I grew up working (grudgingly) in my parent's garden. Every year, as I hilled potatoes, I wondered why we grew the same vegetables that were on sale dirt cheap in the grocery store. I still wonder that as I see people plant zucchini, tomatoes and green beans, veggies that are practically given away during the height of the season.

Instead, perhaps gardeners should concentrate on those items that they pay a hefty price for. If I were planning a garden strictly on saving the most money, I'd include--

• Yellow and red peppers: no harder to grow than green ones, and sliced and bagged, they freeze well.
• Basil, cilantro, and parsley: A friend makes his pesto in huge batches and freezes it in ice cube trays, a perfect one-meal size. The cost of buying fresh herbs is many times its cost to grow.
• Brussels Sprouts: An easy crop to grow and infinitely better fresh than frozen, the price never seems reasonable at the grocery store.
• Jalapeno and serrano peppers: Also sold at a premium, these will last a long time in the crisper, especially if stored in bags specially made to prolong the life of greenstuff. Note: keep them well away from your other peppers, so they don't cross-pollinate and provide a hot surprise.
• Sugar snap peas: another vegetable easy to grow but expensive to buy, it is delicious raw or cooked.

What veggies could you save the most money on by growing yourself?

Restaurants are feeling the pinch in two directions. With money tight, consumers are cutting back on how often they dine out. Meantime, food costs more. Way more.

Egg prices have doubled in the last six months. Dairy, chicken, beer and bread crumb prices are all climbing higher. Even when the core commodity escapes the trend, packaged ingredients and other restaurant supplies are more expensive as the costs of transportation climb due to higher fuel prices.

When people do go out, they are ordering less. "Appetizer sales are down. Dessert sales can almost disappear," says Dan Simons, principal at Vucurevich Simons Advisory Group, a restaurant consulting firm. "And the most expensive items on the menu aren't sold as much."

Restaurants know there's a limit to how much they can raise prices without driving off already broke customers. So for now, many are looking for ways to raise prices and cut costs that won't be too obvious.

The next time you go out -- if you can afford to go out at all -- see if you can find your favorite restaurant working any of these old gimmicks. Read on and you may even learn some tricks you can use to stretch a buck in your kitchen at home:

Cut back on portions:

Restaurants normally spend between 25% and 40% of their budgets on food, according to Barry Brown, president of Profit Strategies Solutions, which sells software for restaurants to manage inventory and profitability.

So if they can make a smaller hamburger and still sell it for the same price, their profits go up. Milk shakes at family diners that could once be split three-ways may now truly be single serve. There are reports of some restaurants buying smaller plates so customers won't notice they have reduced portions and chefs won't be tempted to heap on food to make dishes look appealing.

Eric Arthur, president of Marketplace Management Group, a restaurant procurement company in Collierville, Tenn., expects to see more junior-sized portions offered on menus. "You might have a shot-glass-sized dessert. It gives the customer the opportunity to say 'I can still have some dessert' and it gives the owner the opportunity to still add a dollar to the bill," says Arthur.

"Americans have been kind of spoiled. We have supersized everything," Arthur says. "That's not necessarily the way it is in the rest of the world."

Cut back on the most expensive ingredients:

Maybe the recipe calls for five sticks of butter. In good times, the baker adds six because she thinks it tastes better. But in tough times, she'll stick to five (or worse, substitute a stick or two of margarine in the recipe). The chef may prefer to load up on shrimp when preparing his signature gumbo, but he knows his job depends on restricting the number to four or five per serving.

Every day, WalletPop will be bringing you information about a fantastic freebie. Like what you see? Check back tomorrow for more!

Dunkin' Donuts is making a big push to capture a bigger share of the grocery store coffee market, and they're giving away coffee to make it happen!

Just fill out this quick form and they'll mail you a 1.1 ounce Original Blend sample pouch.

Want more free coffee? Seattle's Best Coffee is also offering free samples.

When it comes to humor, I have to admit that I'm not proud. While I love to spend hours setting up elaborate practical jokes, and will often compose brilliant double, triple, or even quadruple-entendres, I'm not above going for the low-hanging fruit. I will, if the opportunity arises, resort to fart jokes, idiotic puns, and even slapstick. Anything to get a laugh.

