You’ve probably heard from every person you’ve ever followed on Twitter, or elsewhere, that Hostess is going out of business. If you felt suddenly nostalgic for these treats, you might have run out and bought all of the Twinkies at your local supermarket or bodega. Or if you’re me, you might have thought, “There has to be a way to recreate all those products if you really wanted them.” There is: The Times was already on it when they heard about the bankruptcy filing earlier this year. Recipes:

• If you want to recreate the Hostess Cupcake
• If you want to make homemade Twinkies
• And just for the heck of it, recipes for homemade Oreos and Fritos.

Obviously, the most important part of all this is whether or not the homemade stuff tastes any better. A tentative yes, according to the writer: “I ran my project over to the neighbors, where we all squealed with delight at the familiar ooze of cream and that softly yielding vanilla cake. Delicious! Delightful! To bed!”

The taste goes stale after a day or two. That’s the one great thing about those manufactured Hostess snacks—they seemed like they could store forever.

I’m not a scientist, but I support a theory shared by many people who are also not scientists: Kombucha is super good for you, and you should drink it every day. Kombucha is a fermented tea drink full of floating particles that are cultures of bacteria and yeast. I’m certain that the more I drink these cultures, the closer I am to becoming the person I want to be (which is to say, Lena Dunham’s writing partner/best friend/muse).

I swear I am physically and mentally unhealthy if I’m not constantly ingesting it, so when GT was forced by the FDA to take their Classic Raw Kombucha off the shelves because of the “alcohol” content (there are trace amounts from the fermentation process), I was devastated. The ban was a joke, considering you’d have to drink tanks of kombucha that would lead to regretful diarrhea long before you got drunk off it, but I digress. Classic Raw is the brand I love—it gives you a slight buzz that makes you feel like your blood is being detoxed or whatever it is that kombucha allegedly does to your body. Kombucha costs about a billion dollars a bottle, which I was happy to pay to feel like I was floating, and less happy to pay when I had to go with a subpar, less-”alcoholic” brand. So, I decided to start brewing my own.

The way you make kombucha is by combining the aforementioned special bacteria culture with tea, a little bit sugar and then letting it ferment. You only need six things:
1. Water

2. Tea you like to drink

3. A dish towel/some sort of porous cloth

4. A large rubber band or tie

5. A boyfriend who is thoroughly amused by your ambitious plan and willing to procure your big glass jar…

6. …and who will also find you a SCOBY and starter tea!

First, some background: SCOBY is an acronym that stands for “Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast.” This culture looks like a tan portobello mushroom cap and is what gives your kombucha the tangy, vinegar taste that makes your eyes water. (Fun fact: You’re eating a SCOBY cousin every time you eat sourdough bread!) The “starter tea” is just previously brewed kombucha the SCOBY sits in to keep hydrated.

Obtaining your own should not be difficult. SCOBYs multiply all by themselves because they are secretly little alien hermaphrodites, so those who have a SCOBY mother always have unwanted babies. People often give theirs away on Craigslist—though to be honest, that sort of scares me. Where has it been? What have they been brewing with it? What if they put it in their bathtub?!?! If you, too, have these irrational fears, ask your hippie-est friend (preferably the one who homebrews everything with an aura) and see if they have one. Or stop by a farmers’ market and ask those hippies. I guarantee someone will have one!

Whatever you do, do not pay money for a SCOBY. There are websites that try to trick you into doing this, and they charge upwards of $100! Scam alert! In my opinion, SCOBYs should always be free, and I think most people who brew share this opinion.

Now that you have your SCOBY, pick a tea you really like to drink. Caveat: It must be a black, green, oolong, red, or white tea. More simply: It must not be an herbal tea. If you use an herbal tea, your SCOBY will hate you and make you pay, but more on that later.

Onto the fun part—brewing! First things first…

1. Grab your kitchen’s biggest pot and bring four quarts of water to a rolling boil.

2. Add one cup of white sugar and let it boil for five minutes.

3. Turn off your stovetop and add your tea—7 tea bags or 4 teaspoons of loose leaf tea. Let it steep for 15 minutes.

4. Pull out your tea bags and let the tea cool down COMPLETELY to room temperature. This will take at least an hour, so go catch up on a couple episodes of Game of Thrones and then come back.

