Category Archives: frugal strategies

Introducing solids and making baby food

frugal strategies, parenting

>>When you start your baby on solids, would you mind to blog about your approach and how you introduce different foods?<<

This was an incredibly timely request, coming less than half a day after giving my baby solids for the first time!

Generally, my babies start eating solids between 6 and 8 months.  My oldest started at eight months because I had the idea then that the longer you waited, the better.  That wasn’t the case with him; I should have started him sooner but didn’t recognize that and his weight dropped before I realized he needed more food.  My last baby (now two years old) also didn’t really start eating solids until eight months.  In his case, he wasn’t interested, despite being given opportunities periodically from six months and on.   All the others started at six months, at which point they were all showing significant interest.  Last but not least is the current baby, who is starting younger than everyone else at 5 months and one week – and he is sooo ready!  (I think that being born three weeks past his due date is relevant here, since if he was born ‘on time’ he would be exactly six months now.)

A few days ago, my dd was eating something and commenting on how the baby kept trying to grab her food and stick it in his mouth.  (He’s been doing this for several weeks.)  So she asked if she could try giving him something to eat, and after looking in the fridge, asked if she could give him yogurt.  Generally I don’t give dairy from the start, but after my initial hesitation, told her to go ahead since it was homemade yogurt from organic/hormone free milk.  He loved it!  If we had any doubt about if he was too young or not, those doubts were gone within about two minutes.  He kept eating, and eating, and eating – until he had eaten two cups of full fat yogurt.

This is the only time I’ve ever started with dairy.  Generally I start with banana mashed very well, followed soon afterwards by baked (and mashed) yam that has coconut oil mixed into it.  I look at solids as supplemental to nursing, not as the source of their main nutrition.  Avocados and other fruits and vegetables soon follow, all cooked if necessary and then mashed well.  Gradually I mash the food less finely, to give the baby  exposure to food of different textures.  By the time they are a year, they are eating almost everything we eat, albeit in a somewhat mashed form.  I also add in milk, butter, gravy, and stock to their foods, depending what they’re eating.

After a few months, I add in foods like oatmeal.  I don’t feel that cereal grains are ideal foods for a young baby, and when I do serve them, try to be sure they’re properly prepared to maximize absorption of vitamins and to minimize the negatives.  One grain that I very much try to delay is wheat.  Wheat gluten is a very difficult to digest grain, and if I could, I’d keep it away from my babies until they are two years old.  But it’s not so easy when others in the house eat wheat based foods, since they end up finding something and stuffing it into their mouths, or seeing everyone else having some and naturally also wanting some.   This time around I’m planning to  be more proactive and bake biscuits/crackers with alternative flours, keeping them in the freezer so I can pull out a similar looking non-wheat option when he sees his siblings eating something that he wants.  (I have a few months until this will be necessary.)

For a very short time when my oldest started solids, I gave him baby cereal mixed with formula.  I know, I know, the absolute ignorance of youth can be frightening.  🙂  That’s what the nurse at the well baby clinic recommended (additionally, she also told me to give him chocolate to fatten him up – which was probably somewhat better than the recommendation a friend of mine was given, to feed her baby oil) and that’s what I saw other mothers doing so I thought it was the right thing to do. After less than a month, my husband told me he didn’t like it – “I feel like we’re feeding him plastic”, so that was the last of store bought food for our babies.  From there we switched to what I described above.

Aside from that very short foray into factory created baby food, I haven’t bought processed baby foods for any of our nine children.  Besides my skepticism about the nutritional value, it’s incredibly expensive.  How much does a banana cost – thirty cents?  That’s a lot cheaper than a jar of baby food that holds a similar amount of food, and with a banana there’s a lot less likelihood of contamination.

I think parents have been sold a bill of goods when it comes to marketing of baby foods – there’s hardly anything easier than making your own baby food.  You don’t need a scientific formula.  You don’t need a lot of time.  You don’t have to do anything extra to ‘make’ baby food.  You can buy a food mill to grind food up or a blender to blend it, but a fork works just fine.  Since I start with soft and easily mashed foods, there’s no difficulty in manually mashing it immediately prior to serving it.  (The main exception that I’ve had is brown rice – I don’t generally add this in until the baby is very comfortable with texture unless I blend it, since it’s very hard to mash it well with a fork.)

