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Tips & Tales from a Frugal, Healthy Kitchen

Budget Shopping, Healthy Choices,

and Thrifty Recipes

By Daisy Luther

© DAISY LUTHER

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION 5

BUDGET SHOPPING 8

THE PANTRY PRINCIPLE 10

WHAT YOU SHOULD HAVE IN YOUR PANTRY 18

12 QUICK TIPS TO BUILD THE PERFECT PANTRY 20

OTHER TIGHT BUDGET TIPS 20

HEALTHY CHOICES 22

WHAT SHOULD YOU EAT WHEN YOU'RE BROKE? 24

THE SIMPLE TRUTH 27

THE LOST ART OF SCRATCH COOKING 28

SCRATCH COOKING IS EASIER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK. 30

IT'S HEALTHIER. 31

IT'S CHEAPER. 32

EXPERIMENT! 34

MAKING THE MOST OF LEFTOVERS 42

THRIFTY RECIPES 46

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SUBSTITUTIONS 46

MAIN COURSES 51

SIDES 57

BAKED BROWN RICE 58

BREADS 63

SNACKS AND DESSERTS 67

LEFTOVER MAGIC 69

AFTERWORD 77

ABOUT DAISY 77

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Introduction

Have you ever been broke?

I mean really broke, like, if one of the kids spills the gallon of milk, there simply won’t be any more milk until the next payday?

I’ve been there. I raised my girls on my own for many years, and there were weeks – months, even, when I questioned how I’d keep them fed. At the same time, I’ve always had a keen interest in nutrition and the healing power of food, and we all know that the most healthful foods are rarely the cheapest.

I’ve spent years budgeting strictly, stretching every penny as far as it could go, building a pantry, and cooking from scratch to try and feed my family the most nutritious food I could put on the table.

And you know what? Sometimes, you have no option. You must make nutritional sacrifices just to keep everyone fed.

The lower your income is, the more difficult it is to be particular about what you

feed your family.

This probably isn't an earth-shattering revelation to anyone, but if you feel like

experimenting, try to buy a week's worth of healthy food for a family on a budget

of, say, $50-75. Food manufacturers that target lower income shoppers1 with

more affordable products tend to include more GMOs and toxic ingredients in

their offerings.

It isn't always possible to stick to my usual food restrictions. Generally speaking, I

avoid:

Non-organic dairy because of the hormones and antibiotics as well as the

GMO feed given to the animals

Non-organic meat because of the hormones and antibiotics as well as the

GMO feed given to the animals

1 http://truthstreammedia.com/2013/08/08/lower-income-grocery-store-features-items-with-even-more-gmos/

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Anything containing corn, soy, or canola in any form because it is almost

certain to be GMO

Anything with chemical additives like artificial colors, flavors, or

preservatives

Anything that is likely to have been doused in pesticides

Anything containing neurotoxins like MSG, fluoride, or aspartame (along

with other artificial sweeteners)

But when times are tough, it’s a matter of weighing the pros and cons, and

figuring out what things, for you, are the most important, while also

deciding which standards can be loosened. These decisions will be different for

everyone, based on their personal health concerns, their genetic propensity for

certain diseases, food intolerances or allergies, and the members of the family for

whom they are buying the food.

Sometimes, when people are looking at someone else's situation while they are

comfortably backed by a loaded pantry, it's easy to be judgmental and tell them

what they "should" do. The thing that we must all remember is that when times

are tough, a person may be down to these two options with a two-week grocery

budget:

1.) Buy strictly healthy organic foods and feed your family for perhaps 8 out of

the 14 days.

2.) Carefully select which standards you will relax to keep the tummies of your

family full throughout the wait for the next paycheck.

Not too many people are going to choose option one.

I try to keep a loaded pantry, full of non-GMO foods, and a flourishing garden to

serve as a back-up for whatever non-toxic items are being offered at a reasonable

price that week. But sometimes, we all find ourselves at the mercy of the food

manufacturers.

When your budget is extremely limited, the normal healthy eating suggestions of

shopping only the perimeter of the store or visiting the farmer's market will not

suffice to feed a family. As much as you may want to dine only on locally grown,

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fresh organic produce, a $50 farmer's market spree will only get you through a

few days if you are totally reliant on only this food.

In this book, we’ll talk about a few strategies to manage when money is tight.

1) Building a pantry at the best prices possible

2) Deciding where to skimp and where to splurge when shopping

3) Making the most out of the food you have

4) Being certain that you don’t let anything go to waste

Not all of the subjects will apply to every person reading this, so feel free to skip

around to find the things that are the most pertinent to your situation.

Because this topic is so personal to me, I’ll also share some stories with you from

my own difficult times. If you are going through tough times, I want you to know,

I’ve been there too, and things will get better.

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Budget Shopping

One of the most common reasons that people give for not building a food stockpile pantry is the cost involved. People seem to have this mental image of a bedroom or basement dedicated to being filled to the rafters with cans of Chef-Boy-Ardee. They imagine someone going out and spending $5000 at a time for a year's worth of food, or perhaps an 18-wheeler backing up into their driveway and unloading the contents with a forklift.

It’s time to learn a whole new way to shop. Thrift is of the utmost importance if you want to be able to afford to build your pantry quickly.

The fact is, a pantry is a work in progress and a whole new type of personal economy. And it’s not a massive expenditure - you can save a fortune on your food budget by shopping carefully and in quantity.

A well-stocked food pantry is an investment.

Purchasing food at today's prices is a great hedge against tomorrow's increases. The cost of food will only be going up.

Consider the drought that has ravaged California, the number one producer of fresh fruits and vegetables in the entire country. Farmers there have been forced to cut back on the amount they produce, due to water shortages. Livestock herds have been culled because they can’t grow enough to feed them. Winters are longer and more severe in other parts of the country, leading to shortened growing seasons and freak storms that destroy newly planted crops.

Your pantry is your insurance against all of this. It can protect you from drought, pestilence, bad weather, and rising prices.

Take peanut butter, as an example: A few years ago, I purchased a store-brand peanut butter for $1.88 per jar when it was on sale. The following year, that very same brand in the very same sized jar was $5.99 on sale because of a poor peanut harvest. Each jar of peanut butter on the shelves represented a savings of $4.11 - there is not another investment that gives you over a 200% return.

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The best investments in these questionable times are those which are tangible. Having a food supply, purchased at a good price during good times, can be invaluable if things become more difficult. And by "more difficult" I'm not necessarily talking about a massive, national economic collapse or an epic natural disaster.

Anyone can have a difficult week (or month or year). Maybe an unexpected expense arose, like a trip to the emergency room or a car repair. Perhaps a job was lost or hours were cut at work. It's possible that something happened that made the primary breadwinner for the family unable to work for a time. Whatever the case, having some supplies put back can help you through a rough spot. While some folks have room in their budgets for these shortfalls or added expenses, a growing number of Americans are only one paycheck away from disaster.2

The key is this: when times are good, you should focus on loading up your pantry for when times are not so good. It's not a new idea. It's how our ancestors did it because they never knew when a fluke cold snap would kill their crops, when a predator might get the animal they depended on for food or when a drought would occur.

Here's why I keep a well-stocked pantry

Before I even knew what prepping was, I had a well-stocked pantry because I learned the hard way how quickly things can change.

When I was first married and had a newborn baby, I was struggling to put food on the table with our tiny grocery budget. Then, as life often has it, things got even worse when my husband got laid off. We had a few dozen bags of sale-purchased bagels in our freezer, a few jars of peanut butter in the pantry, and high hopes for the garden we had just planted. Our situation was desperate, and the new little addition to our family added to our panic.

As we rationed out our bagels with peanut butter over the next few weeks, waiting for unemployment insurance to kick in finally, my husband frantically

2 http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/without-an-emergency-fund-you-are-one-missed-paycheck-from-disaster-01062016

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searched for a job, and I became determined never to be in such a position again. (Think Scarlett O'Hara waving her dirty fist around.)

Since we had absolutely no money for entertainment, the library was my saving grace throughout this time. One day, searching for answers among the shelves, I stumbled upon a series of books by Amy Dacyczyn called “The Tightwad Gazette.” The three volumes gave me a whole new perspective on grocery shopping and are still the basic shopping philosophy I adhere to today. (By the way, I highly recommend the books – they’re available on Amazon in one big compendium. Just remember, they were written in the 80s, so some of the specifics are a bit dated.)

The Pantry Principle

The TG recommends something called “The Pantry Principle.” It’s a process that

saves both time and money. The idea is too consistently stock up on items at the lowest possible prices, creating a supply of ingredients at rock-bottom cost. This sometimes means you should say no to preparing a meal just because it sounds good. You must discipline yourself to adhere to a whole new way of shopping that does not supply just food for the week but replenishes your pantry, again, at the lowest possible prices.

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#1 Create a Price Book

First, start a "price book" - this is a vital tool. Without it, you can't be sure if that sale is really a sale at all. A price book is simply a notebook that you keep with you when shopping, into which you write down the price that you pay for certain items. You should always update your price book with the lowest price for these items. The price book is what allowed me to see that at one point I paid $1.88 for peanut butter and a year later the lowest price I could find was $5.99, as I mentioned above.

In The Tightwad Gazette, Volume I, Amy Dacyczyn wrote:

My price book is a small loose-leaf binder. Each page contains prices for one item, and the pages are in alphabetical order for quick reference. I include my code for the store name, the brand, the size of the item, the price, and the unit price.

I began by writing down prices on sale flyers and from my grocery slips. I made a few trips to compare prices of specific items. It quickly became evident that not every sale was really a sale. But when I did find a good buy, and I could verify it with months of records…what power! I could stock up with confidence.

At first you may think this is too much work and the idea of shopping at so many stores will be inconceivable. It will pay off. A good strategy is to shop at different stores each week of the month so that within a 30-day cycle you can hit them all. We have our shopping system down to once a month with only a few short trips to hit unbeatable sales.

[A price book] revolutionized our shopping strategy more than anything else we did. For the first time we had a feeling of control over our food budget.

It might take you a total of five hours to make up a price book for comparison shopping, but after several years of supermarket excursions, you may discover that your hourly “pay” for those five hours was over $1,000.

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You’ll discover all sorts of trends with this type of record keeping:

Your local sales cycles When certain items tend to be loss leaders Which stores are consistently cheaper for specific ingredients Whether a highly promoted sale is actually a good deal or not Whether a big package of whatsits is a better deal than individually

purchased whatsits at a different store

Speaking of sizes…

#2 Always Calculate the Unit Price

Be sure to record the size of the package you are purchasing so that you can accurately calculate the unit price. A unit price is vitally important. If you happen to go to one of those giant, members-only warehouse stores like Costco or Sam’s Club, you may discover that although a huge package seems like a good deal, it was cheaper to purchase the items in smaller quantities elsewhere.

The unit price tells you the cost per ounce, per gallon, per pound, etc., of what you want to buy.

