Pembirdie

Author: saragerman89

  • An alphabet soup of retirement savings

    In an effort to help myself understand the different kind of retirement accounts, I’m listing some here:

    • Traditional IRA. This stands for Individual Retirement Arrangement. (I thought it stood for Individual Retirement Account, but this says I’m wrong.) Anyone can have one of these. As long as you don’t make too much money, you can contribute dollars to this account and then essentially get those dollars deducted from your taxes. When you take the money out in retirement, you have to pay taxes on it. If you make too much money, you don’t get to deduct the dollars from your taxes. An IRA has a contribution limit that changes with inflation. I’ve never had a traditional IRA. Instead, I’ve had…
    • Roth IRA. Why Roth? Apparently Mr. Roth was a senator and he started this kind of retirement arrangement/account. With a Roth IRA, you put in your dollars (after you’ve paid taxes on them) and then when it’s time to take the money out, all the money is tax free. The other thing with a Roth IRA is, you can technically take the money out before retirement without a penalty. However, if your money has MADE money, you can’t take out the extra stuff. For example, if you contributed $10,000 to your Roth IRA and it grew to be $12,000, you could take out $10,000 but you’d have to leave in the $2,000 of growth until you reached the designated retirement age. A Roth IRA has the same contribution limit that a regular IRA has. Technically, you can’t contribute to a Roth IRA if you make too much money. There is, however, a workaround, called…
    • Backdoor Roth IRA. This is actually not its own thing, it is a combo of the above. You use it if you make too much money to contribute tax-advantaged dollars into a regular IRA or any dollars at all to a Roth IRA. It’s some kind of IRS/legal magic where your first put your post-tax money in the regular IRA, and then transfer it to a Roth IRA. If this is legal, why can’t you just contribute to a Roth IRA directly? I have no idea. Maybe so less people do it. I certainly haven’t. (Yet.)
    • 401(k). If you work at a for-profit company, you probably have this. You get to put pre-tax dollars into a 401(k), meaning it reduces the amount of money you have to pay taxes on, so your tax bill is lower. The contribution limit for a 401(k) is higher than the contribution limit for an IRA. Sometimes, instead of using pre-tax dollars, you can choose to contribute to a Roth 401(k), where the money that goes in is after-tax (you don’t save on taxes immediately), but you don’t have to pay taxes on it later when you pull it out in retirement.
    • 403(b). This is the same as a 401(k), but for non-profit companies. I’ve only worked for non-profits so I’ve only ever had access to 403(b)s. Can also be Roth.
    • 457(b). This is a “deferred compensation plan.” It’s not offered all the time. Basically, you pretend that your employer is not paying you now, but instead is paying you when you stop working for them or retire. The money they are paying you later goes into the 457(b), and you pay taxes on it when take the money out. Again, this reduces the amount of money you have to pay taxes on (for now). This can also be a Roth. I have one of these. I think it’s for high earners, typically. The money you put into a 457(b) does not affect your contribution limits for a 401(k) or a 403(b). The scary thing is that if your employer goes bankrupt and loses all its money, it will also lose your 457(b) money, which would be sad.
    • 401(a). This is also not offered all the time. It’s a retirement account for your employer to contribute to, but they can also mandate employee contributions. One of my employers provides this account. Employees can elect to contribute 3.5% or 5% of their wages, but you have to choose one of those options, and then my employer contributes an additional 6.5% or 8%. Does not affect contribution limits for other accounts.

    A lot of different number and letter combinations! I work at an academic medical center, and for some reason that means I technically work for two different employers. Employer 1 offers a 403(b). Employer 2 offers a 403(b), 457(b), and 401(a). Even though I have two 403(b) accounts, the contribution limit applies to both of them, meaning I can’t max out both of them. For Employer 1, I max out my 403(b). I’ve decided to made half my contribution pre-tax (reduces my current tax burden, will be taxed later), and half my contribution Roth (no tax benefits now, won’t be taxed later). For Employer 2, I max out my 457(b), and contribute 5% to the 401(a) in order to get the 8% employer contribution. Employer 2 is government-adjacent, so I’m banking (somewhat literally!) on the fact that it shouldn’t go bankrupt. If it does, I’ll probably have worse problems then worrying about my retirement savings.