Some parents like to make a big amount, blend it, and freeze it in ice cube trays for small portions.  I’ve never done that, but can see how it would be a good idea.  This would be especially convenient when they get to the point they are eating something like chicken with carrots and rice blended in, since you’re not going to make a recipe of only one cup.

I try to give vegetables like carrots and zucchini fairly soon after they start eating, within a month or so, since it’s easy for babies to get used to the sweetness of fruits and after a period of time, often will turn down anything not sweet since it isn’t a familiar taste.  I’m very fortunate that none of my kids have ever been picky eaters, and part of that probably stems from when they are very little, when they eat a variety of  foods.  I still remember when we had a couple of teenage boys for Shabbos/Sabbath lunch, watching in awe as my then 1 year old infant daughter gobbled down three servings of cholent – “Whoa, your baby is awesome! She can eat more cholent than me!”  Maybe cholent isn’t typical baby food, but all of our babies have enjoyed it!

Avivah

Using coupons

frugal strategies

For years I’ve resisted using coupons because I was very skeptical that the time and energy spent would justify the savings.  But last August (fifteen months ago), I finally decided to do some research and try using them for a while in a organized and strategic manner to see how much money I could save.  I heard of people getting significant savings, or even getting things for free, on things that would be helpful for our family.  So I set about learning how to work the system for CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid. 

First, I did my online research, reading and figuring out the lingo and system for each store.  Then I asked a relative in the area for the insert of their Sunday papers, and started clipping the coupons in them.  And then I headed to the stores.

The first visits to each store weren’t fun.  It took a long time, I didn’t know where anything was located (I didn’t shop in any of these places before), and it took time to learn how to apply for rebates, what order to present coupons in, etc.  But after the first couple of visits, it got easier, and it got to be more enjoyable.  My kids got to the point that they expected me to walk in from these stores telling them I paid nothing for all my items.  🙂

Yes, you can definitely save money by using coupons.  If used well, you can come home paying small amounts for your items or even getting them for free.  I had fun doing this with particularly with shampoos and soaps; since these are things that we always need, it was nice to get them significantly discounted.  I also got some things that were nice gifts for extended family members last Chanuka. 

But after a few months, I felt I had given coupon usage a fair shot and decided not to bother anymore.  Yes, even though I figured out the system and knew how to use them very effectively.  Why?  I felt it was using way too much time for insignificant things.  I really don’t use a lot of consumer items.  I don’t like constantly thinking about buying or sales or having to shop.  I don’t use processed foods.  And alot of the health and beauty aids I don’t want, even if they’re free.  I didn’t see any benefit for us in using coupons for our food bills, because the foods we eat are rarely discounted and I have yet to find anyone with a family our size that spends less than we do by using coupons (or even smaller families spending proportionately less). 

Too many store clerks have no clue how coupons work and it’s a pain to spend an hour having your transaction cancelled, speaking to a manager, having it rung up again, having to explain to those who work there why their store rules allow you to use your coupons to get items for free (it got to the point I’d buy an inexpensive item so they wouldn’t realize that I wasn’t paying anything out of pocket for everything else).  Even when everything goes smoothly, you still need to drive to the stores, stand on line, etc.  My life energy and time is worth much more to me than the piddling amount I saved (piddling referring to the amount saved on things I truly needed, not the amount I supposedly saved by getting things for free that I wouldn’t have otherwise purchased).  

I feel my time is spent much more effectively by stocking up when there are sales, cooking from scratch, and minimizing my use of health and beauty aids.  There’s almost nothing left that we buy in the drugstores.  I mentioned buying a fifty pound sack of baking soda  six months ago, and since then have been meaning to share with you what we do with all of that!  I’ll write a more detailed list sometime, but in short it replaces almost everything I would have bought or got for free with coupons.  And it benefits our health and the environment to boot!

