Signs of Aging. Does your bathroom need rejuvenation? Would de-cluttering help? Aside from a fresh shower curtain and fluffy new towels, where would you begin? Like me, my mirror developed a couple of age spots that need covering! According to popular home and garden designers on T.V., fully mirrored bathroom walls are passé! Buyers prefer older homes that have been remodeled with stylish, individual mirrors above sinks! If your bathroom needs a facelift, you can achieve it without major surgery. Here are three low-cost ideas, two for do-it-yourself folks and one for the DIY-challenged.

Frame It. If your mirror covers part of the wall above your sink, consider framing it. T.V. designers suggest making a frame from wood easily obtained from a lumber supplier, like the Do-It-Center. Quarter round trim may be needed to keep the adhesive from being reflected in the mirror. The supplier might cut the wood for a minimal charge to get 45º angles so that the pieces abut nicely. If you’re going to paint the wood to match your walls, prime it first. Pine doesn’t take stain evenly. Buy better wood trim if you plan to stain and varnish it. Use a strong adhesive to mount the wood directly onto the mirror. Your supplier should know the best type of glue for this purpose.

Conquer and Divide It. An even more involved solution is to remove the mirror from the wall and cut it into one or two mirrors. This way you salvage the size you want. Safe-guard yourself during removal. Generously crisscross-tape and cover the mirror with heavy plastic first, in case it breaks. This is a two person job. Wear protective gloves. The wall may have to be refurbished, if adhesive remains from the mirror’s removal. Cutting the mirror requires care, too. You’ll need a flat surface and a glass cutter. This all sounds too scary to me. The resulting mirror(s) can be framed and hung or mounted on the wall with adhesive. If the mirror breaks, buy a framed mirror from a garage sale, thrift store, or discount home goods store. Chalk it up to experience!

Cover It. Personally, I like a huge mirror in the bathroom. It makes a tiny room look so much bigger! I could save money by not doing anything at all to it! I could also probably live in a tent instead of a house, if I had to! As luck would have it, I found a beautiful image of a lady picking flowers, taken from a wall in an ancient Roman’s home. I loved it at first sight at the garage sale where I bought it for $10. What to do with it? I held it up on my mirror in the bathroom. Perfect! It covers the age spots. It goes with the classical bust and lyre-shaped lamp on the counter. All it took to hang was one of those new “monkey hooks,” shaped like the letter J with a little V at the bottom. You just poke it into the wall and turn it hook-side up. It makes the tiniest hole and holds a lot of weight. Try this solution. Pick a print that really emphasizes the style of your bathroom décor. Hang it over your mirror. The transformation will be uplifting!

Caution: Don’t hang really fine art in a bathroom because moisture can be damaging. Be sure your print is well covered and sealed on the back to prevent condensation under the glass. My guest bathroom gets very little tub use, so I’ve seen no signs of damage.

Pots and Baskets

Create Storage. Not enough room for pots, pans, sieves, and baskets? Look up. French chefs use pot racks. I needed easier access to my cookware than the space under my cook top, which is crowded with venting pipes! Our first solution was to install metal baskets on rollers under the cook top. However, there is only room for cookie sheets, cake racks, muffin tins, roasting pans, perforated BBQ veggie baskets, and an electric frying pan down there! Our next solution was to install a pot rack. However, we could not afford a fancy iron or copper beauty. Here’s how we created one on the cheap.

Pot Rack. You may be blessed or cursed with a huge fluorescent light box above your stove in the kitchen. It’s not my favorite technological wonder. (It helped when we replaced our glary fluorescents with “day light” bulbs.) This box was in the way of hanging a pot rack above the stove. So, my clever husband found a work-around. He mounted eye-hook bolts in the ceiling and then wrapped wire cable through the hooks. He fed the looped cable through slots he sawed into the plastic panels to hang a metal bar. We got the bar and hooks for hanging the pots from Bed, Bath, and Beyond and eye-hooks and cable from the Do-It-Center. As you can see from the photo, it holds a lot of weight! The bar is subtle, somewhat stylish, cost-effective, and definitely useful!

