Little Things Add Up to Big Savings

• It usually takes as much time and energy to cook two as it does to cook one. You can double most recipes and freeze the entire extra meal for another day.
• Always keep an extra loaf of italian bread in the freezer. It will help to make a filling meal out of a light salad, a little pasta, or soup.
• On the days you bring lunch to work instead of buying out, mark $5 on your calendar. At the end of each month add it up to see how much you have saved.
• Wash and refill sports bottles with tap water, or water from your home filter. That's 50 cents to $1 per bottle you have saved.
• Wash and refill sports bottles with home made ice tea or lemonade and save even more!
• Garage sales offer great bargains on kitchen equipment. Often quality brands gifted to people who have no interest in cooking or preserving their own food end up out on the tables.
• Inventory your food items. Make meals from items in your fridge first, then use what is in your freezer, then the oldest on your shelves. Use it up, don't throw it out.
• Add mashed potato flakes, bread crumbs or cooked and mashed beans, oatmeal, rice or barley to ground meat to extend it. A little browning sauce or onion soup mix will beef up the flavor.
• Extend Hamburger Helper or Rice-a-Roni by adding a handful of similar noodles or rice to the mix when you first pour it into the pot.
• Frustrated trying to get cranberry sauce, brown bread, hash, or other thick foods out of the can they came in? Open both sides of the can, and with your fingers on the bottom lid just push the contents out the top and onto a plate.
• Serving an individual vegetable such as string beans, peas, or carrots? Don't season them in the serving bowl. Let everyone season their own on their plate. Then you can take the plain leftover vegetables and dehydrate or freeze. Puree to thicken soups or add to spaghetti sauce or chili.
• Leftover spaghetti? Make a spaghetti pie! Save your leftovers and tomorrow put them in an oiled cake pan, top with sauce and cheese, and bake.
• Leftover white rice? Put it in the fridge and make fried rice tomorrow. It won't stick together like freshly made rice.
• Mix leftover white or brown rice with milk, eggs, seasoning, and any leftover onions, bacon or ham you may have, and fry like a potato pancake.
• Make too much for dinner? Save that extra serving in a baggie or bowl in the fridge for a midnight snack or meal on the run.
• Quart sized baggies - the same size you use for your lunch sandwich - are great for leftovers. If the contents are wet just place in a bowl to save cleanup in case of leaks.
• Wean yourself away from commercial yeast and use a starter - you will not only save money on expensive yeast, you can use less oil, and your bread will stay fresher longer.
• Dry starter - just smear onto parchment paper and remove when dry - place in a baggie and save in the freezer, in case your original starter dies.
• When you cut the florettes off of broccoli and the ends off of asparagus, chop the tough stems into small pieces and save for soup.
• Buy eggs on sale and freeze. Crack one egg into a compartment in an ice cube tray. If you like 2 eggs for breakfast crack them into a baggie and freeze. 3 eggs for a cake mix, do the same.
• Instead of making dumplings, use a pizza cutter to slice flour tortillas and add to your chicken stew.
• Save the ends from loaves of bread in your freezer. When you have enough cut into cubes. Saute in olive oil and a little butter, with seasonings, to make fresh croutons. Or, lay on baking racks until stale and save for stuffing. Or, when throroughly dry and hard blend into bread crumbs. Freeze until ready to use.
• Substitute finely diced red bell pepper for expensive pimentos.
• Don't have enough berries or fruit when making jellies and jam? Make up the difference with fresh apple juice.
• Mix yogurt, honey and lemon juice for a delicious dip for fruit and veggies, or a healthful salad dressing.
• Stores mark down honey that has crystalized. Bring it home and put it in a pot of simmering water, and it will turn back to pure clear honey.
• Honey never goes bad. You can keep it forever. So when you find sales, stock up.
• Freeze those overripe bananas, skins and all. When you need them for a recipe defrost and they'll squeeze right out.
• If you get a good deal on ground meat, use your favorite recipes to mix and form hamburgers, meatballs (italian, sweet and sour, and swedish), meatloaf, chili, italian meat sauce, taco meat, etc. Then freeze or can in dinner size batches.
• Keep dry milk on hand to save those extra trips to the grocery store. We like NIDO and make it the night before so the flavor is best when we use it.
• Ripen peaches, plums and green tomatoes in a closed paper bag. The bag traps ethylene gasses which speed ripening.
