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We’ve often heard about howAmerica’s poor tend to have unhealthy, fast-food-based diets, compounding health problems for those who can least afford the necessary care. This is silly. There are extremely cheap and healthy sources of energy that take little time and less effort. Here are two things that you should be making and enjoying, whether you’re poor or not:

1. Tofu

Fresh tofu is way, way tastier than store-bought stuff. Plus, if you’re like me and like super-firm tofu, you can make it as firm as you want it (most store-bought varieties are too soft for my taste) – or go the opposite direction.

For a 1/2 cup serving of tofu, you’re getting about 10-11 grams of protein, 227mg calcium, 5g fat, 1-2mg iron, and 94 calories – that’s less than 1/3 of the calories in the same amount of ground beef, and with beef you’re only getting twice the protein.*

Making tofu requires kitchen stuff you already have, an acid like lemon juice, and a whole bunch of soybeans. Soybeans are incredibly, unbelievably cheap. Like $10-20 for five pounds of the stuff. Overall, homemade tofu’s a winner.  I could explain how to make tofu but that sounds boring, so check this out: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Tofu

2. Seitan

Slightly more expensive than tofu, but totally delicious, seitan is usually called a “vegan meat substitute.” This is silly. It is a delicious spongey-textured substance that, yes, can be used in place of meat in recipes, but it’s really nothing like meat. It’s like seitan. Therefore, omnivores can and should add seitan to our rotation of protein sources, if for nothing else, than for variety.

Seitan gets its awesomely weird texture from its main ingredient, Vital Wheat Gluten. This is the gluten from wheat, obviously – basically what’s left when you wash the starch out of the wheat.

Vital wheat gluten is a protein powerhouse. In one, JUST ONE, ounce of the stuff you get 21 GRAMS of protein. You only get 4g of carbs and 104 calories.

This recipe is easy enough to explain so I’ll just go ahead and do it here. Boil a big pot of water with a few tablespoons molasses and soy sauce. Take 2c vital wheat gluten, throw in some herbs (powdered ginger, garlic powder, marjoram, oregano, you know, whatever), a couple tablespoons soy sauce, and mix it with 1c of water (add more as necessary). Knead it up for a few minutes, slice it, and throw it in the pot for an hour or so.

Happy eating!

*This is in no way intended to imply that the Edukatorz don’t like beef. I’ll have my burger rare, still mooing if possible, thank you very much.

We Edukatorz hate to clean, but we like a clean house and don’t like the smell of chemicals (or buying them). Here are a few hobo solutions we’ve picked up over the years so you can spend less money and not have your apartment smell like a hospital.

1) Vinegar

Not gonna lie, we use vinegar for most things and it kinda gives us vinegar strokes when we think about how awesome it is. It’s super cheap (it’s like $3 for a gallon), it kills most germs, mold and bacteria due to its acidity and it’s pet and human friendly. Read the rest of this entry →

image via demotivationalposters.org

Wire hangers are not very good for hanging clothing (or performing unsafe abortions*), but that doesn’t mean that they’re completely useless! You can give your hangers to Goodwill or back to the drycleaners or you can use them for some hobo solutions.

 1) Unclogging a Drain

Clogged drains are gross. If you don’t have any Drano laying around (and that stuff is toxic and will eat at your pipes if you live in an old place) you can get whatever’s clogging the drain with a wire hanger. Simply take some pliers and straighten out the wire hanger’s triangle part until there’s only the hook. Adjust the hook to fit and put it down the drain. You should be able to hook whatever’s clogging the drain (probably hair) and bring it back up to the surface. Read the rest of this entry →

Dental floss is great. We keep it around in case we get food stuck in our teeth (and so that we can tell the dentist that we floss everyday), but it is super useful outside of your mouth as well.

1) In the Kitchen

Dental floss is super useful in the kitchen, just make sure you have plain floss instead of mint floss. It’s super useful as a slicer – use it to slice soft cheese, cake or anything that needs to be sliced but needs a delicate touch. Floss is also a good substitute for kitchen string and can be used to tie up meats that are about to be roasted.

2) In the Garden

If you’re industrious and have a yard you may have a garden and should therefore be growing tomatoes. (Why wouldn’t you grow tomatoes? Tomatoes are delicious). Instead of getting a tomato cage or wire simply use dental floss to support the stalks. Get an old hanger from the dry cleaners, bend it straight and tie the tomato to the wire using the floss. Ta da, your tomatoes will stand up straight. If you’re nervous one wire isn’t enough, just use another one on the other side for extra support.

