Category Archives: frugal strategies

Is it more important to be frugal or healthy?

frugal strategies,

>>Also, I notice that a lot of the food you eat is healthy, but not necessarily the most frugal. Like, mac and cheese would probably be cheaper to make than stuff with nuts, etc. And that soy bean oil is cheaper than coconut oil. But, for the healthy food you buy, you make sure to buy it in the cheapest way possible. So my question is this:
Are you frugal because a healthy lifestyle is important to you, and this is how you make it affordable? Or would you be just as frugal if healthy food wasnt as important to you? If you had to make a choice between frugality and health, health would come first, correct?<<

This is a hard question to answer directly, maybe because I don’t understand it very well.

I often hear people complain that it’s so expensive to eat a healthy diet.  While healthy food can be more expensive, I don’t think that a limited food budget should equate with low quality food.   Right now I’m spending about $600 on food monthly for a family of 11, but that’s a pretty generous amount and it allows me to buy more than a month’s worth of food.  Since my monthly food budget is lower than most people, even those who don’t keep kosher or eat healthily, it would seem even if I wasn’t particularly concerned about health I’d have to be frugal to eat well on this amount.

My food budget is what it is because that’s what I have.  I can spend it any way I want and on whatever foods I want, but in the end, that’s the limitation.  I choose to buy foods that nourish us because I think health is important.  But staying within my financial constraints is primary to me – I believe in living well with whatever you have, so having limitations doesn’t denote deprivation to me.

I’m frugal for two reasons – 1) my financial resources aren’t unlimited; 2) I believe our resources are sent to us by H-shem (G-d) and it’s our responsibility to use them well.  There’s no joy for me in spending more than I need to just because I have it.  My dh once asked me if we were millionaires if I’d shop the same way, and I told him there’s very little I would change.

By being careful I have fewer choices to make between health and frugality in regards to the foods I buy.  But if I didn’t have as much money to spend as I do – if the choice was between going hungry and having healthy foods – rather than let my family starve I’d feed them cheaper and less healthy foods.  (But as I said above, I don’t think this is usually the choice.)  I already make this choice to a degree – my strong  preference is to eat only grass fed meats, pastured eggs, and raw milk from grass fed cows.  Also, I’d like to only use organic produce from local farmers.  If I had the money, I’d gladly spend more for all of these choices, but I won’t financially overextend myself for them.  I do the best I can and I’m okay with that.

Avivah

How to dry clothes on clothesline

frugal strategies, homemaking, , ,

I don’t know why, but every time I feel inspired to write about hanging laundry outside there’s something to keep me from doing it.  At the beginning of the summer it was thunderstorms every night.  We haven’t had any rain for a couple of weeks, but now I have a huge mound of dirt covering my yard right under my clothesline from the excavation of our new patio area, so for the last few days (and presumably more than just another few to come), I’ll be using my dryer.

But times like these are actually exceptions for us once the weather is warm.  I used to hang laundry outside year round when living overseas – I didn’t have a dryer until right before my fifth child was born.  In the winter I was very aware of the weather – when the sun shone, my priority was getting my laundry out right away to take advantage of it.  When it was rainy for a few days, I’d hang the clothes inside.  

Then I moved back to the States where our rental home had a dryer but no clothesline.  While I appreciated the convenience of a dryer, I missed hanging the clothes outside and finally asked dh last year to put up a clothesline for me. I’d tried two or three different drying racks over the years but found them flimsy and their holding capacity was so small that when I used them I wasn’t sure if they were a  help or hindrance.  I hung some things on hangers indoors, and while it lessened my dryer usage, it wasn’t very practical for small items. (I found a solution to this several months ago, though – you can clip small items onto hangers with clothespins and it uses the space very efficiently.)

So here are some tips for how to hang your clothes on the clothesline.  They may be obvious to many of you, but they weren’t all obvious to me and they sure aren’t obvious to my kids! 

– To start with, elevate your basket of wet laundry so that you’re not unnecessarily bending repeatedly and wasting energy – I put mine on the Little Tikes kiddie picnic table we have in the yard.

– Make sure you have lots more clothespins than you think you’ll need.  They disappear quickly.

– Sharply shake your clothes made of a material that holds wrinkles before hanging them so that they dry wrinkle-free – like denim skirts. 