Just divide the cost by the quantity. Here’s an easy-peasy example:

$100/25 pounds = $4 per pound

The goal is to compare the unit prices to find the best deal. Here’s an example of this:

2 pounds of chocolate at $3.80 1.5 pounds of chocolate at $2.70

In this case, the unit is 1 pound, and the unit prices are:

$3.80/ 2 pounds= $1.90 per pound $2.70/ 1.5 pounds = $1.80 per pound

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You know how most businesses try to convince you the bigger package is always, the better deal? That’s not always the case. In this situation, the second package of chocolate, although a smaller quantity, is the better bargain.

Another reason you must compare unit prices as opposed to simply grabbing a package that looks the same is the sneaky maneuver that food manufacturers use of reducing the contents of a package and selling it for the same price as before.

For example, one company used to sell 1 pound cans of coffee. As prices went up, it appeared their price was the only one to remain the same. However, reading the label showed that they had reduced the amount of coffee in the can to 14 ounces. This misleading marketing ploy will become even more common as production prices continue to rise.

#3 Turn Pennies into Dollars

Now that you know you can confidently identify a good bargain let’s move on to the next step in your new shopping style: saving pennies that add up to dollars.

When you find a staple at a good price, purchase in as much quantity as you can afford and reasonably use before it expires. This will allow you to begin building your stockpile. After a couple of months of shopping in this manner, you'll discover that you don't actually "grocery shop" anymore - you shop to replenish your stockpile.

Items that you stockpile should be foods that you regularly consume. If you normally eat steak and potatoes, for example, but you fill your pantry with beans and rice, when the day comes that you are relying on that pantry you will suffer from "food fatigue,” and you will also feel deprived. Start now by adjusting the food that you consume on a regular basis to foods that will be sustainable in a food storage pantry.

Once you have the hang of it, you can apply this same pantry principle to nearly everything that you purchase. Your pantry doesn't have to stop at the kitchen. You can use the same shopping theory to keep your household running smoothly on far less money. Consider stockpiling:

Soap

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Toilet paper Shampoo Kitty litter School supplies Garbage bags Toothpaste

You get the idea – anything that you normally purchase, if you purchase it at deep discount, will add up to tremendous savings.

You may be saying, “Wait a minute, Daisy. I don’t have time to run all over the place just to save 10 cents here and 25 cents there. This is ridiculous.”

It’s not as crazy as it sounds. Here’s why.

It’s a cumulative savings.

Think about a cart full of groceries during a weekly shopping trip. You might have 100 items in your cart for the week ahead, right.

So, let’s say you save 10 cents on every single item in your cart. (Which, when you’re shopping like this is a very low savings – you’ll probably save far more.)

In a cart with 100 items, you’ve saved $10 in a week.

If you do that every single week over the course of an entire year, you’ve saved $520.

If you apply this to everything you purchase, can you see how quickly this could add up for you? You can save thousands of dollars per year and have a loaded pantry, ready to sustain you through emergencies and financial shortfalls.

#4 Plan your shopping trips with the precision of a military maneuver.

If you’re driving without a plan all over the place to hit the sales, you aren’t going to save enough money to make it worthwhile in most cases. You should shop with a plan to maximize your time and fuel costs.

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Most areas distribute free weekly flyers to your house. These are good for more than just lining the bottom of the litter box. If you are in an area where you don’t get sales flyers, you can generally find them online. I live in the boonies without mail delivery to my home, so I subscribe online to all of my local grocery stores’ flyers.

These sales flyers will help you to identify “loss leader” items that are geared to get customers in the doors. The loss leader is simply the unbeatable, oh-my-gosh-what-a-sale bargain to get you in the door at which point they hope you’ll purchase other dramatically overpriced items just because you’re there. This is a technique usually used by big corporations, so I have no qualms whatsoever about beating them at their own game and stopping JUST to purchase the loss leader items in quantity.

It isn’t always worthwhile to go far out of your way to purchase the loss-leaders, though. You should establish a sensible route and pick up sale items along the way. Wasting half a tank of gas just to save 50 cents per item isn’t thrifty at all.

Spend a couple of hours each week writing down the sales that seem good. Then, check your price book and compare the unit costs. Are the advertised items really a good deal?

#5 be flexible

While I do recommend making a list, it’s vital to remember, the list is not the Gospel - it is just a guideline. You know how some of those websites preach strict adherence to your lists and menus? Ignore them.

Here’s why.

Let’s say you have a whole chicken on your list, but chicken is outrageously expensive this week. However, pork is on sale. Doesn’t it make a lot more sense to take that into consideration? Be flexible.

For the thriftiest possible shopping trip, your list should include:

Items that you have coupons for Sale items, listed by store, that are a good deal

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Must-have items, like milk if you have small children (there should be very few must-have items - flexibility is the key to a barebones budget!)

Ingredients that you require for your meal plans (again, this should be flexible - also, don't waste money on an ingredient that you can only use in one dish if your budget is tight!)

Map your route before you go - if you have several stops to make, do so efficiently and without backtracking.

Organize your lists by store

If a store is out of the way from the other shops you plan to hit, think about the week ahead. Do you have any errands or obligations that will take you to that store? There is a warehouse store about an hour away from us. Anytime we have an appointment in that city, we plan ahead, allowing some extra time to stop at the warehouse store and stock up.

#6 Gearing up for a shopping trip

Here are a few more tips to help you keep the budget under control if you are spending an afternoon stockpile shopping:

Eat before you go - hunger can impair your judgment because everything just looks so darned good!

Take a bottle of water or a cup of coffee with you so that you aren't tempted by the coolers or the Starbucks at the front of the store.

When embarking on an afternoon of sales shopping, it can be a good idea to put some ice in a cooler for housing perishable food. Try to plan to pick up most of the perishable items on your last stop.

Go alone - it is always far more expensive with a spouse or a child in tow. Admit it, who among us hasn’t bought something frivolous just to make another family member happy?

#7 Make bulk purchases

The savings get even better when you begin purchasing in bulk quantities instead of grocery store quantities.

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Let’s look at some math, and you'll see why maintaining a pantry beats out weekly grocery shopping every time.

I purchase my beef in bulk from a local farmer through a butcher shop. They raise hormone-free meat; the cattle are grass fed, the animals are treated humanely, and the quality is superior. Because I purchase 1/4 of a cow each year, I'm able to get all my beef at $3.99 per pound.

Compare this to the grocery store (and we’re only talking about price, not the superior quality of the meat purchased farm direct): the best price this week for stewing beef was $4.99 per pound. The best price for ground beef was $2.99 per pound. The best price for roast was $9.99 per pound. When you average all of these together, I pay slightly more for ground beef and far less for everything else. As well, I have the added benefit of excellent quality meat that is cut and wrapped to order, and I'm avoiding the nasty chemicals and factory farming practices that taint the grocery store meat. The average grocery store price per pound, on sale, is $5.99

· Pantry method: $3.99 per pound

· Regular shopping method: $5.99 per pound

Now, for another example, let's look at grains.

When I lived in Canada, I bought organic wheat berries. I paid $17.04 for 10 kg (about 22 pounds). The shipping was $21.78, bringing my total to $38.82, delivered to my door - or $1.76 per pound. I couldn't get wheat berries at the local store. I had to drive an hour and 15 minutes to get them, resulting in a tank of gas. At the closest place I can find wheat berries, the cost in bulk is $2.60 per pound. Yes, I could buy a smaller amount, but purchasing the larger amount also results in savings because of fewer trips to the store.

Most food calculators recommend 300 pounds of wheat per person per year. While that sounds like an astronomical amount, you use wheat for making bread, pasta, cookies and other baked goods. If you are buying your wheat already processed into bread, pasta, and cereal, the price continues to climb.

· Pantry method: $1.76 per pound

· Regular shopping method: $2.60 per pound

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At $1.76 per pound, that costs $529 per year. Per person. At $2.60 per pound, that costs $780 per year. Per person. If you can do this with all of your staples, you can see the savings that can be achieved. That is over $1000 per year for a family of four, for just one item.

Some of the things I buy in extremely large quantities are:

Beef Sugar Wheat Cornmeal Oatmeal Coconut Oil Quinoa Beans Popcorn Tomatoes Dry milk

You’ll be astonished at how life-changing it is to shop for your pantry instead of to fulfill your weekly grocery list. Stock up and prepare for that rainy day that could be just around the corner. And if the rainy day never comes, you've saved time and money while providing healthy food for your family.

What You Should Have in Your Pantry

Much has been written about the specific items to stock in your pantry, so this is just a general list.

Dried goods like grains and beans Pantry staples like baking supplies Meat and produce for the freezer Emergency food buckets stocked with full meals Canned goods like meat, soup, fruits, and vegetables (These can be

either home-canned or store-bought canned goods) Powdered milk

The best-case scenario is to store what you already eat. If you usually eat meals with a lot of meat and little plant protein, you're going to feel deprived if you

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suddenly switch from steak to beans. If you tend to eat lots of protein and vegetables, you're not going to feel your best if you suddenly switch to a diet loaded with starches and high in carbohydrates.

One good way to see what you're already eating is to write down everything your family consumes for a couple of weeks. You can probably remember most of what you had the past week to give yourself a guideline.

Now, while everything is normal, take a long hard look at your consumption. Do you eat foods that you can stock up on or do you focus on things that require a couple of trips to the store per week for freshness? If the latter is the case, you might want to make some simple adjustments so that it will be easier to maintain your diet in difficult times.

When people hear the question, "How long could you survive on the food you have on hand?" they tend to think of the math. "I have 472 servings of grain divided by four people and..."

Stop.

You need to think in terms of meals. Those who think in individual components like this are the ones who will end up near the end of the pantry stretch eating canned peaches, stale saltines, and pureed pumpkin for dinner. Not the most enticing combo, right?

One simple way to stock up and have familiar food on hand is to think about seven meals that your family enjoys. Then, purchase for your pantry the ingredients for 4 of each of those meals. Here are a few quick tips.

Look for non-perishable options, like freeze dried mushrooms and bell peppers for your spaghetti sauce.

Repackage meat carefully for your freezer in meal-sized servings. Learn how to make baked goods from scratch and stock up on the

ingredients you need for them. Keep fruit and veggies on hand in frozen, dehydrated, and canned form. Have some quick meals on hand so that you don't end up breaking the

budget on takeout food on a super busy day. (I pressure can entire meals for this very reason.)

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12 Quick Tips to Build the Perfect Pantry

The Perfect Pantry creates the optimal supply for the needs of your particular family.

The key is organization. Keep the following tips in mind to create the best possible pantry.

Keep an up-to-date inventory so that you know what you have

Catalog your coupons by type and expiration date

Track the sales cycles

Keep your products rotated into your kitchen so that you don't lose foods to missed expiration dates.

Store longer-term foods in optimum conditions to prolong their viability.