5. Once you’re extra super sure your tea is at room temperature, transfer it to your glass jar and dump in your SCOBY with its starter tea.

6. Seriously, don’t do step 5 until the tea is cool! SCOBYs are very sensitive about their temperatures and if they get too hot they will roll over and die.

7. After you’ve successfully not sent your SCOBY to a fiery grave, secure your dish towel to the top of your jar with your rubber band, then shove the jar in a cabinet and forget about it for one week (though if your house is really warm, you should check on it after four days).

8. Pull your tea out of its hiding place and taste it using a plastic or wooden spoon. Not enough tangy bite? Put it back in the cabinet for a couple more days!

9. Does the taste burn so good? Grab two Ziplock bags and pour one cup of this new kombucha (which is now acting as starter tea) into each. With clean hands, take what should be your now very swollen SCOBY and gently pull it apart – just like that, you have two SCOBYs! Put one in each bag, making sure they are completely covered by tea. You can throw them in your fridge, or start another batch!

10. Drink your kombucha; revel in delight.

(Sort of) easy, right? Of course, I encountered some trials and tribulations while figuring this process out. Firstly, I bought way too much ginger peach loose leaf black tea. By the end of my umpteeth batch, I was so sick of it I wanted to puke. I was determined to make a new flavor without abandoning (then inevitably forgetting about and thus wasting) the black tea, so I creatively mixed it with some Earl Grey herbal strawberry something or other. This is when my relationship with my SCOBY turned sour—literally. I found out later that herbal teas do not provide SCOBYs with the nutrients they need to survive, and that when SCOBYs are dying, they become toxic. But I didn’t know this and still stubbornly drank half of the batch before giving up because it tasted so bad. In short, I unwittingly drank half a gallon of poison! Which brings me to…

How to make yourself kind of sick and also kill your SCOBY: Furious my kombucha did not taste like GT Kombucha and even more furious I had to buy Pepto Bismol and Preparation H for chafing (yes, it makes you that kind of sick, ya’ll), I threw my SCOBY in the fridge to wallow in noxious juices. My boyfriend found it stuffed behind the Brita filter months later, grown to the size of a small pizza and covered in mold. I tossed it disgustedly into our green waste bin, where it was carted away to the San Francisco Recology Center. I’m not sure what my SCOBY is doing now, but I imagine it is still multiplying into more alien hermaphrodite babies that will certainly come after me to brew my blood when they’ve built a strong enough army.

No matter how hard I tried, I was never able to recreate the same buzz from my homebrew (even when I was slowly poisoning myself). When GT re-released the Classic Raw Kombucha, rebranding it as a 21 and over drink, I starting paying for my buzz again. Did I save any money during my homebrew stint? Hard to say with all the Pepto, Prep H, and time logged in the bathroom.

Photo: flickr/brockamer

Rebecca Pederson is an editor at Yelp. Her Aunt Leslie loves her blog.

I am constantly amazed at how many people don’t eat after waking up. This is very wrong! Breakfast is great—it’s the most important meal of the day, your body needs fuel, etc.

In addition:
1. It gives you a reason to get out of bed.
2. Otherwise you get spacey and tired at 10:30.
3. Coffee on an empty stomach sucks.
4. Becoming ravenous enough to eat an entire Subway footlong in four minutes flat does not make for a quality lunch break.
5. Because I said so! (I would say I sound like my mother, but she is, in fact, a new convert to breakfasting. And we’re all very proud.)

The eating part is not hard to do, it’s the preparing that trips a lot of us up. But it should not. Breakfast is the easiest meal to make yourself! Unless you live a truly liberated lifestyle of weeknight-bed-hopping, you probably wake up in the same place every day, and that place probably has a kitchen and at least one clean bowl. That’s all you need. Lunch and dinner may be left to the whims of fate, but breakfast belongs in the home.

It’s also the easiest meal to DIY on the cheap. Just say no to $5 boxes of Kashi GoLean Crunch! (Does this stuff wreak havoc with anyone else’s digestive system? No? K.) You can literally make breakfast in your sleep, for the proverbial pennies-a-serving. And, bonus, you save money absent the social stigma of brown-bagging it or “just ordering an appetizer” for dinner.

I keep the day-of time commitment as minimal as possible and mostly passive. Set your alarm ten minutes earlier than usual to get things started, and then you can go floss or practice flashcards while your food heats up. And they’re all nominally healthier than a Cinnabon or a bowl of Froot Loops, so you can save those delicacies for dinner dates. Let’s go!

