Category: Frugal Solutions

5 Favorite From Scratch Recipes

I’ve sung scratch cooking’s praises in a previous post. Here are a few favorites that I use often.

yogurtingredients

I eat this yogurt everyday. It was the star of another post.

Homemade Yogurt


1 quart milk
½ cup dry milk powder
2 tablespoons plain yogurt

Mix powdered milk into the milk in a sauce pan. Using a candy thermometer, heat the milk mixture until the temperature reaches 180 degrees. Remove from heat and allow to cool to 115 degrees. Spoon out approximately ½ cup of the warm milk and whisk it with the yogurt starter. Add this mixture back into the milk and mix thoroughly. Incubate from 4 to 12 hours until thickened.


mayo3
Mayonnaise from a jar just can’t compete with homemade.

Mayonnaise


4 egg yolks
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil (or a combination of vegetable and olive oils)
1/2 teaspoon salt

Combine the egg yolks, water and vinegar in a food processor or blender. Whirl until ingredients are just mixed.
With the machine running, drizzle the oil slowly into the egg yolk mixture. Be careful not to add the oil too quickly or it will liquefy the mixture.
Optional: Transfer to the top of a double boiler and heat until it reaches 160 degrees.
Store in the refrigerator.


bluecheesedressing
I’ve been a fan of blue cheese dressing since I was young. My mother made it too, but I think this mix improves on her recipe.

Blue Cheese Dressing


1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons vinegar
2 tablespoons milk
2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
4 ounces blue cheese

Thoroughly combine the first 6 ingredients. Fold in blue cheese. Refrigerate for several hours before serving.

tartarsauceingredients

I didn’t really like tartar sauce until I made my own.It’s a reason to eat more fish.

Tartar Sauce


2 tablespoons diced dill pickle
1 tablespoon capers, chopped
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 teaspoons chopped parsley
1 tablespoon minced onion
Drain pickles and capers.

Combine all ingredients. Refrigerate any remaining sauce.


hawaiianrollsingredients

Can you eat just one of these?

Bread Machine Hawaiian Rolls

  • Servings: 12-15 rolls
  • Print

6 ounces pineapple juice
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1/3 cup milk
4 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup sugar
3 1/2 cups flour
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
Additional butter, melted, for brushing tops of rolls (optional)

Bring all ingredients to room temperature.
Add ingredients to bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer.
Set machine to the dough cycle. When complete, remove dough from machine and divide into 12-15 rolls. Place into a greased 9 x 13 baking pan. Cover with a towel and let dough rise in a warm place until doubled in size. (about 1 hour)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake rolls for 25 minutes or until tops are golden brown. Remove from oven and immediately brush with melted butter.

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Food: The Budget Buster

Jars of Jam

 

There’s no shortage of tips and advice about saving money on food.

We all know that eating out is one of the biggest budget busters around, but we still do it. I was reading one website that offered the advice: cook at home one to two times per week to save money. (Sorry, I didn’t bookmark this one.) Really? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? How much would someone save if eating out was limited to one to two times per week?

I know how busy life can get and why it’s so tempting to pick up something to go. It’s also common knowledge that cooking at home is truly the least expensive way to eat. It’s much better to save eating out for a treat instead of a regular occurrence.

Of course, there is information about what families spend on food. The US Department of Agriculture publishes a schedule of average food expenditures in America. It’s updated regularly to accommodate changes in the economy.

There are four food plans:

  • Thrifty
  • Low-cost
  • Moderate-cost
  • Liberal

I was curious about where we were in spending, so I saved grocery receipts for a few weeks, added up all expenditures for food, and then calculated a per week average. Our average spending fell in the Low-cost plan, which is approximately $109 per week. Sometimes I spent more and sometimes less, but the average came pretty close to that figure.

This was done before my husband retired from his job. While he was working, we bought some convenience foods that he took for his lunch everyday. Yes, convenience foods are expensive compared to making it at home, but eating out for lunch is much more expensive than a few packaged foods every week. Now, that we are no longer buying that type of product, our spending is probably trending downward toward the Thrifty plan. Of course, I only counted what we spent at the grocery store. We don’t eat out often enough to make much of a difference in our budget.

