WFMW: Finding the Time to Be Frugal (Reader Help Needed)
Molly reader, Kim, left the below post and I though it would make a great topic for Readers Helping Readers.
How do you all have time for this? I so want to be frugal and I’m stressed trying to keep up with it all. I do homeschool my children, like most of you, and I’m trying to do a pampered chef business, but thinking of quitting so i can focus more on my family, but we need the money i bring in. It’s so challenging, God helps me each day! Thanks for the sites, I’ll try to keep up with all you frugal moms, lol.
She has a good point. Bargain shopping and making frugal choices DOES take time. Here are a few of my thoughts on the matter.
- I view my “frugality” as a job. I consider my savings to be my hourly wage. It may take me an extra two hours to plan out my grocery shopping, use coupons, etc. (It’s sometimes shocking how long it can take, isn’t it??!!) But I can easily cut my grocery bill in half when I do so. Even if I only save $50 a trip, that comes out to $25/hr. Not bad. So, if I’m “too busy” to coupon, am I busy doing something that is going to make me $25/hr. Usually not.
- Alternatively, some frugal practices are NOT worth my time. The time you have to spend on frugal endeavors will be limited by the number of small children you have, whether or not you homeschool, whether you work for hire, outside commitments, etc. Before I worked from home and homeschooled, I would can fruits and vegetables every summer. Now, I just don’t have the time. When I calculate out the savings they just weren’t there to justify it. Now, if I had a garden or access to free foods, that might change. But for now, I make more at “work” than I save by canning.
- I enlist the children. As my kids get older I give them more responsibilities. Currently, they are capable of keeping the house relatively presentable. I am willing to pay one of my kids a dollar or two to cut my coupons and put them in my coupon binder. It saves me a good chunk of time and I know I’ll save much more by having them clipped, organized and available. When I was a child, my siblings and I were each responsible for making a batch of bread once each week. Making your children responsible for a small garden, even a container garden could be helpful. Keeping the budget on track is a family affair, not just Mom’s responsibility.
- Consider the learning curve. Sure, the first time you create a menu plan (join our newsletter for a free quide!) or try a new recipe, extend a mix, or make your own laundry soap, it may be a bit time consuming. But many of these tasks become second nature after a few tries and take considerably less time. As with most anything you’ll need to allow some time for education and practice on your road to becoming a practiced frugalite. Is it worth it? Absolutely!
- Don’t forget the real issue. Why are you doing what you do? Being thrifty isn’t about saving every little penny. It’s about being conscious of your spending and making deliberate choices about how you spend your money. If you choose to spend on a luxury or forgo a frugal practice, that’s fine. Just know that you are making the choice and why. The more ways you are aware of to save money, the more choices you have in what you choose to do or not do. Don’t feel you have to do everything!
- I recognize that I’m modeling stewardship and educating my family through my thriftiness. Saving money and being financially responsible isn’t about just the money itself. It is about using the resources we’ve been given in a responsible manner. Our children learn from what they see us do. I am confident that my children can get by with less income than the average young adult simply because they’ve grown up watching us make money-saving decisions. Whether they choose to use those skills or not is their decision, but the knowledge will make them that much stronger as they set out on their own. So I’m not only saving money, I’m teaching at the same time. Plus, most thrifty activities involve learning or practicing a variety of useful life skills.
Those are just a few of my thoughts regarding “finding the time” to be frugal. What about you? How do you find the time, in your busy schedules, to save money? I can’t wait to hear your comments!
Taking time to save money works for me! To see more Works for Me Wednesday tips visit We Are That Family.
Continue reading WFMW: Finding the Time to Be Frugal (Reader Help Needed) …
From Econobusters.
Surprise Your Kids With Some Yummy Fruit Smoothies This Week
You are going to love my frugal tip for you this week. It’s all about getting your kids to consume more fruits and even vegetables. During these hot summer months there is lost of fresh produce available all over the place. But often the hardest part is not finding delicious fruits and vegetables, but getting [...]
