"You can cut food costs by eating more meals at home and by making sure they feature some of the healthiest foods from your supermarket -- foods like whole grains, vegetables, and beans." Elaine Magee, MPH, RD
One reason to pickle foods at home is to make foods last longer. Sometimes you will find an exceptionally low price on vegetables in season, or someone might give you a big bag of produce from their garden, and you’ll have so much that you can’t eat it all before it starts to go bad. When you make pickled vegetables you can enjoy them for weeks!
Try it out! People have been pickling food for 4,000 years. You don’t need special appliances or expensive ingredients. In fact, the whole point of pickling is to save money and have good, healthy food to eat for a long time.
“Pickled vegetables make great snacks and hors d’oeuvres. They look beautiful on a platter. They’re also good with a sandwich or with cottage cheese, a quick and easy way to make vegetables part of your lunch.” – Martha Rose Shulman
It cooks quickly and costs next to nutthin’ – I’m talkin’ ’bout SAVORY OATS. The basic approach, as illustrated in this video by Matt Dellapina (or Matt of the Pina), is simple and adaptable to accommodate whatever you have on hand, whether an egg, some leftover bits of vegetables or maybe leftover beef stew, any kind of cheese including dried Parmesan, peanut butter, and so on, and so forth, et cetera, et cetera. (I like to cook MY oatmeal with canned sardines. Mmmmmm… stick-to-yo-ribs!)
Delicious, nutritious, and cheap as all get out — savory oats. Give it a try.
Yes, it’s otherwise called oat risotto. You can use steel-cut oats if you want, but old-fashioned rolled oats cook quicker and cost a lot less. So use old-fashioned rolled oats, even in the recipes that call for steel-cut oats. Yeah, we can do that! Culinary Anarchy, Baby!
When you try Savory Butternut Squash Oatmeal you may find that the delicious and healthful meal you’re having reminds you of something from a fancy restaurant.
It’s not that I’m singling out Italian seasoning as the only important seasoning, it’s just that I see Italian seasoning on sale for a dollar or less fairly often, in lots of stores, including dollar stores. It’s one of the most common, and least expensive, herb mixtures you can find.
In addition to the health benefits of the herbs themselves, they add an extra dimension of flavor to lots of dishes, increasing people’s interest and satisfaction in the food without adding any extra salt, or fat, or calories.
“I’ll not shy from the blessed truth:
You can make an awesomely good pasta sauce
in just barely more time than it takes to heat up a jar of pre-made.
Add to that the fact that yours will be cheaper.”
– James P. DeWan
For a nice variation of flavor in dishes where you use flour or bread crumbs to coat foods before you cook them, like fried liver or “oven-fried” baked chicken, add Italian seasoning to the coating mix before you coat the food in it.
I just made a pound of whole wheat tortillas for about 50 cents. It was easy. It’ll be even easier next time because I’ll have more experience.
I used white whole wheat flour, and it worked just fine. Not much to it, really. The basic idea is describable in one sentence: Add a little water and fat to some flour, roll a piece of dough thin and flat, and cook it on a hot surface for a minute.
The one part that does require a little art is the rolling of the dough. It’s just that if you want pretty circles, you have to have technique for this part. If you just want some food to eat, well, they don’t have to be real pretty…
Rolling out the dough might take a little practice.
Everyone seems to agree that a little practice will get you where you want to go so that you will be able to easily and quickly knock out a stack of delicious tortillas for a couple of two-bitses any time you want.
"Food prices are climbing, and some might be looking to fast foods and packaged foods for their cheap bites. But low cost doesn’t have to mean low quality. In fact, some of the most inexpensive things you can buy are the best things for you." Brie Cadman