    What I am NOT doing yet is contributing to my IRA. If I wanted to, I could do a Backdoor Roth IRA by first putting money into a traditional IRA and then transferring it to my Roth IRA. However, I’m meeting my retirement savings target and frankly feel a little lazy about it. There’s also no doubt an anxiety component as well as I’ve never attempted a Roth IRA before, but lots of posts on The White Coat Investor say it’s not hard to do. As well as an inertia component because I’d have to open a traditional IRA although it probably takes five minutes.

    That’s a future me problem.

    One other account that I’ve not mentioned is a taxable account, or a brokerage account. This is not a retirement account per se, but it’s a place you can put your money if you’ve maxed out your retirement accounts and still have money left over to invest. We actually are contributing $350 to a brokerage account every month. I should be putting that into a Backdoor Roth IRA, but, again, that’s going to be something I worry about another day.

    SDG

  • PSA regarding cat bites

    I like cats. I even love my cats, despite the old wisdom stating you should “never love something that can’t love you back.” Saying our cats love me is a stretch.

    However, liking cats doesn’t stop me from acknowledging that cats’ mouths are nasty. (This isn’t just a cat thing. One of my professors said, “If you lick the seat of a toilet, it should be the toilet that says, ‘Gross!’” Except of course that toilets don’t talk.)

    In addition to cats’ mouths being a fertile breeding ground for all sorts of anaerobic (oxygen-hating) bacteria, cats have pointy little teeth. Dogs’ mouths are just as nasty as cats’, but their teeth are generally thicker and they make big tearing bites, whereas cat bites are almost like little needles piercing your skin. It’s a lot harder to wash bacteria out of little tiny wounds, and the anaerobic bacteria thrive deep in your tissue away from the oxygen that’s at your skin’s surface.

    For that reason, if you get a cat bite, particularly on your hand, don’t wait to see if it swells and gets red and warm and painful. If you wait that long, it might be too late and you just may end up getting admitted to the hospital for IV antibiotics and an orthopedic or plastics hand consult for a wash out. No one wants that.

    Instead, get an urgent care appointment. Who knows, Amazon might even work for this situation. A reasonable provider will give you a prescription for Augmentin and you’ll kill those bacteria before they can do any damage.

    Are you guaranteed to get a dangerous infection if you don’t go on antibiotics? Of course not. But the danger is real, the prevention is relatively safe, and the overall balance of risks and benefits falls on the side of prevention in my book.

    SDG

  • An analysis of lifestyle explosion

    My husband and I started using YNAB in March, which has made tracking our purchases easier and more graphics-friendly. Before this, I was using a Google excel sheet.

    I decided to compare August 2023 (married, starting fellowship as a PGY-4) to August 2025 (married, starting my second year as an attending). This may be painful.

    August 2023

    Rent: 900

    Utilities: 181.89

    Groceries: 456.66

    Gas: 259.58

    Eating out: 118

    Other: 303.89

    Tithe: 500.50

    Investing: 100

    Total expenses: 2820.52

    Income: 4486.81

    August 2025

    Mortgage: 2000

    Utilities: 222.06

    Groceries: 390.38

    Gas: 200.48

    Eating out: 59.62

    Other: 11559.54 (8210.17)

    Tithe: 2210

    Investing: 350

    Total expenses: 16992.08 (13642.71)

    Income: 12349.88

    Not included are taxes and retirement savings, which are removed from my paychecks automatically.

    Interesting, isn’t it? We’re in a house now, so unsurprisingly we pay more for housing, although not excessively so – around $13,200 more a year. Utilities are surprisingly similar: lower costs in Omaha, compared to Rochester, MN? Groceries, gas and eating out are all similar, although I know 2023 gas was inflated because we traveled that month.

    The big difference is “Other.” I will note that $3,349.37 of this was from funds previously saved and earmarked for our shed project, so removing this makes the Other category “just” $8,210.17. What did that include?

