A cheap over shoulder satchel, it’s like having a extra pocket always available
I’ve got 6 or 8, take one everywhere, even if I already have my purse. I’m addicted to getting them at thrift stores. Just got a sweet, black, tacticool bag with molle loops and velcro for $1.
There are a few brands that make decent backpacks/satchels in the 10L - 20L size, within that price range. They’re very helpful
Converting $20 to local currency, I’d probably go with this:
This is so-called “Liubao Tea”, a kissing cousin to pu’er tea. I did a review of my first batch(es) and it has rapidly (literally with one round of brews) reached the top of my circulation in teas.
The depicted tea is one aged from 1991 (the one I reviewed was tea stems from 2003) and is of one of the higher grades. A 100g package will set you back about $15 or so at today’s exchange rate. 100g is about 15-20 servings, and each serving can be brewed multiple times (even my tea stems can be brewed four times without loss of flavour), so it’s quite the bargain.
Save it for a time when you really need something warm, rich, and comforting. It will last forever as long as you store it in a cool, dry, dark space. And personally I think it’s a bargain at 15 bucks.
Where do you get it?
I get it straight from a collective representing the farmers in Liubao. There are some Internet vendors who sell it, though, so you don’t have to move to China. I can’t vouch for any of them though since, well, I don’t use their services.
What methods do you use to dry the tea leaves and stems after each brew?
You don’t. You finish your cup, you put the leaves back in, you pour hot water over top.
I see, so it’s only possible if you drink it consecutively. Do you use a strainer or put the leaves in the cup?
Yes. At work, for example, I make a cup in the morning about 10AM and then keep refilling and drinking until about an hour before quitting time.
The link provided a lot of answers to your questions. It looks like, similar to puer, to be drunk consecutively.
Oops, didn’t notice the link. I’ll check it out.
Also, if you haven’t tried it, loose leaf pu’er tea really is excellent. I get mine in tins from the local Chinese grocery store, and the one time they didn’t have any I drove around all afternoon trying to find a store that had some in stock.
Excuse me, kissing what?
Cousin. Did I typo that?
It’s an expression. It means “related, but not so closely that they can’t fuck”. Welcome to Dixieland, pardner
Ah yes, the most convenient of currencies - dried leaf.
An electric ‘coffee grinder’ just for grinding up spices / seeds. Don’t use the regular coffee grinder, or your coffee drinking housemates will get super annoyed. The flavor, and nutrition is so much better when you cook with freshly ground spices.
May I suggest a mortar and pestle, then you don’t have build up of contaminants in the burr, and blending of particulate from past grinds
Try grinding 60ml of flax, sesame, cumin, black cumin, and fenugreek in a mortar /pestle. It’s too much work. I’m a tool using primate, and I like powertools. For 5ml, even 20ml hand power is fine. The Chinese developed a thing called a “Brass Boat” for grinding up larger quantities, “manually”, actually by foot/ leg power. Alas, I can’t seem to find an image for ya.
I have several mortar and pestles and I find them very easy, you don’t need to be condescending, I kind of stopped reading your comment after the bitchy start.
Not meaning to be condescending, that’s what I grind every morning for my breakfast. I’ve tried hand grinders, and have a mortar & pestle, but they don’t work for me in that use case. shrug
A <$20 grinder wouldn’t be good enough to use on coffee anyway.
They work well on seeds, tho’.
For sure!
The difference is that you aren’t trying to percolate water through spices like you are with coffee, so the grind size isn’t so critical. With coffee, if the grind is uneven you end up with “channels” instead of the water flowing through evenly, so some parts of the coffee ends up over-extracted while other parts end up under-extracted, and you end up with more sour and bitter flavors than it’s supposed to have.
Or so they say, anyway. I’m not actually a coffee snob myself – I drink instant with a bunch of cream and sugar, LOL – I just like James Hoffman YouTube videos.
Conical burr or bust!
There’s much nutrition in coffee?
Coffee drinkers, especially before morning coffee can be a tad bit intolerant of one’s spice experiments. It’s best to not goad the beast, at least until normal / optimal levels of caffienation have been reached, and beauty achieved.