Continue reading Surprise Your Kids With Some Yummy Fruit Smoothies This Week …
From Moms In A Blog » Frugal Living.
Best Ways To Cook Asparagus
By Susanne Myers www.HillbillyHousewife.com As a frugal homemaker, I like to use fruits and vegetables that are in season as much as I can. For the last few weeks we’ve had an abundance of asparagus at out local markets. I’ve cooked it all kinds of ways and used it various reicpes from plain side dish [...]
Continue reading Best Ways To Cook Asparagus …
From Moms In A Blog » Frugal Living.
Molly Fresh Is Here!
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Get ready then to “freshen up” and bask in the best of summer. When you put out a party platter of these recipe dishes made with fresh fruits and vegetables, you know you are feeding your family well!
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Continue reading Molly Fresh Is Here! …
From Econobusters.
Simple Changes Aren’t Always Simple
One of my favorite writers is Ian Rogers, who blogs about his health at Fistfulayen. In one of his best posts, he writes about his use of the L.L. Cool J workout, which eventually turns into an astute point that virtually every “healthy diet” book focuses on the same handful of seemingly simple principles. He identifies six:
1. Eat five or six times a day
2. Limit your consumption of sugars and processed foods
3. Eat fruits and vegetables throughout the day
4. Drink more water and cut out calorie-containing beverages (beer, soda, and so forth)
5. Focus on consuming more lean proteins throughout the day
6. Save starch-containing foods until after a workout or for breakfast
… but then he notes they’re not as simple as they seem:
Pretty straight-forward, no magic, no surprises, but I had to completely change my diet around to get there.
The steps seem easy enough, but in order to achieve those simple steps, he had to alter his entire pattern of food and beverage consumption – and the cultural and social patterns that went with it.
In other words, a simple change that can be described in one simple phrase often has a huge amount of change underlying it. In order to, say, cut out calorie-containing beverages, a person may have to break a caffeine addiction, break an alcohol addiction, change their social lives in order to break free from such addictions, and significantly alter their daily routine so as to not fall back on such addictions.
That’s a challenge, any way you paint it. The intensity of that challenge, which ends up actually being a large handful of changes all at once, can easily overwhelm someone, even if their intent is wholly in the right place.
Let’s use a personal finance example. Cindy, a reader who emails me fairly regularly, recently wrote in to me lamenting her difficulty in implementing what seemed like a simple personal finance goal.
I will limit entertainment spending to $100 a month.
Within entertainment, she included her cable bill, the costs of going out with friends, and money spent on purely fun things. It seems like a very straightforward goal, but in Cindy’s own words, it’s harder than it seems.
In order to make that goal, I cancelled my cable and used some of the money from my first month to buy one of those digital converter boxes for my old TV. This disrupted three of my weeknights, as I’m now missing out on shows I watched faithfully. I’ve started skipping every other “girl’s night out,” which has been really hard. I don’t go clothes shopping any more either. I now spend a lot more time online than I used to and I feel a lot more moody and kind of sad, too. I keep finding myself cheating on that $100 limit too by buying stuff online.
Cindy’s not just trying one new routine in her life. She’s breaking a big pile of them and trying to establish some new ones at the same time.
She’s breaking the “girl’s night out” pattern. She’s breaking her television watching pattern, which is a several-night-a-week pattern. She’s breaking her clothes shopping pattern. She seems to be flailing with this free time and is somewhat settling on a new pattern of more online usage. She’s also seemingly adopting a new social pattern with her circle of friends, one that she’s not quite as happy with.
That’s a lot of change, any way you slice it.
I’ve found that, time and time again, when you take on a ton of changes in your life all at once, it’s very hard and there’s a huge tendency to backslide. Yes, some stubborn people can make it through a lot of changes at once, but most of us can’t – it’s very, very difficult.
So, what’s the solution?
The solution is to take stock of all of the real changes going on in your life and choose just one or two of them to focus on. Instead of sticking so fiercely to the simple “$100 a month” strategy, Cindy might want to simply live without cable for a while without altering her other routines in life. Yes, I’m advocating that she go back to “girl’s night out” every week.