    1. Necessary car repairs and new tires
    2. Insurance
    3. Home maintenance
    4. Travel
    5. Auto registration
    6. Clothes
    7. Presents
    8. Medical expenses
    9. Life insurance
    10. An unexpectedly expensive sewing machine, curtesy of my mom (that we nevertheless had to pay for)
    11. Paying for this blog’s host site

    Overall, if you add up the “necessary” spending categories of car repairs, insurance, home maintenance, auto registration, medical expenses and life insurance, it comes to $6,562.70. Travel, clothes and presents, which I see as mostly non-negotiables, ate up an additional $846.65. That leaves $800.82 purely frivolous spending (I’m looking at you, fancy sewing machine!).

    Now, some of the “necessary” spending is the result of lifestyle creep. About $2,000 of the car repairs were because part of our shed-in-construction fell on my husband’s car during a windstorm. If we didn’t have the money, we could have driven it around after duct-taping the back but results would have been unideal. Insurance wouldn’t be so expensive if we were buying renter’s insurance instead of homeowner’s. We wouldn’t be paying to maintain a home if we didn’t own one. Lifestyle creep cost us $4,300 in August alone.

    The other thing not reflected in this comparison is lumpy costs. We certainly paid for auto registration and insurance, bought clothes, gave people presents, went to the doctor and purchased airline tickets in 2023, but apparently not in the month August.

    The other thing I’ll add to this postmortem is that thankfully, we aren’t exceeding our income every month. Me as a PGY-4 would find it hard to believe you can spend $12,000 in a month. Current me knows that sadly, it’s pretty easy to do.

    SDG

  • Book review: Don Quixote, Part 1

    Mostly, I read this book because I’m not above being a sycophant, and to a less degree because it seems like one of the books a person should read at some point. A work colleague, my “buddy” during the onboarding process, is coming over for dinner next week. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes is his favorite novel. I thought it’d be something we could talk about.

    I’ve learned that Don Quixote actually consists of two parts that were written and published years apart. I’ve just finished Part 1, which seems like enough of an achievement to write about. I don’t know if I can discuss it in an intelligent manner, but I do have some thoughts.

    1. This book is LONG. The first part clocks in around 500 pages. (Admittedly, the version I’m reading is one of those small paperbacks.) The second part is just as long.
    2. I saw on the Internet that Don Quixote is considered by some to be the first modern novel. It was quite readable. (Not sure what role the translation played in this.) In fact, it’s hard for me to comprehend how this book was written more than 400 years ago, as parts of it seem so fresh. (Again, unsure what role the translation played in this.) On the other hand, novels are not written this way anymore. Don Quixote involves a lot of people sitting around and telling each other their stories. To be sure, there is action as well, but the latter half of Part 1 in particular seemed to consist mostly of people telling their life stories, along with a novella thrown in. Similarly, there’s a lot more unadorned dialogue than I’m used to, whole chapters of two individuals going back and forth each making their arguments with long paragraphs of text. Today’s authors, I think, try to use more “show, don’t tell,” in their approaches, whereas Cervantes heavily uses dialogue to explain what characters are thinking, planning and doing.
    3. On a similar theme, there isn’t much of a point in the plot of Don Quixote. It doesn’t have the classic three part structure that I associate with novels. Sure, things happen and wrap up by the end, but it’s mostly episodic.
    4. The famous windmill scene happens in Chapter Eight. For context, this is essentially the very beginning of Don Quixote’s adventures. Total chapter count is fifty-two. Don Quixote has a short escapade before Chapter Eight but it’s preliminary – his “squire,” Sancho Panza, isn’t with him until right before the windmills. And the windmill “adventure” lasts no more than three pages. Given that the windmill scene is essentially all I knew about Don Quixote prior to reading it, the fact that it came so early into the novel and that it played such an insignificant role in the story was astonishing. True, it’s a great visual and you can read all sorts of symbolism into it. The cynical part of me wonders if it is so famous because it’s early enough into the novel that almost everyone gets that far before abandoning the effort.
    5. Don Quixote is funny. And not (just?) in an erudite way. It has a lot of slapstick humor and even scatological humor. It’s almost like a Looney Toons cartoon. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are constantly getting beat up, but never seriously slowed down. At one point, they vomit into each other’s faces. A long paragraph is devoted to Sancho Panza attempting to secretly defecate while he is standing right next to Don Quixote. Unfortunately for him, the smell rises up to Don Quixote’s nose. “Sancho,” he says, “I think you’re more frightened than you had let on.” And then asks him to stand farther away.
    6. It’s clear than Don Quixote has gone mad and truly believes he’s a knight errant, but it’s not clear to me if he uses being a knight as an excuse to avoid things he doesn’t want to do, or if he’s always acting in good faith. For instance, at one point Sancho Panza is “blanketed,” tossed up and down on a blanket by some guys at a inn as a joke when he tries to leave without paying the fee. Don Quixote has already left the inn, and returns when he hears Sancho’s cries; but when he gets to the wall of the inn and actually sees Sancho being tossed into the air, he can’t move and doesn’t do anything to stop it. He later attributes this to being enchanted, as he believes everything in the inn (a castle, in his mind) is enchanted. I still can’t decide what really happened.
    7. While it’s a comic story, Don Quixote (and to a lesser degree, Sancho Panza) is a tragic figure. He’s mad. His attempted heroic deeds cause only confusion, disaster or loss of property to the unsuspecting people around him or physical damage to himself and Sancho. He brings some people laughter, but it’s the laughing-at-you-not-with-you kind. This is not a guy you would want to meet, because he would somehow mess up your life all while believing he was doing something noble. At the same time, there is something noble about his steadfast dedication to living out his life as a knight errant. He ends up in a cage. That’s hard to laugh at, especially when I take care of people lacking capacity in the hospital.