I love spice and I love my morning coffee. I might try combining them as an experiment and I own to coffee grinders for a reason!
So called Turkish Coffee, which I used to drink on the regular in post grad, has cardamom, which is a great place to start. I’m always game for a little extra flavor. Just a touch of chili powder? Hmm, never tried it, but maybe Nigella sativa / Kalonji/ Black Cumin Seed would be a good add. LMK!
I mainly use mine to get the finer espresso grounds from regular coffee. Why pay premium?
Also used it for chemistry experiments, grinding coriander, all sorts of things.
After breaking 2, I finally got a decent one for $40.
Pet jumping spider.
Honestly 10 star pet. They eat a small bug every other day or so. They look adorable. They will recognize and react to you, and you can even train them to accept handling. They come in a wide variety of colors.
Downsides are that you’ll probably end up getting more than one (do NOT co-hab them!), or that they only live for 1-3 years. If you enjoy having the spider though, you can look into other arthropods like tarantulas, or vinegaroons (which look scary, but are harmless and have very sweet dispositions).
Not a pet but a couple weeks ago I had a big fly buzzing around my room and annoying the shit out of me for like 4 hours while I was working from home. Then I heard it buzzing against my window in a weird way and I turn around and there’s a big ass jumping spider just murdering the shit out of it. I’ve never been so happy to see a spider in the house. It hung out in the corner of the window for like an hour after that and then it was gone and I haven’t seen it since.
Do you just… grab one off the street?
You can, but for ethical reasons, I would recommend not doing that. There are plenty of sellers online and at expos who sell captive bred spiders.
Gin.
That really depends on the gin.
Park Alpine Dry Gin
A decent pen and/or pencil. I have several nice fountain pens that I use for journaling, but I use my Zebra F-301 ballpoint daily for general notes/etc. – ~$10 for a 4 pack on Amazon. If you prefer a pencil, you can pick up a Pentel Sharp Kerry for under $20 on Amazon.
I prefer the Pilot Precise V5 as my favorite cheap and ubiquitous pen upgrade. Everyone remarks on how smooth it writes. Not the best for labels with gloss though is the only catch with it. Capped or retractable versions, and while I like the V5 (0.5mm tip) because I write smaller, they also have a V7 (0.7mm tip) for those that write larger or what bolder lines.
After that, hop on Jetpens and there are tons of <$10 pens that are way better than anything in a store, or refills to turn your favorite cheap pen into an undercover fancy pen so you don’t need to worry about losing a fancier pen body. I stocked up on so many great pens, and now I have a job where I hardly ever have to write and I really miss getting to use my pens all day. The cheap office pens skip and are so scratchy it feels like drawing on dirt with a stick in comparison.
That’s a great tip about the “undercover fancy pen!” I hadn’t even thought about that, but I’ll definitely be doing it now!
I’ve got a few hybrids at this point. Some really nice pen bodies come with crap refills, or they will come in a tip size you don’t like, or you can put a more expensive refill in a cheap pen, so if you like using something like a Cross pen but worry about losing it, put a Cross refill in a cheap disposable pen body.
Most pens use one of 2 fairly universal refill types, so swapping is easy 90% of the time and there are a number of great styles and brands in those formats, and now with 3D printing, you can buy adapters for popular pens that use oddball refills to use the common ones.
There are so many good pens for $3-5 that you can just pick an assortment from a place like Jetpens (they list compatible refills for each pen body!) and mix and match until you create your perfect pen.
It’s a much more affordable and practical (sorry fountain pen fans) way to get an affordable but perfected for you writing instrument that you won’t cry about if you lose it or someone walks off with it.
Edit: If you’d ask me to make you a $20 pen that should be awesome for almost anyone…
Zebra Sarasa Grand - metal body, good weight but not heavy, nice spring clip that shouldn’t snap off and you can clip it to things normal clips wouldn’t like, comes in a ton of unique colors ($14)
Uni Jetstream refill ($2) - the Sarasa Grand ink isn’t bad at all, though I thought it was a little free flowing for my taste, but when I bought it they only had the bigger 0.7 tip, which is too big for how I write. It’s a gel ink, so it looks superb and bold, but it will smudge on labels. The Jetstream is a great hybrid ink blending the good qualities of oil based and water based inks, pretty smudge proof on just about any writing surface, comes in black/blue/red and 0.3/0.5/0.7/1.0 mm tips so anyone can get a size and color combo that works for them. Lasts much longer than a gel ink also.
