59 new of 68 responses total.
Eprom sounds like the sort who does not like to cook ;) We make our nwn noodles from durum flour, our cereal is oatmeal, I have made corn tortillas from masa harina. Meat is generaly cheaper than cheese - I think it's govt. subsidized. If you want to save money on meat find a fish store or butcher and ask them for the trimmings - fish bones from the fish filets are free here (pay for the bag). The parts left after making boneless chicken are also cheap. Supermarkets often mark down somewhat old vegetables and fruit.
One thing to look into would be farm-style cooking, although I don't know if there's any such cookbook. Typically it involves trying to use as much of the ingredients as possible, avoiding having to throw out things with nutritional value. Example: Cook meat in a skillet, and instead of throwing away the grease, make gravy and use it on potatoes or as a sandwich spread. Hard to say how many such things are relatively doable in a modern kitchen with modern stuff, but it's something to think about. Overall you can save some money with cooking, but really it's a drop in the bucket compared to housing and transportation. Being able to do basic car maintenance and repairs is very useful; not only do you save on shop labor but you also tend to notice things which need immediate attention and can prevent more expensive repairs. Maybe there's a local organization which gives cheap/free car work classes. Or maybe you could trade some guitar lessons for car repair lessons and access to tools? Speaking of things like guitar lessons... have you looked into making a little money on the side that way? A few years ago I noticed a really interesting guitar in a new store which needed work, and ended up fixing it to see if I wanted to buy it. I didn't buy it, but I did end up occasionally doing other repairs for the store. Right now I'm trying to decide if I want to do that kind of work on a half-time basis and spend some money on tools, since I'm the best amp & electronics repair tech to have shown any interest. And while I was almost exclusively doing repairs on store items (it's a vintage instrument store) it turned out there were regular service requests from customers who were being turned away because there was no regular repair tech to make sure stuff got fixed in a timely fashion. So check out the local music stores, and if they don't offer lessons ask why - maybe they were just waiting around for somebody who could actually teach (plenty of people can play, but not so many can be a good teacher) and was reliable enough to keep a regular schedule. And if there's demand, well, go with it. You want to teach professionally, right? The business side might be a little scary at first, but no worse than academia politics.
No-brand cereals are creeping up in price, but are still much less than their brand-name equivalents. Rice krispies and corn flakes are really cheap. I get the no-name Cheerios equivalent, which are usually about half the price of the name brand product. What kind of stuff are you eating now?
Bulk food store oatmeal is cheaper than any no-name breakfast cereal.
Home-baked bread is *vastly* cheaper than fancy-bread-store bread.
(That you had to buy, right?) Can you split the savings with your
hosts ("paying cash for electricity for baking bread") to save some?
Meat/fish/poultry is fairly cheap if you don't mind the least-wanted
stuff & don't expect to fill up on it. (A nice $0.99/lbs. pork shoulder
roast is simmering as i type. It seems to be the piece of the pig that
my favorite butcher can't get folks interested in buying. Another local
store cuts whole salmon into salmon steaks - then sells the lots-of-meat-
but-no-cool-looks tails for $2.99/lbs.
Eating cheap is 1 part penny-pinching attitude, 1 part on-the-cheap
cooking skills, and 1 part having the time.
We receive foodstamps. We are not really quite worried about budgeting that, as I bargain shop well. We buy "no-brand" cereal, and we shop at a grocery store that keeps prices very low by staying less fancy as far as the store (think Safeway vs. some smaller-chain store) and they have you bag your own groceries. resp:9 yep, I always check the per/unit price, too. Again, bulk is not a great option. Our roomies insist on buying lots at a time, but space is a bit at a premium, as over 60% of our belongings are in their basement. I may be making excuses as to the bread machine, but I have little time to do it. Yes, the husband does work in the bakery of the grocery store where we shop at. I doubt we could do day old bread because I'm sure the wife roomie wouldn't allow it. Food service employment may not be the best idea right now. I am really working on finding a living wage, and I have some good leads that might work. resp:11 farm-style cooking.. well, I think the mention of "The Frugal Gourmet" might partially cover that. I had a friend who helped me with car repair, but he moved out-of-state to go back to school. Guitar lessons aren't really an option; I don't play well enough. I'm just trying to figure out how to barter for lessons for myself. If I had stayed with piano, I might be able to do that, but the honest fact is, I don't think I can compete. I think I haven't been very specific.. I'm not really worried about budgeting and whatnot-- I need help with recipes and meal ideas.
(You don't have to be a super-whiz guitarist to give lessons - you have to be OK [which I suspect you are], but mainly you have to have a great deal of patience to teach 12 year-olds how to fret their very first chord.)
<sigh> Yep.
What sorts of things do you like to eat? And how much time do you have to cook?