    Overall, I’m happy I read it, but I haven’t decided if I’m reading Part 2 yet.

    SDG

  • When good advice can be bad, and other thoughts

    I am haphazardly reading through the Bible and have just started the book of Job. I find Job to be a challenging read. Today, I read the first reply of Eliphaz the Temanite, who has the dubious distinction of being the first of Job’s three friends to open his mouth. Despite being with Job for the explicit purpose of comforting him, his words are far from comforting. He implies Job is whining, wonders why Job is having so much trouble dealing with his problems considering that he’s given advice to people in bad positions in the past, suggests that Job must have done something worthy of punishment and deserved what happened to him, and ends by saying if Job simply repents and learns his lesson God will forgive him and bless him more than he did before.

    Yeah, no, if you have a friend going through hard times, this would not be the speech to emulate.

    However, despite Eliphaz being utterly wrong about things – the narrative has told us repeatedly that Job is a righteous man who has done absolutely nothing to deserve what has happened to him – he says a lot of things that are, at face value, true. For instance, in Job 5:17 he says, “Blessed is the one whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.” This is echoed in Proverbs 3:11: “My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke,” which is itself quoted in Hebrews 12:5.

    My dad taught us a saying about proverbs, which is not original to him: “Proverbs are principles, not promises.” Proverbs teach us about how the world works, the principles of how God has set things up. Most of the time, they accurately describe what life is like. Life, however, cannot be reduced to formulas. I think that is intentional. God wants us to live by faith and trust him. He intend for us to manipulate and control our lives through promises that work like magic spells.

    While Eliphaz was factually correct in saying God’s discipline is good, and we should welcome it into our lives, he applied this truth wrongly to Job’s life. He demonstrated knowledge of how life works, but not wisdom in applying this knowledge. Jesus does not do this. Solomon may have been the wisest man on earth, but he has nothing on Jesus, who knew Proverbs as well as anyone and also wisely interpreted the Law.

    On a broader level, how do we deal with situations where something is true on its own, but made false in context? In the above situation, many of Eliphaz’s statements were true, but they added up to a false argument for Job’s guilt when taken altogether. Would it still be ok to pull out the truths and use them, divorced of their context? I have never read Marx or Nietzsche, but I’ve certainly read a lot of quotes from their works and some of them ring true. Overall, I reject their overall arguments (or, what I understand their arguments to be, never having read them). But is it acceptable to pull out the parts I agree with and say, This is true? To do this, must I include a disclaimer explaining the context? Or is the “truth” irrevocably damaged by the part it plays in their larger arguments?

