"The little money I have - that is my wealth, but the things I have for which I would not take
money, that is my treasure."
Robert Brault
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 Make your own herbal tea for practically nothing. Here is a pan of herbal tea I made today.
It takes only a small amount of each ingredient to make a wonderful tea. Orange peel is free. Other ingredients not free, but used in small quantities: Dried mint leaves, Dried spearmint, Lemon grass, Lemon juice, Frozen raspberries (only 3 berries), Ginger root shavings. Makes two quarts of tea for 14 cents, or eight 8-ounce cups for less than 2 cents each. Compare that with 10 cents per teabag to buy herbal tea in the grocery store.
Of course, if you live where you can get to a garden or walk in the woods, you can collect rose hips, wild mint, chamomile, wild berries and flowers to make tea with even cheaper than using items like I did today, which all came from stores.
Whether you gather the ingredients by foraging, or use what’s available from your local stores, you can enjoy your own personal blends of herbal teas just the way you like them, and pay a tiny fraction of the cost of boxed tea – or even pay nothing at all!
Here are links to some of the many sites on the web that explain how to make your own herbal teas:
http://www.countryliving.com/cooking/about-food/herbal-teas-0906
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/1981-05-01/Wholesome-Hearty-Herbal-Tea.aspx
Here’s a list of hundreds of different ingredients you can use to make your own tea: http://www.crazyfortea.com/herblist.html
Another long list of possible ingredients, and more general and particular information about herbal teas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbal_tea
If you keep a record of food purchases, at least for a while, you can establish your own target prices on the foods you use most. Then when you’re shopping, you’ll know if a price is great or not-so-great. You won’t be mislead by “sales” or coupons that aren’t really offering such a good price.
What I call my “target price” is the price at which I know I’m getting a good deal on certain foods that I use a lot. Food prices vary from store to store, season to season, and even week to week in the same store. Knowing when the price is up or down, you will know when to stock up or skip a particular commodity.
Continue reading Know Your Target Prices
You gotta do what works for you. People are different, and will enjoy different foods and different strategies for how to shop and cook.
I don’t plan meals. (Well, rarely.)
A lot of the lists, essays, and websites that give advice about how to save money on food say “Plan your meals.” I don’t do that. I keep food on hand so that I can make stuff. I’m not going to plan today what I’m going to eat next Tuesday. I will have food in the house so that I will be able to choose from a great variety of stuff to eat depending on what I feel like next Tuesday.
I might sometimes decide to cook something special, or experiment, or analyze something in particular, in which case I might have to plan ahead of shopping to buy the things I need for that special dish or meal, but ordinarily I shop for what’s on sale and for staples.
I eat what I feel like and is available in my stock of staples, or I eat what I have that needs to be eaten so it won’t go bad. If I have bread that is going to get old, I will choose that over quinoa or rice for that meal. If the cabbage and peppers in the refrigerator are starting to look like they might not be very good in another couple of days, I eat that and leave the Chinese brocolli in the freezer.
Sometimes you choose the food, sometimes the food chooses you.
I also consider what nutritional elements I may need when I’m thinking about what to eat – I try to get the right number of servings of leafy green vegetables, and fruits, and protein, I think about whether I’ve had enough calcium for the day, and so on.
By stocking up on staples, I have enough food and enough variety on hand so that I can put together good meals according to how I feel at the time. I might feel like creating something complex, or testing a recipe, or I might feel like I just want to get nutrition with as little work as possible. By keeping staples on hand, I’m ready every day, without planning meals.
I guess a lot of people do plan their meals, and that’s cool. I can see how that could work well and be one way of avoiding impulse buys that aren’t helpful for saving money or getting good nutrition. It’s just not my way. Shopping, cooking, and eating are infinitely variable – there’s not a right way and wrong way, there are ways that work for you and advance your goals, or don’t.
What’s important is not necessarily for you to do what somebody else says works for them. What’s important is to know what you want, and then act in ways that will make that happen for you.
 From 1918, good advice for today. Sheila Lennon, writing in the Projo Subterranean Homepage News, today referred to this old cookbook as “a primer and a prize.” Thanks to Sheila for bringing this resource to the world’s attention!
Foods That Will Win the War And How to Cook Them is old-fashioned, and specifically designed for a different era, so there are some spots that you may want to alter for your own use; for instance, you may want to use sugar or honey or agave nectar or some other sweetener in the recipes that call for corn syrup – they were trying to save sugar in those days.