While there may be couponers who spend less than we do on health and beauty aids a year, we don’t spend very much.  I’ve seen what the cost to saving money with coupons was and it wasn’t a true savings for me.  Now I’m back where I love being most, home with my family, focusing on things that I enjoy!

Avivah

How to make grape juice

food preservation, frugal strategies, ,

At the end of last week I found a great deal on boxes of wine grapes.  There were two kinds, Concord and a yellow grape that another shopper told me were called Niagara.  I tasted one of the Niagara grapes, and as I did, the memory of being a kid eating grapes in my grandparents’ backyard suddenly flooded over me.  These were the grapes they grew, something that I had entirely forgotten about.  They were so good!

The grapes were super cheap because they were so ripe – the Concord grapes had some clusters that had mold on them and since I wasn’t interested in having to pick through them, I decided to get 2 boxes of Niagaras instead (they looked very ripe but in basically good shape).  The price was $7.50 for two boxes, and each box had about 18 pounds in it, so .21 lb.

They made for great eating and we enjoyed the grapes for our picnic right after our shopping, but we decided to reserve some of them to make some homemade grape juice, something we’ve never tried.  When I got home I learned from reading online that it takes about 20 lb of grapes to make 7 quarts of juice – if I’d had any idea of that when buying the grapes, I would have bought a lot more.  We used about a third of a box, about 6 lb. of grapes, which made enough to fill a 64 oz jar plus a couple of cups more, about ten cups in all.  So my estimate on cost is that it was $1.25 for ten cups; when I get it on sale, I pay $3 for 8 cups.  That means that making my own grape juice cost me less than 1/3 of the price I can get it on sale. 

Here’s how you make grape juice – this is soooo simple!  First you wash the grapes, then blend them slightly in a food processor or blender to break open the skin (yes, this means with the seeds and skins, but make sure all the stems are off, because it will make the juice bitter).  Put all of them in a pot with enough water to cover them, and cover the pot.  Then heat it until boiling.  When it reaches boiling, turn it down to medium low and let it simmer for about fifteen minutes.  Then line a strainer with cheesecloth or muslin, and set it on top of a cleanpot where the juice can drain in. Pour the grape mix through the strainer, and bottle the strained juice.  If you make a large amount, you can can fruit juice by water bathing it.

This didn’t look or taste like the grape juice in the store; it was much better!  It was so amazingly good!  Everyone loved it and we all are sorry we won’t have any more.  When I encountered the sale, I didn’t want to buy lots of grapes (not that 36 lb is a small amount) that needed to be dealt with immediately, since I didn’t know how much time would be involved and was concerned that it would be a big project that would compromise the commitment I’ve made to myself to be ready for Shabbos by Friday afternoon.   (I already had a lot of unpacking for Thursday afternoon to do from my monthly shopping which was putting me on a tight schedule.)  Now that I know what’s involved, I won’t hesitate to buy up a bunch more if an incredible sale comes my way again! 

Avivah

How to make yogurt

cheesemaking, food preservation, frugal strategies, lacto fermentation, recipes,

Yesterday I made a large batch of yogurt, something I haven’t done in a while. I had forgotten how extremely easy it is to make, and it’s about a third of the price of the least expensive store yogurt!  I made a very large recipe of 1.5 gallons (24 cups), but the recipe below is for a more moderate amount.

Homemade Yogurt

  • 2 c. milk
  • 2 T. yogurt to use as bacterial starter (look for any plain yogurt at the store that says it has bacteria in it – eg. acidophilus- you can get the smallest cup size sold)

I used organic whole milk, but you can use any kind of milk you want.  Put the milk in a pot, and heat it until almost boiling, 180 degrees.  I have a candy thermometer for this, which eliminates the guesswork.  Once it reaches that heat, turn off the heat and let it cool down to between 105 and 110 degrees.

Stir in the yogurt.  Don’t let the temperature go below 105 degrees before you pour into a jar, then cover the jar with a lid.  Now put the jar somewhere warm where it can incubate overnight.  An oven set to 100 degrees is perfect, but you can also put the jar into a picnic cooler.  If you’re using a cooler, line it with a towel, put the jar in, and cover it with a towel.  Some people put a heating pad set on low on top of the towel, or a hot water bottle, to keep the temperature constant, but if you make several jars of yogurt, then the heat from the jars will keep all of them warm without anything extra.  It should be ready within eight to twelve hours.