Why do this? Her one change – cutting the cable – will save her money. But it’s a pretty significant alteration to her routine, one that she has to get used to and one where she’s going to need to find replacement activities that she’s comfortable with. That alone is a major change to deal with and she should give it time until that change is routine and normal.
Give it a month, Cindy, until coming home to a house without cable television feels normal. Find other things to do on those evenings where you might have watched some cable program. Try out a new community group. Visit the library and pick up a book or two. Invite the ladies over for a “girl’s poker night.” Find things that you really enjoy that don’t cost money to replace the gaps that cable has left in your life.
Once it’s all established and you’ve found a new normal, you’re sitting on a new normal with $50 less spent each month. Now, move onto another piece of the puzzle. Maybe the next thing to try is giving up clothes shopping – or at least altering it by hitting consignment shops and secondhand shops instead. Dive into that change – this one will probably be easier.
Sometimes, you’ll find a smaller change that is really hard to break because the activity you’re modifying brings you a lot of personal joy. Guess what? You shouldn’t break it. Likely, that thing is something that’s a big part of one of your true core values in life, and those are the things we work to preserve in life. Instead, move on and look for other ways to save and to change.
The moral of the story is simple: if a change is just too big for you to swallow all at once, break it down into smaller changes and work through those changes one at a time.
If you’re finding it difficult to meet a spending goal, look at all of the different things you’re spending money on and focus on the areas you can cut, one at a time.
If you’re finding it difficult to meet a diet goal, focus on one specific dietary change until it seems normal, then move on to another one.
If you’re finding it difficult to meet a personal growth goal, tackle a specific element of that growth (or focus on finding the space you need to tackle it).
It’s just like my two year old daughter with a bowl full of grapes. If you try to stuff too many things in your mouth at once, it becomes difficult to chew them and digest them. You’re far better off with one grape at a time.
Continue reading Simple Changes Aren’t Always Simple …
From The Simple Dollar.
Simple Changes Aren’t Always Simple
One of my favorite writers is Ian Rogers, who blogs about his health at Fistfulayen. In one of his best posts, he writes about his use of the L.L. Cool J workout, which eventually turns into an astute point that virtually every “healthy diet” book focuses on the same handful of seemingly simple principles. He identifies six:
1. Eat five or six times a day
2. Limit your consumption of sugars and processed foods
3. Eat fruits and vegetables throughout the day
4. Drink more water and cut out calorie-containing beverages (beer, soda, and so forth)
5. Focus on consuming more lean proteins throughout the day
6. Save starch-containing foods until after a workout or for breakfast
… but then he notes they’re not as simple as they seem:
Pretty straight-forward, no magic, no surprises, but I had to completely change my diet around to get there.
The steps seem easy enough, but in order to achieve those simple steps, he had to alter his entire pattern of food and beverage consumption – and the cultural and social patterns that went with it.
In other words, a simple change that can be described in one simple phrase often has a huge amount of change underlying it. In order to, say, cut out calorie-containing beverages, a person may have to break a caffeine addiction, break an alcohol addiction, change their social lives in order to break free from such addictions, and significantly alter their daily routine so as to not fall back on such addictions.
That’s a challenge, any way you paint it. The intensity of that challenge, which ends up actually being a large handful of changes all at once, can easily overwhelm someone, even if their intent is wholly in the right place.
Let’s use a personal finance example. Cindy, a reader who emails me fairly regularly, recently wrote in to me lamenting her difficulty in implementing what seemed like a simple personal finance goal.
I will limit entertainment spending to $100 a month.
Within entertainment, she included her cable bill, the costs of going out with friends, and money spent on purely fun things. It seems like a very straightforward goal, but in Cindy’s own words, it’s harder than it seems.