    Stretching the questions a little further, what if the stated truth is untainted by the context of the argument, but rather by the person making the argument? Attacking an argument by attacking the person making it is a logical fallacy, an ad hominem attack. You’re not supposed to do that. And yet, Jesus didn’t allow demons to address him as Lord. Is a shirt that says, “Jesus is Lord – Demon” going to convince anybody? Wouldn’t it do the opposite?

    I’ve read a few articles discussing this question, including one from The Gospel Coalition on Jonathan Edwards. Edwards still has a large influence on Protestant Christians today, and he was a slave owner. How does that influence how we interpret his writings? Does it?

    Although the context is different, there are similar questions about truth and its context in the medical field. In medical school, we learned about Wegener’s granulomatosis. But we don’t call it that anymore, our professor said, we call it granulomatosis with polyangiitis, because Wegener was a Nazi. On a more serious level, the scientific community didn’t know what to do with the discoveries made by Nazi scientists who experimented on people in concentration camps. Many of these findings cannot be duplicated because they were blatantly evil and unethical. But there have been blatantly unethical experiments run in the United States as well. Sometimes they resulted in knowledge that could improve people’s health. Is it ethical to use knowledge obtained through unethical means?

    I don’t have answers to these questions, and I’ve gotten pretty far away from Job’s friend’s words. Well, I’ll end on a piece of good advice. As Thumper’s father said, If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.

    SDG

  • I’m almost eight years older than my husband

    Growing up, I thought that the husband was always older than the wife. After all, my dad was older than my mom. It made sense.

    I wised up as an early teen, when my dad’s youngest sister met the man who would become her husband. I’m not sure how much younger he is than my aunt, but it’s a few years. She is not ashamed of this and says it is the best thing ever.

    I’m not exactly in a position to disagree anymore.

    I was not sure how old my husband was when we started dating in November 2019, but I knew he was a fair bit younger than me. One of his older sisters is my age, and there’s another sister four years younger than me between us. On my flight home for Christmas, I amused myself by calculating the lowest acceptable age he could be. I was thirty at the time, so the bare minimum for him was twenty-two or twenty-three. (The rule is half your age plus seven. I preferred using a more conservative eight.) As it turns out, he was twenty-two. He turned twenty-three in January.

    I’ve had time to get used to it, but contemplating the age gap hasn’t lost its power to astonish me. When I first met my husband, I was twenty-eight and he was twenty. (At that point in our lives, the age gap would have been unacceptable according to my calculations.) I’d graduated college before he started high school. I was driving independently when he was six. At our wedding, my sister joked during her maid of honor speech that she used to pray that God would find me a husband, but “God was just waiting for your relationship to be legal!” I still feel the urge to blush when I have to disclose our birthdates to someone we don’t know.

    Fortunately for me, my husband doesn’t mind. His mother is older than his father, so he’s used to the concept. And, truly, it doesn’t seem to make a difference most of the time. There are life experiences I’ve had, living independently, that he hasn’t – I think the influences some of his disinterest in money. He’s emotionally mature and level-headed. The other day I made a juvenile joke and he said it’s hard to believe I’m older than him sometimes.

    One of my more superficial but nevertheless very real fears is how we are going to look as we get older. People say we look similar in age now, or even that my husband looks older. (It’s probably the mustache.) But as they say, “Black don’t crack.” They don’t say that about white people. About a year ago, I cared for a late middle-aged (but still suave) Black gentleman. With him were three lovely young adult children and his white wife. Sadly for me, she looked old. White cracks. She didn’t seem to mind.

    Maybe I won’t then, either.

    SDG

  • And now for one of my favorite topics, percentages

    I made $37,000 during my first year as a dietitian in 2013. Granted, this was in South Dakota so there wasn’t state income tax, although now I wonder if I would have paid much income tax at my level. As an attending physician, I paid significantly more than my starting dietitian salary in taxes this year. Taking into account Social Security, Medicare, Federal and State taxes, I’ve estimated our total tax burden comes to about 25% of our gross income. It would be a lot worse if I was filing separately or my husband made a lot more money. Taxes are automatically withheld by my employer(s) so although they are painful to contemplate it’s a painless monthly experience.