I did a couple of things that made the process even easier.  First of all, I left the yogurt to incubate in the covered pot I heated it in.  Then I removed the trays from my dehydrator and put the entire pot inside (set at 100 degrees).  And that was all we had to do, except eat large quantities of it for breakfast. 🙂

You can add flavorings if you like. This morning I had mine with some fruit spread that I canned a while back, and it reminded me of a healthy version of the yogurt cups with fruit at the bottom when mixed together.

Avivah

Paying extra for unnecessary certification

frugal strategies

Today I did my big shopping, and even though I didn’t feel like I really needed much, came home with the van stuffed.  I often marvel at all the things I can buy while staying within my budgetary constraints – today I got a good amount of quinoa,  raisins, dates, walnuts, and sliced almonds, along with the usual other items (eg 50 lb onions, 50 lb potatoes, 40 lb yams, 20 lb.cottage cheese). My shopping would seem totally imbalanced to the casual observer, since I buy large amounts of a small number of items each month, but it all balances out when taking into account the current pantry holdings.   

I came upon a super bargain when shopping – I found a dried bean mix for .50 a pound.  Being me, I scooped up all that there were into my shopping cart (all 43 pounds worth :));  bean prices usually average around.99 lb, and since beans stay forever it’s not like they’ll go bad waiting to be used.

When I got home, I mentioned my purchase to my husband, but when he looked at the package, his attention was attracted by something other than the price.  These beans were marketed as a specialty item, called cholent mix.  Most of you know what this is, but it’s basically just a mixture of three different  beans used for a traditional Shabbos/Sabbath lunch dish.  Where I was shopping they were being passed over as unfamiliar.  My husband laughed when he noticed that the packaging displayed no less than three separate kosher certifications.  He works in the field of kosher supervision, and commented on how unnecessary even one of those certifications were – dried beans don’t need any supervision!   

So many times people pay  a higher price because of certifications or assurances of quality.  Sometimes that’s worth it; often it’s not.  Be a conscious shopper.  I see so many items that are very inflated because the marketers have found an effective way to manipulate your emotions or thoughts regarding a product without actually doing anything to increase the value.  

As an side note, a neighbor came by and asked if I had a package of cholent beans she could borrow.  Umm, yes, one package or forty….:)  This was the first time in seventeen years that anyone came to borrow this item from me, and the only time in seventeen years that I had them on hand (you don’t think I’d buy this at the usual inflated price, do you?).  Very timely, wasn’t it?!  

Avivah

Food stamp challenge

frugal strategies, nutrition

Every so often I see various food stamp challenges – the idea is to see if you can eat healthily within the dollar guidelines that the food stamp allotment your family would receive.  Sometimes it’s for a week (which imo is a joke) and sometimes as long as a month.  I have yet to see a challenge like this that is encouraging and helpful (that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there, just that I haven’t seen it).  I think the point of a food stamp challenge should be to see how to eat healthily with limited dollars and then show people what you’ve done. 

Instead, the consensus of the 3 or 4 challenges I’ve noticed over the past couple of years has been basically the same: it’s impossible to eat well on such a small amount, food stamp participants are penalized with bad health because they are limited to low quality food, and the government needs to do more to make high quality food available to everyone.  Yada yada yada. 

Well, I don’t agree- at all – and that’s why I’m finally posting on a topic I’ve considered writing about for two years.  I think the US government food stamp amounts tend to be very adequate, even generous, particularly when people know how to budget or shop well.  The problem lies more in the lack of nutritional education and accountability than anything else.  And most people really don’t have much of a clue about how to effectively budget their food dollars well – teaching people how to make their dollars stretch in additional to nutritional education would end the supposed problem.  But that’s as political as I’m going to get about this topic, because this gets overtalked all the time and I think it’s a lot more valuable to focus on how to use food stamp dollars well than why it’s impossible to manage. 