– Hang clothing so that when it’s dry the mark of the clothespins were isn’t visible: hang shirts upside down or on hangers, skirts at waist, pants at the cuff.  If you’re using a dryer rack, place items so that the dryer line isn’t in the middle of them. 

– To avoid fading, turn dark clothing inside out.  I learned about the bleaching power of the sun the hard way when I did my first load of laundry in Israel as a seminary student.  I hung my dark cotton tops on the clothing rack, and when I went out to bring them in, I found the sun had bleached the half facing it lighter than the side not facing it.  Also, hang the item so that it’s evenly exposed to the sun, not like what I did. 

– On the positive flip side, the sun is a wonderful whitener!  I schedule my laundry washing so that we hang the light loads first, when the sun is strongest.   If I get busy or go out for hours, it doesn’t matter if they end up hanging for hours.  Then I hang the darks in the later part of the day, when the sun isn’t shining directly on my clothesline for hours.  If something has a stain, hang it so that it’s facing the sun.

– If your neighbors will see your hanging laundry, for privacy’s sake hang undergarments on an inner line, and large things like sheets and towels on the external lines.  Try to be sensitive to what they’ll see from their window when you decide where to hang your clothesline – we put ours to that it runs parallel to the fence between us and our immediate neighbor.  Other neighbors don’t have to look at it, and because of the positioning of our neighbor’s windows, it’s not something that ruins their view of the outdoors, either.

– Here’s a tip I recently learned about but haven’t yet had a chance to try because of the patio preparations.  Before you hang up your clothes, see if you can tell what direction the wind is blowing in.  When you identify that, hang your clothing so that you’re only pinning one side to the line, and the air will blow through the clothes and dry them superfast.  (To clarify, imagine you’re hanging a pillowcase: instead of clamping both parts of the opening together so that it’s hanging closed, put a clothespin on each end but not on both layers –  does that make sense?)

– Some things will dry kind of crunchy, like towels.  You can run clothes after they are mostly dry through the dryer for 5 – 10 minutes to remove that, if it bothers you.  I don’t care about towels but I do care about scratchy cloth diapers on my little ones’ bottoms, so usually cloth diapers go in the dryer. 

Why bother with the effort of hanging your clothes?  Well, using free solar energy to dry your clothing instead of paying the power company for the same result is a frugal thing to do!  I suppose you’re getting some exercise, too.  But for me, it’s more than that.  I really enjoy hanging clothes outside.  It may seem that I’m spending time on something that I could do more quickly with the help of an appliance, but while I’m hanging the laundry, I’m enjoying the air, the sun, the sounds of the birds….It’s a time that I can combine doing what I need to do while being able to relax and be more mindful, to think instead of rushing from one thing that needs to be done to the next.  Time to breathe deeply and enjoy the world around us, to slow down without feeling guilty, is something every busy mom can benefit from on a regular basis!

Avivah

Modest bathing suits

frugal strategies, homemaking,

>>Would you mind sharing what you did for bathing suits? I’ve been looking at various patterns.<<

A couple of years ago I bought patterns in the girls and ladies sizes from the following company – http://www.modestswimwearsolutions.com/.  I looked at several different patterns but liked this one best, because they looked nice and for the ease of sewing.  It’s basically a dress made of swimming suit material with leggings underneath.  I made three suits for the girls and one for myself (though I was 6 months pregnant at the time so I adapted it accordingly).   I also liked that the patterns were made with the option of several sleeve lengths and several legging lengths  – I made 3/4 length sleeves with leggings that just covered the knee but didn’t stick out under the dress.

I bought a the swimsuit material on ebay, and including the cost of the materials and patterns, it was under $20 per suit.  (And I still have enough material left to make a couple more suits, which will essentially be free.)

Though everyone said how easy this was to sew, there was one part of it that I found challenging – there’s a V where the top part of the dress and bottom part connect, and I had trouble getting it to lay smoothly.  I’m far from a professional seamstress but can handle basic stuff without too much trouble and kept wondering as I was making these how so many people who said they didn’t know how to sew could do this while I was struggling with it.  I took it apart several times and redid it, and then changed the design for later suits so I wouldn’t have the problem.  I still wonder if it was something obvious that I did wrong to cause that difficulty.