Hanging Baskets. It’s a girl-thing, I think—collecting baskets! Maybe a carry-over from hunter and gatherer days? I find it difficult to pass up a basket at a garage sale. However, I am pretty picky. It can’t cost over $3—usually is $1. It has to be large and intricately wrought, the more unusual, the better. I do use my baskets. I like to see them, have them around me to choose from for the occasion. Hanging them from my light panel not only makes them easy to reach, but also lovely to look at. And, they mask that outdated light panel! We can’t afford to replace the light box with recessed, directional lighting. So, “hiding” it is the next best answer! Nails for hanging the baskets are easily pounded in the seams between the frame and molding.

Pot Lids. One of the best investments we’ve made is in a pot lid holder. You can see it in the photo. It’s hanging on the wall to the left of the refrigerator. It was not too expensive. We found it at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, too. We used our 25% off coupon that comes in the mail every so often. A bit of advice—mount a board on the wall first, then affix the rack to the board. Over time, the lids have rubbed the paint off the wall, exposing the plaster beneath. Not chic.

Handy Tools. I love having my kitchen tools within reach. Ladles, a box cheese grater, spider (webbed Asian strainer), a pressure cooker, long-handled spoons, and a double boiler all hang from my pot rack. Some people like a bare kitchen. I’m inspired by one with everything I need to get right to work being creative. You can have a cook’s kitchen, too. Make use of the space above your stove or sink. Pot rack bars can be mounted on walls, too. Check out all the great solutions at IKEA for not much money. My only caution would be to avoid hanging heavy cast iron cookware overhead!

Cookies and Milk

Hi, I’m Home! The child in all of us would like to come home to a treat after a hard day of work, school, or activity. When dinner may still be hours away, and there’s a hollow to fill, what satisfies? Of course, the first thought might be warm cookies right out of the oven and a cold glass of milk. That’s at the top of the nostalgia meter for comfort food! It’s also at the top of the calorie content scale. Boo hoo! What registers high with a yum factor and low on the sugar/fat chart? First, serve non-fat milk. Here are more ideas.

Old Stand-Bys. Pre-schools and thrifty moms have certain commercial, small snack favorites they offer children that total just 58 calories: 2 squares of crisp sugar honey graham crackers, 2 gingersnaps, 1 oatmeal cookie with raisins, or 3 vanilla wafers. One fig bar is 50 calories. Four whole saltine crackers are 48 calories. The trick here is to dole out the snacks, rather than offer a big cookie jar or box full of them. For adults watching their weight, having a measured amount waiting on a plate upon arrival home is a treat, too.

Homemade Goods. Cookies made at home tend to be larger and chock full of more goodies, like 1 of Mrs. Field’s cookies: chocolate chip 280, chocolate chip with walnuts 320, oatmeal raisin 180, oatmeal chocolate chip 280, peanut butter 220, peanut butter with chocolate chips 300, butter cookie 290. Although we tend to think of oatmeal cookies and rice crispy treats as being healthier choices, size and rich ingredients load on calories. A 2” x 3” x 2” (not very big) rice crispy bar is 150 calories. Instead of making a batch of cookies all at once, consider making 1 cookie for each family member, then saving the rest of the dough in the refrigerator. You could bake 1 cookie every other day per person to control how many get eaten in a day! Also, make the cookies smaller.

Other Snacks. Ever heard of ants on a log? There are only 7 calories in a stalk of celery. Spread a scant 2 Tblsp. of peanut butter or cream cheese along the entire stalk (200 calories). Cut it into 4 “logs.” Then evenly divide 1Tblsp. of raisins (26 calories), the “ants,” over the logs. Each log will be roughly 58 calories. A cup of canned chicken noodle soup is 67 calories. One whole, peeled cucumber sliced and chilled in a dressing of rice vinegar and soy sauce is only 58 calories. To satisfy a craving for something crisp, ½ cup of dry Cheerios is 50 calories (and they help lower cholesterol).

