Hacking the Tchibo coffee capsule

Many months ago, we bought a Tchibo coffee machine. It uses a similar exactly the same concept as the Nespresso coffee machine. You pop a capsule that contains the grounded coffee into the machine, put a cup under the nozzle, press the button and voila, a steaming cup of coffee is there for you in about 1-2 minutes.

We have been using ours for about 12 months, trying out the various coffee that Tchibo sells. Occasionally, Tchibo would sell a new selection of coffees for a limited period of time. These new selection of coffee is also sold a slightly more price. Regular coffee capsule cost 2.99EUR, but a new selection is priced around 3.50EUR.

One of the catch is that the capsule is not interchangable with capsules from other coffee machines, such as Delonghi or Nestles.

The hacker sense kicked in and had to try to get something going. After a couple of false starts, I got something that is workable and produce reasonable coffee.

The following some simple steps that I have used to reused the capsules again.

The first thing you need to do is to get a capsule that you already have used and open it up with a sharp knife. I used a pairing knife with a sharp point. Carefully, I pierced at an area just inside the lips of the capsule and work the knife around the edge. I used a gentle sawing motion as I move around. The plastic top came away quite easily.

Once the top is removed, the capsule needs to be dissembled and cleaned. Be careful to do the dissembling over a sink as the used coffee could spilled out. It could get quite messy. With in the capsule, there are two plastic filters. The top plastic filter can be lifted out to exposed the used coffee grounds. The used coffee grounds need to be removed. At the bottom of the capsule, there is a filter there. This also needs to be taken out for cleaning.

When the two filters and the capsule itself is cleaned, it can be assembled. Began by inserting the bottom filter back into the capsule. Now the usage of the coffee is next. Besure to fill as much coffee as you can fit in. I have used a small tool to jam the coffee grounds into the capsule. I have found that the flavour and the aroma is better as well when grounds is tightly packed. The top filter can also be placed on top.

Prepare a piece of aluminium foil that is big enough to cover the top of the capsule. The piece of foil need to be folded over the edge of the capsule to form a tight seal. Depending upon the strength of your foil, care need to be taken not to tear any part of the foil. Doing so may caused some of the coffee grounds to escape from the capsule and it end up in your drink.

Placed the completed capsule that has covered by the aluminium foil into your Tchibo and press the button. It will take some effort to get the combination right, but the flexibility it gives you will be fantastic.

Enjoy!

  

There's a Better Way: Saving on Food as a University Student

The following is a guest post from Jena Ellis.

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While this may not be particularly true of university students in Europe, the stereotype of the American collegiate scholar is one who drinks cheap beer--more like water--and eats Ramen noodles, perhaps the cheapest microwaveable meal available. There is also the legend of the "Freshman Fifteen", which constitutes the alleged fifteen pounds a first-year student is supposed to gain as she navigates the world for the first time without mummy and daddy.

As someone who graduated from university not too long ago, I can attest to the fact that these stereotypes are by and large true. I myself ballooned a little over fifteen pounds, and my friends did the same if not more. Of course, a lot of these weight gain travails can be associated with drinking heavily for the first time, or even the stress induced by having to set your own study schedule without the structure imposed at home.

But there's one culprit to university student weight gain on which I'm going to focus--and that's cheap food. We all, of course want to save money. And saving money is a prime mode of activity for college students. Whatever is cheapest, whether its food, alcohol, textbooks, or clothing, we'll go for that first. And this is a great thing. Unfortunately, in the case of food especially, cheap food tends to be of low quality and low flavor.

Take Ramen Noodles for example. Can't get any cheaper than that. But the problem with Ramen is that its taste is very one-dimensional. What's more, it's really quite terrible for you. While Cheap as Chips has suggested to get off your lazy butt and learn to cook (wise advice, I may add), sometimes, for whatever reason, working on those culinary skills is inconvenient as a student. So what then?

My advice--what really turned things around for me during those college years of no money and junk food--is being a little bit smarter and more selective at the grocery store. For one, go to the smallest grocery store you can find, because the more options you have at a Mega Store type of environment, the more likely it is that you'll buy things you don't need.

Another thing to avoid is big brand name college staples. I'd often resort to Ramen Noodles, frozen pizza, Mac 'n Cheese, and other commonly known frozen or nonperishable food items simply because that's what I heard university students eat. If you do a little more searching, you can find things that are just as cheap but are a whole lot healthier for you. Most importantly of all, they have flavor.

Flavor is a huge component of consuming food that satisfies you. If you eat flavorless food, you'll want to eat more of it. And the more you eat the more weight you'll gain. One place I looked is in the ethnic food aisles. Japanese, Indian, you name it, tends to have more flavor than your standard, quick prep fare.