    We aim to save 20% of our gross income for retirement. This mostly gets taken out of my paychecks automatically so it’s pretty painless when you never see the money. The personal finance people call this “paying yourself first” – we are giving our future selves the ability to not have to work forever.

    We give 10% of our income as a tithe to our church. We’ve also added a category to our budget consisting of 1% of our income as designated “give away” money. (We’re still figuring out how we want to do that.)

    So, if you add that up, it comes to about 56%: taxes, retirement, and tithing, leaving 44% to live on. When it comes down to it, we’re living on less than half of my gross salary. Which is not to say we are in any way deprived! I make a good amount of money. But when you are told you make $250,000 and find you actually “only” have $110,000 to work with, it’s disorienting.

    I have heard some people say that you should live on 50% of your take-home pay. In our case, that would be $93,750. Still more money than many people make as their gross income. Less than we’re spending in a year, though. Kind of amazing how fast that adds up.

    Just as a income does not equal wealth, a paycheck does not equal what you get to spend if you hope to one day become financially independent. Crossing fingers we’ll get there some day!

    SDG

  • How much to save?

    The White Coat Investor and most other reasonable personal finance blogs for physicians recommend saving 20% of gross income for retirement. (People who aren’t physicians usually do fine with saving 15% because they start the process earlier and benefit from more years of compounding.) If you are aiming to retire early, you need to increase that percentage.

    With my current job, I am technically employed by two different organizations, the result being I get two salaries and can contribute to both a 403(b) and a 457(b). But wait, there’s more! One organization provides a 501(c) with a mandatory 5.5% employee contribution and 8% employer contribution, and the other organization contributes an extra 9% of my salary to a different account (I have no idea what numbers go along with that one).

    All together, if I max out my 403(b) and 457(b), and all personal finance sites recommend maxing out tax-advantaged space, taking into account the forced 501(c) contribution and employer contributions, I’m saving 25% of my gross income. And we haven’t even considered the backdoor Roth IRA! We could save another $15,000!

    This begs the question, do we want to do this? Would I ever consider saving less?

    What if, instead of going for a 25% percent retirement savings rate, I went for 20%? This would involve me not maxing out one of my retirement funds, which would feel weird after reading so much about the importance of doing so. It seems like everyone is doing it. (This is probably not true.) Does that mean I’d fall behind? Would I be missing out?

    What would we do with an extra 5%? Would we save it up for something big, like a bathroom renovation, a new business venture, adopting a child? Would we just inflate our lifestyle by eating out more, going on more trips (my husband would hate that) and upgrading our stuff? Would we give it away, as gifts, family assistance or support to organizations we believe are making difference?

    I have, of course, a few thoughts. The first is that, the extra 9% from one of my employers comes with golden handcuffs, meaning if I leave my job before I’ve worked there for three years, I forfeit the money. I don’t plan on leaving my job, but life does weird things sometimes, so in the spirit of not-counting-my-chickens-before-they-hatch I’m not going to include the extra 9% in my savings calculations until I’m past the three year mark. Taking everything else together, and including a little extra that goes into a taxable account, we’re saving right at 20%. Meaning, we can kick this decision down the road for another two years.

    The second thought is that there are a lot of warnings in the Bible about putting too much faith in money. A wise man in Proverbs asks God to avoid giving him too much wealth, lest he put his faith in his riches and not in God. The rich man in Jesus’ parable is foolish for building up his possessions and not putting any thought to the fact he could die any moment and that he has an eternal future on the other side of death. Jesus teaches that our hearts follow our treasure. James castigates rich people for mouthing platitudes while ignoring the poverty of their brothers and sisters. The Bible also teaches that wealth is not a bad thing, but the implication is that it comes with the responsibility to use it wisely.

    I know that I am tempted to derive security from the money I’ve saved up – that’s just I am. Because of that propensity, I believe it will be wise to avoid going beyond 20% retirement savings in the future. Instead of hedging my bets by stashing away another five percent or more, I can ask God to use what we save to provide for our needs. My husband and I will need to have more discussions about it, but I’d prefer to use the money we’d otherwise be saving for the benefit of others. One can make the argument that by saving more now, there will be more to give in the future… but the future is uncertain. I don’t want to wait for a mythical tomorrow that isn’t guaranteed.