Fruit Pros and Cons. While fruit doesn’t have the fat content of peanut butter or cream cheese, it does have sugar. Fruit calories add up: medium orange 71, apple 80, pear or banana 100. A cup of plain yogurt is 144 calories; but with fruit, it’s 225.

Comfort in Company. Focus on finding and giving comfort through communication, instead of food. Sharing how work, school, or activities were while nibbling on a light snack or low-calorie drink can nourish the need for comfort. I applaud Michele Obama’s efforts to help children manage their weight through good food choices and exercise. If we don’t learn that as children, it’s even more difficult to practice as adults. Make it fun!

Seashells-and-Ceramics

Seashells. People have collected shells from time immemorial. Shells hold a fascination for most people. They’ve been used to adorn the human body and decorate everything from boxes to lamps to bottles, bags, clothes, mirrors, bookends, and napkin rings. They whisper of exotic places, vacations, briny havens under the sea, the mystery of life and our possible origins. Summer is the perfect time to haul out your collection of shells and display them in new, beautiful ways. Hopefully, there are still beaches where shells may be freely collected. That is part of their great appeal. They are harder to find and consequently cost more to acquire bagged and even more glued on interesting bases!

Ceramics. My daughter gave me the gift of choosing ceramics for Mother’s Day at Moorpark College’s annual ceramics sale. It is such a wonderful treat to visit the school’s art studio and view their lovely creations. I’ve fallen in love with their green glazes. Lots of beautiful pieces are under $5. This year I chose one a bit more expensive, but still very reasonably priced. That is the extraordinary aqua-green shell-like beauty on the pedestal, functioning as a vase with the seed spray coming out. The obvious play on nature is so striking. I love combining my shells with my ceramics.

“Anthropologie.” The highly creative décor in the clothing and collectibles chain called Anthropologie is changed regularly. It’s an absolute inspiration to browse through their tables and wonder at their walls. Their buyers find an eclectic mix of books, ceramics, scents, fabrics, furniture, and natural artifacts to display from around the world. Creating that same kind of well-traveled look and feel at home is appealing. How can you achieve it? Put out seashells and a seashell guidebook or encyclopedia opened to shells. Collect and display or draw botanicals with pen and ink: fern leaves, palms, orchids, bananas on a stalk. Collect and display seeds, pods, driftwood, pine cones, fronds, and faux mushrooms. At garage sales and flea markets, watch for woven mats, ethnic prints, and carved wooden masks and animals. Check used book stores for large picture books.

Indoor Displays. Martha Stewart’s recent guest on her T.V. show demonstrated how to glue shells onto sconces. He first covered the sconce with white glue and sand. When it was dry, he mounted shells using a tube of glue (527?), rather than a hot glue gun. He mounded sand up against a glued shell to keep it in place while it dried. Mastic and tile grout work, too, showing white between shells. With a hot glue gun, my daughter arranged shells on the back of my terra cotta turtle. The result was beautiful, but difficult to achieve. I cannot bring myself to glue larger shells to a mirror or picture frame or string them together. I do not want to damage them in any way. I love the effect of arranging them on glass or silver trays (like petit fours) for friends to admire and identify.

Outdoor Displays. At a gardening store, I found pot hangers made of ropes of tiny seashells to hang large conch shells in. Lucky me, I snapped up a very large coral specimen (1’ x 1’) for $1 at a garage sale! Mounted on a twig stool by my fountain, birds like to perch on it. Create a fun scene your child, the scientist, would love to explore!

Wedding Centerpiece

Pricey Centerpieces. According to pricehelper.com, wedding centerpieces can cost an average of $1272, not counting the $698 for wedding party members’ bouquets and boutonnieres! Whew! Plan your wedding in the summer for best flower prices, not Valentine’s Day, when flower prices soar. Better yet, plan ahead to create your own centerpieces. Start planting roses and hydrangeas now for your future wedding celebration! And, consider buying fresh flowers through Costco.com when the time comes.