With that in mind, it's hardly surprising that I sometimes descend to the lowest of the low: cheap translation humor. For example, I have a Scottish cookbook, passed on to me by my mother, that has a recipe for "Roastit Bubblyjock wi' Cheston Crappin." While there's nothing funny about roasted turkey with chestnut stuffing, roastit bubblyjock had me laughing for months. Frankly, it still brings a smile to my face. The same goes for "Spotted Dick with Custard," which was a standard dessert at my office canteen when I worked in the UK. Am I immature for giggling like a schoolgirl whenever it was on the menu? Yes, I am. Did that stop me from offering to let co-workers take a bite of my spotted dick? No, it didn't.

Recently, one of my Walletpop colleagues gave me a link to a site that carried a list of foods with funny names. The really funny thing was that I had tried many of the products that I saw featured there. Mental mints? Check. Jamaican Cock soup? Been there, done that. "Smack My Ass" hot sauce? It's on my shelf.

Things have been tough for Taco Bell lately. First there was the whole E. coli scare in 2006, which people are still talking about. Then there was the chain's new grills, which it claimed were "green" because they used less water and electricity than traditional steam tables. One of Taco Bell's execs even went so far as to state that "Whether you take shorter showers, turn off the water while brushing your teeth or purchase a Grill-to-Order menu item at Taco Bell, you can save water and impact the environment without even thinking about it." In point of fact, as CNN pointed out, Taco Bell's heavy reliance on beef makes it far from green. Finally, who can forget about Taco Bell's famous rat infestation video, which featured dozens of the furry little critters taking over a New York restaurant.

Still, even with its bacteriological and environmental shortcomings, Taco Bell is my go-to restaurant when it comes to fast food, for the simple reason that it consistently offers relatively healthy (compared to a Big Mac), surprisingly flavorful food for a very low price. My loyalty to the place dates back to when I was a poor starving college student. There was one semester in which I was particularly broke and could only spend about $50 on food. Throwing variety to the wind, I subsisted on plate after plate of hummus, lentils, tuna macaroni salad, and ramen. Whenever I could, I'd find some change in my couch and wander off to Taco Bell, where I could get a burrito for 59¢. It became a lifesaver. Many were the nights when I'd grab a table, pick up a burrito, load it with hot sauce, and savor the joy of something other than my regular fare. When I had an extra couple of cents to splurge, I'd pick up a bottomless cup of soda and revel in my wealth.

Over time, of course, Taco Bell phased out the super value menu. By that point, I had a little more money, so it didn't hit me too hard, although I remember feeling a pang when I discovered that my favorites were now a little more expensive. However, in addition to its push for green cred, Taco Bell seems to be returning to its roots. On May 15, it is rolling out its new "Why Pay More" menu, featuring items that cost 79¢, 89¢, and 99¢. Given that many customers are currently concerned about their ability to pay for gas, the super-cheap menu is coming out at the perfect time. And, to be honest, I will probably be taking advantage of the new offerings.

And I'll remain a Taco Bell regular as long as the rats remain among the patrons, not the ingredients!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. A recovering fast food junkie, he still dreams about Wendy's "Big Dave's Deluxe" burger.

Life used to be so simple. If you drank a lot and found the bottle talking back to you, you know you've had enough, and that it's time to stop. Conversely, if you were a bartender, and you saw one of your patrons having a conversation with the bottle, you knew it was time to call a cab and send the lush home.

That may change. Or at least in Russia, bickering with one's bottle of booze will no longer be considered odd.

As BBC News recently reported, in Russia, where drinking vodka is a national pastime, they've come up with the world's first ever talking vodka bottle top.

Every time you remove the cap off the bottle, which BBC News refers to as a vodka genie bottle top, a voice starts talking, offering a series of popular Russian toasts. The voice also encourages people to drink up.

And then proving that Russian scientists and vodka marketers have a sense of humor, every time you remove the top from the bottle, the vodka genie's speech becomes more and more slurred.