Maintain a list of what is needed to balance your pantry nutritionally so that you can focus on those items when an unexpected bargain pops up.

Buy pantry staples (like beans and grains) in the largest quantities you can manage to maximize your savings.

Remember the adage "Store what you eat and eat what you store" - it isn't a bargain if you purchase something no one in your family will eat.

Supplement your pantry by growing as much as possible in your particular circumstances, even if you are just adding a windowsill herb and salad garden.

Tap into your inner hunter-gatherer with strategies like foraging,

fishing, snaring, and hunting.

Purchase seasonally and in large quantities from local growers or harvest from your own garden.

Become a food preservation expert and stock up on the necessary tools and supplies.

Other Tight Budget Tips

1) Buy local, in-season foods in enough quantity to preserve them.

Sometimes when you’re buying in quantity, you can get a pretty reasonable

price for fruits and veggies at local farms and markets. Be sure and ask if

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they have “seconds,” too. Seconds are the odd-shaped, bruised, or at-the-

very-end-of-edibleness bits of produce that they can’t sell at full price. As

soon as you get home, begin canning, dehydrating, and freezing your stash.

2) Be scrupulous about food hygiene. Wash your produce very thoroughly

and soak it in a baking soda bath. Also, remember to careful wash your

beans and rice.

3) Get growing. Even if it is the off season, you can sprout some seeds on

your counter to add fresh nutrients. You can grow some salad greens and

herbs on a sunny windowsill. Invest a few dollars each week in some seeds,

and you will soon be able to supplement your diet with nutritious, organic,

home-grown veggies.

4) Visit outlet stores. Sometimes places like Big Lots or grocery clearance

centers have organic options at good prices. You might be able to pick up

canned goods, cereals, and crackers at a fraction of the normal grocery

store price.

5) Forage for freebies. In many locations, even in the city, there are free

delicious foods just waiting for you to pick them. Dandelions, wild berries,

nuts, and nutritious leaves abound. Just be very sure you know what you're

picking and then enjoy your wild foods. Check out a local guide to the

nutritious plants that may be in your backyard masquerading as lowly

weeds.

6) Plan on at least one extra frugal meal per day. Have peanut butter and

crackers, a bowl of oatmeal, or soup for one meal per day - not every meal

has to be made up of protein, veggies, and grains.

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Healthy Choices

Some folks aren’t particular about what they eat. If you aren’t overly concerned

with additives, GMOs, and hormones, you might want to skip over this section

and move on to the next part because this will bore you to tears and make you

feel preached at. No hard feelings.

But for those who put a lot of thought into where their family’s nutrition comes

from, this is the chapter for you. Sometimes, a decision has to be made about

where to spend less and where to splurge on your groceries.

So, what is a broke, but health-conscious, shopper supposed to avoid?

Earlier, I mentioned the things I prefer to avoid when I can.

Non-organic dairy products

Non-organic meat

Anything containing corn, soy, or canola

Anything with chemical additives likes artificial colors, flavors, or

preservatives

Anything that is likely to have been doused in pesticides

Anything containing neurotoxins like MSG, fluoride, or aspartame (along

with other artificial sweeteners)

When I’m in a pinch, I opt not to cut corners on the organic dairy, neurotoxins, or

the GMOs. I have a growing child, and these things are at the top of the toxic

pyramid for her development. This isn't to say that the pesticides aren't harmful,

or the preservatives are not a chemical minefield. In a perfect world, I'd avoid all

of it, and you should too.

If you are in a situation where you have a family to feed and don't have a lot of

money to do it, you need to do your research well before looking at those brightly

colored packages with the false promises of nutrition within. While this list isn't

comprehensive, here are some things to consider about conventional grocery

store offerings.

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GMOs: Genetically modified foods have not been tested for long-term effects on

humans. There is a great deal of evidence to indicate the GMOs can cause a host

of illness. Peer reviewed studies implicate GMOs in the development

of grotesque tumors, premature death, organ failure, gastric lesions, liver

damage, kidney damage, severe allergic reactions, a viral gene that disrupts

human functions.3 Many people like to point out that the Seralini study

referenced in that article was “debunked, but it’s interesting to note that while

the study was indeed retracted, guess from where the brand-new editor that

retracted it hailed? He formerly worked at Monsanto, the corporation that is

responsible for the spread of genetically modified crops across America.4

Hormones and antibiotics: Livestock animals that provide meat or dairy products

are often given growth hormones, antibiotics, and GMO feed. These items pass

through the food chain to the consumer. Grown hormones can cause opposite sex

characteristics in developing children, early puberty, the development of cancer,

and infertility5. Furthermore, the world is quickly becoming immune to the effects

of antibiotics because of constant exposure through the food supply, which

means that there is the potential for things that should be easily treated to

become deadly due to antibiotic resistance.

Pesticides/Herbicides: The use of pesticides and herbicides in conventional

farming is rampant. Even the hijacked Environmental Protection Agency has to

admit that the ingestion of pesticides can cause health problems. They warn of

the risk of “birth defects, nerve damage, cancer, and other effects that might

occur over a long period of time.” 6 (Keep in mind, however, that despite this

warning, the EPA just raised the acceptable limit of glyphosate7 at the behest of

Monsanto.) Especially at risk of harm from pesticides are prepubescent children

and fetuses.

Neurotoxins: Our water supply is spiked with fluoride, a neurotoxin that lowers

IQs, causes infertility, has been linked to cancer and causes hardening of the 3 http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/gmos-not-even-in-moderation-02072013 4 http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/gmo-rat-study-retracted-by-new-journal-editor-from-surprise-monsanto-11302013 5 http://www.sustainabletable.org/258/hormones 6 https://www.epa.gov/pesticides 7 http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/despite-irrefutable-evidence-of-toxicity-and-death-monsantos-friends-at-the-epa-raise-allowable-glysophate-levels-06192013

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arteries8. Nearly every packaged food on the shelf is seasoned with MSG in one of

its many names, and many lower calorie foods and diet drinks are sweetened with

aspartame. Both of these are excitotoxins that can cause brain cell

death instantly, causing decreased IQs, headaches, depression, and seizures9.

Assorted chemical cocktails: The length of the ingredients list in your food is

often a direct indicator of the unhealthiness of the item. When an item contains a

host of additives, colors, flavors, and preservatives, you can safely bet that most

of the nutrients are gone. These highly processed food-like substances are very

difficult for the digestive system to break down so that the few remaining

nutrients can be used. If you can't picture what an ingredient looked like

in its natural state, it probably isn't something you really want to eat. When is the

last time you saw a tertiary butyl hydroquinone grazing in a field, or a calcium

propionate growing in the garden?

What should you eat when you're broke?

Grains: If you can't swing organic grains, look for whole grains with few or no

additives.

Wheat flour

Brown rice

Pasta (with recognizable ingredients)

Couscous

Quinoa

Barley

Meats: If you can't afford grass-fed organic meat, at the very least look for

options that are guaranteed to be hormone and antibiotic free. The USDA does

not allow the use of growth hormones in pork, which makes it a slightly better

option.

Here's a little primer on those confusing meat labels:

8 http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx 9 http://www.naturalnews.com/rr-blaylock.html

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Hormone-free: This means something with beef, but is nothing but a

marketing ploy when you see it on poultry or pork, as the USDA does not

allow the use of hormones in those animals. Hormone-free does not mean

antibiotic-free

Antibiotic-free: Because of poor and stressful living conditions, factory-

farmed animals are very susceptible to illness. Antibiotic-free means they

were not prophylactically treated with antibiotics. This does not, however,

mean that the animal is hormone-free.

Grass-fed: Grass-fed cows are allowed some access to the outdoors and are

not fed grains or corn. This does NOT mean they are organic, because the

grass they are grazing on may have been chemically fertilized and

sprayed. Unless you have actually seen them roaming around the farm,

keep in mind their access to the outdoors may not be the lovely rolling

pastures that you have in your mind, but a crowded corral with hundreds of

other cows.

Free-range: This label doesn't mean diddly squat. It means that the animal

is allowed a minimum of an hour a day outside. This could mean that they

are crammed into an open area with a billion other chickens, still, without

room to move, or that their cage is put outside, leaving them still tightly

confined. Like the grass-fed cows above, unless you actually see the farm

with the gallivanting chickens or pigs, take the label "free-range" with a

grain of salt.

Your best options, if you can't afford organic meats, are to go for the hormone

and antibiotic free options as a supplement to vegetarian protein sources like

local eggs, beans, and organic dairy products.

Fruits and vegetables: If organic produce is not an option, look for the items with

the lowest pesticide loads. (This list by the Environmental Working Group is

based ONLY on pesticide loads - some of the items they recommend could be

GMOs10). Fruits and vegetables that can often be peeled subject you

to fewer pesticides than thin-skinned items. If you must buy conventional, wash

the produce carefully and peel it if possible. You may notice that two of the items

on the list are marked with an asterisk. That’s because these foods are frequently

10 https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/dirty_dozen_list.php

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genetically modified. So, you might be avoiding pesticides, but if you’re also trying

to avoid GMOs, go for the organic versions of these, also. Look to these foods for

lower pesticide loads:

Avocados

Corn*

Pineapples

Cabbage

Green Peas

Onions

Asparagus

Mangoes

Papayas*

Kiwi

Eggplant

Honeydew Melon

Grapefruit

Cantaloupe Cauliflower

Dairy products: Conventional dairy products are loaded with hormones. Dairy cattle are given high levels of female hormones to make them produce a greater quantity of milk. These hormones cause little boys to develop female characteristics and make little girls hit puberty at a far younger age than normal, which is the reason you see 4th graders with large breasts and hips. These hormones can also trigger obesity in both genders. Because of the public outcry, some dairies have pledged not to use rBST, the most commonly used of the growth hormones. Do your research to discover if there are any such brands available to you. The Lucerne brand from Safeway is guaranteed to be hormone free. It's interesting to note that Monsanto, the company that pushes rBST, wants the FDA to disallow dairies to put this on their labels. As well, the FDA forces those who label their products rBST-free to put the following disclaimer on the

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containers: “No significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBST-treated and non-rBST-treated cows.”11

Organic dairy is still better because the cattle are fed a healthier diet and are free

from antibiotics. If you can't swing it, at the very least, search for rBST-free dairy

products. For other types of dairy products, you can save loads of money by

making your own from untainted milk. At the end of this book, you can learn how

to make your own yogurt, yogurt cheese, and cottage cheese. Plain yogurt can

also be used as a healthy substitute for sour cream.

Water: If you are on city water, chances are, your water is loaded with chemicals,

from fluoride to ammonia to chlorine12. I won't drink this water, and I won't let

my children drink it either. The large 5-gallon jugs provide the least expensive

way to buy water. Also, look for sources of spring water to fill your own

containers. You can find sources online.

