with chicken. I have a hard time eating a whole chicken myself so I make this with a cornish hen. (My mom was really happy to find out that the American supermarket has this small chickens that fit into a regular pot. What will America think of next?!)

This is really easy recipe, but you can’t be too squeamish about the meat part. It’s not anything more than sticking your hand inside the bird. The other thing is knowing what’s a good consistency for the porridge, but I’ll get to that too.

Jook

1 whole cornish game hen, dressed and clean
garlic to taste, approximately a 1/2 bulb (or more!)
4-5 dried dates, or a handful, depending on your pot size
1/2-1 cups of sweet rice/glutinous rice
1 cup regular rice (short grain ’sushi’ rice, not basmati)
6+ cups of water
salt & pepper to taste
chopped scallions for garnish and taste
ginger (optional)

Start boiling the water in a medium size stock pot, enough to submerge the bird and more. Wash and rinse your hen. In the cavity, stuff in the sweet rice about 1/2-3/4 full. Once the water is boiling, put in the rice-stuffed bird.

Boil for about 10-15 minutes and skim the water of any scum that forms on top. (Lid on, lid off, it’s up to you really. I keep the lid on for most of the cooking)

Add peeled cloves of garlic, more is better if you ask me. Add the dates, not too many. It depends on how much you are making. Add a chunk of peeled ginger if you like.*

* A word of caution. Peeled ginger when boiled, looks a lot like a boiled clove of garlic. While you can bite into cooked garlic without reprisal, ginger keeps its bite. I used to hate that taste as a kid which is why I can’t stand really gingery foods. Total ick. My mommy fishes it out for me now, but sometimes she forgets.

So the hen boils along for a few hours, not a roiling boil, but not just a simmer either. You want to eat this bird during your lifetime. Skim any fat if you like that sort of thing. I do, but I try not to obsess on the low-fat front.

Ok now here’s the tricky part if you’ve never had rice porridge. What consistency do you want? It’s not a pudding, but it’s thicker than a soup. You want add any remaining rice (both the sweet rice and the sushi rice) to the water and continue boiling. But you don’t want to add too much! And how much water? This is where I can’t be of much help. You want to add enough to thicken the soup, but not so much that you run out of water. The size of your pot effects this a lot so don’t use a really large one unless you scale this up for a chicken. You don’t want to keep adding water because splashing cold water on the rice makes it do funny texture things. So boil a little water in another pot and if you need more water for your jook, use the hot water to thin out the soup.

How do you know when to eat? It’s up to you. When the meat is fully cooked, you can take a knife and hack off pieces of the hen and ladle out the rice and broth, laying pieces of meat on top. Keep adding water to the pot to stretch the soup. Keep boiling it until the meat falls off the bone easily. Pull out the carcass and pick off any good bits and toss them back into the pot. Throw away the carcass.

Add the scallions on top of each bowl and stir them into the soup when you eat. Make sure you chop it thinly, not a mince, but bias cut strips of both the green and white part.

Confused? If so, please email me. I think I’ve made this more complicated than it actually is. I don’t even think about little details while I cook, but when I write this kind of recipe out, I realize how much knowledge my mom has and how much of this kind of cooking is done by looking and feeling.

Why is this economical? Well, conceivably you can leave this on the stove or in the fridge overnight and keep adding water and more rice and eat this for breakfast all week long. It’s a nice breakfast in the winter. You get nummy garlic to ward off germs, a little meat protein, and hot food for breakfast. As a dinner, I need to add kimchee or pickles to the meal, but I could eat 2 bowls of it easily. I add tons of salt. I could save a lot of money if I gave up on cooking and put a salt lick in the kitchen. I love sodium.

I got a new assessment last week. I’ve been staring dumbly at the paper. I know my condo has appreciated, but now the assessed value is more than what I paid for it. I don’t think that I could get this price on the market if I sold it today.

I keep a spreadsheet of my condo community’s recent prices. The Washington Post has all recent local sales on a searchable database so you can get an idea of what your neighbors paid 6 months ago to move into your neighborhood. With the opening of new condos all over the DC market, I wonder if prices are going to fall or go up.

It’s nice to know that my condo is still appreciating, but it’s disconcerting to know that I am going to have to start socking away some more escrow money, yet again. Where are those fixed payments the bank promised?! I have an aversion to variable payments. I want my payments fixed from year to year. I know I shouldn’t give the bank a loan of my escrow money, but my community has a $500 homeowner’s property tax refund if you have a net worth less than $250K. Per my NetworthIQ graph, I will be getting that credit for a while.

So let me post a question, how do you guys value your homes with doing your net worth calculations? Mine has fluctuated wildly over the last two years since I don’t think the units in my building are selling. Because of this, I feel that my assessment is too high and to be conservative, my net worth values my home at its original purchase price.

Like many PF bloggers, I have a
Citibank Platinum Select Dividend Card. It has some really great benefits, and I definitely like getting cash back on my purchaes, up to 5% for certain kinds.

However, I went overboard during the holidays and I need to lower my rate.