And I used to think the Hallmark talking cards were clever.

Geoff Williams is a business journalist and the author of C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America (Rodale).

Americans -- the majority of whom are overweight -- are crying their 42-inch waists off over the soaring price of food. Some U.S. officials have suggested that India's rising prosperity and the resulting increase in demand for food are to blame.

India's response? The New York Times has all the details but if you're in a rush, I'll summarize it for you: Sit on it.

Pradeep S. Mehta, secretary general of the center for international trade, economics and the environment of CUTS International said that if Americans ate less, "many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates." He also added that the savings resulting from a decreased need for liposuction could be used to feed famine victims.

Burn sauce! Apparently this whole mess started when our commander in chief opined that "When you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up."

Indian commerce ministry Jairam Ramesh's rebuttal? "George Bush has never been known for his knowledge of economics." More burn sauce!

I'm inclined to agree with the commentators critical of Bush on this one. The idea of America's president blaming increased consumption in India for rising food prices is laughable. It's like Ralphie May telling Amy Winehouse to get off the couch because she's taking up too much room.

Here's a way to have your casket and drink it too...

Aaah, PBR! Let Budweiser claim to be the king of beers; Pabst Blue Ribbon doesn't aspire to such lofty heights. Pabst is the beer of the working man, the hard-core drinker, the one that I'd pick up at the bar when I'd already gotten drunk and couldn't feel my nose. Pabst doesn't waste time on things like flavor or bouquet. No, it's a no-nonsense, get-you-drunk-and-happy beer.

In spite of its shortcomings, PBR has a surprisingly loyal fan base, including my grandfather, my friend John, and Bill Bramanti, a 67-year old Chicago Heights man who recently decided that he wanted his burial to have a little pomp and circumstance. While the Vikings went to Valhalla on flaming ships and the Pharaohs entered the afterlife surrounded by retainers, Bramanti wanted his death to say something about his life. With that in mind, he bought a casket from the Panozzo Brothers funeral home of Chicago Heights and had it customized by the Scott Sign Company, of the same city. Now, when it's Bill's time to enter the great big dive bar in the sky, he's going to do it in style, wrapped in a great big can of Pabst.

With food costs rising at a furious pace, restaurants are looking to avoid increasing their menu prices: by serving smaller portions. In addition, many chains are offering really small servings in an effort to lure in health- and budget-conscious consumers.

It's working to the extent that the small servings have quickly become big sellers, but it isn't making people any thinner. According to the USA Today, "Instead, people are using smaller dishes as an excuse to add to their orders, spending - and probably eating - just as much as before."

That's right! No pesky fun-sized dishes are going to interfere with our pursuit of the American Dream: the 42-inch waistline. But at least ordering smaller portions makes people feel healthier -- even if they order 7 of them.

I bet those are the same people who order 2,900-calorie cheese fries, and then wash them down with a Diet Coke.

The idea of using old skulls for the consumption of intoxicants is fairly common. In fact, it's become the basis of more than a few legends. One of my favorites involves Nostradamus, who supposedly predicted that anyone who drank wine from his skull would gain his powers of prediction, but would die soon after. As the tale goes, three French soldiers decided to test this legend in 1791, but the one who drank was shot almost immediately. History doesn't record whether or not he offered any predictions before giving up the ghost.

Another great story involves the head of Edward Teach, the famed "Blackbeard." After years of ruling the seas off the East Coast of North America, he was finally killed in 1718. Rather than bring Teach's corpse back to port, his killers cut off his head and threw his body overboard. After Robert Maynard, the commander of the force that killed Blackbeard, turned in his head for a reward, Governor Spottswood of Virginia hung the trophy from a pike in Bath, Virginia. There are conflicting stories about what happened to the skull; my favorite is that it was gilded with silver and turned into a drinking vessel.

It's not too hard to see why people would contemplate using a skull as a beer mug. Apart from the grisly coolness of the finished product, it's not all that hard to do. Basically, it only requires removing the top of the head, blocking a couple of holes, slapping on a handle, and developing a strong stomach.

