5 Ways We’ve Saved Money This Week #171

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Well, it’s happened.

I’ve become a little obsessed with homemade foods.

The thing is, a lot of these foods are waaay easier than you’d think to put together!

On the weekends, I might take an extra hour or two to put together some goodies. And then throughout the week, it’s just a few extra minutes of work here and there.

And it’s saved us an incredible amount of money!

The 5 Ways We’ve Saved Money This Week

Sorry if this one gets a little long winded! It’s hard to explain some of what I’ve been doing, but if you want the details, you’ll like this post. 😉

If you like details, don’t forget to grab a copy of the 500 Ways To Save Money ebook!

Apples, Apples, Apples

We went to our local apple orchard, where pick your own 1/2 bushel bags were $20 each.

By my calculations, that amounts to around $1 per pound for delicious, fresh apples.

So I brought home like 70 pounds of them!

Dropping $70 isn’t the most frugal thing ever, but I processed most of them to save for later.

Which means cheap apples throughout the winter!

I canned apple sauce, apple pie filling, apple jam, apple jelly (using the leftover cores and peels from the apples I’d cut up), canned apples in light syrup (for whatever recipe I want).

Also, I ended up dehydrating a bunch of apple rings and homemade fruit roll ups. (Those were a hit!)

Use It Up

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote up a post on the two biggest things I’m focusing on right now.

By simply refusing to waste food and shopping at the thrift store as much as possible, I’ve saved us hundreds of dollars in the past couple of months alone.

(Here’s the post if you want more details on that.)

In the past couple of weeks, here are some extra things I’ve done.

Now, these things are a little time consuming, and you’ll probably think it’s way too much to keep up with. And that might be true for your season in life!

But I’m finding that for me, these things are much easier for me to keep up with as opposed to constantly grocery shopping.

Sourdough

I’ve started my own sourdough starter.

It can be tricky to get started! There’s way too much conflicting information out there.

If you decide to give it a try yourself, here are the things that made all the difference for me:

• use a scale like this so you can be sure you are getting 100 grams each of your starter, flour, and water (measuring cups just don’t give you proper amounts, no matter who tells you to use a cup of each)
• use unbleached white flour (bleached will kill your good yeast)
• make sure your water has no chlorine (I had to buy bottled water, but it was only $1.49 per gallon, which will last a good time)
• if it’s not taking off, sub out some of your white flour for wheat or rye flour (I ground up some wheat berries I found at a local Amish shop in my blender)

It seems intimidating when you get started, but after a little effort, you’ll have delicious sourdough goods whenever you want them! It’s healthier for you and costs less than buying yeast all the time.

Yogurt

I made my own yogurt using a gallon of milk and one little tub of plain Fage yogurt. (In this photo is some of my yogurt topped with homemade peach preserves and easy homemade honey granola.)

This video is exactly what I did. (Incidentally, I found this video while looking for a better way to make my sourdough starter. Once you have this yogurt, you can try her easier way to start your sourdough method if you want to.)

It really does make 4 quart jars of delicious yogurt…just be warned that it took me more like an hour to get the yogurt heated up and then cooled down to the proper temperatures.

Which was worth it to have so much yummy, healthy yogurt.

Dairy Products

So after doing these things, I had the bug. I wanted more easy homemade stuff!

Making your own version of things is so much easier than you think.

I ended up grabbing some heavy whipping cream to keep on hand, because you can make a bunch of stuff with it.

You’re right…heavy cream is expensive! I found the best deal at Sam’s Club, but even that was over $4 for 32 ounces.

Then again, the price of all dairy products is sky high. AND that heavy cream stays good for a long time! They have an expiration date that’s two months away. Which gives me plenty of time to use it up.

I’m reaching a point where I don’t necessarily need my homemade recipes to cost less than the store bought. Not because I’m rich (ha!) and not even because homemade is better than store bought.

But because by having the right ingredients on hand, I can make the things my family needs (and wants) to eat without running to the store when we run out.

AND also because most of these ingredients will make a bunch of different things!

So when I buy heavy cream to make coffee creamer, but then decide the homemade coffee creamer is not gonna work out, that’s ok. Cream isn’t a special ingredient that’s going to go to waste.

I’ll just use it to make one of a hundred other things instead!

About that make your own coffee creamer… to be honest I wasn’t a fan.

It didn’t taste great, and the cream curdled too quickly.

I’m sure part of it is that I didn’t follow the best recipe or that I messed it up myself. But most of these creamers only stay good for a week…there’s no way I could drink an entire recipe by myself before it goes bad.

So now I’m considering options. I’m leaning strongly towards making some flavored simple syrups that stay good for a long time right on your counter.

Beans

I’ve got a ton of dried beans on hand, but I always forget to make the darned things.

It’s the whole “soaking the night before” thing that throws me.

But now I’m trying to think ahead more often. And I’m so glad I did.

I made a big batch of pinto beans, and we had bean and rice bowls for supper.

The next day, I just mashed them into refried beans and everyone made a bean burrito for lunch.

You wouldn’t believe how much my kids loved those refried beans (this recipe was a hit)! And they’re so handy to keep in the fridge for hungry teens.

Those are the 5 frugal ways we saved money this week!

Remember that I’m trying to give you loads of ideas that you may or may not be able to use in your own home. So don’t feel overwhelmed or like a failure, ever!

Just pick one or two things that work for YOU to try out and see how it goes.