• Wrap green tomatoes individually in newspaper and store in the back of a dresser drawer where it is cool and dark. The tomatoes will ripen slowly and you can eat them a month or more after that final autumn harvest.
• When selecting fresh corn at the market look for tight firm husks, and sticky silks, indicating the ears are ripe and freshly picked. Peel back an inch at the top to check for worms and dried kernels.
• Process fresh corn immediately. Time and heat will turn it starchy. Freeze kernels by peeling back the husk and slicing down the rows with a sharp knife. Then store in the freezer in baggies.
• Sprouts are very nutritious and fill in when you don't have vegetables in the house. Buy mung beans at your local asian market. Online sprout retailers sell mung beans for $4.95 per pound, the asian market sells them for 95 cents a pound. Take 2 TBS and put in a mason jar. Secure net or nylon hose around the top with a rubber band. Add water and let sit over night. Rinse the next morning, store in a dark cabinet and rinse twice a day until eating size.
• Leftover pancake batter? Slice up leftover meat and veggies, mix with the batter, and fry up like a fritata. Freeze for later.
• Leftover pancakes, french toast or waffles? Let cool on a baker's rack, then put in a plastic freezer bag and freeze for later.
• Keep your bread in the freezer and take out the slices as you need them. Laid out on a baker's rack they will defrost in a few minutes and the loaf will keep much longer. 
• Don't buy those little packets of yeast. Bulk yeast is much cheaper. You can buy it in big box stores.
• Find something sprouting? An onion, a potato, yam, or garlic sending out green shoots? Don't toss it.  Plant it!
• Wipe off aluminum foil with a soapy washcloth, dry, and reuse.
• Turn baggies inside out, wash well, put over a soda bottle to dry, and reuse.
• Take an inexpensive disposable plastic cup, assign one to each member of the family as their water cup for the week. Write each person's name on the outside of their cup to avoid confusion. Throw out at the end of the week and make a new one.
• Use your toaster oven, crock pot, microwave, or pressure cooker instead of the oven. You'll save at least 2/3rds of the energy bill. If it is summer and hot inside your home set up the appliance outside on a porch or patio so you don't compete with AC or fans trying to cool the house.
• If you do have to use your oven, bake more than one item at the same time. If you are making lasagna, bake bread and a cake or cookies too.
• Use glass bakeware and lower your oven temperature by 25 degrees.
• Put $10, $20, or whatever amount you can afford in a separate part of your purse and use it for those "too good to pass up" bargains. Nothing is worse than seeing something you use on deep discount and not have the money to take advantage of the sale.
• I picked up a wooden Jenga game at a garage sale for 5 cents. I put the pieces on a cookie sheet in my oven the next time I was baking, and dried them all out. Then I placed a piece in each of my canisters, cookie jar and bread box to soak up any moisture. I stored the extras in a sealed mason jar. Much better, and cheaper, than silica gel packets.
• Mixing up dry ingredients at home rather than buying packaged mixes at the store saves a lot of money but takes a lot of time. While you have the ingredients out and a measuring cup in hand, line up several plastic baggies and premeasure the dry ingredients (except yeast) into each. Then when you want to make bread, muffins, etc, you just need to take out one of the baggies and empty into your mixing bowl.
• Don't store your onions near your potatoes, apples or bananas. The onions give off a gas that makes the other foods go bad faster.
• Don't toss out that tiny bit remaining in your mayo jar. Put a tablespoon of oil and a tablespoon of vinegar in the jar, close it and shake. Use on salad.
• Pick up a wooden clothes dryer at a garage sale or thrift shop and use it to dry batches of home made pasta.
• In the winter, drain boiling cooking water into the sink with the drain plugged. Let the water heat the room and add moisture to the air.
• In the summer, drain cooking water into a bucket and carry it outside. Let it cool and use it to water your plants. The nutrients in the water will act as fertilizer.
• Save your butter and margarine stick wrappers in the freezer, then pull them out as you need to butter frying pans or baking dishes.
• Once you turn 50 sign up for AARP discounts.
• When you finish all the flour in a bag open it up and roll out your biscuits or pie shells on the flour dusted paper.
• Simmer plain meat, vegetables, or fruit in a saucepan until done, then puree. Portion into ice cube trays. Defrost as needed for babyfood.