I've made a concerted effort over the 6 Months to lower my family's food budget, while expanding our food storage, or stockpile. It's difficult to accomplish both of these goals simultaneously, but I've developed some tips that have worked for us, and wanted to share them with you.
Use coupons. Stockpiling and couponing go hand in hand! Visit http://www.stockpilingmoms.com
http://www.southernsavers.com/learn/and The Coupon Wizards and read up about sale cycles to see what I mean. They cover the subject quite well, and taught me how to use coupons in an effective way (not an extreme way).
Buy a stand alone freezer. My preference is a standing freezer. We got ours at a garage sale & it’s been running perfectly for 6 years now (knock on wood) in our garage. I wouldn’t have been able to build our food storage properly without it. We can buy on sale & store it in the freezer. Even a chest freezer would be helpful, and they’re frequently found second hand. Ours has been such a worthwhile investment, and by having it, we've saved at least double what we paid for it.
Learn what can be frozen & what can’t. Knowing that will determine how much of some items you should buy. Extending the expiration date by freezing items until you need them helps you stock up & it helps you be able to buy more when on sale. Saving money while building your food stores... perfect! I found great resources on freezable foods & I've found it very helpful.
I have learned to can and preserve our foods for long term storage. Along, with vacuum sealing and dehydrating.. Oh ,How I love these basic things ,in my life so much help
Eat what you have, not what you want. I know, this sounds harsh, but hear me out. I try my best to use what’s in my fridge, freezer & pantry to prepare meals. Stopping at the store for a missing ingredient is not an effective use of time or money. Buy things on sale, buy several to stock up, then don’t buy it again until it goes on sale again! If we run out of shrimp, I might say “I sure wish we had some shrimp, that sounds yummy.” But, we don’t go buy it. Because then I add “I sure hope it goes on sale again soon!” And when it does, I’m likely to buy more than last time since we ran out! It requires shifting your mindset a bit, but it's paid off for us.
Have enough options in your own home, so that if you run out of something, you don’t have to buy it right away! For example- we still eat ‘healthy’ breakfast cereal in our house. (And Rice Krispies, cuz I just couldn't pass up a recent deal!) Now, I'll admit- I’m learning more & more that there is no healthy breakfast cereal. And I’m coming to grips with that & slowly preparing my children for this harsh reality. But for now, we still eat it. And that stuff is expensive! We buy lots of it when it’s on sale & have a coupon to go with it. If we run out, we don’t go buy more cereal. It just happened last month. We were without cereal for 4 weeks. We used the oatmeal that I had gotten on sale & stocked up on. We had peanut butter & jelly sandwiches since we had bought peanut butter & bread on sale & stocked up. We would have had eggs but one of my three kiddos loathes eggs. Anyway, we made it through without buying more cereal. When it did go on sale last week, we stocked up again & the kids were extra excited to have it back.
Think outside the box. I used to be a by-the-book cook. If a recipe called for milk, I made it with milk. If I didn’t have milk, I didn’t make the recipe! Now, I have learned that I could use half & half, or heavy cream if I have it. Sometimes even sour cream will work. Not only does this cut down on store trips, it cuts down on buying things that aren’t on sale, and allows me to cook a wider variety of recipes! That's just one example. If you think outside the box & be a little creative, you can prepare a meal with what you have, just by adapting the recipe a bit.
If one store typically has an item you use at a good price, buy it there EVERY time you go in. We have one warehouse store that has organic sugar at a decent price in a large bag. We’ve tried finding it in bulk, and it’s not available locally. We’ve shopped around for prices & when we saw this store’s price we knew it was great. So we buy a bag of sugar every time we go in to that store, whether we ‘need’ sugar or not. Each store might have an item like this. Our grocery store brand egg noodles are a favorite for us. Not a name brand, the store brand. So each time we go to the grocery store we buy a bag. These examples don’t really go on sale, never have coupons, we always use them, and we know we’re getting the best price at that store. So, we keep those items in mind as we shop & slowly build our pantry by purchasing them as a habit.
