A More Detailed Post on Saving on Groceries

On my last post someone requested that I be more specific about how I save money on groceries.  Hope this helps!

 1.Treat saving on groceries is a serious business.

Not only do you need to go to the store and actually hunt for the bargains, you have to work hard to preserve the groceries once you get them home. I treat it like a serious business This week I found some amazing deals on meat, because I got myself up early and got dressed and went to the store.  We were about the only one in the store at that hour.  Guys, I bought ground chuck that was $7.99 a pound for $2.66 a pound!  I bought 6 pounds and brought it home and canned it up immediately. It was out of the canner before 10 AM.  We also bought a roast that was marked 65% off.  Ran cut it into strips and made a marinade for it while I was canning. The next day he made it into jerky.

2. Use every last bit.

That hamburger I canned?  Well, when I can hamburger I put it into a roaster without water and into a 350 degree oven. to brown it.  That way it remains nice and chunky.  When I take the roaster from the oven I drain the meat through a sieve, catching all the grease and broth into a bowl.  Once that is cooled, I scrape all the tallow off the top and use the grease for sauteing  and greasing pans, etc.  The broth was made into a gravy with an addition of the remaining meat that didn't fit into the jars.  Along with some carrots, onions, parsnips and potatoes from the garden, this was made into a pot pie. Our meals are never based upon what do we want to eat, but upon what's in the fridge that we need to use up. Back here I wrote about using every bit of a turkey except the quack.

3.  Learn how to make everything from scratch.

We do not buy anything that is made for convenience.  This week we made bread, granola, pie crusts, tortillas, noodles, crumpets and  all from just what is basic pantry items; flour, some sort of fat, and some sort of leavening.  We never buy cream of soups but make a basic white sauce.  We make our own salad dressings from vinegar that we make from peels of fruit while canning and yogurt. Never buy canned beans, but buy them in dried form and can them ourselves. We make our own catsups, barbecue sauces,  spaghetti sauce, salsas, jams, pickles, chutneys, herbal teas, etc.

How to make vinegar

Put you peels and cores from you apples or pears (or both) into a bowl and cover with unfiltered water.  I also add a bit of the mother from last years vinegar.  Let it set out uncover for a week.  Warning: you'll have fruit flies.  After a week, cover the bowl loosely with a cheesecloth and let it set another week. On the third week, strain the vinegar and put into a jar. Loosely screw on the lid and let set like that for a couple of weeks.  After that, your vinegar should be ready to use.

4. Be flexible.

Maybe you went to the store thinking you were going to make tacos for dinner, but when you got to the store hamburger was too expensive, but they had chicken drumsticks for 99 cents a pound.  So, skip the hamburger and make shredded chicken for the tacos.  And when you're done, throw the bones and skin into a pot and boil them up for stock for a pot of chicken soup.Just because a recipe calls for one thing, doesn't mean you have to use it. Personally, when it comes to any sort of Mexican food, I actually prefer to skip the meat all together and use beans.  Spicy foods really don't need the added flavor of meat. I never go to the store with a specific menu in mind.  I find the deals first and knowing that I have basic pantry items and basic recipes, make up the menu as I shop.

5. Eat at least three of your main meals, meatless each week.

There's so many good meatless meals this shouldn't be a problem. Here's a list of some easy quick meals that most families like: vegetable pizza, grilled cheese and tomato soup, spaghetti without meatballs, cheese omelettes or quiche, a vegetable chowder, bean burittos,  black bean burgers, Welsh rarebit,and my favorite, a vegetable stir-fry.  These are especially nice in the summer when the vegetables are in the garden.  I just take a variety of vegetables and onions and garlic and sometimes I add a jar of drained chickpeas, and stir fry them and here's a very easy sauce that goes well with any vegetables:

Basic stir-fry sauce

1/2 C. water

1 1/2 tsp. cornstarch

1/4 C. soy sauce

1/4 C. catsup

2 Tbls. brown sugar

1 tsp. garlic powder

1 tsp. ground ginger

1/4 tsp. black pepper

Just combine the ingredients and pour over the vegetables after the have been sauteed to tender crisp. Heat until boiling and let boil, stirring, until the sauce is desired thickness.

6. Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

The other day we were in our favorite thrift store and the cashier asked if we wanted a bunch of bananas that were left over from the food pantry.  No one wanted them because the were not picture perfect.  I took them home and put them in the freezer.  One of these days they will make a lovely loaf  or two of banana bread.  We were driving down a back road when we saw black walnuts covering the road.  We stopped and picked up a bagful along the roadside.  Ended up with about two pounds of walnuts once they were hulled and shelled.  We might go back and get some more.  I just picked some ripe tomatoes that had grown in the compost bin yesterday and earlier this year I picked a bunch of button mushrooms that had sprouted there.  Ran gave our neighbor some walleye he caught and he told me that next time he catches a pike, he will send it down my way.  Which I will gladly take and can.  Canned, pike taste like the finest abelcore tuna to me.  