Don't give up. If you are feeling financially defeated, it is sometimes easy to say,

"*bleep* it!!!" and just get some Ramen noodles or macaroni and cheese and call

it a meal. Don't do it! Do the very best you can with the resources you have

available. Remember, if you can't afford good food, you definitely can't afford bad

health - it's even more expensive.

The Simple Truth

There are a lot of things that readers may find to pick apart in this section - and

that's good! By thinking critically and discussing these things, sometimes we can

come up with solutions that may not have occurred to us before the

conversation. I'm not some expert that shouldn't be questioned - I am just a mom

on a budget. Some of the suggestions here were gleaned from the comments

sections of previous articles.

Do your research and do the best that you can with what's available given your

resources. Create a plan to provide better options in the future. Don't go down

that toxic trail laid out by Big Food without fighting, kicking, and screaming.

11 http://www.non-gmoreport.com/articles/may07/misleading_rBST-free_labeling.php#sthash.ntlDkxBh.dpuf 12 http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/huh-it-must-be-something-in-the-water-01082013

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The Lost Art of Scratch Cooking

If you compare the meals served in many of the kitchens today to meals served 100+ years ago, there is one very big difference. Nearly every meal served in North America has at least one dish that has come from a box, bag, or pouch.

Take breakfast, for example.

Did you have toast? If so, did you make the bread? Cereal? One of those little packs of Quaker oatmeal, all flavored up and just waiting for you to add water? Did your breakfast originate in the freezer? Frozen toaster versions of pancakes, waffles, and pastries abound in many kitchens.

Several years ago, I did a “Scratch Challenge” for a month, during which everything we ate had to be made from scratch - no convenience ingredients allowed. It wasn't until I did this that I realized that even in my fairly "clean" kitchen, there still remained a lot of processed items.

If you do a quick survey of your own kitchen, you may be surprised at what you find. I discovered that the best way to clean up my act was to focus on cooking only from scratch. Now, my kitchen has only a few holdouts, most of which are there for food storage purposes.

Some of the most common processed items that "sneak in" are dairy and grain products:

Bread Yogurt Cottage Cheese Hard Cheese Crackers Pitas Tortillas Cereal Pasta

None of these would be incredibly difficult to make, but they ARE time-consuming. In a world that is ever-increasingly geared toward convenience, few

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people take the time to roll out noodles or bake cookies these days. Birthday cakes come from the bakery, cookies come from a bag with a convenient tab to reseal it, and bread comes from a shelf at the grocery store, so perfectly uniform that if you put it back and mixed all the loaves up, you'd never find the original loaf. (Anyone who has ever baked a loaf of bread will tell you, they all get a funny lump here and there!)

All this easy-access food has taken a deeper toll than you might imagine.

...A toll on our health.

...A toll on our waistlines.

...A toll on our ability to make the simplest item on our own.

...A toll on the time we spend with our families.

...A toll on the next generation, when we fail to teach them the arts that are vanishing as our grandparents pass away.

…A toll on our wallets because someone has to make the stuff we eat, even if they’re just putting dried ingredients into little boxes.

Cooking from scratch is an analogy for today's society. Those who take the road less traveled are considered eccentric throw-backs to a faraway time.

People feel that we are making unnecessary work for ourselves. They believe that our lives would be vastly improved by tossing a shiny cellophane bag of bread into the grocery cart instead of taking a couple of hours to mix the ingredients, knead the dough, let it rise, knead it some more, then shape it into the desired form.

But when you toss that bag of bread into the cart, you are getting undesirable ingredients. You are missing out on teaching your child how to judge the composition of the dough by the feel of it in her hands when she kneads it. You don't get to inhale that delicious aroma emanating from your oven, and you totally skip that mouth-watering anticipation as you let the loaf rest long enough for you to slice it. Packaged bread from the store doesn't serve as so fine a vehicle for melting fresh butter and transferring it your mouth once you finally get to cut into your fresh, wholesome bread.

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Scratch cooking is easier than you might think.

Media is partly to blame for making it seem difficult to cook. Most of the advertisements for processed food available at the grocery store tout the convenience of these items. You never see a mom with flour all over the front of her apron and her hair in a ponytail. Instead, the TV-commercial mothers are perfectly coiffed, wearing high heels and a skirt, placing a dish on the table with a flawlessly manicured hand. They are never rushed or harried, of course, because they've used pre-shredded cheese along with their premade noodles and their can of sauce. They look like they just stepped out of the office and "poof" a dinner has magically appeared in their kitchens.

If you can read and possess the ability to use a measuring cup, you can cook. It's that simple. It seems almost fashionable lately to claim an inability to cook, as though preparing food is beneath a certain level of sophistication. When you start out, sure, there is some trial and error. Sometimes you end up having a peanut butter sandwich in the early years. But for the most part, with some very basic tools, cooking is foolproof.

Case in point: my oldest daughter was a little bit behind on reading when she was in 3rd grade. However, she had a fascination with cooking. So, to help improve her reading skills, I began letting her cook. She would pore through my cookbooks and choose a meal. She'd make a list; then we'd check what we had in the house and what we needed from the store. When she was nine years old, she made a cheese lasagna, from scratch, including the marinara sauce, completely unaided. (And it was delicious!)

Basic scratch cooking is not some mysterious art that requires four years at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris - it's just a simple matter of reading the instructions and putting them into action.

It doesn't take that much additional time.

With a bit of pre-planning, even the busiest working mother can cook from scratch, without the use of convenience items.

Every weekend I spend a few hours in the kitchen prepping food for the week ahead. I do some baking (cookies, granola bars, and bread), clean and chop up veggies, pack little containers of healthy snacks, and cook a few items to be

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used throughout the week. I was more focused on this when I worked outside the home, but still do it to some degree. More on this in the next section.

Never forget about your crock pot! That valuable kitchen appliance can have dinner ready and waiting when you get home from a long day at the office, in the garden, or out with the kiddos. It makes delicious pot roasts and even rotisserie-style chicken! It's also great for soups, stews, chili and spaghetti sauce. You can make the cheapest cut of meat tender and delicious by slow-cooking it for 10 hours on low, so this is helpful to the budget as well.

There are many healthy foods that are convenient when you're in a time-

crunch.

If you're looking for convenience (and let's face it, we all need convenience sometimes!) here are a few "fast foods" that fall into the scratch category.

Nuts Trail mix Fresh fruit Dried Fruit Salad (extra points if you've already assembled it and just need to dip some

out and add dressing!) Veggies like carrots, radishes, sugar snap peas, celery, and cherry tomatoes Steamed veggies with cheese Eggs (super-fast to fry, scramble or boil) Yogurt (that was made earlier) topped with fruit and granola Leftovers Cheese (opt for a healthy version without additives and artificial colors)

It's healthier.

Any item you make from scratch is going to be far healthier than its convenience food equivalent. Take cookies, for example. Who doesn't love cookies? I bake them 2-3 times per week - there are always some in the jar. However, the ones I make at home contain wholesome ingredients like freshly ground flour, organic sugar, coconut oil and dried fruit. The ones that I would buy at the grocery store, nine times out of ten, would contain unsavory items like HFCS, genetically modified ingredients, and fruit preserved with sulfites.

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The sad thing is, if you look at the labels on the convenience items at the store, they like to tout the health benefits all over the brightly colored package. It makes me livid that people are being deliberately fooled by this. Stamps of approval from the FDA, the American Heart Association, the USDA and other nutritional agencies mean absolutely nothing except that the manufacturer of the product has made all the right donations. If food has to be "fortified" with vitamins and minerals, that essentially means that the basic food has been depleted of those beneficial nutrients and that they had to be added back in artificially. Your body is miraculously designed to take nutrients from food and doesn't recognize many of these artificial versions of nutrients as such.

When you make it yourself, you know precisely what is in it. You know that your family member with allergies is safe, that you aren't unknowingly consuming things you’re trying to avoid, and that you aren't ingesting preservatives that do double duty as drain cleaner.

It's cheaper.

You will save a TON of money cooking it yourself. For example, a one-cup serving of brown rice, cooked in broth and prepared from scratch costs less than 10 cents (and contains nothing yucky). A one cup serving of flavored Uncle You-Know-Who's rice costs up to $1. A cup of oatmeal from bulk-purchased steel cut oats costs about 5 cents, but a little brown packet that you pour boiling water over costs 50 cents.

The reason for this? Time is money. Whether it's your time or the food manufacturer's time, there is a cost involved. Some people feel that it's worth it to pay for this convenience. What they don't consider is that the hands-on time in cooking these items from scratch is often minimal. I use the oven to bake my brown rice, and all I must do is bring the pot to a boil on the stove top, put it in the oven for 1 hour, and walk away. If that hour is not "hands on time" then I don’t think that it could be considered an hour of actual work. Do you?

Shopping to stock your pantry and purchasing basic items in bulk will save you a fortune at the grocery store. As an added bonus, you'll find that by keeping a good supply of all of your basic items, you will end up having to make fewer trips to the grocery store. (And come on, every time you go to the store, if you're

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anything like me, you end up with at least ONE thing that wasn't on your list! See? More savings!)

Here's how to get started with scratch cooking.

The first thing you need to do is acquire a good cookbook. I have lots of

cookbooks that have been purchased at yard sales and library sales over the

years. I find that the most valuable, the ones I turn to again and again, are the old

books. I love cookbooks that were written during the Great Depression, or even

earlier. My prized possession is my Fanny Farmer cookbook, written in 1896 and

originally published as The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. I have referred to

this book again and again because it has instructions for things that are rather

difficult to find in more modern tomes. As well, you don't find ingredients like

canned "cream of chemical" soup – the book walks you through the steps of

making a basic béchamel sauce instead.

With the internet, you can find simple instructions for making just about anything. Find an author who doesn't use hard-to-find ingredients and that shows step by step illustrations.

Next, be sure you have some basic kitchen supplies. You need basic cookware and utensils, obviously. Other useful (but not 100% necessary) items are:

a kitchen timer (this is very, very important unless your attention span is far keener than mine)

an inexpensive little food processor an instant-read thermometer (more important when you’re just starting

out - later you will be able to judge when something is the "right" temperature)

a good sharp knife a box grater with different sized holes a set of measuring cups and spoons a colander a whisk a potato masher a crock pot

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I'm not a huge fan of gadgets, particularly electric ones. Aside from a food processor, crock pot, and blender, my kitchen is equipped with simple, manual tools.

Experiment!

Once you have the basics down, you can begin to experiment, and this is what separates the "decent" cooks from the “great” cooks. Initially, don't veer too far from the original recipe. You can start by altering the spices to suit the preferences of your family. Next thing you know, you'll look at a recipe, get a general idea of what they're making and then set off to create your own unique dish!

Some scratch cooking shortcuts

Those of us who are proponents of whole foods and scratch cooking have known it all along, but a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine confirms it13. Time spent in the kitchen equals a better diet.