Coffee
The most important part of the most important meal. Make in the morning or make it overnight—all you need is a large mason jar or French press and a willingness to drink it cold.

• Mix a ratio of roughly 1/2 cup ground coffee to 8 cups water in your container
• Stir it and let it steep overnight
•In the morning, strain it through a coffee filter or press the press and presto (pressto?)! Iced coffee that tastes good even if you made it with three-month-old pre-ground French Roast from Trader Joe’s!

Oatmeal
I can’t believe that some people don’t like this food. (Do they hate Quakers or something? Because I know some actual Quakers and they are really nice and don’t even wear weird hats.) Anyway, if you buy this up from the bulk bins at your local Whole Foods/co-op/commune, you can get it on the cheap and presumably free-range, organic, and sustainable or whatever.

• Buy steel-cut oats (they look like little pellets, not flat flakes)
• Combine 1 cup oats with 3 cups water in a sauce pan
• Bring to a boil, then turn off the heat, cover, and let sit overnight
• In the morning: oatmeal!
• Mix in some milk, nuke it for about 2 minutes, and voilà.

The best part about steel-cut oats is they work as leftovers that go in the fridge, to be reheated at your leisure (or panicked last minute). And you don’t even have to look at the Quaker Man! (He has a name, actually, and it’s Larry?)

Eggs
Do not scramble, fry, or poach. Buy a dozen eggs and hard-boil them Sunday night, then eat them all week. Protein!

How to hard boil eggs, to review:
• Put eggs pot
• Add cold water to cover by an inch
•Bring to boil, cover pot and let sit for 11 minutes

If you are too lazy to do this yourself, buy one of those bags of pre-cooked ones. More expensive, but still cheaper than Eating Out.

Alternatively, make a frittata:
• Cook up some vegetables in olive oil in an ovenproof skillet
• Add a couple beaten eggs and some cheese
• Bake at 375 until set

These slices are perfect to eat while sprinting in vain after the bus, and will keep long enough for you to forget about them in the back of the fridge.

Bagels
Not the cheapest or the healthiest, but as suburban parents always say, if they’re going to eat bagels, I’d rather they do it in my home where I can keep an eye on them. Buy a bag, freeze them, consume one by one with spread of choice (or sliced eggs for bonus points). This method also works with English muffins, despite them being a vastly inferior bread product.

Yogurt
Yogurt is actually a pretty decent breakfast item, but you have to do it right. Buy it in large tubs to knock down the per-serving cost and stay the hell away from those sucralose-flavored Light-n-Fits. I like Greek yogurt because it’s trendy and proteinier and John-Stamos-approved, but it’s also more expensive unless you get the shitty store brand. I am okay with this.

Secret, bonus, totally-foolproof breakfast preparation method
Have a roommate who stays up later than you do, inexplicably decides to make cinnamon rolls in the middle of the night, and leaves them on the kitchen counter with a note that proclaims in giant, frantic letters, “PLEASE HELP ME EAT THESE!!”

I did this today, and it worked like a charm. I NEVER SAID I WAS A ROLE MODEL.

Blair Thornburgh lives in Chicago, where she makes a podcast, a mean egg sandwich (advanced method), and just above minimum wage. Photo: flickr/sarah and iain

I don’t know about you, but as a girl who once utilized The Mall, and way too many pricey concerts as a way to escape the stresses of being a full-time student, plus working two part-time jobs, mama graduated college with a handful of debts to pay. My thought process at the time was, “Once I graduate, I’ll be able to pay all of this back within a few years.” And while I thought this was a perfectly reasonable idea at the time, that debt pay-off didn’t exactly happen as quickly as I’d planned.

Fast forward almost six years, and I’m now a lady who has a firm grip on her finances, has been consistently contributing to her 401(k) for the last three years, has an okay emergency savings, and is aggressively paying down her stupid credit card debt (credit card debt is so avoidable! Never again!). Money management is a lot like muscle memory. The more you practice, the easier it becomes, and over time, you’re able to do it without even putting a lot of thought into it (after a while it won’t hurt as much to walk away from that Urban Outfitters “Yard Sale” empty handed), and before you know it, you can’t remember how it was once even possible to not know how to manage your money.

