Making Your Own

Kimball Museum (a "like to do")

When I retired a few months back, I thought, "I'm going to have all this time to do more of the things I like to do!" One of my biggest concerns was turning into a couch potato like I see many retirees do.

I hate to admit it. The past few months, I have been a sloth. At first, I was constantly stressing over the thinking I needed to be doing something because I was always busy before retiring. Not to say I didn't have things I could do--it was the absence of things I HAD to do. Then I went through a phase where I didn't feel like doing anything. Even things I liked to do. And then, finally, I got bored. I have finally started getting back to myself. I think I am over whatever was going on in my head. 

Getting back to the true point of this post....I have always made most food from scratch. When the kids were small, it was mainly because (1) it was healthier for them, and (2) it's usually cheaper. And for most of my life, pinching pennies was the norm. But, I admit, working full-time and going to school at the same time sometimes made me really want to use the prepackaged stuff.

I have tried to find premade meals I like. Mostly because I am cooking for one most of the time. I have tried dozens of frozen and packaged things in recent months. For the most part, I haven't liked any of them, although a few are somewhat edible. If you are desperate. And then you look at the label--salt and sugar. Very little nutrition and a lot of calories.

I have been craving minestrone soup for days and finally decided to make it. Yes, I could have gone to the store and bought a can. After all, a can of Campbell's minestrone soup is only $1.79 at United Supermarkets (and even less expensive at some other stores). That $1.79 gets you 2.5, 1/2 cup servings. Does anyone actually eat a 1/2 cup of soup? If I go by the label, there is about 1.25 cups of soup in the can, which is still pretty stingy for a meal.  Looking at the label, that 1/2 cup serving has 28% of the recommended daily amount of sodium. If I eat the whole can (which I would), I am nearly to 75% of my recommended sodium intake for the day. So we can say $1.79 for a meal, which is cheap.

I find most canned soups are edible, but not anything I truly want to eat. They usually have a metallic aftertaste and not much else. I admit I haven't tried the minestrone. But let's consider cost alone. I was lazy, so I did use a couple of ready made ingredients--one Swanson's chicken stock and a can of generic kidney beans. All of the other ingredients were things I had on hand--some tomatoes from the garden, veggies (corn, celery, onions, carrots, zucchini, potatoes, spinach and broccoli--unfortunately, I didn't have any cabbage), some barley, pasta, and spices (oregano, garlic, pepper, basil, rosemary, and parsley--no need to add any salt). So, the only things I paid any significant money for was the broth and the beans (both of which could be done cheaper with a bigger time investment.) And, of course you add water. Together, less than $5. Although a lot of veggies are listed, the amount of each one is small--anywhere from a tablespoon to 1/2 cup each. Since I had the tomatoes already, maybe $2 for all the veggies and that is an overestimate in my opinion.

It did take me about 30 minutes to cook the soup, but I have had six bowls of soup over the past few days. Any my bowls tend to be in the 2 cup range. The soup was thick and hearty. Although I estimate the pot of soup cost me $7, let's use $10. That would be $1/cup. The Campbell's soup was $1.43/cup. It also had less nutrition and more sodium.

Yes, it cost me about 45 min total to chop up veggies and cook the soup versus probably 5 min for Campbell's, but I also didn't have to cook several meals, so I think it probably evens out in the end.

We all need to make choices about our time, budget, and health. I encourage you to learn to cook from scratch and do it as you can. I think you'll find it worthwhile.

Leftovers!

Cooking up homemade chicken soup from leftovers

I love leftovers. With the holidays, most of us have LOTS of leftovers. The problem is using them up before you have to throw them out because they have spoiled. 

I do know some people who rarely, if ever, eat leftovers, and that's a shame. It reduces waste--both of food and of money. With the cost of groceries, getting more meals out of the food you buy just makes sense. From a sustainability point of view, less food waste is a great thing.

Some of the issue is--who wants to eat the same thing over and over? I don't. That's why learning to repurpose leftovers can make it seem like you're not really eating leftovers. Instead, you have an all-new meal.