Valuable information in the book includes how to use oat, rye, barley and mixed whole grains, how to save food, avoid waste, use leftovers and meat substitutes.
Here’s a recipe I will want to try:
BOSTON BROWN BREAD
1 cup rye meal
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup graham flour
2 cups sour milk
1¾ teaspoons soda
1½ teaspoons salt
¾ cup molasses
Beat well. Put in greased covered molds, steam 2 to 3 hours.
The electronic version of this book is available for free online from Project Gutenberg. This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
 Delicious and nutritious. 62¢ Amaranth costs a lot more than oats ($1.99 a pound at Whole Foods), but I like to change it up and eat a wide variety. I cooked some amaranth last night and had some for breakfast this morning. Amaranth is hip and trendy, like quinoa, but I try not to let that bother me. It’s good, cheap food.
1/2 cup of cooked amaranth cost 21 cents. 1/2 cup of frozen blueberries – 28 cents. 1 cup of milk – 13 cents.
311 Calories, 13 grams of high-quality (gluten-free) protein, plenty of calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, manganese, and generally an excellent breakfast for 62 cents. (Nutritional analysis from NutritionData.com)
 Complete dinner for 57¢ Grain, vegetables, leafy greens, and milk, under 500 calories, good nutrition, real food, whole food, good dinner for 57 cents.
Continue reading 57¢ Dinner
From Cheap, Healthy, Good, via LifeHacker:
I was going to post something about roasting a chicken. But LifeHacker.com today referred to a post from last year on the Cheap, Healthy, Good food blog that really, I just don’t think I could beat. I bow.
Click and see…
… and that’s WITHOUT saving the bones to make stock!
You can make your own noodles, (pasta, spaghetti, egg noodles, ravioli wrappers, etc.) for about 50¢ a pound – or less.
Despite what you’ve heard a hundred times, instant ramen is not cheap. It’s expensive. Ditto for boxed macaroni and “cheese.” This is a case of real cheap food vs. fake cheap food.
You can make your own fresh, wholesome, homemade noodles for one fifth the cost of ramen. The cost of making your own noodles is pretty much the cost of flour. White flour goes for about 30 cents a pound if you find it at a good price. That’s slightly more than the cost of one 3-ounce package of instant ramen, isn’t it?
Continue reading Cheaper than Instant Ramen
This song is not about cheese. It’s about something deeper, man.
(With a salute to CSNY, Almost Cut My Hair)
Almost bought some cheese
It happened just the other day
It was on sale at a real terrific price
Much cheaper than you usually have to pay
But I didn’t and I think I know why
I really had to let my cheap flag fly
And I feel like I owe it to someone
Must be because I made my own brie for Christmas
And at this price I couldn’t make the cheese own self
It increases my feelings of avarice
Like seeing something I don’t need on the close-out shelf
But I’m not giving in an inch to greed
Cos I promised myself not to buy anything I don’t need
I feel like I owe it to someone
When I finally get myself the way I please
I’m gonna get down on some of that delicious cheese
But right now I’m learning how to behave
If I really, really, really want to learn how to save
Cos I feel like I owe it, yeah
Said I feel like I owe it, yeah
You know I feel—- like I owe it yeah to someone
Continue reading Almost Bought Some Cheese
Harold McGee, writing in the Curious Cook column at nytimes.com today, wonders “…what else might I have done with all those hours” spent kneading bread for 15 or 20 minutes every time he made bread, accumulated over years.
“No-knead” breads have been kind of popular in the hip-food press recently, and for weeks I’ve been asking people “Why do we knead bread, anyway?” and getting different answers. So now it turns out that a lot of hours spent giving deep massages to those big old dough balls might have been wasted time. (Well, not entirely. It’s still a wonderful intimate moment between you and your bread, so who could call that time totally wasted? It just might not have been necessary to produce great bread.)
I’m all for articles that talk about the generalities of bread, the universals, the principles that we can use to make whatever bread pleases us. I have recommended this article to my friends, and I’m recommending it to you:
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“...the flour on her fingers
Was the sun and the rain
And the earth
... the thump of her palms
On the dough
Was the dance of women
On the ancient threshing floor”
Carol Lynn Pearson
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