The recent upward surge in commodities prices has left no corner of the globe untouched. That includes the bastions of the beer drinkers.

Changes in global climate, a decline in hops growers and a recent fire in a hops storage facility have worked in concert to reduce the world supply of that most important of beer brewing ingredients. According to a story published by Wired, these events have breweries both large and small adjusting their beer making processes and ingredients in an effort to curb rising brewing costs. The Wired story quotes brew master Donald Gortemiller as saying, "When hops were $2 a pound, compared to $20 or $30 a pound now, it didn't matter. We'd throw them into the boil at various times. That was an inaccurate way of doing things. We're modifying recipes and using about 20 percent less hops."

Walletpop blogger extraordinaire, Bruce Watson recently brought to light the mounting concern over hops deficiencies in the brewisphere. He wrote: "I imagine that the hot nights of a post-global warming future will be particularly unbearable without the benefit of a nice cold one." Bruce has vowed to do everything he can to "Save the Ales." For my part, I have chosen an alternate strategy to Bruce's proactive beer saving efforts. I have surrendered my boarding pass to what was for me; "The one way aluminum train to Stupidville."

Believe me when I say that my self imposed abstinence from beer will leave plenty of the cold foamy beverages for the rest of you to share and enjoy. Let's just hope that the remaining hops growers are the people who are benefiting from these unfortunate beer ingredient price increases.

Bad news for beer drinkers: rising fuel costs and a rise of more than 300% in the cost of hops have led to a year over year increase of more than 4% in the cost of beer at retail.



Check out the video from MSNBC for more color.

Here's a quick tip: if a 4% increase in the cost of beer is enough to impact your financial situation, the rising cost of beer is probably the least of your worries. Please seek help immediately.

My first thought was that if this catches on, food prices are going to go up.

Last month, the Agence-France-Presse, the oldest news agency in the world, reported that the Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Gene Technology in Geneva, Switzerland, "condemned the decapitation of flowers without reason." And this week the American press--starting with The Weekly Standard and then Fox News--has been picking up the story.

What really got people talking was that this Swiss governmental ethics committee came up with guidelines to protect "the dignity of plants."

File this on under "incredibly obvious million dollar ideas that you wish you'd thought up first."

Having met more than a few true-blue beer hounds in my day, I realize that I am, at best, a novice beer connoisseur. That having been said, I have a few definite preferences, and there's nothing like being able to mosey up to a bar and order my favorites. Unfortunately, however, I often find myself staring down the barrel of a two or three item beer list and wondering if I've somehow been magically whisked away to Mogadishu. Seriously, I understand that not everyone will have Double Black Stout, but can't we do a little better than PBR, Budweiser and Miller Genuine Draft?

Well, my salvation has finally arrived.

Last month, Eric and Will Stephens, a pair of brothers, launched Beermenus. Basically an online restaurant and bar database, Beermenus allows users to check out the beer listings of hundreds of New York watering holes. Visitors can search by brand, restaurant, or neighborhood, and can compare prices at numerous places. They can then check out the restaurants' websites and get directions through Google maps.

Unfortunately, the site is still a little small, offering listings for only 170 bars. Worse yet, it only deals with bars and restaurants in Manhattan, and doesn't even really offer much above 96th Street. On the bright side, though, the brothers Stephens are already working on extending their database, and have plans to explore New York's other boroughs. Ultimately, they want to create Beermenu listings for other cities as well.

In the meantime, I have a friend in San Diego who might be looking for a million dollar idea...

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. Living in Southwest Virginia, he had a friend whose "moonshinemenu" site was a real hoot. It wasn't quite internet-ready, as it was carved on the trunk of a tree...

My wife and I are thinking about moving. As we've been looking at various apartments, we've had to consider the standard questions: how close is it to the subway, what is the nearest hospital, do the drug dealers seem friendly, what's the homicide rate, how many pairs of shoes are dangling from the nearby power lines...

You know, the standard Bronx questions.

One issue that we've never considered is the distance between our home and the nearest McDonald's. However, a recent study has revealed that our proximity to fast-food restaurants and convenience stores might be among the most important considerations when we choose our next home.