Abundantly Frugal

Fun Site and Laundry Soap Recipe

I recently found a site I absolutely LOVE!  Every article I've read is so well-written in puts my work to shame and, even more importantly, it's good information.  OK, first, the site.  It's the simple dollar: financial talk for the rest of us.  Trent (the author) is an amazing fellow and obviously committed to saving money.  You can read his whole story on the blog.

OK, here's the part about the Laundry Soap Recipe.  Not only is it a great post, it has 323 comments (when I looked at it--they seem to keep being added) and the ones I read were great/funny/informative--well, they were definitely something other than boring (for the most part).

I recommend checking him out, especially for the finance stuff.  I'm going to be honest and say I haven't read more than 10-25 of his posts on saving money in the kitchen or on household goods in general and there may be way more in there that will belie what I'm about to say but so far I'm not finding a ton about super-saving at the grocery store.  In Trent's defense, I did discover he, his wife, and their son live in a 600 square foot abode (house? apartment? unknown at this point) and that can make storing things a bit of a chalenge.  I'll have to be sure to add a few posts here about ways I've found to maximize my storage in a 700 square foot apartment (only one person--makes a huge difference).

OK, off to have my dinner.  Enjoy!

Homemade or Store Bought? Pasta Sauce

A few years ago I was able to go to my favorite Italian market in Kansas City, Missouri.  They have a homemade sweet Italian sausage there that is joy to eat and can turn any pasta sauce around into an amazing Italian meal.  The last time I was there, though, they also had their very own red gravy (that’s what old-fashioned Italians call a red pasta sauce).  I bought a couple of jars of that, a few pounds of the sausage, and real Italian pasta and took it to my daughter’s house in Minnesota and made the best spaghetti I’ve ever eaten.  Since I don’t have access to that wonderful market (I couldn’t even find it listed in the phone book the last time I looked), I have to depend on what I can get at my local grocery or cook up in my own kitchen.

I’m a big fan a making things from scratch to save money.  How much does it cost to make pasta sauce?  Part of that depends on whether you use fresh or canned tomatoes.  Are you going to buy standard canned tomatoes or the really good ones that taste like fresh ones?  Do you want to buy fresh herbs or use the ones you have at home?

If you use the least expensive ingredients you can, including canned tomato products purchased on sale, you can make a respectable red sauce for about $1.25.  That’s assuming you can get an 8 oz. can of tomato sauce for $0.25 and chopped or canned tomatoes, the 16 oz. size, for $0.50.  You then need onion, garlic, basil, oregano, rosemary, and (if you like it) some nice bell pepper.  You spend $1.00 in tomatoes and another $0.25 in spices and such. By the time you cook the sauce down a little you’ve got one quart of sauce for $1.25. 

There are times when I can get the canned variety of already-made pasta sauce for as little as $0.79 a can. Even when I get the expensive stuff in the jars I can get it for $1.50 or even less on a good sale.  The jars contain a little less than a quart but the quality is a great deal higher.  You also can’t compare the quality of the more expensive sauce in a jar and the inexpensive homemade sauce.  To make something of that quality you need to get the really good canned tomatoes.  Those are called San Marzano tomatoes and the problem with buying them is that there are tomatoes that are called San Marzano that are just tomatoes and some that are the real thing and taste like a little bit of heaven.  So, if you find the right ones, you’re going to spend over $2.00 a can, generally closer to $3.00 a can (28 oz.).  Now you’ve spent well over $4.00 for a marinara sauce (this assumes you’re using dried herbs and fresh garlic).

Whichever way you choose to go, the pre-made pasta sauces are just fine and less expensive than homemade ones unless you’re going the gourmet route and you’re making a one-of-a-kind sauce.  In that case, price is just not as much an issue.

The Cost of Bread

I made an exciting discovery! 

While doing my weekly shopping I would look fondly at packaged yeast and internally bemoan the fact that it cost more to bake bread than to buy it.  This is seldom true but it didn't seem to make sense to make bread when the yeast, alone, cost as much as a whole loaf or bread or package of rolls at the day-old bakery.  I still love the smell of freshly-baked bread and the taste is generally far superior so I still bought the yeast and made homemade dinner rolls or sticky buns every once in a while simply because I loved the experience of doing it.

Then I went to Costco.  OK, I go to Costco regularly but this time I looked at the price of yeast.  $2.99 for two pounds.  In case you have priced yeast lately (and, to be honest, it's been a while since I've looked at it in the regular grocery store) that's a huge difference.  I did the math and that't the equivalent of under $.03 per little packet of yeast in the grocery store.  There are three of those packets in one "package" so that's under $.10 for that package.  I don't remember exactly what it cost the last time I purchased yeast but I can guarantee you it was over $1.00 for one of those 3-packs. 