I talked to Ann and she agreed to help me make bread in their machine. Off the food subject, Julie is moving Sarah to cloth diapers part of the time. On lessons, well, existing teachers tend to snap students up and I would be teaching folk style-- hardly the popular choice of many young teens. Julie and I are doing Lean Cuisine (and similar) type dinners right now to make our new diet easier. *sigh* Eventually, I suppose I will be closer to Sindi's suggestions; but I choose to make changes gradually. A chunk of our bankruptcy debt was eating out frequently when I was depressed (during my last days of college, and shortly after, which were miserable). Cooking for 2-3 people is hard for me, and Ann is a picky eater; there are many veggies she won't touch. I think we may move out next month.. that will change things slightly. More things I can cook, but one less person-- I found cooking for 3 easier than cooking for 2. Maybe I'm being obstinate.
Cooking for two is much easier if you make enough to have a few days' worth of leftovers. And, uh, then you've got the added benefit of having a few days' worth of leftovers. :)
I cook virtually all meals from scratch for just one (me). What's the problem? If you count things like washing broccoli & chopping it into an old plastic ice cream tub (free tupperware) and baking bread, most of what i eat is leftovers.
resp:19 resp:20 that's part of the problem.. I don't always like to keep leftovers.
You might want to figure out what you could do to make leftovers more appealing, if you're serious about saving money. I don't mean change your attitude, I mean look at which kinds of leftovers you like, and cook that stuff more often.
Some things make much better leftovers than others. Soups and stews reheat well. Rice reheats okay in the microwave oven. Potatoes are okay if you make them into some other dish (chop them up and fry them with onions). Boiled beans reheat just fine. You can often take a leftover dish and incorporate it in something else you are cooking to make it taste new. I had some leftover stir fried vegetables and I fried an onion, added tomato juice, slivered cabbage, boiled until tender, and threw in the leftovers.
I used to like to make cassaroles out of leftovers. i.e. if I had chicken and rice and broccoli for dinner, I would put the leftovers in a casarole dish with cheese on top and then freeze it for a week. Then the "leftovers" never really felt like leftovers.
I paid the $4-5 at a Corningware outlet store for several 1 pint and 1 quart Corningware pans. They turn leftovers into planned overs. You can either prepare normal 4 serving recipe, and cook it in two separate pans, freezing one for later use. Or you can prepare a dish, and line a Corningware pan with foil, then freeze the contents. In this case, you remove the frozen package and store it without the pan. In either case, the Corningware can stand the temperature differential of being in a hot oven, or on a hot burner with frozen food inside it. All the convenience of 4 serving recipes, with two separate meals as the outcome. I keep 2 or 3 of these planned-over meals in my freezer. They can pop right into the microwave on those evenings I'm too tired to cook.
So sort of like home-made TV dinners? Nice. I can definitely see how there might be something off-putting about a big vat of leftover goop in the fridge.
I would like to learn more how to convert leftovers. Hey, I was still hoping for a few recipes!
What sorts of leftovers do you generate? Leftover bread is no problem, or soup.
It hasn't been much of anything lately. We've been eating Lean Cuisine and the like for dinner. Husband roomie works grave and does not do dinner-- wife roomie eats at weird times, at best, one meal a day. Not healthy at all.
Is there some reason you prefer not to cook your own dinner instead of buying it prepared? You could get better quality for less money. Also these weight watcher's things don't have much bulk and will probably leave you feeling hungry. When we took a visitor to Jim's relatives, his brother in law told the visitor to be sure to eat two of them at a time as they were not filling.
Leftover conversion: in my family, it's obvious this time of year. The loads of leftover turkey will become turkey sandwiches, turkey salads, & turkey & (also leftover) gravy over (reheated) mashed potatoes & stuffing. Lots of mashed potatoes left over means we'll see hash browns a bit later. Picking the turkey's remains clean indeed is an important job. The least desirable little scraps & bits become a seasonal little-extra-bonus-on-top in the pet food bowl. Leftover cookies & pies just come back as-is until finished off. Rolls & breads come back once, then become bread crumbs for meatloaf. The remains of fresh veggie snack trays (celery, cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, etc. return in salads, then baked into a quiche or casserole. When there's lots of something that will freeze okay (usually meat), some is frozen to come back mid-January or so.
resp:30 au contraire, they work just fine. One dieting tip says eat a King's breakfast, a Prince's lunch, and a pauper's dinner, so it's fine. We are not vegetarians, so all of them have some kind of meat-- mostly chicken. I have a hard time with preparation, Sindi. I don't necessarily have tons of time and I just don't have the patience sometimes to cook for people that don't always wait or appreciate it much. Or maybe I haven't gotten into a routine habit-- cooking is a big deal thing for me.. I really get into it once I do. I like super quick, super simple. Nuke it and eat it. And I don't like cooking one night and eating the leftovers the following nights. So I must be spoiled, I guess. resp:31 I don't know why, but ugh.