Florist Secrets. My daughter has been invited to a number of weddings this year, some in which she has stood up with the bride. I was the happy recipient of a floral centerpiece that was given away at the end of one of these wedding celebrations. It lasted from the rehearsal dinner on Thursday through the following Thursday. I assume it was assembled the day of the rehearsal. Keep your eye out for interesting, inexpensive vases or urns. They do not have to match, but be in the same “family” type. Glass vs. concrete vs. resin, etc. Start collecting them for that special day. Florists use a variety of containers.

Beneath the Flowers. Underneath the flowers, there is a florist’s foam block, available at Michael’s or other craft stores. It should just fit the container. It is soaked in water with a packet of preservative. If you are unable to find these packets in a gardening store, add a little bleach and sugar to the water. If a concrete urn is being used, line the urn first with waxed paper to prevent the water soaking the pot. Then, place the wet florist’s block on top of the paper. This step is unnecessary with a glass vessel.

Preparing Flowers. The lovely arrangement in the photo had 4 large coppery-colored rosebuds, 6 magenta orchids, 5 green hydrangeas, 3 succulents, and hanging green clusters, which I can’t identify. You could grow all these flowers ahead of time. The orchids might be easier to buy. The roses were trimmed of their thorns and cut to about 6” long. They were stuck into the foam. The orchids and succulents were housed in small vials of water, which were stuck into the foam. I’ve kept vials like these from previous arrangements for future use. Of course, the problem is having all your flowers bloom at the right time!

Other Tips. Floral centerpieces should not be so high that they interfere with conversation across the table. If you choose to create bouquets and boutonnieres, you will need floral tape, hat pins, vials, and water bottles. Bouquets are usually flowers and berries cut to the same length and bound with ribbon, then set in a cut-off water bottle with preservative before and after the ceremony. Boutonnieres have wet toweling wrapped under floral tape and can be refrigerated in a box or bag until show time.

Fresh vs. Faux. Silk flowers are an acceptable alternative to fresh flowers, but their cost can be considerable, too. Two fresh rosebuds bound together per table can be a simple, yet lovely symbol of the bride and groom coming together in marriage.

Fry Up a Fritter. Here’s an economical, versatile recipe that can be the base for breakfast, lunch, a side dish, or hors d’oeuvres! It’s almost as easy as making pancakes. Although just about any firm chopped fruit or chopped and cooked vegetable can be added to the batter, my favorite is fresh white corn. Fresh corn cut off the cob, micro-waved for about 3 minutes, retains its crisp crunch when added to the batter. Don’t tell your guests what it is. Let them be surprised. They’ll ask, “What is this?” It’s unexpected and delicious!

Basic Fritter Recipe: 1 cup flour, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. salt, 2 eggs, ½ cup milk or cream, 1 tsp. oil, 1 cup cooked or canned corn, 1 tblsp. minced onion (optional additions: 1 tblsp. minced green pepper or green chili). Mix all the ingredients. Heat vegetable oil in a hot frying pan and drop two large spoonfuls of batter in for each fritter. Brown on one side and flip to brown on the other side. Drain on towel paper. Good news: these can be made ahead and reheated in an oven or microwave. I make a double batch (18 fritters) and store them in a plastic bag in the refrigerator for use over several days.

Breakfast Variation. Add minced ham or crumbled crispy bacon to the basic batter. Serve with melted butter and hot syrup. A baked apple topped with cinnamon and brown sugar makes a fancy accompaniment for overnight guests.

Luncheon Variations. Corn fritters make a hearty side dish alternative to potatoes or rice with pork chops, ribs, or steak. Or, they can be the star of the show. Some people like ketchup on corn fritters! Tomatoes are a natural accompaniment. Or, offer an assortment of toppings for your corn fritters, hot off the griddle. Include some or all of these options: zesty tomato/onion/cilantro salsa, chopped avocado, shredded lettuce, grated jack cheese, chili-seasoned ground beef, and sour cream. A corn fritter is “meatier” than a simple corn tortilla shell and far more satisfying.