Knowing what you spend is important and enlightening. Haven’t we all worked with someone who bought something from the vending machine everyday or had lunch delivered to work most days? If you add up just the snacks from the machine, it could total quite a bit. A study for the vending industry found that the average cash vending machine sale is $1.16. If the purchase is cashless, then that average rises to $1.71. It is just too easy to spend small amounts of money and then forget about it. After all, it was just a dollar or two. Someone who puts five days a week in at work will spend $5.80 cash or $8.55 without cash per week . That’s $290 per year and $427.50 per year respectively. If two people from the same household hit the machines every day, we’re starting to talk about some real money.

If you have not analyzed you spending yet, give it a try. It might show that there is at least one area where you can save without it hurting. A bit of planning may save money in another area and you won’t notice that you aren’t spending as much because you’ve planned a substitute. It’s much like dieting—eat this but not that. Spend this but not that to save on food.

A Resource Free for the Asking

Vintage Photo of The Library of Congress

The Library of Congress was established in 1800 and is the oldest cultural institution in the United States. It is also the largest library in the world, containing more than 160 million items. This massive collection requires 838 miles of shelf space. Things aren’t static at the Library. Approximately 12,000 items are added daily.

Our local library can’t boast such a huge collection. It’s really very small, but they do provide computers and WiFi for no charge to any library patron.

I have a computer and an internet connection at home. I use them both daily. However, I live beyond any cable company reach so my choices for internet connection are limited and expensive. It’s one of the sacrifices that we make to live in our beautiful forest.

Texas Forest

When I want to do some research, which might require a couple of hours online to do, I head out to my local library. I can chew through my limited monthly allotment of data quickly when I spend that kind of time online. And, forget about watching videos. I’d be over the limit before I could get started.

It’s one of the resources available that requires no additional fees and it’s an important part of stretching our retirement resources. We’re not alone. In a report published in January of this year, done by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, there were 271,146 public access computers in libraries across the US, and those computers were engaged for 340.5 million sessions.

The survey also found that 62% of the responding libraries provided the only free computers and internet access in the community. While I’m thankful for the internet service we have, it is expensive and likely beyond the budget of many in our area. I’ll admit that I envy those who have unlimited, fast internet access and I hope that I will have that in the near future.

For now, it’s a blend of our service at home and that of the library. It works and it saves money. In other words, it’s a frugal choice.

What’s for Dinner?

Menu

Monday:
Sweet Chicken/Bacon Wraps
Green salad

Tuesday:
Stuffed Peppers
Cucumber slices

Wednesday:
Enchiladas
Refried beans

Thursday:
Sausage and Peppers
Hard rolls

Friday:
Chef Salad

Saturday:
Oven-baked Chicken
Mixed vegetable hash

Sunday:
Salisbury Steak
Rice
Seasoned vegetables

I have found, over the years, that it’s much easier to get dinner on the table when I know what to cook each day. It was necessary when I was working. I never wanted to come home and stare at the kitchen, wondering what I could fix. With a plan, I just look at my written, weekly menu and problem solved. My list is so much a part of my routine that without one, even with a full pantry and freezer, I become the deer in the headlights when the “what’s for dinner” question comes up.

Before I go to the grocery store, I plan a week’s worth of dinners. If I want to switch them around, no problem. I did that last week. When I first planned the Chef Salad, it was for the weekend. On Friday, I didn’t feel like cooking, so I made the salad instead. The plan is top secret. No one knows what’s on it but me so changing it doesn’t cause ripples in family unity.

There’s also the opportunity to try new recipes each week and not just fall back on my tried and true meals. For me, that’s the fun part of planning. I’ll sit down with a cookbook and look over all the tantalizing recipes. OK, some aren’t that tantalizing. I skip those. I should mark the recipes in the cookbooks that I want to try, but I’m not that organized. Maybe it’s because I really do like to thumb through cookbooks.

Menu plans help you use up what you have on hand. When I’m planning, I take a quick inventory of the refrigerator and pantry. If there are things that need to be used, like produce before it goes bad, I can add that to my menu. It helps me prevent food waste which saves us some money. I can’t say that I always get to the produce before it’s spoiled. Menu planning makes me look into the refrigerator with a critical eye and I’m more likely to rescue produce on the edge of rotten.

Menu planning is one habit that’s actually good for me. Too bad I can’t say that about other things I do, but that’s for another blog post.

5 Reasons to Scratch It

brownie and coffee

 

Why do I cook from scratch? The stores are full of wonderful ready-to-eat products, why make my own?