1319 participants in the Seattle Obesity Study answered questions about the amount of time they spend preparing food for their families each day, including prepping, cooking, and cleaning up.

16% spent less than an hour a day 43% spent between 1-2 hours per day 41% spent more than 2 hours per day

Those who worked outside the home were less likely to spend time on food preparation. They relied on restaurant meals and convenience foods. Those who spent more time preparing food were also more likely to consume a greater proportion of fruits and vegetables.

Many of us lead very busy lives, what with activities for the kids, work, and other obligations. Our busy schedules don't mean that we have to say goodbye to healthy eating. There are lots of ways to cut the time spent in the kitchen while still enjoying optimum nutrition, scratch meals, and yummy produce. When you are not in control of your food, you're much more likely to consume additives,

13 http://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(14)00400-0/abstract

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toxic chemicals, and GMOs. Even though I work from home, it's rare for me to spend hours per day in the kitchen. Here are some of my favorite scratch cooking shortcuts that allow me to step away from the stove while still providing a hearty dinner for the family.

#1 Weekly Food Prep

I mentioned this above. When I worked outside the home, Sunday afternoon was always dedicated to weekly food prep. It was necessary to be able to juggle all my responsibilities during the week ahead. Now that I work from home, I usually break food prep into two sessions, but the basic premise is the same.

There are a lot of time-saving benefits to this.

You only have one big kitchen clean-up. The rest of the week your dishes only consist of your plates and flatware, and the cookware you used to heat your food. You can multitask by having several things in the oven cooking at once - this also saves on your utility bill. You can also wash and prep all your produce at the same time, and then just wash your colander and cutting board when you're finished.

Throughout the week meals are strictly grab-and-go. If your food is already prepped, dinner can be on the table in 10-15 minutes every night.

What does a food prep afternoon typically look like?

Menu planning Washing and cutting up vegetables Washing fruit Portioning out snacks for lunch boxes Doing the baking Preparing some basic items that can be used in different ways throughout

the week (chicken, beef, grains, salad)

When you prepare your food ahead of time, dinner is on the table faster than you can say "drive-thru." Your budget will thank you because you won't require those impromptu pizza deliveries when you just don't feel like cooking. Your waistline will thank you because you won't grab high-calorie, low-nutrient convenience

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foods. Your health will thank you because you will be eating nutritious, wholesome foods cooked from scratch that nourish rather than deplete.

Here's an example of a weekly food prep at our house:

Yogurt parfaits (combine fruit and yogurt in individual containers, portion out some granola to stir in at serving time)

Meatloaf "muffins" (Cooking meatloaf in a muffin tin makes perfect individual servings)

Baked eggs (These can be loaded with veggies and cheese and baked in muffin tins for a super-fast breakfast on the go)

Veggies, cleaned, chopped, and ready for steaming or stir-frying Roasted chicken (the leftovers can be used for future meals) Blueberry corn muffins Cookies or granola bars Rice Pilaf Broccoli slaw with bacon Chopped up veggies for a quick-to-grab snack Cooked, seasoned ground beef (can be used in tacos or marinara sauce

later in the week Roasted ham (Use for one dinner meal and then use the leftovers for

sandwiches and salad throughout the week) Green salad (Just grab a handful and add protein and dressing for an instant

meal)

You may want to stash some of your premade food in the freezer, but most items will last until Friday if they’re stored properly.

#2 The Crock Pot

One of the most used appliances in my kitchen is the humble crock pot. There's nothing like coming home after a long day to a mouthwatering aroma and dinner ready to be dished into a bowl.

Most crock pot meals require little in the way of prep time. You can often throw all of the ingredients in the crock pot in less than 10 minutes in the morning. Here are some of our favorite dishes:

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Spaghetti and meatballs (you don't have to precook the meatballs - just let them simmer in your favorite marinara sauce all day. When it's time to eat, boil up some pasta and you've got dinner in 8 minutes.)

Chili: Again, it isn't necessary to cook the meat ahead of time. Pot roast and veggies: Place a slab of meat, cut up potatoes and carrots,

and some onion and garlic into the crockpot. Add a cup of water, beer, or red wine, and salt and pepper to taste.

Pulled pork: Top a pork roast with your favorite organic barbecue sauce and cook it all day. Serve with sweet and sour cole slaw.

Beef stew: Pretty much like pot roast, but smaller pieces and 2 cups of liquid

Rotisserie chicken: It's unbelievable similar to what you'd get in one of those heated cabinets at the grocery store. (Recipe at the end of the book)

Mexican pulled chicken: Skinless, boneless chicken breasts and a jar of salsa = perfect soft taco filling

Don't be afraid to adapt your own soup recipes for the crockpot. Nearly any soup is heavenly after simmering all day long. Just add delicate veggies and grains during the last hour.

You don't have to spend big money on the fanciest crockpot around. Mine is an inexpensive model that I got when I gave my 18-year-old crockpot to my daughter when she left for college. These suckers last forever.

#3 Turn your refrigerator into a home salad bar

This goes hand in hand with #1, but it's a little more specific. When my kids were younger, they loved it when dinner was a "salad bar." The only rules were that they had to pick one protein serving and three veggie servings.

If you prep your salad bar choices ahead of time, dinner is as easy as pulling containers out of the fridge and lining them up on the counter. Wash and chop your veggies and place them in individual containers. Precook your meat and cut it into bite-sized pieces. You can portion them out into individual servings if you are counting calories. Here are some yummy salad bar ingredients:

Greens (baby spinach, romaine, spring mix) Sugar snap peas

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Baby carrots (get the organic ones, so they aren't soaked in bleach) Cherry tomatoes Bell peppers Chicken breast Ham Boiled egg Kidney beans Shredded cheese Sunflower or pumpkin seeds Dried fruit

Have some healthy salad dressings to pick from or quickly make your own in a handy shaker bottle or small Mason jar.

Isn't better health worth a little bit of time?

Despite all sorts of medical advances, the generation of kids who are currently growing up is destined to be shorter-lived than their parents. Many of these children will have no idea how to cook because no one did it at their house. Their kids will be in even worse health. By eating fast, cheap, processed foods, not only is the health of future generations being sacrificed but cooking itself is destined to become a lost art - the purview of a few lone, old-fashioned health nuts.

We need to reprioritize and spend time where it can do the most good - in the kitchen, as a family.

How to eat from your pantry when you have more month than money.

When things go wrong, and money is short, it can be difficult to keep the family fed, the bills paid, and a roof over your heads. This could happen for any number of reasons, such as a job loss, an unexpected repair bill, or illness. However, if you have built a pantry, as we discussed at the beginning of the book, you’ll have one less thing to worry about if you have more month than money.

Pantry Friendly Adaptations

Lots of folks say things like "I only buy fresh XXX at the store - everything else came from the pantry." That's awesome - truly - but if you were when you

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couldn't buy fresh XXX, you probably wouldn't want to go without it right? Here are some things to stockpile so that you can make adaptations to fresh XXX

Milk: Powdered milk Bread: Stock up on the ingredients to make it yourself. Store-bought bread

is usually loaded with additives so learning to bake your own is a worthy skill regardless of whether you intend to survive from your pantry.

Fresh fruit: Frozen fruit is pretty yummy. In fact, my (slightly odd) kids enjoy gnawing on it right out of the freezer. You can also use it in smoothies, thaw and top yogurt or pancakes with it, or bake with it. We are huge applesauce fans, so I can a few dozen jars of this each fall. I also can peach and pear slices in honey for a sweet treat, and loads of homemade jam.

Salad: If you have a sunny windowsill you can grow salad greens all year long to sate your craving for fresh greens. Other alternatives are home-canned coleslaw or lightly cooked veggie salads made from freezer vegetables.

Vegetables: You don’t have to have fresh asparagus in February, contrary to what the grocery stores portray. While I do can some vegetables, canned veggies are not my favorite. I prefer freshly cooked al dente. The closest I can get to that with my food storage is frozen veggies, lightly steamed. I also keep dehydrated veggies on hand for cooking with: mushrooms, bell pepper, onion, etc. If you have a root cellar, lots of good veggies can be stored there.

Sample Menus from Our Food Storage Pantry

Occasionally, we eat solely from our pantry for a month. It helps us test our supplies, and it’s a great way to save some money. Here are some of the meals I can create from my pantry and freezer.

Breakfasts

We have an unlimited supply of eggs with ten hens laying enthusiastically, so most breakfast’s center around them. If you don’t have chickens, eggs are still one of the least expensive forms of protein around.

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Omelets with leftover veggies from the night before and a bit of cheese sauce to make our cheese go further

Eggs with sausage or bacon (we recently bought half a hog, so we have plenty of that)

Homemade pancakes topped with fruit syrup made from home-canned jam Homemade granola or granola cookies Eggs and roasted veggies (One of our weird favorite breakfasts) Oatmeal topped with warmed jam Homemade bread (or cornbread) and jam Smoothies

Lunches

In our house, lunch is often leftovers from the night before. I usually try to cook enough for this very purpose. We do have some other standbys, though.

Homemade chicken strips from the freezer with oven fries Beef patty with oven-baked carrot "fries" Roasted veggies topped with parmesan cheese Soup (all kinds: chicken, beef and vegetable, creamy cauliflower) Refried beans and rice topped with home-canned salsa Top a frozen pizza crust with home-canned pizza sauce, toppings that are

leftovers, and cheese from the freezer Yogurt topped with fruit from the freezer and homemade granola

Dinners

The crock pot gets a whole lot of use in my house. I love the fact that the meal is almost completely hands off while I'm busy doing other things. Of course, not all of our recipes are crock pot ones! Here are some of the dinners we have had over the past couple of weeks.

Roast beef and vegetables (crock pot) Carnitas (pork roast slow cooked with green tomato salsa, lime juice, and

cilantro) Spaghetti and meatballs Pasta with some broccoli from the freezer and parmesan, olive oil, and

garlic

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Stir fries from freezer veggies Pork chops and roasted vegetables sprinkled with parmesan Beef BBQ (slow cooker) and home-canned sweet and sour cole slaw Rice, cooked, then stir-fried with a small amount of leftover meat and egg

to make a tasty bowl of fried rice Roasted chicken and vegetables Baked beans with homemade mac and cheese Beef and vegetable stew Homemade chili (crock pot) Split pea soup made with home canned ham broth Potato soup (it's a family favorite and super-thrifty!) And of course, no list of frugal meals would be complete without breakfast

for dinner

Of course, these menus won’t be for everyone. You may detest potatoes or be a vegetarian or be allergic to wheat. Use this as a guideline to figure out frugal adaptations for your own family favorites.

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Making the Most of Leftovers

One way to stretch your food budget is with the humble leftover.

When you are trying to stretch your money, every single bite of food in the house counts. You cannot afford to let anything go to waste. This is where the "Ménage a Leftover" bucket in the freezer comes in.