Hors d’oeuvres Ideas. Drop tablespoon size dollops of the fritter batter into the frying pan to make appetizer bases. I find that these are delicious hot, room temperature, even cold. Here are some ideas for a tiny topping on appetizer size corn fritters: hot pepper jelly, apricot jelly, whole cranberry sauce, sweet pickle relish, Ranch dip, refried beans, grated cheddar cheese, crisp radish slice, ground ham salad (mixed with mayonnaise and pickle relish), or half of a grape tomato (cut-side down).

Deep-Fried Fritters? You betcha! Try deep-frying this thick corn fritter batter in your deep-fryer to make puff balls. They take on a southern-fried comfort appeal, perfect with deep-fried fish or fried chicken with a bowl of celery-seed flavored, crunchy cabbage and carrot slaw and orange slices. Mmm. I’m making myself hungry just thinking about the possibilities. Let me know if you discover some more tempting combinations, like maybe with buttered spinach and caramelized butternut squash cubes! Enjoy!

Date-Nut-Tea-Sandwiches

Low Cost Tea Party. Offer tea for two or more for very little money. Do you feel a bit of a let-down after the holidays? Once the decorations are put away, the house can seem rather stark. A bit weary of the expense and work of big get-togethers, but still wishing for more intimate time with best friends? A tea party may be just the answer. The great thing about tea parties is make-ahead treats. You can make your party simple or lavish depending on the number goodies you offer and how fancy your service is.

Tea Offerings. Rinse out your teapot with hot water before you brew your tea. Boil fresh water and pour it over loose leaves or tea bags. Let the tea steep for 5 minutes, then remove the tea bags or strain the tea over the cup when it’s served. My favorite full-strength tea is good old Constant Comment Orange Pekoe. I’d also offer an herbal tea, such as peppermint or hibiscus. Some guests may want sweetener or lemon.

Tea Sandwiches. I remember my mother having coffee klatches in her heyday, featuring a single glazed, nutty coffeecake. That is certainly an affordable choice, especially when made from Bisquick! I personally like one or more tea sandwiches: date or banana nut bread sliced thin and spread with cream cheese; tuna or egg or chicken salad on crustless thin bread; and/or thin-sliced cucumber or tomatoes on buttered bread. Make the sandwiches ahead of time, quartered into triangles, and arrange on a serving platter. Cover the sandwiches with a clean wet, wrung-out towel and refrigerate until serving time. Garnish your plates with candied cherries or offer jam or a fruit slices, if you like.

Favorite Date Nut Bread. Save those soup cans (8)! Use them to bake date nut bread in. Spray them with Pam flour spray. Heat the oven to 325º. Pour 2 cups boiling water over 2 tsp. baking soda and add 1 cup chopped dates. Let cool. Cream 2 tblsp.butter, 2 cups sugar, 2 well-beaten eggs. Sift 4 cups flour, 1 tsp. salt and add alternately with liquid to the sugar mixture. Lastly, add 1 cup chopped walnuts and 1 tsp. vanilla. Mix well. Fill cans 2/3 full. Bake 50 – 60 minutes. Remove and cool. Wrap in plastic wrap.

Optional Sweets. If you want to go all out, then include a cake, petit fours, little tarts, or cookies. I’ve never met a lady who did not find a little room for a sweet treat like mints, nuts, or chocolate candy! Although sweets are nice, they are not necessary. Guests may be just as happy not to be tempted to violate New Year’s resolutions to cut back.

Party Ideas. My idea of fun with lady friends is to browse through magazines and cookbooks while chatting. Our library has used magazines, some very recent and others older, priced at 5 for $1. It’s fun to get a number of issues that address ideas for decorating, gardening, and entertaining in the New Year. Another thought is to ask guests to make copies of their favorite recipe to share with the tea party guests. Invite everyone to help themselves, kick back, relax, and simply enjoy each other’s company

Winter White. For my readers in snow country, decorating with winter white indoors may be too much of a cold thing! Reds might be the color you need to help warm up the house. Lucky me in Southern California, we drove down by the ocean today, where it was 70º, while the rest of country is frigid with blizzards! Sorry.