There are a handful of rituals I’ve practiced over the last few years that have really helped to curb my spending, but the one I’d like to share is what I call “Upcycle Sundays”. This idea started three years ago when I was living at home for a few months to save money before moving to San Francisco, where I currently live. I made a point to stop shopping at the mall—because I really couldn’t afford it—and instead turn my shopping into a creative endeavor that I could afford. I would pick up gems from my local thrift stores for upcycle projects that I’d work on on the weekends, usually on Sundays. 

Here are some benefits of upcycling:

• Saving money (obviously)
• Supporting your local economy and helping to create jobs
• Helping the environment by reusing existing materials
• Reducing the amount of factory-produced clothing you buy
• Impressing your friends by telling them, “I made this,” when they inevitably compliment you on your super cute outfit
• Similarly, impressing your frugal friends by telling them, “This (enter article of clothing here) cost $2″
• The satisfaction of knowing that you made something awesome

So, without further ado, here’s a quick tutorial to get you started on your upcycling journey. Today we’ll be upcycling a large men’s striped cotton turtle neck that I found at Thrift Town in the Mission District of San Francisco for about $2. We’ll be transforming this forgotten article into a comfy American Apparel-esque pencil skirt that can be worn to the office or out to your favorite fancy bar, where you’ll hopefully be paying happy hour prices.

What you’ll need for this project:

• A large men’s long-sleeved shirt
• Scissors
• Matching thread
• Measuring tape
• A sewing machine (or a serger if you’re fancy)
• Your body, your roommate’s body, or a body form (which is what I’ll be using)
• About an hour of your time

Step One: First, remove the sleeves and the collar/turtle neck.

Step Two: Cut the shirt up the sides, and leave the two pieces neatly lined up. Take a measurement of your waist 1 inch below your belly button, (or 2.5 inches below your waist) and your hips. Divide each number in half (this is your flat measurement) and mark your fabric accordingly with pins (stick pins through the two pieces, which will hold them together for now).

Step Three: Now, grab those sleeves you removed earlier. We’re using these bad boys to make a waistband. Flatten out your sleeves and measure a 3-inch width, mark with pins and cut. Repeat with other sleeve. (Please note: You’re only cutting one side, the other remains folded.)

Step Four: Back to the main skirt. Sew, or serge (I used my trusty Brother serger) the skirt using your pins as your guide. Try on the skirt and make any necessary alterations. Next, pin the folded waistband to your skirt (if using striped fabric, be sure to line up those stripes!). Once pinned, serge/sew the sides of the waistband together. Then, serge/sew the waistband to the skirt using the pins as your guide. Lastly, hem the bottom of your skirt by folding the fabric about 1/4 inches twice (held by pins) and sewing a hem line.

And, voila! You should have a comfy, yet fitted, upcycled skirt!

Tatiana Jimenez is a marketing person at a credit union in San Francisco, where she has learned financial responsibility through osmosis. She also blogs about design and DIY projects on her website.

Expensive Hobbies I Can’t Afford But Wouldn’t Do Even if I Could

• Skiing (cold, gear, physical exertion)
• Snowboarding (same)
• Snorkeling (sharks)
• Scuba diving (sharks, the bends)
• Spelunking (just no)
• Sailing (seems complicated)
• Rock climbing (too much work, heights)
• Golfing (patience, walking)
• Scrapbooking (not a 40-year-old housewife)
• Cycling (sweat, machinery, carrying bikes up and down stairs)
• Horseback riding (poop)
• Flight lessons (crashes, no-fly zones, jet escorts)
• Art collecting (not a snob)
• Skydiving (parachute fails)
• Bowling (gross shoes)
• Backpacking/camping (dumb, hard, dirty)
• Rock band (gear)
• Pot throwing (messy)
• Pot growing (DEA, general garden upkeep)
• Procreation (literally everything about it)
• DIY (easier to buy)

Expensive Hobbies I Can’t Afford But Wish I Could, Okay, Yes

• Lazing (all day, nowhere to be, nothing to do)
• Sunbathing (private beach, island nation)
• Shopping (with abandon)
• Swimming (in far off bodies of water or own pool)
• Therapy (twice a week)
• Pilates (the one with the machines that basically work you out while you just sit there)
• Space travel (pack me a Xanax or twelve and I’m there)

Photo credit: flickr/girolame