Seriously, open your mail, even stuff that looks like junk mail

This one showed up, looking just like those presorted notices from one's health insurance, stating that the privacy policy has changed or whatever. But nope, it's money. The accompanying letter says it's a State and Federal Medical Loss Ratio Rebate. I googled that and don't understand entirely what it is, but it seems to be a rebate they'll send everyone because they charged too much based on what they paid out, or something.

This one also totally looked like junk mail. But was a check for a class action suit I had opted into. Apparently I got $127.14 for Uber sending me an unsolicited text message (probably when I signed up for something to get some Swagbucks). Sure, send me all the text messages you want, at those rates.

I also got a few others recently, from credit cards I had accounts with in years past, that also looked like those unsolicited offers of 30.00% APR loans or whatever, that I happened to open.

So, yeah, open your mail, even if it looks just like junk mail you receive from these companies all the time. I hope I haven't recycled any envelopes that contained checks.

POTATO, POTATO, POTATO

Have I mentioned I have a bunch of potatoes? Potato, potato, potaaaatoooo. I made potato salad with the tiny potatoes, the red potatoes, and the purple potatoes. It tasted like potato salad, except it looked red and purple. There was probably something more interesting I could have made that specifically used tiny potatoes and/or purple potatoes, but I made this, and it was good.

I also made potato tacos. I'm not sure if potato tacos are a thing, but I imagine they probably are, because root vegetables are a staple of traditional diets in the Americas. I chopped the potatoes up with onions and made basically homefries, but with more seasoning (I used jalapeño sauce, smoked red chili, and lots of cumin). I had small corn tortillas leftover from something, so I served the potatoes on those with tomato salsa, corn salsa from Trader Joe's (this stuff is seriously good; I highly recommend it), and some leftover goat cheese salad crumbles a neighbor gae me, which were the closest thing I had to cotija or similar. They turned out great, and were very popular among my family. 

Moar potatoes

I continue to make things with potatoes, because I continue to have entirely too many potatoes. Here are some homefries. I made them sliced, because they cook faster and more evenly. Nothing special, just potatoes, a little oil, Adobo, dill, smoked red chili powder or paprika. They're good alone, with breakfast foods, in breakfast burritos, or as a quick lunch with whatever vegetables you have around stir-fried and dumped on top of them.














Also I made au gratin potatoes. I used a recipe I found on Pinterest that I can't seem to find again. They were just OK. You can't really go wrong with potatoes and cheese, though I've had better.

I don't think I ever posted a photo of this whole Fair Foods haul. Wow. This one was pretty amazing. And, uh, contained a lot of potatoes.

Oh my god I have all these potatoes

I seem to have a ton of potatoes. Big, small, red, white, yellow, oh, and a bag of small blue ones and a bag of tiny weird-shaped ones. These were all acquired either through Fair Foods or through a similar food surplus program run though a religious organization. Both programs are amazing and have been so helpful to our family. And both programs give you a pre-packaged load of food without much opportunity to turn parts of it down. So there are all these potatoes.

I'm going to have to figure out different things to make with potatoes. Fortunately they keep quite a while, I mean, compared to things like bananas or leafy vegetables. But as tends to be the case with rescued produce, they're already getting up there in age. So far I've made a quasi-Indian curry. I sauteed onions and garlic, then threw it in the slow cooker with potatoes, frozen peas, and canned tomatoes that were either free in one of these food packages or a few cents via couponing. I dumped in a bunch of every spice I had that works in curries (see here for where to get inexpensive spices). Then once it was sufficiently cooked, I blended it a little to make it thicker, and served it over rice. This meal was close to free to make, and it served our family for dinner plus enough for everyone to take for lunch the next day.

Stay tuned for more potatoey goodness.

Well this was a nice surprise

This showed up in my e-mail today. I didn't recognize the name and had to google what the suit was about; Apparently XPO Logistics, which does deliveries from IKEA, had a robocall survey calling people a few days after receiving a delivery from IKEA, and there was something illegal about how it was set up. The class included anyone who had received an IKEA delivery, and I believe I only had to provide my phone number as proof of being in the class.

These class action things are often around $10-$20, or sometimes silly amounts under a dollar where sending the check cost more than the amount, but sometimes they're serious amounts of money. This is definitely something to get into if you don't already. Click the "class action suits" label on my post to find my other posts where I've explained how to find these suits and sign up. It's definitely worth it when payments like this show up.