Our family likes to do outings and activities together, but as the kids get older, modesty between parents and siblings becomes an issue.  So if we found a private part of a beach or secluded lake, the girls would wear long t-shirts over their bathing suits, which I didn’t find a good solution. Wet t-shirts get heavy and I don’t think they’re safe to swim in.   Enter the solution – modest bathing suits.

We used these on our yearly camping trip right after I made them, and they were wonderful!  We went tubing at a private swimming hole in West Virginia, and went swimming at a thermal lake where there were others except for our family.  They were comfortable, modest, and very convenient, since we could wear them on a hike, jump into the water, and keep them on for the hike back.

For the younger boys, I bought wetsuit style bathing suits from cwdkids.com when they were half price (I just bought three more since I was missing the sizes I need for ds3 and ds22 months).  They are comfortable and now the little ones have been running around in them all day long – ds22 months in particular loves his – he brings it to me every time he needs to get dressed and keeps it on.  This is a big deal since he’s been going through a stage of pulling all his clothes off!

I need to make some more suits for the girls since I discovered this year that they’ve outgrown the ones I made.  Dd8 can fit into the suit I made for dd12 and I’ll just have to shorten it, but the older two girls need new ones altogether.  I took apart my maternity suit so I can use the material to make a new suit, I’m going to take apart dd14’s suit and I have extra material from the original batch that I bought, so I should have enough to make three new suits.  I’m thinking of changing the pattern and making a top with a skirt/legging one piece combo, because it will be more flattering than dresses and then I can avoid that problem that I had last time.

Avivah

Getting free bricks for patio

frugal strategies, gardening, homeschooling

It’s not unusual for me to be tired at the end of the day, but for all of my kids to be so worn out they can hardly walk, is!  Since my six week old baby has been crying for over 5 hours, periodically stopping long enough to fall asleep for several minutes before waking up to cry again, I’m not feeling like sharing any meaningful thoughts 🙂 (he’s in the wrap while I write), so I’ll share what we’ve been doing today to wear us all out.

Today we lucked into a large number of free bricks from someone who took down a brick wall.  It’s amazing how many bricks it takes to make a patio the size we want (about 350 sf)- we hauled one load, got home and realized we needed more.  We took out the second bench seat of the van, so we’d have room to bring even more bricks home with us.  We now have over 1000 very large bricks (not the standard size) – there’s now a huge pile in my yard –  and ds16 has informed me after doing the math that we need another 700.  Do you have any idea how many bricks this is, and how much work it is?   You’d probably have to spend an hour loading bricks to appreciate how much energy is involved. 🙂

The downside of the free bricks is that many of them have mortar on them that will have to be chipped off, but it’s pretty soft.  So while it’s a big job because of the number of bricks, it’s not laborious like chipping off hard cement.  While making a patio isn’t complicated, there are a several aspects to the job and it’s been hard to decide where to start first (dh doesn’t think it’s hard to decide – he’s very clear that I shouldn’t do it at all!).

I need to take apart the platform deck since it’s covering the area where the patio will be. But because the chain link fencing that has yet to be put up is taking up all the extra space in the garage, I don’t have anywhere to keep the deck boards we remove.  (I have a neighbor directly across the alley who is hyper vigilant about piles of wood and calls the zoning/environmental office to report people which results in fines, or I’d leave it neatly stacked against the back part of the yard for a couple of weeks.)  Without digging, there’s nowhere to put the gravel, and eventually, the bricks.

You might now be thinking, didn’t I say that I brought home gravel yesterday and bricks today?  Yes, and I’d have liked to have prepared the ground before bringing anything home, but didn’t know how long it would take until I found the supplies I wanted for free and didn’t want to dig up my yard and leave an ugly hole for an openended period of time.  I’m doing everything opposite how I think it would be most efficient to do it, but that’s the reality of working within the time frame of when the free supplies you want to get actualize.

I’m amazed by what hard workers my kids are – loading and then unloading the bricks is a hugely exhausting job.  But they just keep going and going and going, without complaining even a tiny bit.  They’ve actually been enjoying all of this work, and told me a few times we should do this kind of thing every day!  But that was before they finally ran down tonight, and were all happy to drag themselves into bed.