1) I have time
Cooking from scratch does take more time, though often not a lot more time. In the case of homemade yogurt, the time is spent on waiting. Heating the milk takes only a few minutes, but the rest of the process takes more than 6 hours. Of course, I don’t have to stand there and wait for it, I just have to not forget about it.

2) I can control my ingredients
Packaged foods contain a few ingredients that help to preserve the contents and provide a longer shelf-life for the product. I don’t have to eat those. I’m sure none of them will prolong my shelf-life.

3) Things taste better
I had a package of seasoned coating mix in the pantry. (I think it was there for a while.) It tasted like salt. There were many other ingredients listed, but all I could taste was the salt. If I want my chicken to taste like salt, I can do that myself. I can add more or cut back on one or more ingredients to make it taste like I want it to taste, even if what I want is salty.

6) It’s usually cheaper
I did a cost comparison for baking mix here. While it may not prove to be true every time, overall it is cheaper to make your own.

5) I can’t go back.
Since I started cooking more things from scratch, packaged foods just don’t taste good to me anymore. I prefer what I make.

Why, Of Course! DIY Disinfecting Wipes

Does anyone like cleaning the bathroom? We all know that doing a little each day makes the chore easier especially if there is a quick and easy way to do it. Disinfectant wipes are convenient, easy to use, but expensive. Naturally, DIY wipes are the way to go

I searched the Internet for what others were doing for homemade wipes. I found a lot of formulas. The assorted ingredients included vinegar, coconut oil, a multitude of essential oils, and pine cleaner.

Many years ago, in a Microbiology class in college, we tested some common household items for their germ-killing capabilities. A petri dish was prepared with three different bacteria. (I don’t remember what they were.) We all brought in different things to try. My lab partner brought Woolite. I brought pine cleaner. Two out the three areas on her dish were clear of bacteria after applying her Woolite. My pine cleaner killed NONE of the bacteria. So, it may not come as any surprise that I don’t use pine cleaner.

Knowing what I do about pine cleaner, I skipped any formulas that called for it. I wanted a disinfecting wipe and I have scientific evidence that this stuff wouldn’t disinfect its way out of a paper bag.

tshirt

The cloth to use for the wipes is a no-brainer. I’ve got several old T-shirts with stains that nothing on the planet will remove. They remain in the drawer until I make cleaning rags out of them. It was time to press one of those shirts into service.

Some folks used paper towels. Not only did they suggest using paper towels, they suggested sawing the roll in half. No. Not doing that.

So, in my search for a recipe, I landed on the Living on a Dime site. Unlike many of the other recipes, this one includes alcohol. It’s one thing that we know will disinfect; the jury is still out on many of the others.

WipesIngredients

Homemade Disinfecting Wipes

1 cup water
1/4 cup rubbing alcohol
2 tablespoons Dawn dish soap
2 tablespoons ammonia (optional)

Mix the ingredients together. Pour over rags until sufficiently dampened.

Revisiting the Art Question

A few weeks ago, I pulled some old kitchen utensils out of the drawer and put them up on the wall. Yes, But Is It Art?

framedtools

We’ve done it again with some things that may seem odd. This grouping shows that you can put together a collection of just about anything and make an arrangement.

math1First, the items were arranged on the table. Then we tried it out by laying the group on top of the frame, just to see if everything would fit.

math2

This time we used a shadow box to mount the items. These are available at most craft and hobby stores and they come in many sizes.

We tied everything to the backing with clear thread, reassembled the frame, and displayed it proudly in our living room.

math3

My daughter called it Nerdy Cool.

Yo, Yogurt

Being an adult requires that you do things you would rather not do. My father used to say that he ate his vegetables so the kids would eat theirs. He had a life-long dislike of most vegetables, but he also knew that his kids would mimic his disdain, even if we didn’t dislike vegetables.

For me, one of the things I do because I should is eat yogurt. I don’t really like it, but there are rewards that are hard to duplicate.
WebMD.com lists six yogurt benefits:

  • Yogurt with active cultures may help the gut
  • Some probiotic strains may boost the immune system
  • Yogurt with active cultures may discourage vaginal infections
  • Yogurt may help prevent osteoporosis
  • Yogurt may reduce the risk of high blood pressure
  • Yogurt may help you feel fuller

