Briefly: I come from a household where we ate takeout every single night for almost 10 yrs straight. It became our norm. My parents started late in life, and were what some might call “elderly/senior parents.” Mom was frequently very sick and Dad worked a lot. Takeout in NY for a household of 4 is expensive as hell! ($40 absolute MINIMUM including tip). You do the math as I cringe... Fast forward, so as I’ve started to get on my own 2 feet, I’ve had to learn to cut-out takeout, and instead cook at home. It was easier said then done at 1st. Here are tips that have saved me so much of my sanity and so much money:
1) FREEZE AS MUCH OF YOUR PRODUCE AS POSSIBLE Looorrrd. I cannot stress how pissed I would be every week after spending $80-$100 on groceries, only to find out I’d have to throw out $30 dollars worth of the groceries. My bundle of unused parsley went to shit after a week and a half. Or my spinach would be soggy and smelly after a week. Or my celery would be brown and shriveled... the list goes on! SO, I started doing some research on how to lengthen the life of my produce. Freezing seems to be the best and healthiest method. (Dehydrating would be 2nd, but I’m not yet convinced enough in the versatility to invest in a dehydrator.) Anyways, I stocked up on ziploc baggies, took an hour out of my day and pre-prepped ALL of my veggies—I chopped up all my celery, an entire sack of onions, scallions, bean sprouts, etc. I threw everything into ziploc bags making sure to remove all the air. For the scallions/green onions, I chopped them up and tossed them into an empty water bottle. I put them in a water bottle, because it’s a helpful little “hack” that comes in handy when you’re quickly multitasking in the kitchen. Don’t forget to write the date on the baggies. Do this pre-prepping after every grocery store trip :) In order to avoid your chopped up veggies from freezing stuck together, try to lay the bags flat and the bottle on its side. Basically, you’re trying to spread out the contents of each as much as possible. TA-DA! All those veggies that would crap out after a week or so will last an extra 3 months-6 months! If you plan to cook them, there’s no need to defrost/thaw. Just throw them on the pan. Also now that all the veggies are pre-chopped, it’s easier to hold myself accountable and I’m more motivated to cook at home because it’s no longer “too much work/too time consuming to cook right now.” Cooking at home is so much faster and desirable now.
2) INVEST IN AN INSTANT POT. Probably any multi use cooker would be cool, but I don’t know much about any of the others on the market. This one has just about 5-stars from 24,000 amazon ratings. It’s reasonably priced too I think. Cooking for two, I have saved HUNDREDS at this point since buying an Instant Pot off Amazon less than 6 months ago. I think it was $80 for the smaller version? Whether you’re on a budget or not.. I’m telling you, bite the bullet. It’s worth it! It looks so intimidating at first but I promise you, give yourself 10 minutes to read the manual. Honestly, I briefly skimmed just the “setup” section and the how to cook rice part lol. Why? I could not cook consistently good rice for the life of me before I purchased an Instant Pot. I am Asian and my boyfriend is Hispanic. Although we were both raised in the US, the desire for rice pretty much runs through our blood, let alone our households. I learned to make one of our favorite Dominican chicken & beef stew dishes that I would normally spend $15 on at a restaurant. We learned to make Caribbean food as well in it. I’ve even cooked drumsticks in it. Steak too! I learned to heat up canned soup, make oatmeal.... meanwhile the only real reason I wanted one in the first place was to cook normal white rice. We used to spend roughly $45 on Chinese takeout every month. We love soups too, so we’d spend unnecessary $ on that as well. I learned to make Chinese egg fried rice with the Instant Pot, so now we don’t have a desire to buy it anymore—it was our go-to dish. The Instant Pot makes yogurt too! Basically what I’m trying to say is anything you can make on the stove you can make in an Instant Pot, just faster.
3) INVEST IN REUSABLE CONTAINERS. Ziploc bags too. Nothing major. They sell all different sizes of Tupperware at Dollar Tree for $1 each. This is a surprisingly helpful money saver because it keeps left overs fresh longer. Also, I know some people just throw food out because they don’t like the idea of leftovers or don’t think it’s worth throwing those last few bites in the fridge. So many times I’ve walked into the kitchen in a rush saying to myself, “Crap! I have to run to work but I’m so hungry. I just need a snack. Fuc... I guess I’ll just go buy some food on the way!” —It’s moments like those where those last few bites came in handy.
—Obviously these tips may not work for everyone but they surely have helped us become more self-sufficient 20 something year olds in the kitchen as well as save a ton of money! *IF YOU HAVE ANY TIPS, PLEASE SHARE 😋 *
Submitted December 25, 2017 at 05:08PM by lorraineluu http://ift.tt/2Ddqy8Z