In our freezer, we kept an ice cream tub. After each meal, those tiny amounts of food that don't add up to a full serving got popped into the bucket. And because of our situation, I often would take food that was uneaten on a family member's plate to add into the bucket. Desperate times, desperate measures. What people might consider "gross" in good times, they would feel lucky to have in bad times. Then, usually about once per week, the contents of that bucket in the freezer were turned into a meal.

I drew some criticism from friends and relatives during that time for the distance I went not to waste a single bite of food. A few people commented that it was ridiculous, others thought combining all those different foods in the freezer was disgusting and one person even referred to the meals as "garbage disposal meals." It stung a little at the time, but looking back, I'm glad to have had that experience. I can draw upon it if times become difficult in the future. While other people are trying to figure out where their next meal is coming from, I know that I can take the same amount of groceries and make at least two more meals out of them.

I always considered meals from the leftover bucket to be "free food" because they were items that you'd normally throw out. So, let's say, you have a little bit of broccoli, some mashed potatoes, some beef gravy, a scoop of ground beef, some corn...you know? The remains of meals. What can you do with that?

This is where being creative with the spices comes in. I might take the above, add a can of beans and a tin of tomato paste, and turn it into a chili-flavored soup. Alternatively, I could stir in some yogurt and some noodles and make it into a creamy casserole, well-seasoned with thyme. I could sprinkle a bit of cheese on it, wrap it in pie crust and make turnovers. The trick is to make something totally new and different from it so that it doesn't even seem like leftovers. Some of the concoctions were absolutely delicious - so good that we recreated them with

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fresh ingredients later on. Others were not-so-great. Only a couple of times did we end up with something that was truly awful.

If you can serve your family one "freebie" meal per week that results in a savings, for a family of 4, of about $10 or, a whopping $520 over the course of a year. It doesn't sound like much until you add it up, does it?

We don't always do the leftover bucket these days because times are not as tight as they were back then. However, we do creatively use our leftovers. Here are a few ways to remake leftovers into something new and delicious.

Leftover Buffet

We have some nice little oven safe dishes that are divided. We use these on "Leftover Buffet Night." Simply put, all the items from the fridge are placed on the counter. Everyone takes their divided dish and helps themselves to whatever leftovers they'd like for dinner. The dish is then placed in the oven and heated up - sort of like a "TV Dinner" of choice. Aside from the kids scrapping it out over the last enchilada, this is generally very successful.

Soup

When I don't have quite enough to make two full servings, but it's a bit more than one serving, I often make soup. I can broth on a regular basis, so it's an easy thing to grab a jar of broth, chop up the leftover meat and add some vegetables and a grain. You can stretch your soup by adding barley, pasta or rice. If you have fresh bread to serve with it and a little sprinkle of parmesan or cheddar for the top, you have a hot, comforting meal for pennies.

Puree

I use this technique quite often with leftover root veggies. Using a food processor, puree potatoes, carrots, turnips, parsnips or other root vegetables. You can add milk, broth, or even water to thin the puree to the consistency of soup. Season with garlic powder, onion powder and other appropriate spices, and garnish with a tiny amount of bacon, chives, cheese or sour cream. Other vegetables that are suited for puree are cauliflower, broccoli, and squash.

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Pie

This is a great way to use up leftover meat and gravy. In the bottom of a pie pan or cast iron skillet, stir meat that has been cut into bite-sized pieces with gravy. If you don't have leftover gravy, creamy soup, a béchamel sauce, or a thickened broth will work. Add in complimentary vegetables, also in bite sized pieces. We like peas, corn, and carrots with poultry, and green beans, carrots, and potatoes with beef. Add seasoning if needed.

Top your pie with either a standard pie crust, cornbread batter, or with a biscuit dough topping. (Find the recipes in the previous chapter.) Bake as directed, then allow cooling for about 5 minutes before serving.

For even smaller amounts of leftovers (or picky eaters), you can use individual sized ovenproof containers or ramekins to make single serving "pies." I've also used muffin tins designed for the jumbo muffins to make individual pies. When using a muffin tin, you will want to make it a two crust pie to enclose the filling.

Pockets

If I bake it in a pocket, my kids will eat it. Whether the filling is savory or sweet, there's something about a piping hot turnover that makes anything delicious.

The key with a pocket is that the filling cannot be too runny. So, for a savory pocket, you can mix a small amount of gravy, tomato sauce or cheese sauce with your meat and/or veggies, but you don't want it to ooze all over the place as soon as someone takes a bite. If you want to eat this as a handheld food, allow it to cool for at least 15 minutes before eating it.

You can use pie crust or pizza dough for your pockets. Pizza dough is our personal favorite because it is a bit more filling. I make pockets and keep them in the freezer. I take them out the night before and place them in the refrigerator - by noon the pocket is thawed and makes a delicious lunch-box treat at school.

We like pockets with veggies and cheese sauce; meat, mushrooms, and gravy; meat and bbq sauce; pizza toppings, marinara and cheese; and meat and cheese. Another favorite is empanada style: meat flavored with Mexican spices, mixed with salsa, beans, and cheese. As well, you can fill pockets with chopped fruit that is topped with either cream cheese or syrup for a dessert-style turnover.

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Casseroles

The fact is, you can mix nearly anything with a creamy sauce and top it with a crispy topping, and you have a tasty down-home casserole. A basic casserole consists of pre-cooked meat, a veggie, a sauce, a grain and a topping. Bake at approximately 350 for 30-45 minutes until bubbly and the top is browned. The less meat and veggies you have, the more cooked grains you should add. Try barley, quinoa, rice, pasta or wheat berries to stretch your casserole. Instant comfort! For toppings, you can use stale bread that has been finely chopped in the food processor, cheese, crumbled crackers, crumbled cereal, or wheat germ, just to name a few items. I often use things that have perhaps become a bit stale - just another way to use up food that would otherwise be discarded.

Be creative!

You're only limited by your imagination when it comes to turning your leftovers into delicious, tasty new meals. Think about your family's favorite dishes. For us, it is anything in a pocket, pot pies and creamy soups. Therefore, when repurposing my leftovers, I frequently try to gear the meals towards those types of foods. A hint of familiarity makes the meal more easily accepted by those you are feeding.

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Thrifty Recipes These recipes will help you build your pantry faster and allow you to make the

most of what you have, even when you are on a tight budget, by repurposing

leftovers and not wasting a bite of food. If you’re new to scratch cooking, you

will find that some of these basic recipes and skills can help you to extend your

food just a little bit further.

For even more savings, the DIYs will help you to cut your budget and stop buying

expensive specialty items.

In my opinion, recipes are more like “suggestions” than “rules.” Use the recipes

as guidelines and enjoy experimenting based on the items you find tasty and

have available.

Substitutions

In this section, I’ll share some recipes and DIYs for homemade versions of store-

bought standards. For the tastiest and healthiest results, use the best quality

ingredients that you can afford.

Non-Dairy Milk

With more and more people dealing with lactose intolerance and dairy allergies,

alternative milks are all the rage. However, they can come with a pretty hefty

price tag. You won’t believe how easy they are to DIY!

Rice milk

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of cooked rice (brown or white)

• 4 cups of water

• 1 tsp of vanilla (optional)

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Directions:

1. Put all of the ingredients into a blender.

2. Process until smooth.

3. For the best flavor, keep cold. Shake well before using.

Because of the potential toxicity of a heavy consumption of rice (remember how

we talked about arsenic?), for long-term usage, you may wish to go with almond

milk, which is slightly more involved.

Almond milk

Almond milk has a couple of extra steps – soaking the almonds before processing

them in the blender, then straining the finished product through cheesecloth or

a flour sack towel.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of almonds

• 4 cups of water (plus more for soaking)

Directions:

1. Place one cup of almonds in a glass dish. Cover them with water and

allow them to soak overnight. You can cover the bowl with a tea

towel to keep any contaminants out. Soaking will soften the nuts

and make the processing easier and more thorough.

2. Drain the soaking water from the almonds, then place them in your

blender with 4 cups of water.

3. Process until smooth.

4. Use a flour sack towel over a clean container to strain the contents

of the blender. Don’t throw out the almond sludge that you strain

out of the milk! This can be dried and added to baked goods and

recipes.

5. Like rice milk, almond milk will taste better when cold. Shake well

before serving.

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Homemade yogurt

This recipe uses store-bought, pasteurized milk. Instructions are different for raw

milk.

Ingredients:

2 cups of milk

½ cup of yogurt with active cultures (your starter)

Directions:

1. Heat the milk to 165-185 degrees F (use a candy thermometer – or, if you

don’t have one, wait until you are starting to see some bubbles rising, but

the milk is not yet boiling).

2. Remove the milk from the heat and allow it to drop to 105-110 degrees F.

3. Meanwhile, put hot water in your thermos to warm it up.

4. Gently stir in the starter. You want it to be well-combined but don’t use

anything crazy like an immersion blender. Remember, the good bacteria

that create the yogurt are alive, so don’t kill them with too much heat or

overly vigorous mixing. Just a whisk will do.

5. Pour the hot water out of the thermos.

6. Immediately place the mixture into the thermos that has been warmed

with hot water and put the lid on.

7. Keep the thermos cozily wrapped in towels overnight (8-24 hours). It has

to stay warm. When we lived in an off-grid cabin, I tucked the wrapped

thermos behind the woodstove at night to keep it at a warm enough

temperature.

8. Get up and enjoy some delicious, rich, thick yogurt.

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Tips:

• The longer you leave it, the thicker and more tart your yogurt will be. If

you intend to use it in place of sour cream, leave it longer.

• If you are using raw milk, heat it up only to 160.

• Always save a little of your yogurt to be a starter for the next batch.

I like to put a half cup in the fridge, stored separately, so it doesn’t

accidentally get eaten.

Homemade cottage cheese

The thing that shocked me the most the first time I made my own cottage cheese

was that I made this creamy deliciousness with only three simple ingredients:

• organic milk

• white vinegar

• salt

To compare, I looked up the ingredients of a common brand of cottage cheese.

Here is the rather horrifying list14:

Cultured Fat-Free Milk, Buttermilk, Nonfat Dry Milk, Cream, Salt, Citric Acid,

Lactic Acid, Phosphoric Acid, Natural Flavoring, Guar Gum, Mono and

Diglycerides, Xanthan Gum, Carob Bean Gum, Titanium, Dioxide(artificial

color), Maltodextrin, Cultured dextrose, Potassium Sorbate, Calcium

Chloride, Enzymes

Cottage cheese is, for real, the easiest thing that I've ever made. Even better, it’s

far less expensive than purchasing a ready-made container of organic cottage

cheese. This recipe uses store-bought, pasteurized milk. Instructions are

different for raw milk.