When I started eating yogurt daily, I reached into the refrigerator for the individual cups that I bought each week. I made sure I had several flavors to keep it interesting. Once I tried Greek yogurt, I was hooked, but the cost of those little cups was a concern.
Making yogurt at home isn’t difficult but what about Greek yogurt? What is the secret to that? Not much of a secret really. Greek yogurt has been drained of whey. That’s it. No magical process. No special ingredients.
So, what does it take to make yogurt? There are a number of recipes to choose from online, but this is what I use:

yogurtingredients

  1. 1 quart milk
  2. ½ cup dry milk powder
  3. 2 tablespoons plain yogurt

I bought a large container of plain yogurt to use as the starter culture. I froze individual portions to save them. Now, when I make a batch of yogurt, I take one cube out and allow it to thaw while the milk is heating and cooling.
It doesn’t matter what kind of milk. Use skim, 2% or whole milk. All kinds will work. The milk powder adds more milk solids to the mix and produces a thicker yogurt.
When it’s done, flavor your yogurt in any way that suits you. I put in a spoonful of jam. Honey would be good, as well. Put in nothing, if you can stand it.
I have to admit, I like my home-made yogurt better than anything I can buy at the store.

Homemade Yogurt


1 quart milk
½ cup dry milk powder
2 tablespoons plain yogurt
Mix powdered milk into the milk in a sauce pan. Using a candy thermometer, heat the milk mixture until the temperature reaches 180 degrees. Remove from heat and allow to cool to 115 degrees. Spoon out approximately ½ cup of the warm milk and whisk it with the yogurt starter. Add this mixture back into the milk and mix throughly. Incubate from 4 to 12 hours until thickened.

The yogurt can be left in the same pan to incubate or put into a jar or bowl. I leave mine in the same pan I used to heat the milk and it works just fine.
To incubate, I heat up the oven to the lowest setting and then turn it off.

yogurtoven

The pan is wrapped in a towel before I put it into the oven and I leave it in place for about 6 hours.

 

yogurtcheesecloth

When the yogurt is thick, I put the batch in a colander, lined with cheesecloth, to separate the whey. Now, it’s Greek!

What to do with the whey is a work in progress. I’ll get back to you on that.

 

Nary a Chocolate Bunny Was Found

marshmallows

This year’s Easter basket was filled with homemade marshmallows. No chocolate bunnies. No jelly beans. Just marshmallows.

It isn’t that I don’t like chocolate bunnies and jelly beans. I do but, like everything else at the store, the cost of candy is pretty steep and I thought I could save a little money by doing my own.

I’m not new to making candy. I’ve made peanut brittle every Christmas for more years than I can remember. I have also made caramels, peppermint bark, fudge, gum drops and more to round out the candy tray.

Most people bake for the holidays. Baking has never been my thing. I make too much of a mess because something always happens to the flour. Some mysterious force always flips the measuring cup over or poufs it out of the mixer bowl all over me. It isn’t IF I’m going to make a mess while baking, it’s WHEN.

Candy is a bit neater because there is no flour involved. It is, however, easier to burn and I’ve done that too often. Nothing smells quite like burnt sugar in the morning.

Making candy doesn’t need to be limited to the holidays. Someone somewhere has developed a recipe for just about any kind of candy you can think of. I used this recipe for peanut butter cups, substituting candy melts for the chocolate bar. They’re good.

peanutbuttercups

Some other interesting candies I intend to try soon:

Copycat Snickers® bars
Copycat Three Musketeers® bars
Copycat Heath® bars
Copycat Almond Joy® bars

I’ve never made a candy bar but I’m up for the challenge. What could possibly go wrong? There’s no flour.

Cooking Like a Copycat

A few years ago, we decided that eating at most restaurants wasn’t really worth the money. Yes, it was nice not to cook. Yes, it was nice to go out, but the food wasn’t the central focus of the event. Of course, restaurant meals are no way to cut the food budget and, if it isn’t good, why bother.

Copycat recipes can replace the food that is missed by cooking at home instead of eating out. Last week, I tried one of my husband’s favorites–Jack-in-the-Box tacos. I tried to follow this recipe, but I didn’t have everything listed. I had to make refried beans and, of course, they don’t taste like those from a can. I didn’t have the specific taco sauce called for in the recipe, so I used what I had on hand. I’ve never had a Jack-in-the-Box taco, but I thought they tasted fine. The expert, my spouse, said they tasted fine but were nowhere near the real thing. I guess I’ll have to go out for a taco dinner to know for sure.

Buddy

If you miss some of your favorites, there is a recipe for just about any restaurant dish:

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