7. Don't turn up your nose.

Let me tell you about the bargain I got this week.  I bought a four pound wheel of Guggisberg Baby Swiss cheese from the Amish scratch and dent store for ten dollars!  On Amazon they sell a two pound wheel for $64.99. People turn up their noses at the good old scratch and dent stores, but it is like everything else, you have to be a savvy shopper.  Last month I bought wild-caught tuna for seventy-nine cents a can with an expiration date of 2028 there.  Not everything is out of date there.  Sometimes the stores are just getting rid of the oddball items to make room for more popular items. I always buy my dried beans there because the sell them for fifty cents a pound. Dried beans are selling for almost two dollars a pound at the bulk food store. We always buy our coffee there. Just to let you know, that there's more to the scratch and dent than  junk  and processed food and expired goods, so don't be afraid to venture into them. I see some pretty fancy cars parked outside of them.  Just saying!

8. Pay attention to the price per unit.

This is self-explanitory. They are posted under every shelf so it isn't difficult to do.

9.  When you find a deal, buy as much as you can.

Groceries are never going to get cheaper, so when you find a deal on a pantry essential, buy as much as you can. Even if it means you have to eat more meatless meals for the month or have to go without some of the little niceties  that you might want.  It is better to suffer a little now than to suffer a lot later.

10. Learn how to preserve what you buy.

You might not care to can as I do, but you can still preserve your bargains.  Remember last year when I was telling you about the deer carrots (which now is the time to be looking into them)? Well, if you didn't want to can those carrots. you could still cut them up parboil and freeze them.  In November when turkeys are cheap, cheap, cheap, you can still cook up the turkey, remove all the meat, and make the broth, save the schmaltz and freeze it all.  I can because our electricity is not reliable over here in ice storm country.   

So, I hope that helps.  It is hard to write about being thrifty.  It's one of those things you just learn from experience.  Sometimes when I'm out in the stores shopping and I overhear someone grumbling about the sky rocketing prices, I wish that I could take them by the hand and show them all the tricks.  Can someone explain Uncrustables to me?  Why on earth would anyone pay  so much for what is essentially pbj on toast?  Or instant oatmeal, when you can microwave quick oats just as easily and add your own sugar and cinnamon.And don't get me started on Lunchables. Ha! Feel free to add you own tips in the comments.

Hugs

Jane

 

Peace and Plenty

Hello dear friends!  Well, I guess it is autumn now, although the temperatures would tell a different tale.  I was hopeful when we had that spate of cool weather in August, that this year summer wouldn't infringe upon fall too much, but nope, not going to happen.  Well, at least it is beginning to look like my beloved season.

This is a picture of our little dooryard garden, landscaping compliments of the birds.  The birds, bees and butterflies do a lot of landscaping in my yard and I am happy to let them do it.  The other day we watched a goldfinch scattering the seeds of milk thistle everywhere.  I wonder how many of those prickly plants I'l have next year.  And you should see all the wild roses I have thanks be to the birds!  They have such pretty rosehips.  It should be a very lovely sight against the snowy landscape this winter.  Little by little the birds are shaping our yard into their own little sanctuary.  

This little area used to be all white plants, now nary a white flower exists.  Oh well, I'm a firm believer in letting gardens be what they want to be. It's a lot less work that way. 

Speaking of gardens, we have been busy getting the last of it harvested and preserved.  All that is left in the plots now are some parsnips and the beans drying on the vines.  We picked a few of the beans to see what they looked like.

Aren't they pretty?  They are an heirloom variety called "Succotash" and I think they would make a lovely dish with some yellow corn in a traditional succotash.  Every year we plant some sort of dried bean.  As a lover of history, it excites me to grow a variety that people ate over two-hundred years ago.  One of the reasons we garden is so we can have the true flavor of vegetables.  It makes no sense to me to grow the same varieties of vegetables that you can purchase in the stores.  We gave our neighbor some of our extra German Strawberry tomato plants that we had started and she told us that she never realized how good a tomato could taste until she ate one of those.  Yep, there's a difference.  We grow antique apples in our little orchard, too.  It is so much fun to taste an apple the was Thomas Jefferson's favorite (Esopus Spitzenburg) as opposed to a Red Delicious that you  can buy at a store.

Anyway, enough of that prattle.  Someone once left a comment that they wished that I would write less about gardening and canning. Well, they landed upon the wrong blog, if that is what they were looking for, as gardening and canning consume most of the hours of my days from May until October. Ha! But I must remember that the name of my blog is Hope and Thrift and sometimes I neglect the thrift part.  After examing the statistics, I noticed that this old blog has been getting a lot of traffic on the posts about thrift lately.  It is so hard to write about thrift, I can give hints, but at the end of the day, everyone knows it is just a matter of cutting back on spending and making the most of what you have.