In order to make that goal, I cancelled my cable and used some of the money from my first month to buy one of those digital converter boxes for my old TV. This disrupted three of my weeknights, as I’m now missing out on shows I watched faithfully. I’ve started skipping every other “girl’s night out,” which has been really hard. I don’t go clothes shopping any more either. I now spend a lot more time online than I used to and I feel a lot more moody and kind of sad, too. I keep finding myself cheating on that $100 limit too by buying stuff online.
Cindy’s not just trying one new routine in her life. She’s breaking a big pile of them and trying to establish some new ones at the same time.
She’s breaking the “girl’s night out” pattern. She’s breaking her television watching pattern, which is a several-night-a-week pattern. She’s breaking her clothes shopping pattern. She seems to be flailing with this free time and is somewhat settling on a new pattern of more online usage. She’s also seemingly adopting a new social pattern with her circle of friends, one that she’s not quite as happy with.
That’s a lot of change, any way you slice it.
I’ve found that, time and time again, when you take on a ton of changes in your life all at once, it’s very hard and there’s a huge tendency to backslide. Yes, some stubborn people can make it through a lot of changes at once, but most of us can’t – it’s very, very difficult.
So, what’s the solution?
The solution is to take stock of all of the real changes going on in your life and choose just one or two of them to focus on. Instead of sticking so fiercely to the simple “$100 a month” strategy, Cindy might want to simply live without cable for a while without altering her other routines in life. Yes, I’m advocating that she go back to “girl’s night out” every week.
Why do this? Her one change – cutting the cable – will save her money. But it’s a pretty significant alteration to her routine, one that she has to get used to and one where she’s going to need to find replacement activities that she’s comfortable with. That alone is a major change to deal with and she should give it time until that change is routine and normal.
Give it a month, Cindy, until coming home to a house without cable television feels normal. Find other things to do on those evenings where you might have watched some cable program. Try out a new community group. Visit the library and pick up a book or two. Invite the ladies over for a “girl’s poker night.” Find things that you really enjoy that don’t cost money to replace the gaps that cable has left in your life.
Once it’s all established and you’ve found a new normal, you’re sitting on a new normal with $50 less spent each month. Now, move onto another piece of the puzzle. Maybe the next thing to try is giving up clothes shopping – or at least altering it by hitting consignment shops and secondhand shops instead. Dive into that change – this one will probably be easier.
Sometimes, you’ll find a smaller change that is really hard to break because the activity you’re modifying brings you a lot of personal joy. Guess what? You shouldn’t break it. Likely, that thing is something that’s a big part of one of your true core values in life, and those are the things we work to preserve in life. Instead, move on and look for other ways to save and to change.
The moral of the story is simple: if a change is just too big for you to swallow all at once, break it down into smaller changes and work through those changes one at a time.
If you’re finding it difficult to meet a spending goal, look at all of the different things you’re spending money on and focus on the areas you can cut, one at a time.
If you’re finding it difficult to meet a diet goal, focus on one specific dietary change until it seems normal, then move on to another one.
If you’re finding it difficult to meet a personal growth goal, tackle a specific element of that growth (or focus on finding the space you need to tackle it).
It’s just like my two year old daughter with a bowl full of grapes. If you try to stuff too many things in your mouth at once, it becomes difficult to chew them and digest them. You’re far better off with one grape at a time.
Continue reading Simple Changes Aren’t Always Simple …
From The Simple Dollar.
How To Find Affordable Produce – Home Canning
by Tracy Falbe
Preserving your own food with home canning techniques is no longer the dying art of grandmothers and church ladies. Younger people and families are reviving home canning, but you need fresh food in bulk in order to preserve it.
So, how do you get the produce without spending too much?
Growing the food yourself is the obvious, but not only answer. Home gardeners have been canning their fruits and vegetables for generations. Planting a garden and putting in some fruit trees are definitely rewarding. You will get the freshest and most convenient produce this way, but you probably can’t grow everything you want. Time and space limitations often restrict your ability to produce in quantity as well, but you do have options.