A coffee cup warmer. No more getting up from my desk to nuke cold coffee.
Those are stupid cheap at the thrift stores and there’s always one there.
Get a double walled cup, i can have hot coffee for 4 hrs and warm for another 2-4 hours
For me anymore, I like to get a nice bag of single origin coffee from a quality roaster.
You can also still get zoo or museum tickets for that in many places. I got a lot of things (probably too many) so I like doing experiences when I can now to slow down the accumulation.
A usb-rechargeable battery bank that doubles as a hand warmer. Comes in handy for computer time in the cold basement and during a power outage, was extremely useful to charge cell phone
Not luxury, but I keep a small AAA flashlight with me nearly all the time.
Easier to handle and faster to use than a phone light. Also doesn’t use phone battery. I clip it on my hat if I need both hands like taking out the trash.
I have an Olight i3T but I would try out the i3T 2. More lumens and better battery efficency.
How do you clip it to our hat ? Like this ?
The Olight i3T and the i3T 2 have a bidirectional clip.
Oh, I see
This is a less-than-20 usb-c rechargeable light. Not AAA, but honestly I’d take this over AAA. I got this one at Home Depot.
Few dollars over OP’s request, but an Olight Oclip is straight awesome for a multipurpose light. Simple UI, super lightweight, long lasting, quick charging (USB-C), magnetic or clip-on, extra LED for red light.
I clip mine to the cross piece on my hiking pack to illuminate the trail. I’ve also used the red blinky light so my wife can be certain where I am, nobody think I’m a deer and shoots at me, and so 4-wheelers can spot me.
Fluffy stuffed animal. If I didn’t have a couple stuffed kitties to hug I probably would have killed myself already. Nice to have something to pretend loves you
As someone who has no less than two dozen stuffies on the bed right now I can tell you they do love you because you love them.
Been spending about 16 hours a day here
I know few pleasures greater than snuggling up to a pile of plushies in a cold winter night.
Though they do NOT help in getting up at morning in the slightest.
Orthotic shoe inserts. The good ones (superfeet) cost more than $20 but I was able to use my HSA $ to buy another brand for $0 out of pocket. Feet not hurting is worth the money.
Foam roller. I roll out my back 2-3 times a day.
Can you tell I’m getting old?
A 10-foot USB cable. Most people use whatever’s packed in with their electronics, and it’s pretty rare to get anything longer than 6 feet. Having the extra length is really nice in many situations.
It’s also one of my go-to inexpensive gifts or part of a care package for someone in the hospital. The extra length there is often the difference between being able to use a device while it’s charging or not.
Especially if it’s braided and has extra large and durable connector thingies so it won’t hard bend.
They’re rare because 10 feet is too long for a reliable USB data transmission. But yes good for charging.
Eh, I have audio interfaces and MIDI controllers on 10ft cables cause shorter just don’t reach my PC, works perfectly fine. Longer than that is a gamble but as far as I know 10ft is the upper bound of the USB 3.0 spec, so should be totally fine unless you have especially shitty cables.
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We got an Un-Skru under-cabinet opener and it’s pretty great
I use a small sheet of that no-slip shelf liner stuff for jars.
The Lady we got ours from isn’t showing up at the farmer’s marker anymore, but for well under $20, you can make your own corn pillow
This winter’s been bad for deep freezes and 4 minutes in the microwave will keep my corn pillow hot for an hour or more.
Some Warmies are under $20 too. My son freaked out when I started to out his cute new kitty in the microwave haha
when I was younger, my family used dry rice. I wonder which works better.
I’ve used both. The rice is lighter and contours better, the corn holds heat longer.
I’ve seen rice “socks” advertised for neck pain since it can hang around your neck better.