3) For Your Laundry

Some items of clothing clearly should not be put in the dryer. Besides it’s better for the environment to air dry your clothing once in awhile. If you have limited space and no clothing line we recommend putting up some floss. Simply double it over and make a clothing line out of the floss. Dental floss is surprisingly resilient so it’ll support at the very least your delicate.

Every woman should make sure she’s strapped with a plentiful supply of bobby pins at all times, obviously, since they’re tiny and useful for on-the-fly hair adjustments. They’re especially great on the walk of shame, because while throwing your hair in a ponytail is effective at getting it out of your face, it’s completely useless for disguising the fact that you didn’t sleep at home (for more pro tips on the walk of shame, check this out).

However, bobby pins are useful for a whole lot more than just hair, and the guys out there might want to grab a couple from your girlfriend in case you need them for anything else.

First off, for the potheads or for the grandfathers smoking pipes out there, bobby pins are great for cleaning pipes. Also, for that matter, anything else with a small opening you need to get dust out of or for clearing drains with small holes or bottle tops that are clogged or whatever else needs cleaning.

There’s of course the obvious lock-picking bobby pin technique. Surprisingly, this isn’t all that effective with some bobby pins, since they’re usually tipped with rubber and can be too thick on the ends for much use as lockpicks. That rubber end means you can poke electrical things potentially without electrocuting yourself, but please, be careful.

Finally, bobby pins can substitute in some situations for paper clips or safety pins. They’re pretty useful for just holding lots of stuff – papers, clothing, watchbands – and you’d be surprised how many uses you find for bobby pins if you keep them around.

We love fresh fresh food and herbs and we love the outdoors so naturally we are gardeners. Alas, we are also poor so we don’t have a ton of “money” to spend on fancy pants gardening supplies so thus we’ve come up with a few hobo gardening solutions.

1) Use Cans and Plastic Containers as Planters

Instead of buying pots to put your plants in use your old cans and plastic containers as planters. Just make sure to poke out a couple of small holes in the bottom to make sure the water can drain out of the planter. As the plant grows just keep putting it in bigger and bigger containers if you don’t want to plant it in the ground.*

2) Play in the Sandbox

We assume you don’t want to use nasty chemicals or buy expensive dirt (what’s hobo about that?) so instead you can use some regular soil mixed with some sand you’ve taken from playground. The added sand allows air to flow through the soil. If your soil has a lot of clay in it make sure to have about about a 2:1-3:1 ratio of soil to sand or else the soil will be too compact for the roots to grow.

3) Composting

Of course if you have plants, they’re going to need food and buying fertilizer is expensive and can be full of chemicals. Save your eggshells and coffee grounds and feed them to your plants. You can also grind up your old newspapers and they act like a ghetto peat moss. We recommend adding these materials to your initial soil mix when you plant your plants and then adding more organic material about once or twice a month.

You can also be a dirty hippie and start your own compost pile. It’s super easy, just get some dry leaves or grass together (the brown part of the compost) and some kitchen scraps (the green part of the compost, also no dairy or meat) and combine it in about a 2:1 ratio of brown to green and mix it up every so often.

4) Watering

Plants need water, duh. If you can’t water your plants 2-3 times a day like you should be in the summer (depending on the plant naturally), you can make sure your plants stay hydrated by either putting them in an old roasting pan and putting water in the pan or by wrapping your planters in diapers. Yes, diapers (we prefer unused). Get one of the cloth diapers or some of the one use ones and put your plants in it and water them. The diapers will absorb a lot of extra water and keep your plants hydrated until you can water them again.

5) Pest Control

Bugs and vermin love to eat tasty plants. You could kill them with pesticides and poisons, but then you’d be poisoning yourself. Instead use some ash from ummm, whatever you may be burning** and/or a light spray of water and a little dish washing liquid.

*We’re really lazy and mostly keep our plants in containers and only plant flowers and maybe the occasional root vegetable.

** Just not cigarette ash, there are a ton of gross chemicals in those babies that are bad for plants.

Perhaps you have a lawn, but are too broke or lazy to go out and buy the proper equipment to maintain said lawn. While you could let it grow wild and annoy your neighbors (not a good plan), we suggest actually taking care of your lawn. Besides, who needs fancy lawn care equipment when you have hobo solutions?

