Thrifty Thursday: Kitchen Thoughts

One of my favourite things to think about and talk about is what I do in the kitchen. I love to cook and I love to cook delicious, preferably healthy things. We do eat meat and gluten, dairy and some processed food but not too much- just enough to be real.

If you remember from my last Thrifty Thursday post about money and ethics, the two are never more in conflict than in the kitchen. I would probably spend less on groceries if my ethics surrounding healthy food and who I'm willing to support and how things affect the environment didn't come into play so much. I imagine you have lines drawn in the sand about food too. I'd love to hear about them and how you deal with your inner conflict between ethics and money.
Danielle over at Blissful and Domestic blog has started a challenge for the month of February called Take Back Mealtime. I love this idea around saving money by not eating out and encouraging family mealtimes. In this house we eat dinner together pretty much every night. It saves us money, brings us together as a family and teaches through demonstration healthy eating habits.

When I saw that Danielle had launched this challenge I thought it was the perfect week to talk about food and saving money. I want to go beyond the basics of "Make a grocery list" and "menu planning", "make it from scratch" and "shop the flyers". What do you do when you've already done all those things and you still want to shave money from your grocery budget??
Here are some of my ideas and things that have worked for me:
1. Use up every bit of everything. If you buy a whole chicken for Sunday dinner, use up the rest of the chicken meat for sandwiches on Monday then put all those chicken bones in a pot and make soup. It's amazing how much meat is left on a carcass. It takes time but time is free to strain off the stock, and pull the little bits of meat out. Add in all those odds and ends of vegetables laying around in your fridge and you have another meal. Making soup is an art form, best attempted without a recipe. It's not hard so don't be intimidated. Plus bone broth is amazingly good for your digestive system.
2. I shop once a pay period, that means once every 2 weeks. I make a menu for all the meals we're going to eat including snacks. I check out the flyers for the grocery stores near me and tweak the menu according to what is on sale. I shop once (usually) and then that's it. I don't got back to the store until we get paid again because I know I'll end up spending more than I think I will. It teaches every one in the house to ration out the food and to think ahead. We were supposed to have homemade mac n' cheese last week but because everyone was snacking on cheese we had none left for that meal and had to eat a less popular meal. Lesson learned.
3. Always keep the staples in good supply. For me that means always having baking supplies on hand so if school lunches and after school snacks are looking skimpy the last few days before grocery day I can make a batch of muffins to keep everyone fed and happy. I also always have lots of oats for oatmeal, rice, beans and canned tomatoes in the pantry.

4. I'm a believer in stocking up. If something you always use is on sale, buy 2 or 3 and store it. Why pay $1 more if you don't have to? Get to know your local farmer's market. Produce in season at a market costs so much less than at the grocery store. And you can get great deals on buying in bulk. The potatoes above lasted us at least a month, kept in a cool dry place. We ate most of the bag of apples out of hand and the rest went into muffins, pies and copious amounts of apple sauce that I canned and saved for the depths of winter.

5. Discover the art of gleaning. It's an ancient practice meaning to gather after the harvest but can also mean just to gather. Where I live I see wild apple trees on the sides of the roads. In late summer those trees are loaded down with apples free for the taking. It's worth it to find out what wild things grow in your area and to take the time to gather them up (best to make sure they don't actually to belong to someone!). One year I gathered enough apples to make 10 cups of apple sauce! Not bad for free.
So, thanks for hanging in there with me for this loooong post. I get so excited talking about all the stuff going on in my kitchen.
Feel free to share your ideas, tips and suggestions in the comments below.