14 http://www.baremandairy.com/lowfatcottagecheese.pdf

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Ingredients:

• 2-1/2 cups of 2% milk or raw milk

• 1/4 cup of white vinegar

• dash of salt (optional - it's just for flavor)

Directions:

1. In a large saucepan bring the milk almost to a boil. As soon as bubbles

begin to rise to the top, remove the saucepan from the heat.

2. Immediately stir in the white vinegar and the salt (if using). The milk will

begin to curdle right away.

3. Allow the mixture to cool completely - about 1 hour at room temperature.

(The longer you leave it to cool, the more curds you will have. You can

even put it in the fridge overnight before draining.)

4. Using a mesh strainer, separate the curds and the whey. (Hints of Little

Miss Muffet!).

The result will be a delicious, light and fluffy cottage cheese. This recipe falls just

short of 1 cup of cottage cheese and just over a cup and a half of whey. If the

flavor is a bit sour (more common with pasteurized milk and very rare with raw

milk), you can rinse the curds gently under running water, then drain again.

Don’t throw out your whey!

Here are some uses for it:

Substitute for water or milk in baking

Use instead of water when cooking rice or pasta

Use it for smoothies

Use it in oatmeal or other porridge

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Main Courses

We always make enough for to have leftovers, which we use for lunches, quick

meals, or in some of the recipes in the Leftover Magic section at the end of the

book.

Pot Roast

Ingredients:

• Pork or beef roast (plan on 1 pound per person, so you have leftovers)

• 1 large onion

• 1 potato per person

• 2 carrots per person

• 2 cloves of garlic, whole

• ½ cup of water

• 1/2 cup of another liquid, which can be one or a combination of these

ingredients: water, beef broth, red wine, apple juice (for pork), cola, strong

unsweetened coffee)

• Salt and pepper to taste

• 2 tbsp. of flour and 2 tbsp. of butter for making gravy Directions:

1. Cut an onion in half and lay it, flat side down, in the bottom of a slow

cooker (crock pot).

2. Cut the carrots and potatoes into bite-sized chunks and add them to the

bottom of the crockpot.

3. Place your roast on top of the vegetables, then add the garlic cloves to the

top of the roast.

4. Season the roast with salt and pepper.

5. Pour the liquid on top of the roast.

6. Put the lid on the crockpot and cook this on low for 8-10 hours. The long

cooking time means that you can go with a lower quality cut of meat and it

will still be fork-tender.

7. At serving time, melt butter in the bottom of a skillet on the stove top.

Once the butter is melted, quickly whisk in 2 tbsp. of flour until you have a

creamy white concoction with no lumps.

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8. Ladle out 1 ½ cups of the liquid from the crockpot and pour it into the

skillet.

9. Using your whisk, incorporate the flour and butter mixture with the liquid.

Reduce the heat to low and allow this mixture to gently simmer while you

get the meat and vegetables ready to serve. You may need to thin the

gravy with an additional half cup of water.

10. Remove the meat and vegetables from the slow cooker, reserving the

remaining liquid for your future stew.

11. Slice the meat, reserving a third of it for stew. (If you put all of the meat

out, chances are you won’t have leftovers, because this is melt-in-your-

mouth good.)

Serve meat and vegetables with gravy. Hoard your leftovers for Leftover Beef

Stew or pot pie

Pantry Spaghetti Sauce

Ingredients:

• 1 can of crushed tomatoes

• 3 cloves of garlic

• 1 medium onion

• 1 tbsp. of sugar

• 1 tsp of salt

• 1 tsp of thyme

• 1 tsp of oregano

• 1 tbsp. of basil

• black pepper to taste

• 1 pinch of paprika (smoked Hungarian if you can find it)

• 2 tbsp. of extra virgin olive oil

• Optional: ½ cup of fresh sliced mushrooms and ½ cup of diced bell pepper

• Optional: 1 pound of ground beef

• Fresh grated Parmesan for the top

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Directions:

1. In a food processor, place a small amount of the crushed tomatoes, garlic,

onion, spices, sugar, and optional bell peppers if you’re using them.

Process until pureed.

2. Pour the rest of the crushed tomatoes, the pureed mixture, and the

optional mushrooms into a stockpot.

3. If you want to add meat, stir in your uncooked ground meat or meatballs

now too.

4. Simmer on a low heat for about 3 hours. (You can cook it for longer if you

want to, or you can cook this all day on low in the crock pot.) Drizzle with

olive oil and allow it to cook for another 15 minutes.

5. Serve over pasta topped with Parmesan.

Save the leftovers for Spaghetti Pie.

Slow Cooker Ham and Potatoes

Leftovers make a fantastic soup or filling for a pot pie. (Recipes in the last

chapter.)

Ingredients:

• Diced or sliced ham (this is the other half of the ham you bought for

sandwiches)

• Potatoes, thinly sliced (Count on 2 medium potatoes per family member)

• 2 tbsp. of butter for the sides and bottom of the crockpot

• 1 large onion, minced

• 2 cloves of garlic, minced

• Salt and pepper to taste

• Optional: Favorite herbs and spices (We like thyme and paprika in this

dish)

• ½ cup of water

• ½ cup of milk

• 1 cup of cottage cheese, pureed

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Directions:

1. Coat the sides of the crockpot with butter.

2. Add potatoes, onion, garlic, salt, pepper, and optional seasonings if you’re

using them, and water to the crockpot. Stir to combine.

3. Top with ham.

4. Put the lid on and cook on low for 4-6 hours.

5. Mix milk and pureed cottage cheese together. Then remove the lid from

the crockpot and gently stir the mixture in, being careful not to break up

the potatoes too much.

• Replace the lid and continue to cook on low for another 2 hours.

Roasted Chicken

This is a very simple meal, but classic and delicious enough to serve to guests.

You can find directions for making gravy in the Side Dishes section.

Ingredients:

• 5-6 pound whole chicken

• 1 medium onion, peeled and cut in half

• 1 head of garlic

• Salt, pepper, and herbs to taste

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 425.

2. Rinse the chicken, inside and out under running water. (Be sure to wash

out your sink with a bleach solution afterwards to keep your kitchen free

of bacteria that could cause foodborne illness.)

3. If there is a package of “giblets and guts” inside your chicken, remove it.

You can use this later for gravy, add it to your homemade stock, or cook it

up for the pets. Keep in mind that liver will give an off-flavor to your stock.

4. Insert the entire head of garlic into the cavity of the chicken. You don’t

have to peel the garlic first – just put the entire head in there for a rich,

garlic-flavored meat.

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5. Cut the onion in half and place it, cut side down, in the roasting pan. This

will keep the chicken raised up out of the drippings. If you are using a

roasting pan with a rack, you can put the onion in the cavity with the

garlic.

6. Sprinkle the chicken liberally with salt, pepper, and herbs.

7. Place this in the oven, uncovered for about an hour and a half. Using a

meat thermometer in the thickest part of the breast, check to see if it is

done. The temperature should be 180 degrees Fahrenheit. If you don’t

have a meat thermometer, gently give the leg a twist. When the chicken is

completely cooked, the leg should separate very easily under the lightest

pressure.

8. Remove the chicken from the roasting pan and allow it to rest for 15

minutes at room temperature.

9. Carve the chicken, discarding the garlic and onion from the cavity. Put

aside the skin for use in your broth, later.

Crockpot “Rotisserie” Chicken

I love rotisserie chicken but have no rotisserie. (Sniff) Imagine how excited I was

to learn that I could make it myself, in my crockpot. If you enjoy eating the skin,

you can put the cooked chicken in the oven on broil for a few minutes after it’s

thoroughly cooked to get it crisp.

Ingredients: 1 whole chicken, rinsed and patted dry, innards removed

2 tbsp. of olive oil

Seasonings of choice (I use salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, a dash of cayenne, and 1/4 tsp of sugar)

Onions and/or lemons (optional)

Directions: 1. If you have a roasting rack for your slow cooker, insert it. If you don’t, was up 6

balls of tinfoil for the bottom or slice onions and/or lemons in half. You want to raise your chicken up a little to let the juices run down and steam it. If you don’t

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raise it up, your chicken may be more of a stewed texture from sitting in the juices.

2. Rub the chicken with oil and seasonings.

3. Place the chicken in the crockpot and cook it on low for 6-8 hours. Do not add any other liquid. When it’s done, it will be tender and practically falling apart in its deliciousness.

4. Because I grew up in the South, gravy is essential in our household. If you, too, are of the gravy persuasion, see the recipe in the “Sides” section to make gravy on the stovetop while you brown your chicken in the broiler.

Chili

Chili is a family favorite in our house. One of my favorite things about it is that it

can be easily made from food storage items. Here’s a version that is largely from

the pantry. You can use a slow cooker or simmer it on low on the stovetop. If

necessary, it can be put together quickly and just cooked until the ingredients

are done, but it won’t be nearly as flavorful and delicious.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound of ground meat (whatever you have on hand: beef, turkey,

venison, pork)

• 2 cans of beans (pinto, kidney, black) – do not drain

• 4 cloves of minced garlic

• 1 diced bell pepper (or 1/3 cup of dehydrated bell pepper)

• 1 diced onion

• Tomatoes: Use any combination of the following, equaling 3 large cans:

crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes, tomato-vegetable juice

• 1 cup of beer or red wine (optional but delicious if you are using a slow

cooker)

• 1-3 tbsp. of chili powder

• 1 tsp of cumin powder

• 1 tbsp. of brown sugar

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Slow Cooker Directions:

1. Stir together tomato products, alcohol, and spices until well combined.

2. Add beans and liquid, stirring to combine.

3. Add garlic, peppers, and onions, stirring to combine.

4. Add uncooked ground meat. Stir gently to combine it into the mixture in

your slow cooker.

5. Set the slow cooker on low and cook for 8-10 hours, or on high and cook

for 4-5 hours. (It’s best when cooked all day on low.)

Stovetop Directions:

1. In a skillet, brown meat, garlic, and onions until the meat is cooked – about

5 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, in a large pot, combine tomato products, beans, peppers, and

spices.

3. Add cooked meat, garlic, and onions to the large pot.

4. Bring the mixture to a low boil, then reduce heat.

5. Simmer, covered, for 2-3 hours.

Sides

How to make gravy

This basic guide will work to make any gravy: beef, pork, poultry, etc.

Ingredients:

• Pan drippings

• 2 tbsp. of flour

• 1-2 cups of water or broth

• Salt and pepper to taste

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Directions:

1. Add hot drippings to a saucepan and turn the heat on your stove to

medium.

2. When the drippings are hot enough that a tiny bit of water splashed in

with your fingertips sizzles on contact, use a whisk to mix in 2 tbsp. of

flour. Whisk vigorously until the flour and fat are completely incorporated

with no lumps. You should end up with a smooth, creamy looking mixture.

(This is called a roux.)

3. Stir in the water or broth. Broth gives a slightly richer flavor, but gravy

made with water is still delicious and much more frugal. Using the whisk,

mix the roué and water thoroughly.