Cutting the Grass

If you have a small lawn and no lawnmower or weed whacker never fear, you can still keep your lawn trimmed by using a pair of scissors. Yes, scissors. It may take a little more time and you may look a bit funny, but your grass will be trimmed.

If you have a bigger lawn you’re going to have to get some bigger scissors or possibly a machete. We realize this may be impractical so follow our general landscaping solution below.

Raking Leaves

The easiest way to rake leaves is of course with a rake. Alas, many of us are too cheap to go out and buy a rake and are left to find alternative ways of dealing with all of the leaves in the yard. We recommend using either a shovel or your hands to put the leaves in a pile to either compost or dispose of.

Landscaping

Perhaps you are too lazy to do anything with your lawn, but you don’t want it to look like a jungle (or you don’t want to get fined by your municipality for not mowing the lawn), why not just remove the grass completely. Yes, it may take some time, but think of all the time you’ll save not cutting the grass with scissors. Instead you can replace your lawn with wood chips (costly and a little ugly) or get a few packets of wildflower seeds to spread over the dirt. Then you shall have beautiful flowers with no lawn to have to maintain.

We Edukatorz understand that you may not always have a corkscrew or a bottle opener handy when the need to imbibe the Devil’s brew strikes. While we try to have at least a bottle opener on our persons at all times (no joke), there have been times when we’ve had booze but no corkscrew or bottle opener, fortunately we are well versed in hobo solutions and this was not a problem for us.

Opening Wine Bottles

Knitting Needles

Odd that someone would have knitting needles and not a corkscrew, we know, but we’ve been in this situation before. Take off the wrapper around the top of the wine and put one of the knitting needles in the cork. Push slowly down on the knitting needle and push the cork into the wine bottle. Make sure not to push it too hard or else wine will go everywhere. Don’t worry about having the cork in the wine, it’ll be fine.

A Knife

Really you can do anything with a knife, but you may not have thought to open a bottle of wine with one. There are a few different ways you can go about this. One is to simply cut away an opening in the cork so the wine can go through. Another way is to jab the knife in and leverage it out like a corkscrew. If those two methods don’t work for you simply use the knife to push the cork into the wine bottle like you would with knitting needles.

A Shoe

As evidenced in the video below you can easily open a bottle of wine by putting it base first into a shoe and hitting it against a wall. The concept is simple, the force of the hit causes the cork to work its way out of the bottle and the shoe prevents the force of the hit from breaking the bottle. You don’t need to use a shoe, you can use a book or any other object that would make a good buffer between the wine bottle and the wall or other hard surface.

Opening Beer Bottles

On A Table

Sometimes we like to do this even if we have a bottle opener, it’s fun and impressive. Angle the top of a beer bottle you’re trying to open on a table so that the bottom of the cap is resting on the table. Apply some force with the heel of your hand and voila, your beer is open.

With A Lighter

If you happen to have a lighter opening a beer bottle is also not a problem. Simply angle the bottom of your lighter underneath the bottom of the cap and push up with your lighter, the cap should come right off.

Wine is a delightful challenge. While everyone can enjoy it, it takes a lifetime to understand it. No matter how expert you are in matters of wine, there is always more to learn. Even we Edukatorz admit we have a lot to learn. So, there is no time like the present. Get down to some serious wine drinking and edukate yourself. And there’s no reason to throw those wine corks away: they’re useful little suckers in a whole range of situations. Whether you like arts and crafts or like to have a solution on hand when problems come up, keep some wine corks around. Here are just a few of the ways you can use wine corks.

Artsy Cork Board

For the craft fans, save a whole lot of wine corks to make a funky-looking bulletin board. There are two basic ways to do this, and for both the Edukatorz recommend using hot glue on plywood. For an approximately 1 1/4-inch thick board with a flat surface, glue them round-ends-down in a honeycomb sort of pattern, starting from the middle and working your way out. For a thinner, uneven surface, glue them sides-down in a brick pattern. The second option is good if you want to use the board to hang things: hammer in some nails or hooks to organize and display necklaces, keys, or small kitchen gadgets (measuring cups, cheese graters, etc.).

Door Jam

Discreet, disposable, and cheap, wine corks are the perfect way to prop open a door. Cut them on a diagonal with a serrated knife to make a wedge shape to stick under a door.

Awesome Cabinet Knobs

Wine is always a good look in the kitchen. Screw corks into drawers or cabinet doors for a unique knob look. If you’re a baller, and the Edukatorz are clearly ballers, use different champagne corks. It’s a sweet way to show off the Veuve Fourny Rose you drank the other night, and hey, they’re already knob-shaped.