The trick with leftovers is not visit them the next day. But don't wait so long they go bad, either.
You can also freeze them for a little later. I just used the leftover mashed potatoes to make a vegetarian Shepards Pie. YUM.
Jeanne is a very good cook. I KNOW!
Cheater's Stew: 1 to 1-1/2 # stew beef (the really cheap stuff) Seasoned flour (flour, salt, pepper, other spices to taste in a paper bag) 2 or 3 potatoes, cut in chunks 2 or 3 onions, quartered Some carrots, cut in chunks Some celery stalks, cut in chunks Mushrooms (optional) Garlic to taste (optional) 3-4 cans Franco-American Beef Gravy If it's not in pieces already, cut up the beef. Put it in the bag with the seasoned flour and shake it around. Brown it and drain it. Place the beef, vegetables, and gravy in a large pot and simmer, covered, at least until the potatoes are done. The longer it simmers, the more tender the beef will be. It ain't fancy, but it's cheap and palatable.
I usually use beef bouillon for my stews.
Never heard of canned Franco-American beef gravy.
I should think that bouillon (just boil 1 cube per cup of water) would certainly be cheaper. You can get giant containers ( I think 100 cubes or so ) for about $5.
New situation, new digs. We eat oatmeal a lot more frequently now, and remember Sindi and Jim's tip on cooking it without burning :) We try to get old-fashioned when we can, more fiber that way, but we get a lot of quick oats from the food bank. Beans are a marvelous thing. I made a mix from some I had in storage (some we had gotten from the food bank, again) and added a soup mix to it which had letter pastas and lentils in it. I usually soak them overnight or Julie might boil them if we are pressed for time, and usually slow cook it until it gets to a chili-like consistency. I add spices on hand, of course, but I recently got some dried chiles from the Farmer's Market that work super. We don't have it down perfect-- I tend to eat out a lot, usually at Subway to float between meals. It is my lazy man's out when I want to get a lot of veggies and I'm not ready to prepare something. Of course I know it is hardly cheap. I've found frozen foods are really great-- frozen veggies, frozen fruits-- often cheap and I understand they usually retain their nutrition a little better than fresh. We get bulk food now too at the store we usually frequent. We can usually get most of our spices there and even 'prepared' foods are a little more reasonably priced. It's a work in progress, but we'll get better at it. Was reading this again and made a note that I should find Jeff Smith at the library. Should be easy to do online and my sister works at our main branch so getting and returning books is a snap.
BEANZ MEANZ FARTZ
'Ello! (just joined the conf, so I thought I would say 'ello). The whole 'eating at home' thing is kind of new for me- but I'm finding that it can be quite enjoyable.
you can make 2-3 meals out of a Little Caesar $5 hot-n-ready pizza.
Yes but that's not particularly healthy...
resp:41 darn skippy. resp:43 can never make pizza stretch well... say, when we get a u-bake pizza it tends to get snarfed. No, not particularly healthy. Usually done for speed and convenience (mostly convenience).
almost forgot. sister brought by the Jeff Smith cookbook from the library. also found some frugal-type recipes on the Internet, both from the Frugal Gourmet and from other sources.
If you have a bread machine, you could take fresh-baked bread for lunch instead of buying Subway sandwiches. Used machines are quite cheap around here, Value World had them for $5 or so, and we found a working one at the curb.
Well that requires purchase of stuff to put in sandwiches. and plenty of time. Hmm, I wonder where in my teeny kitchen I could fit a bread maker... My Beau and I are having difficulties keeping salad stuff fresh for very long in our fridge. Gets quite annoying really.
'stuff' has to be cheaper than buying sandwiches. You can run the bread machine in another room than the kitchen, where you don't mind the noise, even the bathroom. I can't imagine it would take more time to purchase something to put in sandwiches, than to go to a place that sold them and wait to buy one every day.
It can be- but honestly the problem I often run into is the quanity that needs buying. If it doesn't get all used up and goes bad than it's a waste of money. What this really means is that my planning skills need work. ;) As for the time... when you put it like that, I have to agree with you. For the bread machine, I have a fairly good sized apartment- it's just got stuff in many places- and boxes of books since we only have two bookshelves. Putting a bread machine somewhere other than the counter/cupboard isn't likely to happen. And running it... with two cats, one of whom earned the nickname Danger Boy!, I would rather have the bread machine running in the kitchen where I can better protect it. ;)
Jim says he runs his bread machine in the garage. I don't see how a cat could damage a machine, or vice versa - do they try to open lids? What do you put into sandwiches that you cannot either buy in smaller amounts, or freeze?