In the end, it can't be emphasized enough--check the labels for nutrition content, and check the prices. You'll be surprised by what flavorful bargains you can find if you just do some searching. 

By-line:
This guest post is contributed by Jena Ellis, who writes on the topics of Online Certificate Courses.  She welcomes your questions and comments at her email: jena.ellis20@gmail.com.

Be careful of the public holiday surcharge!

Today was the Labour day holiday in Melbourne, and the Melbourne Motor Show was on as well. So this morning, when we decided on to do, we decided to visit the motor show and spend the day in the city. The weather was nice, and warm. My son had a terrific day at the motor show, he wanted to jump into every car he saw and drive it away! He has a great imagination for a two year old.

To finish the day, we bought some ice-cream. When I am paying for it, I fail to notice the sign indicating that a 10% surcharge is applicable because of the public holiday at this ice cream shop. At first I was a bit annoyed that I did not notice this sign, but paid for the ice cream and enjoyed it with my family along the Yarra River. I also noticed that not all the shops are applying the public holiday surcharge.

Later today, I thought about it  a bit more, I realised what really annoyed me was that the sign on the ice cream store also state that the surcharge is also applicable on weekends as well. I have a real problem with the fact that the cost of an ice cream is cheaper on weekday that it is on a weekend. I wonder how many other ice cream or side street business operate this way?

In the future, I am going to be more wary of the what I am really paying for, in particular of the surcharges. By the way, if the surcharges are not displayed, the shop could be applying the surcharges in an illegal manner.

Would you miss a meal to pay your rent?

The Age newspaper reported that some people are forgoing some of life necessities to pay their rent, in some extreme case, missing meals.

Missing meals is pretty extreme, and I am the first person to admit that for some people, the situation is extreme and it does call for sacrifices such as missing meals. I am very fortunate that I am not in that situation.

However, I try to imagine myself in an extreme situation such as that, and imagine what I would do. Firstly, determine if I am actually in trouble.

1. I would draw up a very detail map of where our spending is. Currently, we have a pretty good idea of where our money are going but we don't have a precise knowledge of where they are. By having a very precise view, we are counting the very last cent and accounting for its spending. The tools to accomplish an notebook to take a note of all your spending, and strict discipline to ensure that a log of the spending is kept. Every cent has to be accounted for!
2. From the detail plan, I would classify which of the spending are "must have", "should have" and "nice to have". Food, rental and utility bills falls into "must have". Newspaper and the morning coffee at Gloria Jeans are "nice to have".
3. Evaluate the items in the "must have" to ensure that it is actually a "must have".
4. Work out what income we have to pay for the "must have" expenses.
5. If the income coming in does not cover the expenses, we are in deep trouble.

Once we have establish that we are in trouble, we need a plan. Perhaps the following would work.

1. Inform the creditors that we are having problem paying the bills as early as possible, and attempt to negotiate a better deal. This is a definite must for the creditors providing the "must have" products and services.
2. Inform the family that there are going to be some tough time ahead, and prepare themselves for the tough times. However, tell them that there is a plan in place and I am committed to meeting the plan.
   
3. Looking into supplementing the current income, probably with a second job.
4. Over the recovery period, keep evaluating the items under the "must have". If the items ever get classified as a "should have" or a "nice to have", we are going to stop doing it.
5. The most important part, have a time frame which you can get out of trouble. An open ended plan is difficult to achieve as there isn't any targets to aim for.

At the end of the day, I can not begin to even appreciate the situations some of the families are going through and coming to a decision that they are going to miss a meals here and there.

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If you enjoy this post, you may also enjoy the following post:

What to tell the kids if your family is in financial hardship?

Planning our meals

I have been doing some research on meal planning and its affects on money saving. Several PF bloggers such as Nicole Humphrey over at Families.com and Kris over at Simply Us have been some insightful reasons why meal planning is the way to go if we want to save money.

Back in June 2007, one of the articles that I wrote also advocate the planning of meals. Practicing it is a different story. This is our strategy in an attempt to plan our meals better.

We have a lot of food magazine like Super Food Ideas, Delicious and Good Taste, and frequently try the recipes in them. So our idea is to us a display folders with a few empty inserts. We take a recipe from one of these magazines and placed them into one of the empty inserts. We usually just tear the page out from the magazine.

Each of these recipes are for each weekday. Currently, we are only focusing the evening meals, but we are planning to cook that little bit extra so that the left overs can be use for lunch the next day.

Do you plan your meals, and what strategy do you us to keep it interesting and on track?