I was also really tired, so dinner was watermelon served in the back yard.  The littles played in their wading pool in the new swim suits that arrived today, and then ran over to the pea plants and helped themselves to fresh organic snow peas and garden peas.  Some of the older kids have complained about this practice, saying that the littles are snacking away our harvest. But I’m happy to have it and it’s a pleasure to watch them happily picking them.

Tomorrow afternoon dh wants to take the van to the mechanic for a check up and oil change, so whatever bricks or gravel I want to get will have to be gotten in the early afternoon. I need to summon up some enough energy to get more bricks, since I won’t be able to match them with what’s being sold at Home Depot if I need more, and if I don’t get these, then the patio will be smaller than planned.  Hopefully tonight I’ll get to bed before midnight so I have the necessary enthusiasm when I wake up! 🙂

Avivah

Manual food processor

frugal strategies, homemaking

A few weeks ago my fairly new (bought on Thanksgiving) food processor broke.  Often I think it must be because I use things more than average that they break, but lately I’ve thinking more and more often that it’s because things aren’t made to last.  It bothers me that things are made so cheaply nowadays, and that it’s expected that you’ll just throw the old thing away and buy a new one – they call it ‘planned obsolescence’.  My last food processor lasted for 9 years, and was just an average model; this latest one was supposedly a much better one with more bells and whistles, but never worked as well as the old one.  And to top off not working well by breaking when never mishandled is really annoying. 

I use a food processor alot since it makes chopping or grating all the veggies we use for a meal a breeze – if I had to do it all by hand, we’d just eat veggie sticks.  I considered getting a food processor that wouldn’t need electricity, remembering I had seen something in the Lehman’s catalog.  I pulled out the catalog and when I saw the price (something like $189) I decided being power free wasn’t that important to me!  But it got me to thinking and researching, trying to find something else. 

I found remarkably little available, but I did find this.  I did some research on it and found it for a cheaper price, and decided to get two – one for dairy (so I can make shakes with milk or kefir) and one for meat.  Since I never did get my Bosch mixer repaired after my ds broke it when making a mega sized batch of chocolate chip cookie dough for his cookie business, I’ve been managing without it.  Surprisingly to me, it hasn’t been much of a loss – it’s not a big deal to mix bread dough in a large bowl by hand, we don’t make many cakes, and basically, I really don’t need it.  But the one thing it did that I sometimes miss having the capacity for is beating egg whites.  This little hand powered mixer does that, which is why I got a second one for non-dairy dishes.

It is a simple device, but works remarkably well.  The only down side I’ve so far experienced is it doesn’t beat things for a shake as smoothly as a blender would, and it doesn’t have a shredding capacity (which I knew when I bought it) – just chops- but it is easy to use, easy to clean up, and even the younger kids can use it by themselves.  A couple of days ago ds15 used it to chop four heads of cabbage and 15 large carrots, and he said it was great.  Not as fast as an electric model, but that’s okay with me; it’s still a LOT faster than chopping by hand.

I would have liked to have gotten two different colors so the meat and dairy mixers could be easily distinguished, but it only comes in red.  Not a big deal, we just marked one with nail polish.  I’d also like if it had a suction on the bottom to hold it down on the counter better. 

Now if the cap and trade bill passes (I think it’s a disaster and am perturbed that our government leaders think it’s a good idea to do this at a time of national financial distress; the president himself said, “”Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”), lots of people are going to be looking for ways to cut power costs.  This is a simple little solution for one appliance and I’m glad to have it!

Avivah

Are kids embarrassed by frugality?

frugal strategies, parenting,

>>Also, something else I was wondering… My son right now is only 2 years old, but I know I grew up with a frugal family and I was embarassed of it.  Do your kids have a similar mindset to you in terms of natural stuff and frugality, or do they get embarrassed about it? How do you keep your kids proud of what you’re doing and not embarrassed that their mom is one of ‘those moms’ :roll:; like I felt when I was a kid?  Is living your kind of lifestyle a little more accepted (where you live) than it was (where I grew up), apparently?<<

