How do you save money in the kitchen?

[blissful]

I do get some help from my son and sometimes from my renter too-and they benefit from all the home cooking. They help with the gardening or harvesting or washing and sterilizing jars. If someone gets a deer, I'll help clean and do the pressure canning and I keep half the end result, same with making sausage and jerky. Last year we made italian sausage and breakfast sausage and this year we'll try to make pepperoni sticks and snack sticks (medium spicy). If I do a turkey, I'll bake it overnight on a friday night, take it off the bone saturday morning, and pressure can it promptly that day. Last year we made too many sour and dill pickles, so this year we'll do mostly sweet pickles and sweet pickle relishes.
I barter too. I sent off 5 bars of homemade goatsmilk soaps to a nice woman that has a son that needs the soap and she is sending me some homemade salsas and spaghetti sauces she made. This adds more variety to the pantry.
I mostly make soap in the winter when I'm not busy with other things so I usually have a few hundred bars curing and that lasts a long long time. (daily use, gifts, laundry soap, barter)
Babe-you're welcome to come help too, I could use an extra hand and I'll send you home with some of the goodies! ~Bliss

 

[PattY1]

I just had an idea. Maybe not new to some. When ever you have a left over Ham bone, Carcass or Chicken backs(who eats them anyway?), make a big pot of broth with veggies. Freeze it sized to fit your needs. When you have any left over rice, noodles,beans, meat or veggies. Defrost your broth and you have home made soup, stew or a casserole. This not only saves money, it saves time.

 

[blissful]

I just had an idea. Maybe not new to some. When ever you have a left over Ham bone, Carcass or Chicken backs(who eats them anyway?), make a big pot of broth with veggies. Freeze it sized to fit your needs. When you have any left over rice, noodles,beans, meat or veggies. Defrost your broth and you have home made soup, stew or a casserole. This not only saves money, it saves time.

It's a great idea. My grandmother Molly in Saskatchewan used to do this once a week with all the vegetable leftovers and meat leftovers if there were any and on Friday's we'd eat it in a soup or stew. It wasn't always pretty but it was good. ~Bliss

 

[bethzaring]

I am changing my baking habits. Used to, I would have the oven fired up almost every day. No more. I'm trying to use the oven maybe twice a week. I have started using my bread machine to bake off some breads, instead of baking them off in the oven. And my best idea is to make no bake cookies. They don't use the oven at all

 

[expatgirl]

I don't buy cut chickens, I cut them myself. Same with stew meat. I make my own bracciole, too.

I'm not a fan of the produce section in supermarkets, either. Most of the produce is usually prepackaged (cherries, grapes, green beans, asparagus) in unfriendly styrofoam and or plastic wrap. Generally, it's either more or less than the amount I desire. You can buy two packages, getting more than you need, or get one, and not get enough. You can do what I do...I open those packages to I can take what I want to the register. I remember when supermarkets had scales and paper bags.

You can do that in any station of the market - deli, butcher, fish... Management prewraps everything giving the customer the feeling that they must buy the size the store dictates. Cheese is one of the biggest problem areas. How many times have you desired just enough cheese for a recipe, but end up buying twice the amount because the store pre-cut and prewrapped it? You can take that piece to the counter and have it cut to the size you desire. They (management) just assume no one will bother. Lamb chops are another culprit. They usually come wrapped two or three to a package. First, if you are cooking for more than one person, you are going to need at least two packages. Twice the styrofoam and plastic. 6 is too many, three is not enough. You can end up with 5 if you're not careful. If there is no one staffed in the butcher shop, you have no choice but to buy it the way they wrapped it.

Not every shopper is shopping for a huge or growing family...and having everything prepackaged is good for the store, but bad for many consumers. If it's something that is packaged at the store and it's not the size I want, I will always ask to have it cut down or broken down to the size I do want.

That happens over here, too, Vera..........they usually package for a huge family........after throwing out some produce at horrible high prices, I went up to the counter and actually made them understand that I only wanted a few (it's just DH and me here) and the counter agent just opened up a prepackaged bag and said in Russian I'm sure...."Here you go....take what you want" .........Now I don't hesitate to open large packages but I make sure that I put them back where they go and that they look nicely.....no hurt in being thoughtful..........

 

[Ask-A-Butcher]

Here are a couple of articles that I wrote last winter on saving money at the meat counter.