I think that most of those doing these challenges are somewhat guilty of nutritional elitism.  And I think that it’s good that there are those who are looking at the larger political picture and trying to make improvements.  But as wonderful as it would be if  we all had affordable mainstream options for local organic produce, grass fed beef, etc, people aren’t doomed nutritionally if they can’t afford it.  How to manage well within less than the ideal options is something that seems to get glossed over.   Most of us have to face non optimal choices sometimes, and we do the best we can with the resources that we have.  

Over time I’ve shared a number of strategies I’ve used to keep our family well fed on a limited budget ($600 monthly for our family of 11).  Eating healthfully is important to me (we eat according to traditional foods guidelines – aka Weston Price/Nourishing Traditions), and I have the additional challenge of keeping kosher, which limits many of the bargains that a non kosher shopper could take advantage of.  The huge majority of the suggestions I make could be used by food stamp participants as well as everyone else.  So I’ll do a quick overview of some strategies that are applicable –  my apologies for being redundant for those of you who have been reading a while and know all of this already!

First of all is where to shop.  Since the first food stamp challenge I read about a couple of years ago, I’ve made mental notations about which stores I shop at take food stamps.  All the major supermarkets take food stamps, including Trader Joes and Whole Foods.  Hitting the loss leaders and stocking up when things go on sale is the way to go.  An obvious caveat is that like anyone else with a limited monthly food budget, even if something is on sale, a food stamp shopper would have to buy smaller amounts in the first month, gradually building up the amounts they can stock up on as their sale stocked pantry builds. 

I like to buy vegetables at a small ethnic grocery store (they also accept food stamps).  Their prices are better than the big supermarkets, the produce is fresher, and they often have vegetables that are marked down because of blemishes.  I’ve spoken to the manager there and a number of times bought cases of what I’ve wanted at an additional discount.  I rarely go to farmer’s markets, but I’ve heard that some of the larger stands are set up to accept food stamps.  The prices are best if you go at the end, since they often will lower the price so that they don’t have to pack up their veggies and take them home.   When buying any kind of produce, seasonal is usually cheaper than out of season produce.  You can load up on the inexpensive vegetables instead of the high cost ones.

The discount grocery stores and salvage stores I shop at are a mixed bag – the Amish owned stores don’t take food stamps, but the rest I’ve gone to do-  regardless of who owns them, they basically all have the same prices.  These stores are a nice bonus to the budget, but I wouldn’t say someone who doesn’t have access to these is doomed financially (many states don’t have them, including my own) – they allow me to buy some things I would otherwise would avoid for the most part.  Most of what they sell is processed food, which I avoid.

I buy in bulk through regular supermarkets and health food stores – as mentioned, these stores accept FS.   This is how I buy wheat berries and sucanat, for example, since we don’t use white flour or white sugar.  I also get coconut oil in this way.  I don’t recommend shopping at warehouse stores  because I don’t think they’re economical, but it seems that although most of them don’t take food stamps, one or two do.  I couldn’t check this out personally since I don’t shop at these stores. 

Buying directly from the source, as I do for my raw milk and pastured eggs, won’t be an option.  However, there are other options at health food stores that may not be ideal but are still much better than the mainstream – they tend to be pricier than the less healthy option but by shopping frugally it makes room for the items that are more expensive.  I’ve even found organic milk (and even grass fed, though all homogenized) from time to time at the discount stores.  And you know what?  If someone buys regular milk and eggs, then that’s okay, too.  That’s not the main thing destroying the health of this generation. 

Then there are other things that may be cheaper directly from the source but are available in the stores, like the raw cheese I recently discovered.  Someone using food stamps would be better off buying it in the store instead of buying at a cheaper price directly from the source so they don’t have to take money out of their pocket. (By the way, Trader Joes has raw cheese at a great price for non kosher consumers.)   Use these pricey foods as condiments instead of as a main dish, and a little can go a long way. 

Processed foods are always going to be more expensive than buying the ingredients yourself, and  buying the ingredients instead of a more ready to eat version is always going to be where you save the most money.  There are the obvious things like beans and grains which help a food budget go far, and especially when soaked and prepared properly, are very nourishing and good for you.