I grew up without much money and I always felt less than, so I know what you mean.  When I was younger I planned to make sure my kids had everything that everyone else (plus!) so that they wouldn’t feel bad to be different or have less.  I attributed my negative feelings as a kid to being poor.  But that’s not actually the root of the feeling – it’s an insecurity about who you are and what you do that you convey to your child that they pick up on, not if you are just like everyone else.  If you are confident about what you do and present your choices to your family (or anyone else) matter of factly, it makes a huge difference in how you and what you do are perceived.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that even those who do things just like everyone else also have kids who are embarrassed by them.  So being ultra conservative and conformist isn’t the answer to having kids who are embarrassed by you.  Actually, I think it’s when parents put a high value on being like everyone else that it becomes a lot more important to the kids, and those kids are much more likely to be embarrassed by any perceived differences than kids raised with the idea that it’s a value to live with integrity.

I don’t label myself as a ‘natural’ or ‘attachment parenting’ person.  The things I do are part of who I am, but they aren’t my identity.  I’m a middle of the road person, and if you were to look at me you wouldn’t see visible differences between me and anyone else.  (Anyone who knows me in person is welcome to disagree in the comments section :)).   Why would anyone look at me and know I spent 1/4 – 1/2 of what the same size family spends on food?  People don’t know by looking where you buy your clothes, if it’s at the super duper sales, at a thrift store, or at the beginning of the season in overpriced stores.  And if they learn that you have a great quality life for a lot less than what they think it’s necessary to spend, most people would be interested and positive about that, not hostile.

I’ve said before that frugality isn’t about doing without, but about living within your means while making choices about how you spend your money that are valuable to you.  We make choices and that’s how I explain things to my kids.  I don’t feel apologetic that there are many people in the world that have a lot more money than we do.  We have a great quality life and I constantly communicate my feeling to my kids that we’re so blessed to have all that we have (not just material things, but quality of life things).

Kids tend to have a lot of social insecurity since they are in the process of figuring out who they are and where they fit in. I think it helps a lot that I homeschool, so my kids aren’t constantly exposed to the judgments and assessments of immature peers – it’s that ongoing exposure that creates a lot of insecurity.  My kids haven’t internalized the belief that if you do anything different from everyone else, that something is wrong or shameful about you.

My kids aren’t embarrassed by me, but not because I made it my goal to keep them from feeling that way.  We spend a lot of time together and they respect who I am and what I do; I think the feeling of respect is the core of why I don’t have this issue.  They like me (well, most of the time – less when I’m reminding them to wash the dishes!), and I like them.

As far as if my lifestyle is perceived more positively here than somewhere else – I can’t say.  Maybe.  In my opinion, it’s not so much about how people view your lifestyle as how they view you.  As I said, I don’t wear the different choices I make on my sleeve, and I generally find people to be quite positive when I do discuss choices that I’ve made that are outside of the norm (eg homeschooling).   While I think it’s less about the choice and more about the individual, if I were in a community that was rigid and judgmental, I’d undoubtedly have a different experience.  So I’m grateful to live in the community I do, which is wonderful!

Avivah

How to freeze bananas

food preservation, frugal strategies

When you have bananas that are starting to get a little too ripe, don’t think you have to eat them all or throw them away!  By freezing them at that point, you’ll be able to get lots of use out of them at your convenience.

There are several different ways to freeze them, and the way that works best for you will depend partially on what you want to do with them when you take them out of the freezer.  My preference is to 1) peel them, and freeze them whole in large ziploc bags to prevent freezer burn.  Some people like to 2) peel them, and then slice them before freezing – it probably does make it easier to defrost and use a smaller amount.

Another choice is to 3) peel the bananas and mash them.  Package them in small amounts in plastic bags or freezer containers, putting the amount you would use for a recipe into one bag (eg 1 cup).  This is perfect for having prepped bananas for banana bread or cake.  You can add a tiny bit of lemon juice if you’re concerned about them discoloring. 

The last choice is to 4) freeze them in the peel.  I don’t like this option, but some people do.  One thing that has been said as a benefit of this is that the peel protects them from freezer burn (though my peeled bananas in bags do fine); it also elimates any prep time.  The reason I don’t like it is: a) the peels get brown and look unappetizing, b) it takes up more room in the freezer, and c) it’s lots easier to peel fresh bananas than frozen.