Steady Wobbly Tables

An age-old restaurant technique (since restaurant tables tend to have adjustable screw feet that inevitably get beat up and end up dysfunctional), use wine corks to steady a wobbly table. Either by cutting them diagonally like a door jam or by cutting them into discs at the appropriate thickness, stick a cork under the offending table leg and voila, straight table.

Soundproofing Wallpaper

This is the extreme of wine-cork crafting. If you save up enough corks, you can use the corkboard-making techniques directly on a wall, either with hot glue or nails. Particularly in rowhouses with thin walls, this will add some serious thickness between you and your neighbors. Also a great interior-design look for the home music studio. We suggest you own the place you’re doing it to, though… landlords might not like it. Also, you may way to soak the corks in water for a while to remove as much as the booze smell as possible.

Insulation Helpers

Particularly if your home has exposed brick walls, you’ll find little holes in the masonry. Often people use nasty foam stuff or gross-looking caulk to fill them. Instead, try using caulk to seal the edges of the hole and stick a cork in it. Definitely a better look.

Furniture Feet

If you have an old chair or bookcase that’s going to scratch your hardwood floor while you push it around, just attach a disc of cork and presto, non-scratching feet for your furniture.

Pretty Much Every Other Arts-and-Crafts Project You Can Think Of

Not just corkboards and doorknobs, wine corks are great for any kind of wall decoration, glued onto frames, as coasters, whatever. Just keep ‘em until your imagination strikes.

Corking Other Bottles

Well, duh. You lose one cork, you can just use an old one if you have them on hand. However, the Edukatorz recommend that you either finish your bottle of wine, or cop some of these jawns.

We challenge MacGyver to a solutions-off!

Since the Edukatorz don’t take snow days from edukating we were thinking up new ideas as we’re apt to do and decided on a new semi-regular feature – Hobo Solutions. See the Edukatorz are masters at figuring out cheap/free solutions to the problems life throws our way, we are crafty and we are problem solvers (take that MacGyver!). One could always “buy” the proper tool or “have” what you need on hand, but that’s not always realistic and besides, our way is more fun.

Today we’re going to talk about hobo solutions when dealing with the snow*. Not all of us are adequately prepared for the weather, but fortunately we have you covered.

Improper Footwear

Not all of us have fancy snow boots or galoshes to keep our feet warm and dry in the snow, instead we have to turn to other methods to keep our feet from freezing. What we like to do is to wear a plastic bag over our socks and then put a pair of old sneakers on. Then we tie the plastic bag so that no water will get inside the bag and our feet won’t get wet.

De-icing Your Car

You could buy fancy de-icing chemicals to remove the ice from your car or you can save a little money and use some lukewarm water. DO NOT USE BOILING WATER, this will only cause the glass to crack and ruin your car. Turn on your car to have it start warming up and then apply lukewarm to cold water to your car windows and begin scrapping away, this will make the de-icing process much faster.

Protecting Your Face

When the wind is really bad and it’s cold and/or snowing it’s very easy to get a chapped face. Sometimes it’s so bad you can’t even see. You could wear a ski mask (and look like a robber) or get fancy ski goggles, but there are other options. We like to wear a turtle neck and pull the neck up over our face and in some cases over our eyes to protect ourselves from the elements. This only works when the fabric isn’t very thick since you need to be able to see (even if you can’t see much, it’s better than nothing). You could also use a thin scarf to cover up your face if you still need to see. We don’t recommend doing this for a very long time as it is difficult to see things, but in a pinch it works perfectly.

Slippery Surfaces

Perhaps you didn’t get to the hardware store in time and now you’re left without any salt and are afraid that you might slip and fall on some ice. Never fear, just look around your kitchen and see if you have any popping corn, dried beans, pearl barley or anything hard and kinda gravely. Try to chop up the corn or beans in a food processor or blender. If you don’t have a food processor or blender just put the corn/beans into a bag and start smashing it with a hammer until they’ve broken up a little bit. Then apply it to the surfaces with ice. While it won’t melt the ice, it’ll at least provide you with traction so that you won’t slip and fall. Gravel and sand will also work in this instance.

*Not all of us are fortunate enough to have a home to protect us from the elements so if you see someone outside when it’s cold please call the hypothermia hotline so they can get to a shelter. In DC the number is 1-800-835-7252. Baltimore your number is 1-410-361-4677. Philly call 1-215-232-1984. NYC call 311.