There are so many more possibilities to mention, but I think I hit the main ones.  So while the food stamp challenges continue, know that eating healthfully is within the reach of the vast majority of us, even when our budgets are very limited!

Avivah

Weekly menu plan

frugal strategies, menu plans

With all the holidays, it’s been a while since I’ve posted my weekly menu!  Now that cold weather here, I’m shifting into winter fare – and winter dishes are not only satisfying and warming, they’re simple to make.  Winter is a time to slow down, snuggle up with your kids on the couch, and enjoy the mellowness of the days spent together.  Porridges, soups, stews – now is the kind of weather when these kind of dishes are appreciated.

Shabbos –  dinner – challah, chicken soup, meatballs in sauce, roast potatoes, ratatouille, salad, chocolate/carob cake (we forgot to take the fruit crumble out of the freezer or we would have that as well); lunch – chicken, beef cholent, kishke, mango noodle kugel, potato shells with vegetable filling, broccoli plum salad, Israeli salad, pear chutney, chocolate chip cookie bars, melon, and chocolate/carob cake

Before I make up my menu for the week, I take a quick survey of what’s in the fridge.  That way I can be sure to integrate any leftovers or any vegetables that might otherwise be forgotten and spoil.  I don’t shop for the things on my menu; my menu is generally made up of things that I already have.  This is a very different approach from what is generally suggested, which is to make up a menu and then go buy the ingredients you need.  That’s a good approach, so if you’re doing that and it works for you, keep doing it!  The advantage of my way is it saves more money because I’m taking advantage of whatever sale items I’ve bought, so all the ingredients I use will be purchased at a discounted price.  This alone means my meals cost 30 – 50% of what I’d pay if the ingredients I needed but planned for weren’t on sale.

Sunday – brunch-coconut honey pudding; dinner – creamy butternut squash soup (we have loads of butternut squash from our garden), beef cholent, noodle casserole

Monday – breakfast – buckwheat muffins; lunch – spaghetti squash with tomato vegetable sauce;  dinner – Mexican lasagna, salad

Tuesday – breakfast – millet porridge; lunch – sausage hash and potatoes; dinner – chickpea and peanut stew, rice

Wednesday – breakfast – egg muffins; lunch – will pick something up when doing monthly shopping; dinner – stuffed cabbage soup

Thursday – breakfast – Amish oatmeal, lunch – CORN; dinner – vegetable bean soup

Sunday I usually do some preparatory work for the meals of the week.  This week that will include soaking and sprouting the beans for Mexican lasagna, chickpea and peanut stew, and bean vegetable soup.  I’ll start cooking a large pot of bone broth since I use that as the base for as much as I can for flavor and nutritional value – soups, stews, and to cook grains.  I haven’t made yogurt for a very long time but I’d like to give it a try this week – it’s getting to be challenging to find anything but nonfat and lowfat yogurt in the stores).  I also want to get a sourdough starter going so I will have it to bake with next week.  And since I only have a small amount of fermented sauerkraut left (out of a gallon), I’ll probably prepare make ginger carrots.

My ds16 has an allergy to wheat gluten, which we’ve known about since he was seven or eight but it wasn’t major so we didn’t do much about it.  Though I’m sure the soaking of grains helps foods digest more easily for him, he decided last week he wants to try not to eat any wheat for a while and see if he feels any differently.  I planned this week’s menu with him in mind.  I also planned my bulk order with him in mind, and ordered 30 lb of quinoa instead of the 50 lb of spelt I was planning to get (I already have plenty of millet, rice, oats, and buckwheat) so that I’ll have more options for him.

Avivah

Book repair glue

frugal strategies,

About a month ago, we signed up as members of a privately owned Jewish book library.  They have loads of great books to check out, and we signed up in time to enjoy the book for all of the holidays.  Since we don’t read non-Jewish books on Shabbos or yom tov, this was a nice discovery.

I noticed that a number of the hardcover books had very loose bindings, so last night I took some time to fix them.  We didn’t cause the damage, it’s just the normal kind of thing that happens when books get used alot.  I’ve been repairing our books at home for years, and the high quality book glue I have does a super job at strengthening and repairing books, so it wasn’t a big deal for me but it will significantly extend the life of their books. 