    SDG

  • KT chili recipe

    We have some dear church friends from my residency days in Minnesota, and one night they invited us to dinner. They are aware of my husband’s pickiness when it comes to food, but when I saw what was on the menu my heart sank: chili. My husband has consistently reported an aversion to beans of any variety, and I didn’t see how the situation could be rectified. I resigned myself to watch him carefully pick through his bowl to bypass the beans.

    And was instead surprised when he said, “No, I’ll try it” and proceeded to eat the entire bowl. The fact that there was a generous portion of shredded cheese on top and that the chili was served with tortilla chips certainly didn’t hurt, but I was nevertheless simultaneously amazed and grateful that our friends didn’t ask me in advance about whether chili would be a good option – I would have told them no, and we never would have found out that my husband likes chili. How he explains it is that his main problem with beans is a texture issue, and when the beans are soft and mixed in with a similarly-textured ground turkey (in my mind these are not very similar, but it’s ok for him) he finds the texture acceptable. And apparently the taste, too.

    It feels wonderful that my husband can eat plant protein and enjoy it. (Not that this meal doesn’t contain plenty of animal protein, too.) Even better, this recipe is fast and easy. It can definitely come together in 30 minutes but I’d say less, if you’re trying to go fast.

    KT’s chili recipe

    Ingredients

    1 lb ground turkey (you can use any fat percentage, I usually pick the leaner 93%/7% variety)

    1 packet McCormick’s mild chili seasoning

    1 can dark red kidney beans (rinsed and drained)

    1 can light red kidney beans (rinsed and drained)

    1 can petite diced tomatoes (we use an immersion blender – directly in the can – to liquify the tomatoes – my husband doesn’t like the texture otherwise)

    1 can tomato sauce

    OR, in place of the 1 can diced tomatoes and 1 can tomato sauce, you can use a jar of pasta sauce and it’s one less can!

    Shredded cheese (we usually use cheddar)

    Tortilla chips (corn chips like Fritos would do well here, too)

    Instructions

    1. Brown the turkey and drain the fat/extra liquid
    2. Add the seasoning mix
    3. Add all the other cans
    4. Simmer as long as you like, add water if it’s too thick
    5. Serve with as much shredded cheese as you like and tortilla chips

  • The joy of cooking with cans

    When I was young and dumb(er), I viewed my mom’s cooking with snobby condescension. I read cooking blogs, like Smitten Kitchen and Mel’s Kitchen Cafe, like it was a full time job. (Full disclosure, I still read these blogs, and have made delicious recipes from them!) When blog authors wrote about how beans-from-scratch are so much tastier and almost no more work than canned beans, I believed them, although it never seemed to turn out that way with my recipes. I shuddered at the jar of pre-chopped garlic in Mom’s refrigerator. I turned up my nose at Mom’s generous use of onion power and garlic powder in place of onions and garlic.

    I have gradually come to an appreciation of Mom’s cooking. No, appreciation is too dry of a word: an admiration. She served up made-that-morning meals five to seven days out of the week, consistently ready by noon, all while taking care of five kids, feeding bucket calves, going to morning Bible study, and supervising our homeschool activities. And you know what? They tasted good. Dad was always raving about Mom’s cooking, and while he may have not been the most discriminating judge, I can say that as kids we generally didn’t have reason to complain.

    Using canned goods and seasoning packets was part of how Mom pulled it off, and I now recognize it as a feature, not a bug. Although we do not have any children requiring our attention, my husband and I manage to make meals with much less consistency and timeliness than my mom did. (Maybe kids force you to be structured? I’m making excuses for ourselves.) I’d prefer to eat supper by 6:30 PM, but more often than not it’s after eight. When we whip up a old standby, however (almost invariably using some kind of short cut such as canned beans), there’s a better chance I get food in my belly before I get hangry.

    In conclusion: Canned beans are easier and faster than making beans from scratch, and give you a more consistent product, don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise. My mom is a great cook, way more experienced and effective than I am, and she doesn’t shy away from using cream of chicken soup or a boxed cake mix. Do what you have to do to get food on the table.