 But if you do want to freeze your bananas unpeeled, here are some tips for using them: 

Score the peel lengthways with knife and gently open.  It can take up to 2 hours for them to defrost, and will be very mushy when thawed.  If you don’t want to peel the banana, you can cut off the top and squeeze out the banana mush.  It may sound unappetizing but it works. 

I’ll try to write another post on some ideas of how to use all of these frozen bananas!

Avivah

Restocking the pantry

frugal strategies, homemaking

It was so nice to do a big shopping trip today and stock up on some things that I wanted!  I wasn’t exactly out of anything – except eggs, cheese, and some vegetables, which I picked up yesterday – but I felt like I didn’t have what I needed to make any dish I could think of.  And I wanted to add some things that I haven’t used much of before – specifically, I’m interested in using less grains and trying out nut/coconut flours for baking with, in addition to upping the kids’ intake of protein and good quality fats.  With that in mind, I bought a 50 lb bag of unsweetened dried coconut that I plan to grind up to use in place of coconut flour (it won’t be the same but it should be close enough to be comparable), as well as a 30 lb bag of pecan meal and 30 lb of almond meal.  And 25 lb of raw cashews.  After all, why bother with small amounts? 🙂

In addition to the regular stuff, like 50 lb of potatoes, 40 lb of yams, 50 lb of oats, 30 lb brown rice, and raw milk, I also got some nice fruits – 2 cases of blueberries, 1 case of cherries, 40 lb bananas, and 9 pineapples (they were $1 each).  I was out of butter (unless you count the butter that I canned, which I haven’t yet used), so I bought another 40 lb; 35 dozen eggs, 5 or 6 lb of cream cheese, 36 lb of ricotta, and 25 lb of organic unsweetened peanut butter.  I also got a lot of pecans (one of my favorite nuts), and four cases of frozen vegetables (okra, green beans, and peas and carrots).  I got some not so ideal food, too – 10 boxes of whole wheat/rice/flax pasta, and 12 boxes of blintzes (144 blintzes – half blueberry, half potato); it’s not the kind of thing I’d serve every night, but it’s nice for a easy dinner once in a while. 

As usual, putting everything away was the hardest part – I’m like the kid who’s eyes are bigger than his stomach – I see all these bargains and I buy it and hope that I’ll somehow find a place for it, even when it’s really unrealistic.  Before we left for our trip, I checked to see how much freezer space was available and there was just one empty shelf.  Dd14 rearranged the entire freezer to figure out a way to fit a lot more stuff in.  And I’m doing my part by using the turkey carcasses that were taking up freezer space to make more room for the new stuff.  Tomorrow I’ll be dehydrating some of the frozen vegetables that couldn’t fit (amazingly, only 5 lb) and canning the broth since the fridge is jam packed and there’s no possibility of finding an inch of space there, let alone room for a large pot. 

It was nice after all of that work unpacking to sit down to a quick and yummy dinner.  We heated spinach tortilla wraps (got a few packs today for a treat) and then the kids spread on mayo, added lettuce, pinto beans cooked in turkey broth (prepared yesterday), and some home pickled vegetables.  We finished off our meal with a big bowl of fresh Rainier cherries – I never bought these before (always got Bing) and the kids really liked them.

My husband was concerned when I told him I’d like to increase the protein and veggies for the family that I’d max out our food budget and it wouldn’t be sustainable long term.  I can’t say long term how it will work out because I don’t have the power to see into the future, but for now found that I was able to get all the nuts/nut flours and proteins that I wanted without going over my monthly budgeted amount.  It’s by continuously buying in bulk that this is possible – I didn’t need to stock up this month on a lot of grains and beans, for example, because I had plenty from last month – so that freed up money for these things.  Next month I’ll get the staples that I didn’t get this month, since I have enough of the bulk purchases from today to hold me over until then. 

At dinner my dd12 said that it’s so much work unpacking that she understands why people go shopping all the time instead of shopping like we do. I pointed out to her that while she’s right that it’s a lot of work unpacking so much food, it’s only a couple of hours once every 1 – 2 months, with a little here and there in between. But we’d be spending a lot more time on a regular basis dealing with buying and putting away food if we were shopping weekly. 

Now that I’m stocked up again, I’m looking forward to trying out some new dishes for the coming week’s menu!