Farmers’ markets are expanding all over the country and they offer you a great way to buy fruits, vegetables and other produce. Check your local daily or weekly newspapers for ads and articles about farmers’ markets in your area. The markets are often located in downtowns, so check with your chamber of commerce or downtown business associations for information about farmers’ markets. The website www.localharvest.org has a searchable database of farmers throughout the United States that may be helpful as a starting point too.
You will likely find that you have more than one market in your area through the summer. While you’re at the market, you will be able to meet growers of the types of food in which you’re most interested. Growers often open their farms to the public, and you can find out if you can connect with them directly outside the market venue. They often have bulk deals at the farms. At the market, expect to pay retail prices. Sometimes the prices are better than the supermarket, but you will still be at the retail level.
You-pick or U-pick farms are also widespread. These operations are popular for berries and fruits. You can find them through ads in local publications and signs on the side of the road. Sometimes your vendors at the farmers’ market have u-pick operations too, so be sure to ask. You can get a great price on produce at the u-pick farms because you are supplying the labor and transportation.
I just paid $1.50 a quart for strawberries by picking them myself. The work was a little dirty but otherwise a fairly pleasant activity. It actually felt nice to be out there with other people harvesting food.
People have been doing this since we were wearing fig leaves, and the experience had a natural and serene quality. If I had to do it all day, the work would have been backbreaking, but it’s a nice outing for an hour to get food for your family at a great price. You will certainly gain a deep empathy with the underpaid people who have to put in long days harvesting the food sold at the supermarket.
Another emerging way to find produce is www.craigslist.org. If your community has an active Craigslist be sure to frequently scan the ads in the farm and garden category. This will alert you to deals on local produce, markets, and u-pick farms.
Road side stands usually have decent prices as well. The produce tends to be very fresh because the stands are often right next to the fields.
You can reasonably expect to find good prices on fresh produce during peak seasons. With a little effort you can find the best growers and obtain quality food for home canning.
When I picked strawberries the other day, I paid $12 for 8 quarts. This would have easily cost $24 at the market, so I gained a 50 percent discount with under 1 hour of labor. With that 8 quarts of super fresh strawberries, I put up 18 half pints of jam, made a strawberry crisp dessert, and froze about a quart of whole strawberries to use in a pie later. I put in a big day of work, but all that jam will last my family for months and taste better than anything I can buy.
This is the basic recipe for Canning Strawberry Jam:
- 5 cups strawberries
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 1 package fruit pectin powder
- 7 cups sugar
Fill and heat a water bath canning kettle. Bring the water almost to boiling, at least 180 degrees F and sterilize 8 to 10 half pint canning jars and new lids in the hot water. Set them aside on a clean cloth.
Then in a big sauce pan, add the strawberries and lemon juice. Crush the strawberries with a potato masher while heating to a boil. Once you have a nice berry mash, thoroughly stir in the pectin. Bring this to a hard boil that cannot be stirred down. Then stir in the appalling amount of sugar. Keep stirring until you reach that hard rolling boil again. Maintain the boiling for 1 full minute and then shut off the heat.
I usually let the jam cool for 5 to 10 minutes and stir it a couple times. Turn the heat back on for your water bath and start filling your jars to within 1/4 inch of the top. Wipe clean the jar edges and put on the lids and bands. Once the water bath is boiling, lower the jars into the water bath and process them for 10 minutes. (If you’re at elevations about 1,000 feet, you may need to process longer. Look for directions specific to your area.)
Remove the jars from the water bath and set them on a counter to cool for 12 to 24 hours. Do not disturb them. You will likely hear the lids pop shut within minutes of taking them out of the water.
You can get many jam and jelly recipes like this one out of the box of fruit pectin. For complete information about home canning and more recipes, please visit and bookmark my website Canning Local http://canning.falbepublishing.com
Continue reading How To Find Affordable Produce – Home Canning …
From Hillbilly Housewife Blog.
Make foods with peel appeal
When prepping fruits and vegetables, do you throw a lot away? Often, we toss out potato, apple and orange peels. Or maybe you don’t use the entire broccoli and only eat the florets. These can be eaten. Think: Potato skins, applesauce and candied orange peels. And broccoli stalks? You can peel the woody stem with a vegetable peeler. Chop and use in stir-frys, casseroles, as a pizza topping, or in soup or casseroles. Or grate it and add it to meatloaf. The first reader tip has a few more ideas.