Try to think Spring. I did the day after New Year’s Day, when I walked past my pussy willow bush and noticed that its little catkins (kitty toes, I call them) had started to emerge. I decided to cut the bush back, bringing the branches indoors as a harbinger of spring. Flower markets may start featuring them soon, if you don’t want to wait until March to harvest homegrown ones up north and back east.

Pussy Willow Magic. This bush is so easy to grow! If you don’t have a bush and cannot find a neighbor with one to give you a cutting, buy a few branches at a flower market. These can be put into water to root for planting and harvest the next year! If you choose not to plant the cuttings later, just put them into a vase without water. They will last a surprisingly long time. Fresh pussy willow with fully developed catkins can be bundled and wired to a wire form to make a beautiful wreath. If cutting your own branches, cut them at an angle, just above the knobby growth ring where the branch meets its host branch. Bushes can be cut down to 6” tall and grow back denser than ever. Prune them every spring to keep them from growing into their potential 15’-20’ tree height.

Tablescape Design. Coming from the Midwest myself, I remember how sparklingly beautiful ice on branches could be in the sunlight. To try to replicate that scene (without the cold) indoors, I selected mirrors and glass for their icy, reflective surfaces. My lampshade provides the warm, sunny glow. Its bangles remind me of ice sickles. My unfinished ceramic angel looks like she was carved out of snow. By itself, the large vase holding the water and branches seemed a bit plain. Adding the cut-glass punch bowl beneath finished off the sparkling ice-pond effect. The mirror behind and the mirror below the vase multiply the glittery quality of each object on the table.

Other Cuttings. Any type of branch that flowers can be cut and forced to bloom indoors the same way as the pussy willows. Back home in Indiana, we looked forward to the forsythia bush’s bright yellow flowers. Here, I watch for my apricot tree to swell with buds. Before the blossoms open, I cut the apricot tree back and bring in the handsome mahogany branches to display in bundles. Even if you are living in an apartment with no access to even a sunny window to grow a plant, you can still enjoy being close to nature when you bring branches indoors–the taller, the better. It’s akin to bringing a Christmas tree inside–a rather primitive, homey thing to do. Try it.

Winter Gardening. Learn to force bulbs to grow indoors in the dead of winter. If you have never tried growing bulbs indoors in a sunny window, you are in for a real treat. Right now, my rose bushes are still producing some big pink and red blossoms, thanks to a recent rain in Southern California! But come the first of January, it will be time to cut the rose bushes back to a few hearty canes. So, what can take the place of color outdoors until Spring comes? Fragrance and a riot of color indoors in clay pots.

Narcissus. Legend has it that handsome Narcissus fell in love with his reflection in a spring. Unable to pull himself away, he died, and the Narcissus flower grew in his place! Well, there is something to love about the little white trumpet flowers atop tall slender stalks! It has incredibly sweet fragrance. If you can, choose a sunny window near a seating area, where your family gathers, to place your pot. Everyone will comment on that heavenly scent. Mature narcissus bulbs are about the size of an apricot. You can find them in bags in autumn or already potted and blooming in December and January. The great thing about potted narcissus is that it produces baby bulbs that can be separated for planting next year.

Amaryllis. You’ve probably seen those gorgeous Christmas boxes with a single jumbo amaryllis bulb, about the size of a large orange, trying to grow out of one corner. But, did you know that there are mini-amaryllis bulbs, too? Colors range from deep reds to pinks to whites. These are gifts that keep giving every year. My sister treated all the ladies at the Thanksgiving table with an amaryllis box. These are stunning show-stoppers in a room. Guests want to inspect the huge blossoms up close.