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garlic pesto recipe

My wife and I was experimenting with some pasta dishes and came up with something that we found to be simple, cheap and extremely delicious. It is a recipe that I wish to share.

Ingredients

a handful of pine nuts
2 tablespoon of olive oil
2 cloves of garlic
1 satchel of tomato paste
a quantity of pasta

Recipe

1. Peel the garlic and roughly dice the garlic
2. Put the pine nuts and the garlic into a mortar and pound it gently for about 30 seconds.
3. Pour in the olive oil into the mortar and mix well.
4. Leave the mixture to rest for about 10 minutes for the flavour to mix.
5. Cook the pasta until it is to your liking.
6. Drain the pasta and put into a large steel bowl.
7. Pour mixture into the pasta and mix well.
8. Stir in the tomato paste and all ingredients are mixed well.
9. Serve and eat well.

You probably guess that the ingredients' quantity is not very precise. We have cooked this dish a number of times and found that the recipe works well with a wide variation in quantity. If you pound the mixture to a fine paste, the flavour will be stronger.

It took us about 15 minutes to cook this dish, so it is perfect for something on the run.

From a cost perspective, this recipe is dirt cheap. I think that the most expensive ingredient is the pine nuts.

Hope you enjoy this recipe.

Tax free food

Well, tax free food has arrived at my work. Hang on a minute, food is already free of GST isn't it? Yes, it is but it is also taxed because you use your after-tax dollars to purchase your food, so in an in-direct manner you are being taxed for buying your food.

While I was overseas, our HR department has introduced a program where you can purchase your food with your pre-tax dollars, essentially salary sacrificing for your food. The organisation that is running with this program is EzyBite, which is part of the Accor services.

This is how it works.

1. You sign up with EzyBite to get onto the program.
2. You nominate how much you want to spend on your food per pay period. So for me that would be monthly.
3. When you are hungry, you order on-line and your food will be delivered at agreed timed, usually be lunch time.
4. Enjoy the food and the savings.

According to EzyBite, an average saving of around 31.5% could be made but it is largely dependent on which tax bracket you fall into.

However, there are a couple of rules.

1. You must order through the EzyBite program to get this savings. So you can't just walk into the shop and order over the counter.
2. You must eat your food on your work premises.

These two rules are quite strict and is one of the reasons that the food can be purchased with pre-tax dollars.

I am still thinking if it make sense in my case, but will probably sign up for about $10 per month. I sometimes forget to brown bag my lunch and just buy it from the take-away across the road. This program will become quite handy. $10 per month equates to a purchase power of around $13, that should buy me a nice juicy burger with the lot!

I shall let you know in a few months time if this is working out.

photo credit: Maira Kouvara

Cook and save

Learning to cook is one of those skills that have many benefits for your life. Not only that it is much healthier for your body, you are also absolutely sure of what is in your meal (you know, no nasty preservatives to keep you awake at night!). I didn't really learn to cook until I was in my early 20s. I regretted not helping mum more in the kitchen and therefore pickup some of her magical cooking skills.

As my son grows, I will endeavour to teach him to love the kitchen and love the art of cooking.

Lets see what you will get if you learn how to cook.

1. Always ready to cook up a meal - Understanding the basics of cooking allow you to cook up anything that is in the pantry, or the fridge. Further it will also taste good. I had a small discussion on why it is a good idea to use what is left in the pantry, money wise.
   
2. Makes your meals more enjoyable - I always seems to enjoy the food that I have cooked much better than the same dish if I have had it at a restaurant. Maybe it is because I can feel the effort that has gone into the preparation and the cooking of the meal.
3. Impress your partner or date - By preparing the meal yourself for your partner, it sends a message that "I want to cook this meal for you to show that I really appreciate you". It is a win-win situation. It has been shown that living in a happy relationship usually promotes healthy living, which means less medical bills.
   
4. Save tons of money - By cooking a nice meal and eating in, you will save plenty of money. Some of the fancy meals could be cooked up for a fraction of its restaurant prices.

That is fine, but where to start. I guess you could enroll into a cooking school, but that may not be suitable and may cost quite a bit, so I have a few suggestions.

1. Have a cook out with friends - Invite a group of friends around for a cook out. This will encourage you and your friends to cook as it is a more enjoyable activity, your friends share cooking ips with you so that the meal will have a better chance of turning out.
2. Visit your local library - Your local library will have a good selection of cook books available. Borrow some books to get some ideas on what is possible. Pay particular attention on the basics which you can build upon. For example, understand the basic of asian stir fry cooking and you can almost turn left over vegetable in the fridge into a great meal. Be sure to borrow books that are applicable in your area as recipes from other areas may call for not readily ingredients available in your area, (read expensive).
   
