Making Food From Scratch
July 6, 2009 – 6:47 amYour grandmother did it for every meal. Your mother did it for almost every meal. You probably have never done it.
Do you make most of your food from scratch, or do you buy prepacked meal or components? I’m blessed in that I like cooking, and although I don’t make anything terribly difficult or exotic I don’t mind spending time in the kitchen.
I’m much more of picky eater than my wife is, mostly because I need to eat clean foods and know what is in my foods to feel good. As my wife and I have try to squeeze every penny out of our grocery budget we’ve discovered that it’s very easy to make a lot of the products we used to buy in the stores. The other point worth considering is that we’re all creatures of habit. You may want a little more variety and we do, but my wife and I eat about the save 10 meals over and over. Find ways to reduce the costs, and potentially time, of making those meals and you’ll feel like you’re printing money in the basement.
A few of the key savings drivers in our menus included:
- oatmeal. I love Quaker oatmeal, and their new Simple Harvest products are fantastic. But they’re also expensive, and I don’t need all of that sugar. Buy bulk quick-cook oats and you’ll save a bundle if you eat oatmeal regularly. You could even by ORGANIC oatmeal for about $1/lb, which is much less than any prepacked single serve oatmeal products. By the way you’ll also be saving the planet, because all of the tiny extra plastic packages have to go to a landfill somewhere.
- bread products. It’s pretty easy to make your own pizza crusts, muffins, biscuits, bread sticks
- cheese, sandwich bread, milk. I shop at Sam’s Club to get the best price on these items, but check your local prices to ensure you’re buying at the best store. A price list will help with this.
- skip the pop-tarts and candy bars, and have a piece of fruit instead. Anything that contains something pre-made or contains a package in another package is going to be EXPENSIVE. Think about it! A manufacturer is giving you a pop-tart, which has to be manufactured, inside of a foil bag, which is then placed inside a fancy cardboard box. That’s bound to be more expensive than growing some apples and driving them to a farmers market.
You can save quite a bit of time preparing meals as well if the meals you eat can be frozen. We freeze lasagna (which takes forever to prepare), soups, and make multiple batches of things we eat daily like scrambled eggs (just microwave them with some cheese and they taste good as new). Meatballs are also a great choice for the freezer.
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