WASTE LESS:
Use more of the fresh foods you have. Use the fat on the steak as the oil to fry it, use broccoli stems/leaves, radish leaves (odd, they’re “fuzzy”), lettuce and cabbage cores, carrot greens, leaf lettuce and asparagus bases, etc. This takes a little research and care, as you don’t want to eat rhubarb leaves (poisonous) or potato peels with green (also not good for you), etc. There are plants that you can plant in which you use all of it: Chives and beets are the two most obvious. What about parsley stems? They taste like parsley and are edible, but they aren’t as pretty as the leaves. I grow root parsley, and it reseeds itself every year. There’s a lot of food that probably winds up in your trash that you might be able to use! — Judi, New Hampshire
SOFTEN BROWN SUGAR:
Put it inside Tupperware. Get the lid a little wet and put it away for a day. Sometimes this has to be done more then once, but it works like a charm. I do no not keep mine in Tupperware, but I do the same thing. Mine is in a jar that has a plastic liner on the lid, and I just get that wet. No muss, no fuss, the brown sugar is back to where it should be. — Pat C., e-mail
PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY ROUNDS:
I was in Wal-Mart awhile back, and the kids asked me to buy them the Smuckers PBJ rounds in the freezer section. So I did. I was really disappointed. They were OK for the big kids (a bit indulgent for the price) and too thick to eat for the little kids. So I decided to duplicate it my way. I guess you could just cut them and put them in freezer bags, but years ago, I got a Pampered Chef cut-and-seal. They still have them. They run about $9, and I have used mine enough to pay for itself.
What you need:
– Peanut butter
– Jelly
– A good, fresh loaf of bread
– Sandwich bags
– Ice cream tub
Make all the sandwiches; I cut each one with my cutter. Place them each in a sandwich bag. I put them in the ice cream tub. Place in freezer. The ice cream bucket keeps them fresh. When you want a few, take them out to thaw. Throw them in a lunch box. They are really handy and very neat. The kids all love them. I make them in big batches. I don’t mind because I’m saving money and can make them healthy (wheat bread). I bet you could do just about any sandwich. In my busy life, anything quick, easy, healthy and already done is up my alley. — Louise, Georgia
photo by mac morrison
Continue reading Make foods with peel appeal …
From Frugal Village.
Make foods with peel appeal
When prepping fruits and vegetables, do you throw a lot away? Often, we toss out potato, apple and orange peels. Or maybe you don’t use the entire broccoli and only eat the florets. These can be eaten. Think: Potato skins, applesauce and candied orange peels. And broccoli stalks? You can peel the woody stem with a vegetable peeler. Chop and use in stir-frys, casseroles, as a pizza topping, or in soup or casseroles. Or grate it and add it to meatloaf. The first reader tip has a few more ideas.
WASTE LESS:
Use more of the fresh foods you have. Use the fat on the steak as the oil to fry it, use broccoli stems/leaves, radish leaves (odd, they’re “fuzzy”), lettuce and cabbage cores, carrot greens, leaf lettuce and asparagus bases, etc. This takes a little research and care, as you don’t want to eat rhubarb leaves (poisonous) or potato peels with green (also not good for you), etc. There are plants that you can plant in which you use all of it: Chives and beets are the two most obvious. What about parsley stems? They taste like parsley and are edible, but they aren’t as pretty as the leaves. I grow root parsley, and it reseeds itself every year. There’s a lot of food that probably winds up in your trash that you might be able to use! — Judi, New Hampshire
SOFTEN BROWN SUGAR:
Put it inside Tupperware. Get the lid a little wet and put it away for a day. Sometimes this has to be done more then once, but it works like a charm. I do no not keep mine in Tupperware, but I do the same thing. Mine is in a jar that has a plastic liner on the lid, and I just get that wet. No muss, no fuss, the brown sugar is back to where it should be. — Pat C., e-mail
PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY ROUNDS:
I was in Wal-Mart awhile back, and the kids asked me to buy them the Smuckers PBJ rounds in the freezer section. So I did. I was really disappointed. They were OK for the big kids (a bit indulgent for the price) and too thick to eat for the little kids. So I decided to duplicate it my way. I guess you could just cut them and put them in freezer bags, but years ago, I got a Pampered Chef cut-and-seal. They still have them. They run about $9, and I have used mine enough to pay for itself.