Part One deals with coupons, etc, and the Poultry case.

Part Two gets into the Beef and Pork section, plus a few miscellaneous topics.

 

[DramaQueen]

Here are a couple of articles that I wrote last winter on saving money at the meat counter.

Part One deals with coupons, etc, and the Poultry case.

Part Two gets into the Beef and Pork section, plus a few miscellaneous topics.

First let me say that I just clicked on the picture of the grill and my mouth is still watering. Everything on the grill looks great!

I don't save money in the kitchen, never did, probably never will. I buy what I like no matter what the cost because I eat only what I like. The only way I save money is by not buying any processed foods. I don't buy TV dinners, canned foods and only frozen veggies. I make all my food from scratch and that really is cheaper than buying pre-made dinners. If you look at the cost of Lean Cuisine for instance, and figure out how much each dinner weighs and how much is costs to make it from scratch, the LC is waaay over priced. But more importantly, the homemade version is so much better tasting and without all the preservatives.

I use all leftovers because I don't like throwing food away and becauese if I liked it the first time I'm going to like it the second time too. So one meal stretches to 2 easily.

 

[sattie]

Save money on trash bags now since we have reduced our waste considerably. Only one small bag of trash every two weeks. We definately recycle more than we throw away. Raw veggie matter goes into compost pile, not down sink or in trash. Started saving bread heels to make bread crumbs... (thanks so much to the folks that gave me that idea!). There is so much stuff I make now that I do not have to purchase!!! I know this seems more of a green thing, and it is to me. I don't have to skimp on things that I like, I just have to rethink how to get it done that will cost less to me and be good for the environment. Most of the things that I like, I have found that I can make better and cheaper myself.

 

[DramaQueen]

Save money on trash bags now since we have reduced our waste considerably. Only one small bag of trash every two weeks. We definately recycle more than we throw away. Raw veggie matter goes into compost pile, not down sink or in trash. Started saving bread heels to make bread crumbs... (thanks so much to the folks that gave me that idea!). There is so much stuff I make now that I do not have to purchase!!! I know this seems more of a green thing, and it is to me. I don't have to skimp on things that I like, I just have to rethink how to get it done that will cost less to me and be good for the environment. Most of the things that I like, I have found that I can make better and cheaper myself.

You got THAT right! Ditto on the bread crumbs. I always make my own from rustic bread. Bread crumbs are just that - bread crumbs - period. So howcome they have to put 2000 ingredients into the ones you buy in the supermarket??

 

[sattie]

DramaQueen, I have no idea why there is so much crud in that stuff. I use to buy that stuff, the canned bread crumbs and they would go stale by the time I got around to using it all. The bad thing is that I have been tossing those bread heels all this time and not even realizing that those could easily be used for bread crumbs!!!! Saves me money, saves food waste, and I always have fresh crumbs on hand! I just want to SMACK myself sometimes for being sooooooo slooooooooow!!! DOH!

I used some bread crumbs the other day on an orange roughy recipe, all I did is take out one frozen heel out of the container and crushed it with my rolling pin. How easy can that be??? Recipe turned out perfect!!!

 

[DramaQueen]

DramaQueen, I have no idea why there is so much crud in that stuff. I use to buy that stuff, the canned bread crumbs and they would go stale by the time I got around to using it all. The bad thing is that I have been tossing those bread heels all this time and not even realizing that those could easily be used for bread crumbs!!!! Saves me money, saves food waste, and I always have fresh crumbs on hand! I just want to SMACK myself sometimes for being sooooooo slooooooooow!!! DOH!

I used some bread crumbs the other day on an orange roughy recipe, all I did is take out one frozen heel out of the container and crushed it with my rolling pin. How easy can that be??? Recipe turned out perfect!!!

I make bread crumbs from artisan or rustic bread only - French, Italian, etc. - and this is what I do:

Save the last of the breads, cut into cubes, let the cubes dry completely then put them through your food processor. Sometimes I have as much as 1/4 of a loaf since there are no preservatives in these breads. The crumbs will keep for weeks in an airtight container and you can just keep adding to them. This way you will always have crumbs on hand when you need them.
If you want finer crumbs, run the processed crumbs through your blender on pulsate but just for a very short time or they will pulverize. You can't buy crumbs this good.