3. Use only in-season fruits and vegetables - Using out of season ingredients will just make your learning path that more difficult. Plus it will be much more cheaper to use in-season fruits and vegetables.
4. Experimentation - once you get the basics of the cooking style that you are learning. To best way to gain some form of expertise is to experiment. You never know what you will get!
5. Watch cooking show - this may sound rather strange, but watching cooking shows on TV will actually give you a sense of what cooking is all about. They are abundance of cooking shows on the TV at the moment. At the moment, my favourite is Iron Chef, although some of the ingredients are hard to find, and the techniques are even harder to master.
   

I suggest to start off with, learn to cook pasta. The ingredients are cheap and readily available from your supermarket. There are many, many different recipes available which are simple to prepare, to cook and, best of all, they are very tasty.

Trent over at The Simple Dollar has a great article on the financial benefits on cooking skills.

Good eating!

Cooking for the kids

Our son is growing like a mushroom, he just had his 18 month regular health checkup. The maternal nurse measured his height, check it against the curve. Guess what, our son's height is that of a 30 month old toddler! I am guessing that the food we are feeding him is OK!

My wife and I tend to cook him food rather than purchase specially made baby food from the supermarket, the ones that usually comes in a small jar container. We do it for a few of reasons, mainly we believe that it is healthier for him and for our hip-pocket.

One of our son's favourite and simplest recipe is fruit salad. This is simple, quick and very healthy to do. Not too mention a lot cheaper than the jar variety, especially if you compare it by weight.

Our fruit salad always consist of banana, catalope, watermelon and yoghurt. We also make sure that the pieces are cut up to size for his little fingers. He usually has this for breakfast.

I also came across this great blog at minti.com with many, many nice recipes from mums around the world.

So from a money saving perspective, why would you want to cook your baby's meal?

1. Share the cost. By using the same ingredients from your meals to cooking your baby's meal, you are essentially sharing the cost of feeding the family with all of the family members. Typically, the baby will only use a small portion of the ingredients. When the baby is able to eat the same food as you, the cost of feeding your baby will probably fall further. That is until the baby becomes a kid and eats like a horse!
2. Cheaper. Do the comparison between a cook meal and a jar food on the basis of its weight, you will probably find that the cook meal is cheaper, probably by more than 50%.
3. Cook meal are healthier. Healthier baby means that there is less chance of the baby becoming sick, much less trips to the doctors and fewer medical bills!

Here are a few links for baby recipes

• Kidspot recipe finder
• Adventures in Baby Food
  
• Porridge recipes from Shannon Chong - baby loves porridge, especially rice porridge.

Uhmm...What do I do for lunch?

For me lunch is one of the meals that should be almost a full meal, but is more than just a snack. So from a money perspective what should I do? Well, when I used to work in Prahran, I was really tempted to buy lunch as my office was about 10mins walk from Chapel street. The amount of cafes, sandwich bars and restaurants were numerous.

Now that I am working in Seaford, there is only a take away food store across the road, and one further down the road.

To save money, instead of buying lunch from the local food store, buy the ingredients from the grocery store and make your lunch. Do the maths. For each day that lunch is bought, it will cost about $5.00, for a year, it will cost $1300. $1300 for lunch!!!

I reckon we could make lunch for about $1.00 per day, probably $1.50 per day. That would cost $390 for a year. That is a saving of $910 each year. Imagine what you do with $910.

Lets see

• invest it in good investment like a good internet bank account like bankwest.
• buy some very nice clothes for your children
• nice holiday to the beach over the summer months.

Food...

Food is one of those necessary evils, like sleep; if you don't get enough of it, your body will start to deteriorate. Eventually, it will break down and will end up cost you more than ever in medical fees in repairing your body. Just as well we enjoy eating!!

So how do we save money with food. One of the things we are starting to do at home is to eat all that is in the fridge. In the past, we would do our food shopping once a week, sometimes twice a week. A few days later on, we had to do throw about 10% to 15% of the food in the bin as it has gone rotten. That is like throwing 10% to 15% of the cash you used for your grocery straight into the bin!

To save some money, we are doing a few things.

1. Eat what is in the fridge or pantry. Otherwise, it just stays there, gets past its use-by date in a few days time and then thrown out.
   
2. Don't buy so much at the next grocery trip. This reduces the amount of the food just sitting around getting rotten.
3. Plan your meals for the next few days and stick to it. This will help to decide what to buy at the next grocery trip and reduce impulse on buying.

So far, it has been working out well. The planning of meals also gives a better choice of meals as well. Delicious for the taste buds as we only choose meals that are appealing to us and more spare money for our the hip-pockets!