Posted by Canadian Dream on September 9, 2008
Alright, I’ve tried again and again to show you all how to eat cheaper. I’m still getting people commenting on how can I feed a family of two adults and two small kids for about $10/day? (Keep in mind that $10/day also includes my cleaning supplies, paper towel and other items for the house.) To them it seems impossible. So I talked to my wife and we are going to do a little more in depth series on what we eat and how we cook and how to eat well for pennies. We are actually tracking everything we eat for a month so I’ll report on that later.
Generally speaking there are two main rules to follow: 1) buy more of something when it is on sale or in season or bulk (if you are going to actually use it) and 2) avoid prepackage or foods full of chemicals you can’t say or even know what they are.
So when soup is on sale by the case for about $0.50/can buy two cases and stock up. That way you are always eating cheap soup. The same applies to other basics like sugar or flour which keep for a long time. For the longest time I never paid more than $5 for a 10 kg bag of white flour. Now I can’t see to get a sale for less than $7, but it is still much cheaper than the regular $11.50 a bag.
The other rule is simple. The more processed a food is the higher the profit margin is for the company. Therefore buy the base ingredients and just make it yourself and pocket the margin you would have paid them for yourself. Not to mention, home made typically tastes better!
This post we are going to focus on eating a cheap breakfast. First off contrary to most people’s thoughts a bagel at $0.50 a person isn’t a cheap breakfast. For two people that is $1.00 before butter or juice or anything else. Homemade muffins are about $0.15/each. So for $1.00 I can feed my wife and I two muffins each for 3 breakfasts for the same price. It’s not to say you can never eat bagels, but just don’t do it every day.
So what else is cheap? Pancakes, waffles, an egg and toast, fruit, oatmeal, buttermilk biscuits. All of these can be made for dirt cheap and taste good. Yet some people may wonder, how do you do a pancake or waffle for breakfast during the week? Easy. Make it on the weekend and freeze a pile. Then you heat them up in the toaster (mmm, home made Eggo).
To help you get started here is my mother’s classic recipe for buttermilk biscuits. Mix two cups flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp of salt into a bowl. Then add in 4 tbsp of margarine. Use a pastry cutter or your fingers and break up the margarine into tiny pieces and mix well. Then add in 1 cup of buttermilk. Mix until flour is absorbed. Knead about 10 to 20 times. You should now have a nice ball and no flour in the bowl. Pat out dough on floured counter until 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut with plastic cup or use a glass with a little bit of flour on the rim. Bake ungreased cookie sheet for 12 minutes at 425 F. Serve with margarine or butter and jam or honey. I typically make a double batch of these so I can freeze some. They don’t last long in my house.
Tune in next week when I deal with lunch and at some point we will also report in on what we ate for the last two weeks.
This post is now part of the 170th Carnival of Personal Finance.
Posted by Canadian Dream on August 27, 2008
What is incrediably cheap, useful and a renewable resource in your house you can tap to save money which requires no capitial investment? Now think about, give yourself a second. Ok, it’s your leftovers.
Leftovers?!?! Yes, leftovers. I couldn’t find a formal study showing the food waste in this country but I found a few references to estimates ranging from 20 to 30% of what food we buy goes to waste. So if you think about it that means if your not eating your leftovers you could reduce your food bill by 20% or more just be eating them. So if you are spending $700/month on food you could be saving almost $1700 annually just be eating your leftovers.
Despite how easy this can be to do I find when I talk to people about it they always seem to say “But I just ate that I don’t want to eat it again.” Who said you had to eat it the exact same way in again the day after you eat it? You really don’t. All it takes is some planning or a little creativity.
So your first option with leftovers is a little planning and some freezer space. If you lack a creative bone in your body, even you can manage to do this. Freeze your leftovers into single individual portions with a piece of tape with a today’s date on it. Build up a supply to allow you to have four meals of leftovers. The start a leftover night once a week where you eat them. That way you will have some choice in what you do eat for leftovers. Also you need to make sure none of your leftovers get’s older than 2 months old, so if you put it off eating it for 7 weeks your stuck eating it on week 8.