I called Citibank and they lowered my rate by 3.0% on the spot. The nice agent on the phone didn’t try to sell me any services and I was beaming and smiling as I tried to get off. As she thanked me, she slipped and said,’Thank you for shopping with AT&T…’ I know she was about to say ‘Universal’ which is another Mastercard brand. After that she hung up even more quickly, but not after I said, ‘Gotcha!’

The moral of the story? Call your credit card company. That might be all you have to do to lower your rate. FWIW, Citibank’s number is 1-800-950-5114.

Today I found The Daily Financial Challenge - Day 2 and didn’t know I was already participating!

On Wednesdays I go out to knit at Panera. I usually buy dinner there. Today my strategy was to take two frozen dinners to work. Eat one for lunch and one right before I leave for Panera. This worked out nicely for me. I usually spend about $7-10 for a large meal with beverage. Because I had already eaten something, I ordered a hot tea when I arrived. Later on, I smelled some burnt sugar, that appealing caramel scent. I got a sweet treat, two actually. One for now and one for later.

I paid for all three things with my change purse. I had some dollar coins from the Post Office vending machine 3 weeks ago, when I bought new $0.39 stamps. I probably normally wouldn’t have $6.00 of dollar coins, but it’s nice to know I am still going strong on the paycheck challengs. Besides, I don’t know of any other vending machines that accept these coins.

I have a check from the yarn shop that I need to deposit. I have decided to go out bowling tomorrow for a purely social event, so I will break the paycheck challenge by a few hours. (Direct Deposit is sometimes available the night before payday.) I almost bailed on bowling, but I like it and it’s chance to meet some new people. I balked at paying $15 downtown for parking, so my friend offered to drive me. I told her I’d split the cost of parking and buy her a beer at the lanes. Saving money by carpooling!

The nice thing of being subscribed to lists with like-minded folks, or meeting people with similiar interests is that the things they give away you might actually have a shot at enjoying, and not just junking later.

I knit every week with a bunch of women I met online. It’s a nice group of ladies I’ve known for over a year now. Sometimes, in a fit of decluttering, people bring stuff they no longer want or need. It’s called a ‘yarn swap’ and it’s a little bit ritualized. You go through your ’stash’ and pull out half-used balls, skeins of stuff you thought you liked but changed your mind a about, free yarn someone’s deceased grandmother never used but thought you would, etc. It’s a nice opportunity to get some yarn you might not have seen before, try out a small sample before you buy more, etc. It really can expose you to yarns that you might not normally find or pick out for yourself.

Tonight, one of the regulars had been cleaning up her bookshelf of old pattern magazines and books. I walked away with Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s book (aka The Yarn Harlot). I have been waiting to get it, and now I got it for free! I also scored three other pattern books from which I might make one or two small items, or simply study the patterns to get new ideas for shaping and design. After that, I will de-clutter by taking the books back and share them with other knitters. The other really good freebie was a knitting guide on a card that I think will be helpful for teaching new knitters some basics.

It sure beats the grabby-grabby nature of Freecycle, which is a nice concept, but only if you watch it like a hawk and beat someone else to it.

My 401k Rollover account hit $3000.00 on 3:00am on Saturday morning.

Little by little. Bit by bit.

Hm. That reminds me. Not to get all political, but EMILY’S LIST is a group out there that supports women political candidates. The name comes from a saying in the political world, ‘Early Money Is Like Yeast. It grows and grows and grows.’

Same goes for your compounding interest, so start saving today!

CNN has posted an article about debt strategies for your holiday hangover.

I have one and I’m going to pursue option two. Like many personal finance bloggers, I have a Citibank Dividend Rewards card, which I love, but I carry a balance. I’m really bad about not paying it off every month. Right now, it’s living in my desk drawer while I try out my paycheck challenge this week.

I’ll post an update once I find out what happens.

Flexo at Consumerism Commentary has blogrolled me! Wow!

Stew cubes are cheap meat. They are great for slow cooking. Just rinse them, cut them up if you want smaller pieces, dump into a crock pot with veggies, whatever else you like, and cover with water. Wait 12 hours and voila! Soupy-stewiness.

I’m stuck in a bit of a rut over my crockpot since I am started to despise canned chopped tomatoes. 14oz cans go for about 69 cents on sale some times. Yes, I hoard these too, but I try to get only 4 at a time.

Earlier I suggested white beans, but the slow cooker directions say don’t cook beans with tomatoes because the tomatoes make the bean’s texture tough. I tried it out and they were definitely a little weird. Too much ‘al dente’ texture.

For variation on this pot of beef and beans, I’m going to make some macaroni elbows and add them later, after the meat’s almost done. I’m a big fan of pot meals and this soup needs a starch.

Oh yeah, and if you haven’t been reading carefully, I’m really big on meat and starch. I don’t mind vegetarian and I find Boca Burgers to be my favorite veggie burger meat. It’s just that I throw out produce all the time because it’s spoiled on me. I had a red pepper on the grocery bill last week and I never cooked it. I got a tiny bit wrinkly so I chucked it today.