What you need:
– Peanut butter
– Jelly
– A good, fresh loaf of bread
– Sandwich bags
– Ice cream tub
Make all the sandwiches; I cut each one with my cutter. Place them each in a sandwich bag. I put them in the ice cream tub. Place in freezer. The ice cream bucket keeps them fresh. When you want a few, take them out to thaw. Throw them in a lunch box. They are really handy and very neat. The kids all love them. I make them in big batches. I don’t mind because I’m saving money and can make them healthy (wheat bread). I bet you could do just about any sandwich. In my busy life, anything quick, easy, healthy and already done is up my alley. — Louise, Georgia
photo by mac morrison
Continue reading Make foods with peel appeal …
From Frugal Village.
Make foods with peel appeal
When prepping fruits and vegetables, do you throw a lot away? Often, we toss out potato, apple and orange peels. Or maybe you don’t use the entire broccoli and only eat the florets. These can be eaten. Think: Potato skins, applesauce and candied orange peels. And broccoli stalks? You can peel the woody stem with a vegetable peeler. Chop and use in stir-frys, casseroles, as a pizza topping, or in soup or casseroles. Or grate it and add it to meatloaf. The first reader tip has a few more ideas.
WASTE LESS:
Use more of the fresh foods you have. Use the fat on the steak as the oil to fry it, use broccoli stems/leaves, radish leaves (odd, they’re “fuzzy”), lettuce and cabbage cores, carrot greens, leaf lettuce and asparagus bases, etc. This takes a little research and care, as you don’t want to eat rhubarb leaves (poisonous) or potato peels with green (also not good for you), etc. There are plants that you can plant in which you use all of it: Chives and beets are the two most obvious. What about parsley stems? They taste like parsley and are edible, but they aren’t as pretty as the leaves. I grow root parsley, and it reseeds itself every year. There’s a lot of food that probably winds up in your trash that you might be able to use! — Judi, New Hampshire
SOFTEN BROWN SUGAR:
Put it inside Tupperware. Get the lid a little wet and put it away for a day. Sometimes this has to be done more then once, but it works like a charm. I do no not keep mine in Tupperware, but I do the same thing. Mine is in a jar that has a plastic liner on the lid, and I just get that wet. No muss, no fuss, the brown sugar is back to where it should be. — Pat C., e-mail
PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY ROUNDS:
I was in Wal-Mart awhile back, and the kids asked me to buy them the Smuckers PBJ rounds in the freezer section. So I did. I was really disappointed. They were OK for the big kids (a bit indulgent for the price) and too thick to eat for the little kids. So I decided to duplicate it my way. I guess you could just cut them and put them in freezer bags, but years ago, I got a Pampered Chef cut-and-seal. They still have them. They run about $9, and I have used mine enough to pay for itself.
What you need:
– Peanut butter
– Jelly
– A good, fresh loaf of bread
– Sandwich bags
– Ice cream tub
Make all the sandwiches; I cut each one with my cutter. Place them each in a sandwich bag. I put them in the ice cream tub. Place in freezer. The ice cream bucket keeps them fresh. When you want a few, take them out to thaw. Throw them in a lunch box. They are really handy and very neat. The kids all love them. I make them in big batches. I don’t mind because I’m saving money and can make them healthy (wheat bread). I bet you could do just about any sandwich. In my busy life, anything quick, easy, healthy and already done is up my alley. — Louise, Georgia
photo by mac morrison
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From Frugal Village.