Last night ds2 watched me intently as I repaired three books.  I left them on the dining room table to dry, along with the closed bottle of glue.  I went into the kitchen to do some cleaning up, and a few minutes later ds was attempting his own book repair!  He found a book of ours that had exactly the same kind of damage that I was repairing, in the same place, and proceeded to pour a huge amount of glue all over it.  And all over the couch, which was the surface he decided to work on. 

My kids were upset about the mess he caused (fortunately it washed off the cushion), but he did a good job on the book!  I did have to scrape away oodles of glue, but he was obviously paying attention to what I did. The binding of the Curious George ABC book that he fixed will never, never get loose. 🙂

Supposedly the glue is only good for a year, but that’s clearly not the case since I bought it over eight years ago!  I bought it from Demco, a library supply company, and the glue is called Norbond liquid plastic adhesive.  It’s rated 5.5 to 6.5 ph, an all purpose book repair glue.  The bottle I got was 32 ounces, which is enough to fix hundreds of books.  I had no idea how effective it was or how a little bit goes very far when I bought it.  I’ve routinely fixed books that my kids have borrowed from friends before sending them back, in addition to the many, many books of ours that I’ve fixed.  After all of this, I still have a quarter of a bottle left!

My kids are wondering when the library will realize that the books we bring back are returned in much better condition than they were when we checked them out, but I don’t think they’ll notice and I’m not planning to mention it. 

Avivah

Making first aid salve

frugal strategies, home remedies, ,

In the beginning of the summer, I shared how we made a salve for poison ivy.  That worked well, but we discovered one problem with it – since we used coconut oil as the base for it, it became liquid at the summer temps.  Then when we put it in the fridge, it would be hard as a rock when we took it out.  We managed with this, and the salve was great.  But one day when it was in its liquified state, someone knocked the open container over and it all spilled out.  And that was the end of that salve. 🙁

So I wanted to make another salve, but decided to improve upon what we did last time – namely to improve the consistency and make it less greasy.  I decided to base this recipe on the ingredient list of the all purpose salve that I bought last year.   Going along with the premise that the first ingredients listed are used more heavily, I weighted the herbs I included accordingly. The basic formula for a salve that I used is 3 T. herbs, 2 c. of oil, and 1 1/2 oz beeswax. (Note – in my opinion this isn’t enough beeswax.)

I chose the following herbs: comfrey – 1 part, plantain – 1 part, echinacea leaves -.5 part, yarrow  – .5 part, and a few olive leaves thrown in for kicks.  🙂  I made four times the recipe above.  I simmered the herbs in oil for a couple of hours, then strained them out.  That gives you herbal infused oil.  Then you mix the beeswax into the infused oil.  I used pastilles (tiny little beeswax balls) that I bought for this purpose.

(A little off topic, but I ended up buying a huge amount of beeswax – I was going to buy a pound but saw that after shipping, it was $15.  And for $35 I was able to buy eight pounds including shipping from a different site – I had a frugal struggle with myself, trying to decide if it was better to spend less money or to get substantially more for my money – and now I  have enough beeswax for the rest of my life.  I think I’ll have to find a new hobby to use it up or my greatgrandchildren will be making herbal salves to take home with them when they visit me!)

The beeswax didn’t mix in well the first time I melted it – it melted but solidified in a layer on top of the oil.  When the pot with all its ingredients were remelted, it mixed in nicely – I don’t know why it needed a second melting.  After the mixture cools, you can decide if it’s the consistency you like.  If it’s too loose, add some more wax; if it’s too thick, add some more oil.  I wanted it a little firmer so I added about another 3/4 cup of pastilles (it was late and I didn’t feel like measuring it exactly), and remelted the whole batch another two times so it could be mixed in.  At the end I also added the last little bit of an aromatherapy oil mix that I’ve had around for about ten years from my doula days.