Here's an example. We usually have ham for Christmas dinner. This year, we celebrated Christmas a little early because some members of my family were going on a trip over the holiday. After the meal, I took home way too much ham, potato casserole (basically mashed potatoes with mashed carrots and cheese mixed in), and some veggies. The potato casserole turned into potato pancakes for breakfast and some was added to soups for more flavor. The potatoes could have been turned into a delicious potato soup all on their own, but I love potato pancakes for breakfast.  More of the ham went into a breakfast casserole that my husband and I had for dinner a couple of days later. More ham went into an omelet one morning for my breakfast, and more went into a dinner of pinto beans with fried potatoes and corn bread (my husband's favorite dinner), and on New Year's Day, black-eyed peas. Believe it or not, I still have a few slices of ham to do something with this weekend--fortunately, ham lasts a long time. You pretty much have to forget about it for weeks before it goes bad.

I keep leftover chicken and turkey in the freezer for soup and casseroles. You can see in the picture above, I raided the chicken to make chicken soup. (The picture isn't the best as I was using my cell phone and the soup was boiling--steam doesn't help create a clear picture). I always have onions, carrots, celery, and fresh spinach around for soup making. In addition to the leftover chicken, I had some leftover corn from dinner earlier in the week and had some fresh herbs in the crisper that I needed to get used up.  I also had a jar of potato water. I was planning to make potato bread, but got side-tracked, so put it in the soup for more nutrition and extra flavor. Then I threw in some orzo. 

I know a lot of people feel making your own soup is time consuming. But it really isn't, especially if you are using up leftovers, as a lot of things are already chopped up or cooked. It's just a matter of throwing it all in a pot and watching magic happen. As an added bonus, less sodium and more nutrients.

As a way to help the environment (and your budget) in 2025, consider finding ways to creatively use up your leftovers. If you have a favorite leftover recipe, please share in a comment.

Would You Like an Extra $1500 a Year?

Photo by Alexander Mils on Unsplash

Be honest here, who couldn't use an extra $1500 a year, other than the Bill Gates of the world? Well, in this case, I'm not talking about finding an extra $1500, but not throwing $1500 in the trash. It comes to the same thing in your budget. 

Did you know the average American family throws away 1/3 of all the food they buy? That could be the take out box from the restaurant you ate at last week or, more likely, the food that looked so yummy at the store that you didn't get around using before it spoiled or it went well past the "Use By" date. By the way, did you know you can safely use food past the  "Use By" date? Some times, well past. I do it all the time. Yes, if you pull a can from the back of your pantry with a Use By date of 2016 (which I did this week), you might be pushing it. I opened the can and the contents smelled OK, but looked disgusting, so I decided not to push my luck.

Besides being a waste of money, the food we toss took fossil fuel to transport and probably has added pesticides, which also contain fossil fuels. Wasting less food is not only good for our budgets, but for the environment.

I'm generally frugal, but I do waste more food than I should, so that is my focus for 2024--throw away no food. We probably won't hit the "no food," but I think "very little food" is doable.

This isn't intended to be a food blog, but I will probably talk about food a lot in 2024, because this is truly an excellent place to start in our quest to live more sustainable lives.

Once again today I made soup from leftovers for lunch. A few days ago I made mashed potato casserole (mashed potatoes and carrots with cheese added--kids and husbands will eat carrots this way and the carrots five the casserole a nice color). I was at the Farmer's Market and was thinking about lunch and remembered I still had some of that casserole in the frig, It was at the end of its edible life expectancy. Rather than throw it out, why not creamy potato soup? I sauteed some onions and celery, added the leftover casserole with some garlic and pepper and a little broth to heat it up, then a bit of cream at the end and voila! Soup! Not only did I have lunch today, but probably the next couple of days, unless I decide to freeze it. Altogether, I probably spent about $1 and easily have 3, maybe 4, meals.

What are some ways to spend less at the grocery or Farmer's Market?