Alright, so that one way to handle leftovers. I personally don’t freeze much myself. I prefer to try and reuse things the same week we generate them. Often lunch on the weekend consists of leftovers or I take them for lunch and I try to have one leftover night per week. Also I’m ok eating some of the same food again within a week, but if you really hate it here is some ideas on how to avoid that fate.
Using up leftovers is basically an exercise in creativity, but here are a few standard ways people use them up.
- Soup. Did you know most restaurant’s soup of the day is likely made up of leftovers? It’s true. I’ve worked in a kitchen before so I know. So steal this page from the industry’s play book and do your own leftover soup. Take 2 to 3 cups stock (chicken, beef, vegetable) and add about 1 cup of leftover starch (pasta, rice, potato). Then add about 1/2 cup protein (beans, meat, etc) and 1/2 to 1 cup of vegetables. Then spice it up with what ever comes into your head (bay leaf, rosemary, thyme, basil are all classics). Simmer for an 30 minutes to an hour and serve. Trust me you won’t make the same soup more than once and it won’t taste anything like what you already ate that week.
- Casserole. This is another classic trick used by my own mom for years. Mix 1 to 2 cups starch (or mix up what starch you do have like 1/2 cup rice with 1/2 cup pasta) with 1 can of cream soup (mushroom or tomato are classics). The cut up your leftovers into small parts and add in what ever is in the fridge (meat, vegetables, etc). If your leftovers are making everything a little too liquid like feel free to add some dry pasta or instant rice to help soak up the extra liquid as you bake it. Or if it looks too thick add a little bit of water. You want it to look a little thick going in as the water content of what you add will turn the entire thing more liquid as you cook it. Add spice(s) of your choice mix then top with either some cheese or bread crumbs mixed with butter and crumbled on top. Bake uncovered for 1 hour at 350F.
- Stir Fry. Cook up or reheat some rice or pasta. Then chop up what every you have into small pieces. Fry it up in a hot pan with some oil in the bottom. Mix well. Then add in some sauce. A typical mixture is something like 1 tbsp of water, 1 tbsp of soy sauce, 1 tbsp of other sauce (pick something out of the fridge or peanut butter works well too), 1/4 tsp sesame oil, 1 tbsp corn starch and spices like garlic powder, onion powder, ginger. Feel free to adjust to anything you like. Then mix it well and add it to the pan after you remove it from the heat (otherwise you can boil off your water content too fast and your corn starch will turn into a mess on the bottom of the pan, if this happens add some water and simmer for a while stirring to help reverse the effect somewhat). Serve over rice or pasta.
So hopefully that helps with your war on your leftovers. If you’ve got another idea please share with a comment.
Posted by Canadian Dream on December 1, 2007
So after a couple of requests here are a few of our most loved recipes.
1) Hot Chocolate Mix
- 3 cups skim milk powder
- 1 cup cocoa
- 1 1/3 cup of sugar
- 1/3 cup of powdered coffee whitener
- 1/8 tsp salt
Mix it all up and store in an air tight container. We make a batch each fall and it usually lasts most of the winter. To use add 2 tbsp of mix to 3/4 cup of hot water. Unlike some other mixes this one will completely dissolve in hot liquid.
2) Homemade Granola Bars
- 3 cups rolled oats
- 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
- 1 1/2 cups of trail mix
- 4 tbsp margarine
- 1/4 cup brown sugar (dark if you have it)
- 1/2 cup honey
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
Mix margarine, brown sugar, honey and salt in small saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Meanwhile mix the rolled oats, flour and trail mix together in large bowl. Add vanilla to sauce mixture and pour over oat mixture. Press into a greased 13 x 9 pan (if you don’t have that size just about any size will do). Bake at 325 F for 20 minutes.
The bars will break up somewhat when cut, but save the crumbs as they make excellent granola cereal. I should warn you I’m still working on this recipe. I have a base one from a internet site that I’ve been messing around with to get it to where I like my bars. So if you have problems let me know and I’ll try to answer any questions in the comments.