The other day I was in the grocery store and they had a display of Sander's Bumpy Cakes.  Now I adore those cakes, but it has been years since I've purchased one. maybe even decades.  I was astounded by the price, $15 for a little eight-inch square cake!  I said something to Ran about it and a lady nearby, that was looking at the cakes also, came up to me and said something about how unaffordable food was becoming and was almost in tears.  She kept saying "what's a person to do?".  Well, I didn't say it, but I was thinking, "You can start by not buying a fifteen dollar cake."  The store was having a sale on roasting chickens for ninety-nine cents a pound, which is what I came in after.  For four or five dollars, she could have gotten an entire week's worth of meals from one  of those chicken. And at that, price, she could have stocked her freezer for the same amount as that one little cake cost. 

The point I'm getting at, is people need to learn how to shop.  That means you have to actually go to the stores, look for the bargains, examine the fruit and vegetables and keep track of your budget.  The excuse I always get is that "I'm too busy to shop".  What could be more important than shopping for the food that nurtures your family?  The cost of food is right up there with mortgages and rent in a family's budget, so isn't it worthwhile to take your time and do it properly? Rather than having a "date night" Ran and I go grocery shopping twice a month.  We always have,from the beginning of our marriage.. We even get spiffed up for it.  Through observations we've learned that one of our local stores always mark down their meats early in the morning midweek.  Just yesterday, we bought three pound of steak for less than three dollars a pound and a pound of wagyu ground beef for $4.64.  We also bought a pint of buttermilk for twenty cents and  two packages of corn tortillas that had some broken tortillas for twenty cents each.  Do I care that the tortillas were broken?  No, because I was going to use them in King Ranch casserole anyway.  The meat was still fresh, you can tell by looking at it and smelling it.  And I froze it in vacuum sealed bags as soon as I got home, except for three of the steaks that are marinating in the fridge as I write this. The buttermilk was made into pancake batter that was then cooked into a large batch that went into the freezer for quick breakfasts for days when we tire of oatmeal.  And I know, I'll get those that will say "Eww, I'd never eat marked-down meat, etc.".  I always get those sort of comments.  I will tell you a favorite saying of one of my uncles, "you hold your nose, I'll hold my pocketbook".

And another comment I often get, is the old my-husband-won't-eat and my-husband-insists-on-meat-at-every-meal.  I get so tired of hearing those excuses.  How I really want to respond is "tell your husband to grow up", but of course that would be rude.  Some women treat their husband's as if he were child.  He should be an adult enough to understand what things cost and what your family can afford. I strongly suggest family's have a  family meeting once month where you discuss the costs of things, the expenditures for the month, and where cut-backs can be made.  I'd include older children in on the discussions too.  Run your family's finances like a good business.  

So what I'm getting at here, is part of being thrifty is take your responsibility for your actions.   Stop looking for someone to blame.  Benjamin Franklin said the kindest thing you can do for the poor is to make them uncomfortable in their poverty.  I see evidence of this every time I go to the grocery store.  People filling their carts with all sorts of junk and then paying with an EBT card.  People complaining about the quality of the food at free food pantries instead of being grateful.  People refusing the offer of free fruits and vegetables from the garden because it's too much work, while moments later complaining about the cost of food.  No matter how much you give, it is never enough or good enough, they always want more and better.  If they were truly improvished and starving (BTW, most of these people do not look like they are starving), they would be thankful for a bag of beans and rice. Well, I have to stop ranting here, or you will think I've gone completely mad. Ha!  I know that many come here for pleasant conversations.  It's been a trying month.

So on that note, one of the most pleasant things to me is take a fifty-cent skein of yarn from the thrift store and make it into a pretty and useful garment. Like these socks I recently finished:

I'm almost finished with a cardigan, that I will show you next month.  I'm quite pleased with it.  Recently, I discovered old knitting magazines from the 1980s. If you can look past the models with the frizzy hair, flippy bangs, hot pink and cobalt eyeshadow and the shoulder-padded color-blocked neon sweaters, they offer a lot of good basic patterns, written in a no-nonsense manner.  And for the price of a few dollars at an antique shop for a magazine  with a half a dozen or more usable patterns, it's a lot cheaper than paying $8 for just one pattern on Etsy or Ravelry.

For me, autumn is always a hopeful month.  I do not celebrate any holidays, Christian or pagan, but I can see some of the logic in the old pagan holidays; rejoicing when the last of the garden has been harvested, observing that the days are now getting shorter and preparing for the long winter ahead.  These things just make sense to me as a person that lives close to the land. After all isn't it God who has provided the bounty and hasn't He created the seasons?  Always have a grateful heart for what blessings He has bestowed upon you.  When a crop fails or doesn't yield as  much as we had hoped for, we always think,yes, but it is sufficient for our needs.  If we go through hardships, and we all do, we always think, yes, but He has brought us through it and now we are stronger because of it.  Life may get difficult, life may seem unfair at times, but He has promised to never forsake you.

Hugs

Jane