So, I came home and put it in the fridge to help keep it fresh and today I was looking at my recipes and thinking about making homemade hamburger buns, hot dog buns, dinner rolls, and sticky buns and decided to do a cost breakdown now that I have affordable yeast in the fridge.  Good grief!  I couldn't believe the difference.  I can make a lovely sweet dough sutable for all the above uses for about $.67.  That's at today's prices, mind you.  I haven't made this particular recipe so I don't know how much I'll get from it but it starts with about 2 pounds of flour so we can make a pretty good guess, right?  When I add in the milk, water, sugar, and eggs, it adds up to well over three pounds but there is a bit of evaporation during baking so let's just say it's 3 pounds of rolls.  I can't possibly beat that price at the store.  To be fair, I have to admit that I'm using electricity to both run the mixer and the oven but I know it's no more than $.20 for both of those (that's based on $.14/hr. for my oven) so I'm still paying less than $1.00 for a ton of fresh-baked rolls.  That's a pretty darned good bargain.

I understand if you don't want to spend the time it takes to make your own bread on a regular basis but do consider it every once in a while.  If you have children who enjoy helping in the kitchen, this is also a great rainy-day project they can help with.  Kids love to help roll out dough or make fun shapes out of dough for their very own dinner rolls.  There aren't many projects you can do with your kids for so little money that provide so much enjoyment and good eating.

Oh, and a hint for baking in the winter:  I keep the temperature in my apartment fairly cool.  Bread dough likes a warmer temperature to rise.  Put about 3-4" of very hot tap water in your sink or a dish pan.  Place the dough in the hot water with a towel over it.  You may want to change the water once or twice while it's rising but it will get the extra warmth it needs to rise nicely. 

One more thing--when you are done using the oven and have turned it off, leave the oven door open a couple of inches to let that heat escape into the kitchen.  It's not like it's going to save you much on your heating bill but no sense letting it go to waste. Enjoy!

Tapioca

I don't calculate the exact costs of everything I make but I check it out periodically.  Sometimes I calculate the difference between homemade and purchased convenience food, sometimes it's the difference between super sale prices and regular prices.  Every time I do, I'm always excited.

In my book, Cut Your Grocery Bills in Half, I talk about the economy of making food that is now being sold already made and packaged into individual portions.  This weekend I wasn't feeling well and decided I needed some comfort food.  For me, coming from Minnesota, that may be very different than your idea of comfort food.  OK, even people who live in Minnesota may have totally different ideas about what constitutes comfort food.  This weekend tapioca sounded like a little bit of heaven to me. so I made a batch and ate the whole thing between yesterday afternoon and today.  I think that means I should make it more often so I'm not quite so obsessive about it.  I didn't eat lunch or dinner yesterday and had no breakfast this morning--still, a whole recipe of tapioca is not exactly good nutrition.  I digress...

So, I was sitting here this morning, eating my tapioca and wondered what the cost difference was between store-bought and homemade.  So, out comes Excel and I ran the numbers.  I knew it would be less to make it from scratch but I had no idea it would be so much less.  It cost me just a hair over $.04 per ounce to make.  The grocery store sells the same product for $.13 an ounce.  Even at Costco it's just a hair under $.12 an ounce.  That's 1/3 the cost at the best price.  Even when the convenience tapioca in little cups is on a super sale, the homemade costs less.  This week Safeway has tapioca for half price--admittedly, a very good price--but even at that, it's $.07 per ounce, almost twice what it cost me to make it at home.

One of the big reasons I didn't like to make tapioca at home was because it would stick to the bottom of the pan and I had to stand there and stir it until it came to a boil.  It finally occurred to me there was an easier way to make this--the double boiler.  Why didn't I think of this sooner?  Who knows.  Well, I finally did think of it and I'll never look back.  The only adjustment I had to make was that the recipe called for the tapioca to come to a full boil.  I just waited until it was obviously thickened and the tapioca was soft (I tasted it).  It took about 10-15 minutes from the time it got hot (sorry, I didn't actually time it but your stove and double boiler may behave differently than mine so you'd have to figure yours out on your own anyway).

So, as always, think before you buy.  If you feel you don't have the time to do this, think about making it while you're making dinner.  It wouldn't have been any difficulty to put this on the stove to cook while I was cooking something else.  If it's not quite done when you go to eat, just set the timer for another 5 minutes and then turn the heat off while you finish dinner.  The hot water under the tapioca will finish cooking it.

Enjoy!