Repackage some items. Now, this doesn’t make sense for everything. For some foods & pantry staples you’re going to need to have the expiration date for reference. Many of my pantry items are in their original packaging for this reason. It also helps if, God forbid, there were a recall & I needed to find the batch number. But there are some things that we eat often enough, or have so much of, that it makes more sense to repackage. Cereal is like that in our home. We saved old organic brown rice containers with screw on lids and we transfer the cereal into them. It saves space, keeps the cereal fresher, and makes it easier to pour. I have many pretzel barrels with screw on lids saved for this as well. We store rice in those, and I'm about to pour my bags of sugar & flour into them as well. You could also purchase food grade buckets. I'm trying to spend as little as possible, so I'm using what I have.
Chop your meat for meals while it’s frozen. No, not solid, obviously, but still mostly frozen. It’s much easier to get a small dice on chicken, and it slices cleaner & straighter. I’ve done this for over a year, and now refuse to do it any other way. I can cut a boneless skinless chicken breast into pieces so small, that I can use 3 small breasts to feed 5 people, and everyone feels like they got enough. I know that it’s still the same amount of chicken, and it’s all in their head… But they’re more satisfied with their meal when they have 12 smaller bites of chicken served to them, instead of 4 larger bites. I think it would work for beef as well when making stew, or soups. I’ve stretched our meat & saved a lot of money with this simple trick.
We’ve expanded our pantry using these tips & freed up money in our budget to add to our food storage. I’m always looking for more ways to improve & I’d love to hear your tried & true tricks! What would you add to this list? Please share your ideas & leave a comment!
Water Kefir
It's a healthy, delicious, fizzy drink. Full of probiotics & enzymes. It's also frugal & simple! I have 2 half gallon jars going at all times, so I got into the habit of making it daily, and we were able to stop buying soda for a while. I'm not able to do it daily now that the weather is cooling off. The grains seem to like it a little warm, and work slower when it's cooler. My children don't drink soda, but my husband & I are trying to break our soda habit. We like water kefir because not only does it help us break free from that, it's also very healthy!
I thought you might like to see just how simple it is, so I'm going to take you through the process. Here you can see a half gallon canning jar with the water kefir grains in some sugar water. It's been sitting here for at least 24 hours. I received my grains from a friend, already hydrated. I've heard you can buy dehydrated grains via the internet. Apparently, if you go that route, it takes a time or two of going through this process to wake the little guys up. Mine was ready to go, as my friend sent them in sugar water, in 3 zip baggies, priority mail. So they weren't in there long, and nothing leaked. You can find sources for buying them online. Just do a quick search.
Basically, the water kefir grains live in sugar water, and eat the sugar. Then you strain them out, and use the liquid to make a fermented drink. You return the grains to more sugar water & repeat.
Water kefir grains do not like metal, so use all plastic utensils & tools for them! After some trial & error, I've found a few items that really help out. They make this simple process even quicker & easier! I had to purchase them through Amazon, as they were not available locally for me. I recently added an Amazon store to my blog, so I'll show which ones I use & link to them. At minimum, you need a plastic strainer, and something to catch the liquid & pour it into the jars. The half gallon jar and the strainer were the only things I purchased to start with, and I just used a bowl & small canning jars that I already had on hand. Then after a few weeks I got the canning jar funnel & a better bowl. The new items have helped a lot, but you can begin with just a plastic strainer & a glass jar!
Start with a half gallon canning jar, and put in 1/3 cup of sugar. I use organic sugar, but have read that any sort will work. Originally, I was using more than 1/3 cup of sugar (I used an amount I found on the internet) and my grains were sluggish, and my second ferment wasn't getting fizzy. I played around with it a bit & found through trial & error that I was using too much. I guess since these grains are alive, different grains need different amounts of sugar. So, just see what your grains like!
Put the sugar in, then add 2 bottles of water.
Water kefir grains do not like chlorine or fluoride. I have a PUR filter for now, and until I get a better water purification system, I think my grains are better off with bottled water, even though it's not completely free from either. It's not ideal, but it's better than my filtered water for now. So, I put in 2 bottles, then stir vigorously to dissolve all the sugar. You wouldn't want your grains getting beat up during that process!
After the sugar is dissolved, add your grains to the jar. The canning funnel is helpful in several steps, but THIS is the step I actually bought it for! So helpful. And I should have had this handy gadget on hand anyway. You probably already do!
Next, add some of the third bottle of water. Not all of it though, as you want some headspace in here. If you're not using bottled water, follow the same process, just fill the jar a little more than half-way after putting the sugar in, stir till dissolved, put the grains in, then add more water.