• Don't go when you are hungry. Everything looks good when you're hungry.
• Plan ahead for your trip. I almost always buy more than what was on my list, but the list does keep me from cruising up and down the aisles, impulse buying.
• Buy less. This is difficult for me. Growing up, my Depression era grandparents and (at that time) low-income parents stocked up when things were on sale so they had food on the shelf in case there was no money at some point in the future. I still do this--thus the 2016 can mentioned above. If you are good at rotating your stock, you're ok, but sometimes, I find something I missed. If you end up throwing that sale food away, it is still waste.
• Try not to make more than you will eat. This is a biggie for me. I was raised in the Midwest, and it is almost a capital offense not to make so much food that people leave feeling like a stuffed turkey. I still have a tendency to make more than my family will eat, but I am doing better.
• Use the leftovers. Either eat them as they are or make them into something else like soup or a casserole. I had potato water in the frig from making the mashed potatoes, intending to make potato bread (mmmm!), but I didn't get to it in time, so made potato yeast instead (a different way to make sourdough starter).
• If you have nonperishable food you are not going to use, give it to another family member, a neighbor, or take it to the Wichita Falls Area Food Bank. 
• If you have food trimmings or have to throw something away because it is not longer safe to eat, compost. I have a small compost bin under my sink and carry it out to the garden every couple of days. In this case, I am feeding my garden, so I'm not just throwing it in the landfill.
• If you have chickens or other small pets like rabbits or guinea pigs, some of your food trimmings can go to them. I have two dogs. They don't get much in the way of people food, since it isn't good for them, but they get an occasional small leftover treat in their meals.

It won't necessarily lead to less food waste in your kitchen, but some foods are much cheaper if someone else doesn't process it for you. Easy examples are beans and rice. If you buy them dry, they last years (especially if you vacuum seal them when you get home). Yes, you do have to cook them, but the little $1 bag of black-eyed peas I have will make the equivalent of 4 or 5 cans of canned black-eyed peas.

I'd enjoy learning about your ideas for reducing food waste!

Leftover Day

I hate to through food away. When I was growing up, the starving children in China would have been welcome to a lot of the stuff I had to eat, whether I wanted it or not. My parents probably didn't care that much about starving children, but we were not well off and food for four growing children was a big part of the budget. My parents were not going to throw food away; guilt was better than the alternative (which was to sit at the table until you ate what was on your plate or were dead.)

When my husband met me, I converted most leftovers into soup. I called it "garbage soup," which turned out to be a strategic error. He's not a big fan of soup anyway; he definitely wasn't going to eat anything with "garbage" in the title.

When the kids were growing up, we had a leftover night once a week. Any bits of things that weren't enough for a meal went onto the table, and we dined on the bits left over from meals throughout the past week. Today my husband and I are having a leftover day.

Americans waste way too much food. About 400 lbs of food per American is wasted. Not all of that actually gets to our homes for us to throw away, but that is a huge amount of food. However, American families could save $500 to $2000 on their grocery bills annually by turning this sad statistic around. I can use that much money--if for nothing else than to pay the additional amount food is costing. Have you noticed how much groceries are going up? The last few years have seen prices rise faster than usual. Although 2012 is supposed to be back in the normal range, some common foods will have significant increases. Here's the USDA on 2012 food prices.

So what can we do?

• Make a grocery list and stick to it
• Buy less--we tend to buy  more than we need
• Keep better inventory of what we have--I have been known to buy something I have on the shelf because I didn't see the item in the pantry. Sometimes I end up throwing the one in the pantry away because it is 3 years past the expiration date (yes, it has happened.)
• Use the leftovers
• Compost food waste, so it is a least going to some good and not into the landfill

Save money while doing good for the planet.

Reduce Food Waste

I throw away a lot of food (especially produce) and am trying to get better about it. I go to the store and think, "I'll make that this week!" and then don't do it.

Supposedly Americans was 14% of the food they purchase each year and throw out $600 in fruit alone. I don't think about how those mushy bananas add up, but they do.

I came across a good internet article on ideas to reduce/eliminate food waste. One they don't mention is "don't buy so much." I stop in the store a few times a week for various items and I am trying to take the European approach, at least on produce--only buy 1 or 2 days' at a time. I pass the store that often and so it's no great hardship to stop. The question will be whether the amount of produce I save offsets impulse purchases of other grocery items. We'll see.