I posted this in r/povertyfinance and thought I’d post here as well.
First time poster here, and I apologize if this has been posted a million times before. Recently, my husband and I have needed to drastically decrease our spending. One area we looked at was our grocery bill. The problem we were having is that my husband works out a lot (has a free gym at work) and has a pretty physically demanding job and the man eats A LOT. So moving to a rice and beans situation, while I would be perfectly fine, was less than ideal for him. So I decided to get creative. How much of what we buy could I make at home? And the answer is, a lot. And you don’t always need a bunch of fancy equipment or ingredients.
•Bread/biscuits- making bread is time consuming, no getting around that. But considering you can buy a 5 lbs bag of flour for about $1.18 at Walmart, it can definitely save quite a bit, especially if you go through bread quickly. Most bread recipes call for very basic and relatively inexpensive ingredients. And most of these ingredients last quite a while, so you won’t need to buy them every trip. A 4 oz jar of yeast is less than $5 and will last you a long time. Biscuits take less time and taste so much better than store-bought. I usually make up a large batch of dough in the morning, bake some for breakfast with enough to be leftover for dinner and freeze the rest of the dough. Pro tip: the secret to great biscuits is nearly frozen butter (not margarine) and the best recipes need baking powder—don’t skip this step! You can pre-make biscuits and freeze or freeze the whole ball. Thaw in the fridge and let it set out at room temperature to rise. Many batches of dough can be made at once and frozen for a later date. Pasta is also fairly easy to make, it’s a bit of a pain without a pasta machine, but it’s not extremely complicated. Once you’ve cut your noodles (or ravioli if you’re fancy ) you can put them in bags, squeeze out as much air as possible and freeze them. Pro tip* don’t thaw frozen noodles, just place them straight into the water. Thawing will make them stick together and be gross. Want a desert? Cake is so easy to make, and buttercream icing is only 3 ingredients— heavy whipping cream, butter and powdered sugar. Don’t have fancy equipment? Many times you can find inexpensive loaf pans, cake pans, and bowls at thrift stores. You can also pick up an electric mixer for about $10, or do it by hand.
•This one may not be worth the savings, but I enjoy it and it’s kind of neat. You can make your own butter, right in the comfort of your own home. You need heavy whipping cream and either an electric hand mixer or a plastic container with lid and some clean marbles or small ball bearings. There are several steps to this process but they’re easy to find online. I splurged and bought an antique butter mold ($12!) but it’s super neat, I can freeze a bunch of sticks of butter, and the kids love helping! Also, I started wearing a bonnet and old-timey dresses with aprons while making butter and now my husband has a weird little house on the prairie fetish. YMMV.
Bottom line: I was so intimidated by making stuff from scratch because I thought that it was really difficult and you needed to be an awesome cook to accomplish this stuff. I was flabbergasted when I realized that it was mostly really simple with just a couple of ingredients. The hardest part is it being time consuming, but I’ve figured out that if I mix up some dough, set it out on the counter, and do other chores while I’m waiting for it to rise, it doesn’t seem to be as bad. FYI- your grandparents probably won’t be impressed when you tell them about your culinary feats because this is what everyone did when they were growing up and you’ll have to listen to the “I walked 5 miles in the snow” stories. I hope this helps some of y’all!
Submitted August 10, 2019 at 10:31PM by flygirl083 https://ift.tt/31BvVet