This morning my ds16 put all of the salve into jars – we now have about eight cups of salve.  (After he put it into the jars, he told me he thinks we should add a little more beeswax to make it firmer.  I told him that suggestion would have been more useful before he put everything in jars!  But it can be remelted and the wax added if I want to do that.)  I ordered different sized tins to package this in, but they haven’t yet arrived, which is why it’s all been transferred to glass jars.   I made a very large amount because I want to give this as gifts for Chanuka, but the basic recipe above will give you a nice amount.  It’s the kind of salve that most people would find valuable to have around, and to buy a 4 oz can of a similar salve would be about $17.  Using that as a baseline price, ds16 calculated the retail value for what we made to be $271!  It was a fraction of that to make it ourselves.

We tried it out first thing today – our cat got a bad cut on his foot sometime during the early morning, deep enough to see the bone.  So dd8 doctored him up (yes, my eight year old daughter does what I’m too squeamish to do :)).  He licked off the first salve she applied, and kicked off the strip of cotton that she tried to tie it on with, but she applied another thick layer and he left it on.  Even though he was clearly in pain, he seemed to appreciate her putting it on.  This should significantly accelerate the healing.

This salve is good for all kinds of cuts, abrasions, bug bites, itching, and diaper rash.  Good for kids, adults, or even pets.  Very useful stuff!

Avivah

How to make elderberry syrup

frugal strategies, home remedies, nutrition, , ,

Last night I made my first batch of elderberry syrup.  It is filled with antioxidants and is good for preventing colds or treating them, depending when you take it.  I bought dried elderberries online, but if you are able to pick them fresh locally, all the better!  Here’s how simple it is to make:

Elderberry syrup

  • 1/2 c. dried elderberries (or 1 c. fresh)
  • 1 cinnamon stick (optional)
  • 3 c. water
  • 1 c. honey

Put the berries in a pot and cover with water.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cover.  Let simmer for 30 – 45 minutes.  Mash the berries with a potato masher, and strain through a fine strainer.  Add honey while liquid is hot, stir, and bottle.  Keep in the fridge – should last 2 – 3 months when refrigerated.

I made four times this recipe and I ended up with three full quarts plus one 16 oz honey jar. I forgot to mash the berries, but since they were dried to start with, I think this was probably less important than when using fresh berries.  I added the cinnamon sticks because they taste good, but also because cinnamon kills bacteria and is great for fighting infections.   I used crystallized honey that was sitting around not being used because the kids said it doesn’t taste as good when it’s crystallized.

Here’s a breakdown of the cost to make it: I bought the dried elderberries for 7.95 lb, and used 2/3 of that (wanted to save some to tincture), so the berries were $5.30.  I used three cups of honey, and if I figured the cost correctly, each cup was $3.33 cup.  That seems high to me (I thought I paid about 2.50 per cup, less when I recently bought small 16 oz containers for 1.99 each), but I based it on googling how many cups of honey are in a gallon (supposedly nine); I buy a gallon/twelve pound container for $30.  So the honey was $10.  I’ll add in .14 for the cinnamon sticks, since I got a container that had thirteen sticks in it for .88 so each stick rounds up to .07.  The total for 12.5 cups of elderberry syrup came out to 15.44.

When you consider 4 fl. oz of Sambucol costs around $12.99, or to use their cheaper price for a larger bottle, 7.8 oz is $21.99, that’s a real bargain! Elderberry syrup from Mountain Rose Herbs is similarly priced with a 4 oz bottle being $13.25.  To put it further into perspective, 4 oz is about a quarter of a cup and 8 oz is half a cup – so I’m getting about thirty five times as much for the same price (my price for 1/4 c. is .31; 1/2 c. is .62).

Because this has a limited shelf life and I don’t want to use up my fridge space hosting three quart sized jars for months, for immediate use I kept one quart plus the little honey jar, and canned the other two quarts so I can keep them on a shelf out of the fridge.

This can be given when a child is showing signs of the cold or a flu, a tablespoon every hour or two, or you can give them a teaspoon each morning as a general immune strengthener.  This could easily be added to tea or (if you let the water boil down more so the final result is thicker) poured on top of pancakes or waffles.  Getting kids to have some of this isn’t hard at all.  This morning we gave the younger kids a teaspoon each, and a minute after ds3 got his spoonful, he came back holding out a cup and asked for a cupful!

Avivah