Savings Sunday - The Kitchen (better late than never!)

Sorry this is late... yeah, I didn't manage to get on to blog yesterday at all!  It was busy!  But not a bad busy, haha.

Anyway, this week I wanted to tackle saving money in the kitchen.  You can find a post I did on stretching your dollar on more expensive foods and how to make things like chicken and beef pull 'double duty' by getting more meals than one, here.

For a good bun recipe (note that I estimated a cost of about 35 cents per dozen if you get your flour on sale at $7/10kg), click here.

For a good tortilla recipe (again, cost is way less to make your own vs. buying... at less than 1/10th the cost of buying from the store), click here.  This will actually give you a recipe for bean burritos which is a super cheap meal in general!  I mean, super cheap.

Next up, some interesting things I learned from pinterest!

Did you know that you can take what you'd normally trash from your produce and plant it, growing your own?  No need to buy the seeds!  Serious!  I heard you could do this with celery, bok choy, leeks, and onion greens.  Since I only bought celery recently, I decided to give it a shot.  Chopped off the bottom of my celery stalk, and popped it into a bowl of water for half a week.  On Monday last week I planted it, making sure to keep the ground moist every day (this is something I'm usually not so good at... I'm no good at the gardening thing).  This is what I saw today, exactly one week later!

My celery is growing!  I'm so very excited!  I planted some seeds from my spaghetti squash on Monday as well, and I'm looking forward to seeing those start sprouting as well.  Nothing yet, though.  Although, we also planted this beauty that we got as a 10th anniversary gift from my in-laws.

 

An apple tree!  I'm very excited about it.  Oh, and the bottle you see in the ground next to it?  I read on Pinterest that you could poke holes in the bottom of a 2L bottle, bury it next to your plants, and then fill it with water for a slow release into the ground near the roots.  I like this idea!  I absolutely love reusing things this way!

 

Another money saver is buying lentils and sprouting them.  Not only is it cheap (and great on salad and in stir fry), it is super healthy for you!  I started last week Monday.    

 

First, rinse your lentils... about 1/2 cup.  Put them in a large canning jar and put 2 cups of water in to soak for 8 hours.  To close the jar, you could do what most sites suggest and buy a special lid... OR you could just use the netting from the three pack garlic like I did and stretch it over the mouth before putting the ring on.  Reusing at its finest!  Saved me $5.

 

After the  soak, dump the water and rinse them a few times through the cloth.  Drain as much water as you can, then lie the jar on its side in a dark place.  Rinse the lentils every 12 hours to prevent it from getting slimy (I did it whenever I saw the jar... showed it to the kids too, they loved watching it grow).  After 4 days, you should have this! 

Our food just quadrupled (or more) in size!  We used most of it in stirfry that night, the rest I use in salad (and my 4yo daughter likes to snack on them).  You can sprout all sorts of things.  Not sure what to do next... probably more lentils.  For more info, click here.

You can save money and get healthier food by supporting your local farmers!  Get your produce locally if possible.  I know that here in Canada you can't do that with certain things due to regulations, but things like beef, chicken, pork, honey, and produce can all be purchased from farmers and farmers markets.  I know that in our area you really have to watch for good deals and go looking for them. A lot of farmers markets are overpriced here (in my opinion).  We buy our cheese direct from the plant and save 30cents or more per 100 grams.  We've bought local honey from the farm directly and got a great deal that way.  Also, if you know a dairy farmer you can get beef for cheaper from them.  It won't be the same quality as the stuff grown specifically for the stores as it will generally be older animals, but for ground beef it's all we eat, and is much cheaper in the long run.

That's all for now!  If you have any of your own tips for saving money on food and in the kitchen, please let me know in the comments!