No, not opening lids- chewing cords. I used to joke that my Sasha was a great mouse hunter- except the mice she killed were connected to computers. Part of the problem is also that we don't have a great refrigerator- it's very damp. So things like lettuce, onions and tomatoes (well they're okay) go bad more quickly than they should. Getting a new fridge means arguing with the landlord. As it is we buy 4 tomatos and they go bad before we eat them all. Usually it's because we're lazy and get the 'bag' salad and that almost always goes bad before we eat it all. Like I said, poor planning in terms of what meals will be eaten in the coming week and shopping accordingly.
Do you keep your vegetables in the plastic bags they come in? That raises the humidity a LOT. Take them out and keep in the vegetable bin (crisper) or even an open colander. I have never heard of a refrigerator being too humid. The self-defrosting ones have the opposite problem, they dry things out. If you are used to those, but have a non-self-defrosting one, get used to taking things out of bags. Jim asks if you are putting uncovered foods in there, which will evaporate and increase the humidity.
The problem seems to be the freezer automatic defroster- it drips into the fridge. I actually keep a small bowl in there to catch the condesation, it gets emptied every few days or so. So that would be where the humidity comes from. Sadly our fridge really is a joke and while we try to put the veggies in some other container and in the crisper they just don't stay crisp.
It sounds like the tube from the freezer to the area below the refrigerator, which is supposed to drain the melted ice, is clogged, so the water drips onto the inside of the refrigerator. It is fairly simple to unclog them with a pipecleaner or maybe a coat hanger. This is not condensation collecting, but melted freezer ice. We have at least one free refrigerator in good condition that was thrown out because it had a clog in the drain line. If you cannot figure out how to unclog, I will ask Jim for more details, but I think it is up near the freezer, assuming it is a one-door model. My crisper is badly designed and rots things because it has no drain/ventilation holes near the bottom, where the humidity tends to be highest because cold air sinks.
I'll look at it when I get home- but it is a two door (the freezer has a separate door from the main fridge).
Is the lower compartment also self-defrosting?
No idea. I'll have to find out.
If it is, look for a drain tube and clean it out with pipecleaner. Or make sure you are not putting uncovered foods in there, which do increase the humidity and cause condensation.
resp:47 I need to find out about getting some more wheat. We ground some wheat in a blender for flour once and we got bread that was sort of like cracked wheat bread. We've usually been buying bread at a bakery outlet- about 3 for $1 or 3 for $2... I am sure you'll tell me that bread machine bread is ultimately cheaper. As for sandwich stuffs, I agree with Anne-- it is tough getting a lot of veggies and the like to keep. Right now, we've had good success with tuna sandwiches-- we use a recipe that uses onions, pickles, and dillweed. I could add romaine quite easily. On the subject of used items-- those are much harder to come by here, even harder to find places to fix cheaply-- I would love to have someone like you guys to fix our poor little vacuum cleaner that just dies everytime I turn it on and run it through 2-3 rooms.
Re: #60- is the vacuum overheating? Mine was doing that. The Beau figured out a way to open it up and clean the filter (it's still not that great of a vacuum, but it never really was to begin with. ;) ). Back to the sandwich thing- not being a vegetarian, getting decent meat fillings can be annoying. Gotta be careful it's not overly processed, etc.,
Bread machine bread consists of whatever you choose to make it from. 3 for $1 bread is probably the white puffy stuff with no taste or texture or fiber. Check the vacuum cleaner for threads wound around the roller. Why take sandwiches at all? You can bring other things in containers and eat with spoon or fork. Cook extra the day before.
I hate to sound like I'm purposefully trying to be difficult however... Keeping items fresh during the day while in their containers can also be an issue. Keeping items cold or warming them up so that they don't go bad. Which, come to think of it, is also a reason taking sandwichs can be difficult. It can be very difficult when you don't have a schedule that's totally of your choosing.
Do you work some place that has an employee refrigerator? You can take a small insulated bag with a coldpack in it to keep things cold. Hard cheese can be left at room temperature for a long time without spoiling. So can uncut fruits, which includes tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers.
Well I work someplace with an employee fridge now, but I haven't always.
In the (distant past?) when I packed lunches for myself, I routinely made a week's worth of sandwiches and froze them, so that on a weekday morning I only pulled out a sandwich or two from the freezer and added a piece of fruit or vegetable. The sandwiches were mostly peanut butter, and one of our cats was fond of peanut butter, so he expected his share.
Why did you freeze peanut butter? It keeps pretty well at room temperature. I used to put apple slices in my peanut butter sandwiches. To upset people at school, I would also add just about anything else that stuck, including green beans (cooked) or cranberry sauce. The carrot tops were not very good.
resp:61 Julie (I should start calling her Ms. Fix-it now) figured it out. She said the brush roller had too much hair on it and couldn't spin. Took off the hair-- problem fixed. i.e. resp:62-- exactly. resp:62 au contraire, it's reasonably tasty, and reasonably fibered (usually just 2 g though :/ ) I guess it's time to start workin' that bread machine...
You have several choices: