Milk Savings

Saving money on milk
I have been saving money on milk for quite a while. When, I was younger and had young ones at home, milk gone sour was poured out or fed to an animal.

Drink sour milk
Now, I just use it up by putting Hershey's Quik in it and drinking it instead of another form of chocolate.

Make buttermilk
Since I make buttermilk by leaving perfectly good milk on the counter overnight with a little buttermilk in it for a starter, why not drink sour milk that I paid for? Make buttermilk on the counter!

Make buttermilk substitute
Normally, I use milk with lemon or vinegar in it when a recipe calls for buttermilk. The substitution of this "buttermilk" does not affect the baking a bit.

Freeze sour milk
If you don't want to drink sour milk and have no immediate use such as making buttermilk or a buttermilk substitute, freeze the sour milk until you need it. If your recipe where you need buttermilk calls for 1 cup buttermilk, freeze one cup of sour milk. When you need buttermilk, thaw the sour milk and add vinegar or lemon juice.

I bought milk on sale
Since I bought this milk marked down, I saved one dollar. Instead of a gallon of milk costing me $3.19, I paid $2.19. SCORE!






Out of date
Can you see the date? It is on the top line. The first "1" of "11" is only partially printed. The date is 01 10 11. I purchased this on 01 09 11. I decided to take a chance. Today is 01 20 11. My chance paid off. However, even if this started going off, souring, I would not have lost out on a deal. Just use it as buttermilk if you don't want to drink it with chocolate.

Date meaning
That is the 'sell-by' date. That is not the date by which it must be consumed. I am sure the idea of buying milk on sale is not suitable for most folk. I like milk on sale. According to several experts, milk should be good for five days and for seven days beyond the sell-by date. My jug of milk was not even opened until 01 14 11.

Promise
I could not taste any sour milk when I drank milk that soured and had chocolate from the cupboard stirred in.

Tonight
At 10:30 on January 20, 2011, I drank a glass from the jug in the picture. It still tasted as fresh as when new. You can see there is enough for two more days, maybe one day.

My pennies
Every dollar or penny I save is to my benefit. I refuse to spend just to spend. Well, I do have a pecadillo or two, but don't we all? I saved less than a dime on each glass of milk I drank, but that counts when I add up all my ways of saving, living frugally, being parsimonious.

Your turn
Did you ever drink sour milk with chocolate in it? Other than drinking it with flavor in it or using it for buttermilk or feeding it to animals, what else do you do with sour milk? Have you thrown milk out? I won't tell anyone. Promise. Chickens love milk or dairy products in any form!

Valentine Giveaway--more added

Floating Heart Candle
I just could not get a really good picture of this. No, I don't have great prizes to give away. All this is from years before. Nothing has been used. The candle is about two inches across.

You can enter here.

Stay tuned for more prizes I will put in the box.

Cooking to Relax--Cure for Stress

It seems that worry over children never ends. My daughter is having problems with severe nosebleeds and may need surgery. She ate too many of the pecans I sent her as she made dinner last night and suffered later in the night, frightening her daughter with her moaning. Her sixteen-year-old son is very ill with strep throat. AND, the nine-year-old daughter broke the growth plate in her leg, down near the ankle! Besides that, my daughter has been dealing with the huge snowstorms and the aftermath in NYC. She is a single mother.

So, how is a mother to relax? It is not easy. I just cook my way through the mental pain I feel. Actually, I cooked until I was in physical pain...back, knees, elbow. Don't ask me why the elbow hurt from cooking.

Three chicken breasts were baked on the stove top in an iron skillet with Italian dressing as their only seasoning. Two baked potatoes and eight sweet potatoes spent an hour in the oven, making the kitchen cozy. That was nice after the extreme cold for ten days. Well, it has not been frigid in there for two days, just cold. (baked potato for tomorrow)

Red cabbage looked, smelled, and tasted delicious. Green beans were from a can. Don't scold. I know there is bad stuff in the lining of the can! But, I can eat green beans raw. Honest, I will try to can some green beans this summer. I sliced a horrid tomato that was free. For some reason I opened a can of applesauce to go with all this.

Baked chicken
green beans
sweet potato
red cabbage (purple)
sliced tomato
applesauce

The plates of food were lovely. I won't have to cook for three days. It is not the cooking for 24 days at once, but it works. No salt was added to anything. The green beans were low sodium and the applesauce had absolutely no sweetener of any sort.

Today, exbf came and helped me with things my back will not allow me to do. He does not cook AT. ALL. So, he enjoyed dinner and took a Tupperware divided plate with a meal for work tomorrow. I also gave him more sweet potato, baked potato, and tomato for another day. LOL...I pay him in food.

After he left, I had to find something to fasten the commode handle to the chain, so I went to Lowe's. It turns out the wire I have will work and not rust. SAVED MONEY--used what I had. Then, the lure of potting soil or something to start seeds in forced  me back to the nursery. I am set. 

A smoothie ended my night--1/2 cup chopped strawberries, large banana, 1/4 cup blueberries, bit of orange juice. One one glass I had my fruit for the day. Well, I had orange juice this morning and apple at noon.

Don't you think an 8" x 8" pan of fudge  brownies with two cups of chopped walnuts is just the thing for me to bake now? I do.

The chickens are over here, snoring! I have clothes to fold and sheets to put on the bed.

Your turn
Do you ever cook just because you are stressed? Now, this was not a fattening meal at all, full of nutrients, all fresh except for the applesauce and green beans. Cooking is a nurturing act even when done for yourself. But, I wanted my daughter and her children to have this meal. No, I did not eat it all...lol. Do stressors ever cause you to cook?

LED Christmas Light Grow Box

Isn't this clever? He has the original post and at least one other update. This seems like something I would like to try. I have never had a grow box.

Rising Food Prices: A Solution

What will you do to keep your grocery bills stable? Or, maybe you have an unlimited income and can financially cope with the rise. Well, just don't read anything else in this post.

It's a fact. Food prices will rise. Prices are rising daily. This article will inform you. If interested, read here and here. Sure, the last article is from last November. You cannot say you were not informed. If you don't have a pile of cash somewhere to draw from, and you cannot make more money, or you just plain don't want to see your grocery bills rise more, now is the time to think about your grocery strategies. Even if you do have that pile of cash, why would you pay more if you don't have to.

How do you save?
Coupons work to lower the grocery bill. Not eating as much meat will help your finances. Shopping sales along with coupons, and eating less meat will help to lower costs. However, we all are going to have to further tighten our belts.

How?
I have bought food at extremely low prices to save in Ball jars on the shelf--oatmeal, rice, raisins. Now, none of this is meant to feed me for years. Some items will. I am not a prepper for religious or other reasons. But, when the price is right, I buy many packages of whatever food I find that I will eat.

What do you do with fresh produce or meat?  Neither will keep without some sort of processing. Can, freeze, dehydrate, pickle, smoke--all are good options. These are all methods for another post, here or elsewhere.

What are the benefits of processing food?
*you know what pesticides are used if you raise it or buy locally
*you can buy fresh food in bulk and at better prices
*you can take advantage of an unexpected sale or windfall of fresh food
*you will have food bought cheaply when prices are higher
*You will not have to travel farther than your storage to access food

My focus today is taking advantage of an excellent price. You may not be into freezing bananas on sale, but I will be talking each week about how I save money by preserving food for later use. Or, I may discuss the use of preserved food in my stock that I am using right now. Here we go--bananas. (You know I love bananas?)




manager's special--9 bananas

 

There are nine (9) bananas in the pack. I bought it on Saturday. It is Monday evening. I put these in storage tonight.

 Can you see the price?--$0.29/lb for 3.22 lbs!  I paid $0.93 for 9 bananas. Let's say I paid a dime apiece.

The usual price is $0.69/lb. I would have paid $2.22 for these 9 bananas. At that rate, I would pay $0.25 per banana rather $0.10 per banana. My savings--$1.53 for the package or $0.15 per banana!