Forcing Bulbs Indoors. An online source for beautiful amaryllis bulbs in a large variety of colors is http://www.bloomingbulb.com. They recommend that you first soak your bulbs in lukewarm water for several hours. Then, plant the bulbs just up to their necks in sandy, loose soil. A jumbo amaryllis would be planted in a 6”-8” pot. I crowded 10 of my small narcissus bulbs in their pot. Water the bulbs when they dry out a bit. You might want to support your narcissus and amaryllis with stakes. After the blooms fade, cut back stalks but not the leaves, which should continue to be watered until summer. Stop watering the bulbs then, cut back their leaves, remove the bulbs from the soil, and store them in a bag or pot in a dry place to plant again next the fall.

No Money for Bulbs? Ask a friend or family member into gardening if they can spare a few baby bulbs for you to nurture. Also, watch for bulbs marked down right after Christmas, on discount department store clearance shelves. 99¢ Only Stores have little packets of bulbs for, of course, 99¢. My family of bulbs keeps growing, each cheerfully producing year after year. Sometimes, I just plant the bulbs in the garden, but I love bringing the garden into the house with pots in winter. Try it for yourself! Experiment! Enjoy both their beauty and fragrance.

Low Cost Pork Chops. I bought 4 thick, bone-in pork chops for $8.60 today, on special, using my Von’s card. This is what I consider to be fancy food fit for company or a special family dinner. Holiday entertaining is upon us. But, given current hard times, how do you put on a dinner that only looks extravagant? Check out the meat counter. Pork is usually the best buy. However, today’s pork has become so lean that it sometimes comes out tough and tasteless. Here’s how to get a succulent result every time.

Baked Stuffed Chops. Preheat the oven to 350º. Stuff pocketed pork chops with a bread stuffing of your choice. Dust them liberally with salt, pepper, and paprika. Then, brown the chops on both sides in hot olive oil in a frying pan. Transfer the chops to an oven-proof pan that has a lid. I put the dressing that didn’t fit into the chops around the chops in the pan. Melt two pats of butter in the fry pan and add 2 tablespoons of flour to make a roux, scraping up any bits from browning the chops. Then pour 1 can of chicken stock into the pan to make gravy. Pour the gravy over the chops. Cover and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes. The gravy thickens, from the extra dressing in the pan, into a savory sauce.

Low Cost Stuffing. The cost of bread has gone up along with everything else. Be thrifty, look for day old bread shelves in regular markets. In some areas, there are bakery outlets that sell day-old goods, too. We are lucky in our area to have a British Import distributor who sells drastically reduced food items once a month. Their delicious dried, elegantly packaged sage and onion dressing is just 50¢ a box, and it serves six people! I fry up some celery to add to it, with butter and a little chicken broth.

Roasted Root Vegetables. Roast inexpensive peeled carrots, parsnips, and quartered beets with halved small onions in their skins tossed in olive oil in a shallow jelly-roll pan, while the pork chops bake. You can even add a halved, whole garlic cluster. Season them with salt and pepper. Half way through the cooking time, turn them over. The HGTV chef, Tyler Florence, makes this dish with reduced Balsamic vinegar. He adds it to the vegetables halfway through their cooking time. If you have Balsamic vinegar, try it. If you don’t and you’re watching pennies, just sprinkle a little brown sugar over the veggies for carmelization. Or, bake halved acorn or dumpling squash (removing seeds), stuffed with butter and brown sugar. Delicious!

Presentation. This meal is sumptuous. You don’t need potatoes or rice or rolls, because the stuffing is so rich and filling. Plate up all chops, extra stuffing, gravy and root vegetables or squash on a large platter. Don’t spend extra for parsley. Wash and dry the beet greens, even sauté them in a little olive oil and butter with salt and pepper, if you like. Use them as a garnish for the plate. One extra festive addition to the meal, if your budget allows, would be cranberry sauce. Apple cider, sparkling cider, or rosé wine would be an excellent accompaniment. If guests ask what to bring, suggest one of those beverages to round out the feast. Enjoy!