Frugal Food Tips

Here are some frugal food tips I've come across on my adventures through the Internet.

Mix left-over mustard, honey mustard and horseradish to make a delicious, zesty spread.

Make powdered sugar – blend together granulated sugar with cornstarch in the blender.

Save mayonnaise jars to store grease and fat from cooking. This will keep it from socking up your sink drains and messing up your garbage cans. Store it in the fridge. When the bottle is full, seal it tightly and throw it away.

Save glass bottles and use to store homemade spaghetti sauce, pickles, jams, jellies and marmalades. If you don’t make them yourself, you may give them to someone who does. Your generosity may win you over a bottle of such delicious condiments.

Make your own non-stick cooking spray. Get a spray bottle and fill it with your favorite cooking oil. Something cheap works just as well as something fancy and expensive!

If you put too much salt in a soup or stew, add a sliced potato. It will absorb the salt, so take it out before you serve the meal.

Stretch your hamburger meat by adding oatmeal to it – try ¾ meat and ¼ oatmeal instead of the full meat. You could also used tsp (textured soy product) which doesn’t have a taste, so it will absorb the hamburger’s taste and no one will know the difference.

The best day to go grocery shopping – Saturday evening! This is when the foods that were baked earlier this week get marked down and you can get them on sale! Freeze them when you get home so when you need them, they’re ready to go!

Store brown sugar in the freezer to prevent hardening.

Save the heels from your loaves of bread and freeze them. You can chop them up later for bread crumbs for salads.

When mixing frozen juice, add one more can-full of water than required. You get more juice, but the same taste. If you can, add two. You don’t want the juice to taste watered-down, but you can make it stretch a few glasses more.

Keep a heel of bread in your cookie jar to keep the cookies soft.

Buy Big On Sale: Grocery shopping can be made much simpler if you just by the expensive stuff when it’s on sale. Anything that can be frozen, like milk, cheese, meats, fruits, veggies, margarine, frozen juices, breads, cookies, etc. are great items to watch for on sale! When you get them, spend a full day preparing them the way you like – individually wrap meat, dice up chicken, chop up veggies, etc. – and put them in the freezer. Ta-da! Ready when you need them!

Buy rice, legumes, beans, etc. in bulk at discount chains or farmer’s markets and store in big ice-cream tubs with a measuring cup. As you need them, they’re available. These too, can also be frozen!

Save your left-over pickle juice and pour into a jar of baby carrots, chunks of broccoli or cauliflower, or hard-boiled eggs. Let sit in the fridge for a few days. Cheaper version of pickled veggies or pickled eggs!

Buy the big blocks of cheese, grate yourself, and store in a Tupperware-like container. You can freeze cheese!

More To Come

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