Price of bananas

Even if you can purchase bananas for less than my full price, what would those lesser priced bananas cost if you purchased them on sale? This is not about who can buy bananas in their prime the cheapest. It's about how much money you can save by purchasing at the lowest price and freezing them.

Later use

I make smoothies. You might want to mash them and store in the amount your banana bread recipe calls for. I have done that. If you freeze them in a jar, make sure it is a freezer jar.

My method

I take peel and little strings off; break banana in half; wrap in waxed paper; stuff in a quart freezer bag. Now, I am sure I could stuff these in a freezer jar (straight-sided Ball canning jar) but I don't.

One brown banana

Even "One Brown Banana" at My Zero Waste can be used. (I often only have one banana to rescue.) This is a great blog about the Greens in England and how they eliminate waste. I was not sure at first if their name was really "Green." I suppose it really is.

Two things
I wish these were in the brown paper bags as before, bags that could be reused. Also, the banana stems are removed so the banana will fit on the styrofoam. Soooo, I don't pay for useless stems--another tiny savings.

Your turn

Are you as adamant about reducing your food costs as I am? Does anyone else freeze your bananas that will spoil for later consumption? Do you ever do as I do and buy cheap bananas just to freeze? Do you have another use for frozen bananas other than smoothies or baking?

The Garlic Problem

The problem
Okay, I know this is not the problem global warming is, affecting all our lives. But, I have a garlic problem.

Disappears
First of all, I just don't use much. I did, and then I quit. Why? I don't know. Maybe it is because when I look, all the garlic has dried up, so I do without that day. It has not dried into in a powder or something really hard or crispy. Dried garlic in my kitchen is only a shell of papery garlic outsides, all hollow inside.

Secondly, I don't buy it because I feel I am wasting my money One. More. Time.

So, garlic that does not last long is my problem. Or, is it that I don't use it fast enough?

Garlic was on my list at the grocery  more for its medicinal/health powers than for the taste it would add. And, I do love the taste. Since I try to avoid garlic from China, I searched and read a bit. Finally, I found a bag of five bulbs for $1. Yes, a plastic bag for garlic. I bit. I bought.

Dehydrate
There is a bag of five on the counter. Dehydrating is a choice. I don't want to use the oven since that would be too costly. I don't have a dehydrator. That is on my wish list right after a secure home for my hens.

Chop and store in oil
There were jars of chopped garlic in olive oil and something else (maybe water?)--two choices. I almost just gave up and bought one of the jars of commercially canned, chopped garlic. Home canning of garlic in oil is frowned up by the  canning authorities. I have lots of little pimiento jars that would be perfect for garlic storage.

Store whole
I have taken the advice of several and tried only two methods--leave the garlic on the counter or leave it in the crisper. Obviously, I am just not eating it fast enough. Usually, only one bulb at a time enters my home. Now, I have five bulbs peering at me. Yikes! I do not want to waste food or money.

What have any of you done? Can I just store garlic in the refrigerator in olive oil, chopped or unchopped? Do you think bacteria will grow if I refrigerate the oil/garlic combination?  Five bulbs will last me five months. Maybe I would eat more if I had it handy for cooking and it did not disappear in its skins.

One of these bulbs will be planted. Each little clove planted should yield a good harvest. Maybe I will never have to buy garlic again. Yay Me! I know how to plant!

Garlic home remedies
I just found these uses for garlic.

Your turn
What are your experiences with long term garlic storage? Do you ever chop, dehydrate, freeze, freeze in oil? Do you have any experience or good links to any of this?

My solution
Okay, this was written after the above post. I am going to freeze all the garlic (chopped) in olive oil in a sterilized jar. I still want to know what works for you. I will be freezing garlic again.

$250 Macy's Gift Card at Bargain Babe

 Check this out--11 prizes, including a $250 gift certificate from Macy's! Bargain Babe is giving away some interesting books, all about saving money, of course. The deadline is Monday night, so don't dawdle!