Now the grains are ready to eat most of the sugar from the water. Let them sit on the counter for a day or two. After a while, you'll see the grains zooming up to the top, and floating back down to the bottom. There are different schools of thought on tightening the lid. I think it depends on your grains. Experiment & see how they respond. Mine seem to like it tightened in the very beginning, but then loosened after a couple hours. A friend swears that hers only do well with the lid completely tightened throughout. Mine zing around the jar more when it's looser, so I think they like it that way! In the summer, mine are ready for the next step after 24 hours. Now that it's getting cooler, it's more like 48 hours. I haven't had my grains through a winter yet, but I expect them to slow down even more.
The jar on the right has been resting on the counter for a day or two & is ready to go through fermentation. The one on the left is about to sit for a day or two. It contains fresh sugar water & the grains haven't eaten the sugar yet.You can see how the water is clearer in the jar that's been sitting for 24 to 48 hours. The water kefir grains have eaten most of the sugars! You can see a few of the grains have risen to the top, but I wasn't able to capture their movement on my camera.
A note about my nifty red bowl: I tried several different kitchen items (bowls & measuring containers) around my house before finally purchasing my Pourfect bowls. I don't often spend a lot of money on kitchen items that do something simple. But since this became a daily thing for me, and my husband kept urging me to get them, I finally did. I really wish I hadn't waited so long, and he teases me daily about it, ha ha! I rarely give glowing reviews for kitchen items, or urge friends to purchase them. They're usually just not THAT big of a deal, and I like to be frugal about such things & encourage others to be as well. But these things are the bomb. They really do NOT drip, they have a non-slip ring on the bottom, and measuring marks along the inside. Since buying them, I use them several times every day! You don't hold the handle, you put your entire hand under it (see pouring pic below). Because you're using your arm, not your wrist, you have so much more control over holding the bowl and it saves your wrist from the weight & strain. Didn't sound like a big deal to me, but wow, is it ever! (Disclaimer: I signed up with Amazon as an associate, and I put this item in my store. So, yes, I suppose I could benefit from recommending it. But, I recommended it to people before signing up, and would honestly be recommending it even if I couldn't benefit).
So back to the project at hand... Set up the strainer over the bowl & pour out the contents of the jar.
Rinse the grains under purified cool water, and set them aside for now.
To the liquid in the bowl, add some fruit juice. We use coupons to build our food storage, and have gotten some great deals on non-organic 100% juice. So, we're using several flavors & brands of store-bought juice. I guess it makes my water kefir a little less healthy, but my budget currently requires it. Hey, I'm just keepin' it real! I have previsouly used fresh fruit juice, and I'm sure I will do that again someday. Do either, or both! Lemon juice alone is very good & creates a fizzy lemonade type drink. The kefir liquid you're using will impart a slightly sweet flavor to the end product, but it's not nearly as sweet as the sugar water that the grains started in. To the slightly-less-than a half gallon of liquid, I'd estimate that I add about a cup & a half of juice. You can add more, or less. The higher the sugar content (which is determined either by increasing the amount of fruit juice, or by using a sweeter fruit rather than acidic) the fizzier it seems to get.
Now pour it into very clean, airtight containers. We use various sized canning jars to ferment the water kefir during the second stage. They give a great seal, and they're a good serving size. Leave some headspace in the jars because they build up some carbonation while fermenting. These smaller jars are filled a little too much, since I was distracted with the camera.
Seal the containers, and set them aside for 24 to 48 hours. I can tell mine are ready because I'm not able to press down on the canning lid easily & hear it pop. In other words- you can tell it's building up pressure from the fermentation. I can also see tiny bubbles around the top of the liquid inside the jars. At that point, I put them in the fridge & they're ready to go.
I'll be honest, I was intimidated by the whole process when I first heard about it. But trust me, it's so simple. I spent an afternoon searching Youtube & watched all the top rated videos. I suggest you do that as well, it really gave me the confidence to jump in. A few of those videos recommend adding raisins or lemon peel to the first step. It's up to you if you'd like to try that. Since I'm in a climate that stays hot & humid for about 8 months out of the year, I thought it best to avoid any issues so I decided to keep it simple.
Are you thinking of trying it? I encourage you to go for it! Have you already tried water kefir yourself? What health benefits have you noticed? Please comment & share any tips that have worked for you!