Avivah

Buying cheese by the block

frugal strategies

I think I’ve been suffering from food shopping withdrawal without even knowing it!  Today I went shopping for the first time since the baby was born; it was so fun to be out and about again!  First I headed to the vegetable store and loaded up on produce – I got a full cart of fruit and veggies for $53.  I want to increase the amount of vegetables we’re eating and decrease the grains somewhat, so I shopped with that in mind.

Then I popped into the kosher supermarket for some eggs and cheese – well, it was supposed to be a quick trip, but I didn’t plan on meeting three people and shmoozing with them all!  So my short trip became a lot longer; I had to remind myself to stop chatting since I don’t want to have an unhappy baby waiting at home.  While I was there, I got a bunch of turkey wings on sale (.79 lb) and a lot of ground beef (3.49 lb).  I checked the prices on turkey gizzards, which I thought I had remembered being expensive – and they are. They were something like 3.69 lb, which is more than I pay for whole turkey or ground meat!  So not an economical choice for me – that just underscores the point that I’ve made before, that there’s no food that is cheap for everyone.  You have to find what’s a good deal in your area and make the most of it.

The cheese wasn’t on sale, so I decided to pass on it.  But when I went by the dairy appetizer section, I noticed the least expensive cheese (they slice for you from large blocks) was cheddar at 5.49 lb.  That beats the $7 -8 per lb. of the 8 oz or 1 lb. blocks.  As I was standing at the appetizer counter, it occurred to me to ask (after 7 years of shopping at this store) if there’s a discounted price for buying a large block of cheese. She told me it would be $1 less per pound – and 4.49 for a pound of kosher cheese is pretty darn good, in my opinion!  I ended up getting a 5 pound brick of mozzarella, which was slightly more expensive (4.69) and a couple of pounds of sliced cheddar at the regular price.  If you buy in the block, they don’t slice it for you, and there isn’t much of a savings if you end up using lots more of it than you would otherwise.  But I’m going to divvy up the 5 lb block into 1/2 lb. blocks to use for meals, and I think that will work well to help me portion it out efficiently. 

In the end my quick little shopping trip wasn’t so quick or so little, but I do have lots of poultry and meat for the month, as well as veggies for the next week or two.  Tomorrow I’m going to do my big monthly shopping and will hopefully get us stocked back up – I haven’t been since a week after Pesach and my supplies have dwindled more than I like.  I’m hoping to find lots of great bargains!

Avivah

Pressure cooking chicken soup

frugal strategies, homemaking

On Thursday night I tried something I’ve never done before – I used my pressure canner as a pressure cooker to make our chicken soup/stock.  I’ve known how much faster pressure cooking is, but for whatever reason never did it – probably because doing something new takes conscious effort.  For some reason on Thursday I felt motivated to try it and see how it went – and it was great!

Usually when I make stock, I let it simmer for hours to leach the nutrients from the bones.  Generally I start it before I go to sleep, and let it simmer overnight, then turn it off in the morning when I wake up.  It’s a pretty easy way to do it, and it doesn’t take much of an effort.  But it’s nice to learn to do things more efficiently, and this was a good opportunity to implement something I’ve known about for a long time.  (Often I feel I’m at least a year behind on my ‘to do’ list – so many new things to learn about and try!)   

My pressure canner holds 23 quarts, and I filled it 2/3 of the way full.  It took a long time to bring that amount of water to boil and then for the necessary 15 lb of pressure to build up, but once it was at that point, it only took ten minutes to cook the stock.  Ten minutes, instead of 8 hours!  That means it’s costing me 1/8 in energy costs of what it cost with my overnight method, and since gas/electric rates are rising steadily, it’s good to find ways to achieve the same results with significantly less energy. 

Not only does it save in cooking time, but it also doesn’t get the kitchen as hot as having the pot simmering for hours.  Usually there’s a plume of steam rising from the simmering pot of stock, but when pressure cooking there isn’t a significant amount of heat that escapes, so the kitchen stayed cooler while cooking it than it usually does. 

The next thing I’d like to try pressure cooking is beans – that’s the other thing that I cook that takes a long time – maybe this week I’ll have the chance.  When I bought my pressure canner a year ago, I had no idea how economical a purchase it would end up being – I keep finding more and more ways to save time and money with it!

Avivah