4. Cook, whisking almost continuously, for 3-5 minutes until your gravy

reaches a uniform consistency and the desired thickness. If it is too thick,

whisk in more liquid, half a cup at a time.

5. Keep warm over the lowest heat your stove allows.

Baked brown rice

Lots of people complain that brown rice is tricky to cook. Take it off of the

stovetop and cook it in the oven for absolutely perfect rice every time. For

efficiency, bake your rice when you are cooking something else in the oven.

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ cups of brown rice

• 2 ½ cups of water, broth, or stock

• 1 tbsp. of butter or olive oil

• Salt, pepper, and herbs to taste

• Optional: dried sweetened cranberries

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. On the stovetop, bring rice, liquid, seasonings, and fat to a boil in an oven

safe pot.

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3. Immediately put the lid on it, remove it from the stovetop, and place it in

the oven.

4. Bake for 1 hour. Do not remove the lid during the cooking time.

5. Fluff the rice with a fork and serve immediately.

Leftover rice can be refrigerated and used in a casserole or stir-fry.

Cooking beans from scratch

Do you know what to do with all of those bags of beans? It’s silly to buy them if

you don’t learn how to prepare them. As cheap as they are, they do your budget

little good sitting there in storage containers.

There are minor differences in soaking and cooking times with different types of

beans, but if you follow these basic directions, you’ll be successful. The obvious,

common sense difference is that smaller beans require a shorter cooking time

than larger beans.

Prepping the beans for cooking:

1. Start with one pound of dried beans. Our favorites are pinto beans and

navy beans.

2. Pour them into a bowl and pick through them, discarding any beans that

are dry and shriveled, and any little stones or twigs.

3. Using a large colander, rinse the beans well under running water.

4. Place your beans in a large stockpot. Cover them with water by 3-4 inches.

5. Turn the stove on high and bring the beans to a boil. Turn off the heat

immediately, soak them, covered. You can soak them overnight, or a

minimum of 4 hours.

6. Drain the beans using a colander, then rinse them well under running

water.

Cooking directions:

1. Return the soaked beans to the stockpot.

2. Cover them with 6 cups of water per 2 cups of beans.

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3. If you want, you can also add some meat at this point. Salt pork, ham, and

bacon are popular choices. If you aren’t using meat, add a tablespoon of

vegetable oil. The fat not only adds flavor but keeps the beans from

foaming.

4. You can also add onions, garlic, and herbs to the beans now. Don’t add

anything acidic until the beans are fully cooked.

5. Bring the beans to a boil, then immediately reduce the heat to keep them

at a simmer.

6. Stir occasionally to be sure the beans aren’t sticking. The beans must

always stay covered with water. You may need to add water during the

cooking process.

7. Simmer for 2-3 hours. To test whether they are done, remove a bean from

the pot and let it cool. Taste it – it should be tender, but not mushy. There

are lots of variables that will affect how long they take to cook – weather

conditions, altitude, and the age of the beans can affect cooking times.

8. When they’re done, you can leave them in the cooking liquid or drain

them, based on personal preferences. (I grew up down south, where my

family always enjoyed them in the “bean broth.”)

Serve your cooked beans as a dish on their own, or use one of the following

variations.

Pork and beans

You can start this recipe with home-cooked beans or canned beans. It can be

made on the stovetop or baked in the oven.

Ingredients:

• 6 cups of cooked beans

• ½ cup of bean broth (If you’re using canned beans, drain them and use this

liquid)

• 1 tin of tomato paste

• 1 cup of diced smoked pork or ham, or ½ pound of diced bacon

• 2 tbsp. of brown sugar

• 1 tsp of chili powder

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• 1 tsp of onion powder

• 1 tsp of garlic powder

• Salt and pepper to taste Directions:

1. In a large mixing bowl, combine bean broth, tomato paste, sugar, and

spices until well blended.

2. Stir in beans and pork.

3. If you are cooking this on the stovetop, put the mixture into a pot and

bring it to a simmer. Put the lid on and cook it on low for 30 minutes.

4. If you are cooking it in the oven, preheat it to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Grease a baking dish with cooking oil or butter, then pour in the mixture.

Cover it with foil, and bake for 45 minutes.

Mexican beans and rice

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of cooked beans (You can use leftover pork and beans for this, too)

• 2 cups of cooked rice

• ½ cup of bean broth

• 2 tbsp. of tomato paste

• ¼ cup of diced onion and/or ¼ cup of diced bell peppers (optional)

• 1 tbsp. of cooking oil

• 1 tbsp. of chili powder

• 1 tsp of cumin

• 1 tsp of garlic powder

• 1 tsp of onion powder

• Salt and pepper to taste Directions:

1. In a large skillet, heat cooking oil.

2. Add onions and bell peppers, if you’re using them, and sauté lightly over

medium heat.

3. Stir in bean broth, tomato paste, and spices.

4. Stir in rice, then when it is combined, gently stir in beans, taking care not

to break them up when mixing them in.

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5. Reduce the heat, cover, and cook for 15-20 minutes on low. If you need

to, add ¼ cup of water to keep the mixture from sticking.

Serve topped with cheese, sour cream, and/or salsa.

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Breads

Cornbread

This quick bread was a staple when I was growing up. My dad, who was a child of

the Great Depression, loved nothing more than a big slice of cornbread topped

with pinto beans in their own broth. Unless perhaps it was cornbread broken up

into a glass of buttermilk and eaten with a spoon, a dish I never personally

enjoyed.

Some people like their cornbread sweet, while others don’t like the addition of

any sugar or honey. This ingredient is entirely optional. This recipe is naturally

gluten-free, so it doesn’t rise much. If you want a fluffy cornbread, replace half of

the cornmeal with flour. Maybe I’m a traditionalist, but in my humble opinion,

cornbread is at its best when cooked in a cast iron skillet.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of cornmeal

• 1 egg

• 1 tsp of salt

• 1 tsp of baking soda

• 2 tsp of baking powder

• 4 tbsp. of butter or cooking oil + extra for greasing your skillet

• 1 ½ cups of milk

• 1 tbsp. of white vinegar

• 4 tbsp. of brown sugar or honey (optional) Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. In a bowl, mix white vinegar and milk and set it aside for at least 5 minutes

to allow it to sour.

3. Grease the skillet well with oil or butter.

4. Meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients with

a whisk, including sugar if you are using it.

5. Add eggs and honey (if you’re using it) to the sour milk. Whisk until well

combined.

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6. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until they are just

combined.

7. Pour this mixture into the cast iron skillet.

8. Bake the cornbread for about 20 minutes. The top should be golden brown

and crispy, and a toothpick inserted in the middle should come out clean.

Variations:

Mexican Cornbread: Add 1 cup of cooked corn, a couple of diced jalapenos, and

a cup of shredded cheese to the batter. Reduce the sweetener by half.

Blueberry Cornbread: Add one cup of fresh, frozen, or rehydrated blueberries to

the cornbread batter. Sugar and honey should definitely be used when making

blueberry cornbread.

Pie Crust

The beauty of my granny's pie crust recipe is the versatility - you can use what you have. Ideally, I use butter and water for the fat and liquid. However, I have used many different ingredients with excellent results. This recipe makes enough for one double crust pie or two single crust pies.

Don’t think that pie crust is only useful for dessert. Stuff some leftover stew or roast veggies and meat into a pie crust for a delicious, homemade pot pie that will put the yucky freezer versions to shame.

Ingredients

3 cups of flour 1 cup of fat (butter, shortening, coconut oil, lard, vegetable oil) 2 tsp of salt ½ cup of liquid (water, milk, whey)

Directions

1. Place your liquid in a dish with a few pieces of ice, if available. Keep this in the refrigerator while you're combining the other ingredients.

2. Combine the flour and salt.

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3. Cut the butter or fat into tiny pieces and incorporate it into the flour mixture, either with a pastry cutter, a food processor, or a couple of knives. Once the mixture resembles cottage cheese curds, you have combined it sufficiently.

4. Add your ice water to the mixture a couple of tablespoons at a time. This is where practice makes perfect - after you make this a couple of times, you will begin to know when it looks and feels "right." Use a fork to mix this into the dough - if you use your hands you will heat up the dough too much, and the crust won't be as flaky.

5. You don't want to dough to be wet and sticky - you want it to be sort of stringy and lumpy. When you think you have the right consistency, squeeze some dough in your hand - if it stays into a nice firm ball, it's time to move on to the next step. If it is crumbly and doesn't stick together, you need more water.

6. Make the dough into 2 balls and press them down. Place them, covered, in the refrigerator for at least an hour.

7. On a floured surface, roll out the dough with a heavy rolling pin until it is thin but not broken. Fold your circle of dough into quarters and carefully move the dough over to your pie pan.

Bake as per your recipe's directions or at about 375F for approximately 45 minutes for a two-crust pie or 35 minutes for a one crust pie.

Pizza Dough

You can use pizza dough for, of course, pizza, but also for calzones and other

pockets full of yumminess. It’s a great way to use up small amounts of leftovers

that aren’t quite enough to feed the whole family. (What doesn’t taste better

when stuffed in a pocket of bread, anyway?)

Ingredients

1 cup of warm water 1 tbsp. of sugar 2 1/4 tsp of active dry yeast 3 tbsp. of olive oil 1 tsp salt

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Directions

1. Stir water, sugar, and yeast together and allow it to sit for 5 minutes. 2. Add olive oil and salt, then stir in the flour until well blended. 3. Knead the dough for about 5 minutes, then let it rise, covered, for 30

minutes. 4. Preheat the oven to 425F. 5. Knead the dough again, then break off balls of dough. Roll them out and

cover one-half with the desired topping. 6. Fold the other half over the topping, moisten edges with water, and press

them together with the tines of a fork. 7. Place the pocket on a greased baking sheet. 8. Once all the pockets are on the baking sheet, brush them lightly with olive

oil. If desired season the top with a sprinkle of garlic powder and salt, or whatever herbs are appropriate.

9. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until lightly golden brown.

Biscuit Dough

This recipe can be used for more than biscuits. As well, you can roll this dough

out and cut it into thin strips, dropping it into boiling broth until it floats to the

top (7-10 minutes) to make dumplings. You can also top a casserole or pot pie

with biscuit dough.

Ingredients

2 cups of flour 3 tsp of baking powder 1 tsp of salt 1 tsp of sugar 1/2 cup of milk 1 tbps of white vinegar 3 tbsp. of cooking oil

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425°F. 2. Mix milk and vinegar in a small bowl and allow it to sit for about 5 minutes.

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3. Mix flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a bowl. Add milk and vinegar mixture, and oil.

4. Stir just enough to hold dough together. 5. Knead lightly about ten times on a well-floured surface. 6. Pat or roll dough about 1/2-inch thick. 7. You can move the dough in one piece over to your pie pan, or you can cut

circles with a floured drinking glass and place the individual biscuits on the dish you are topping.

8. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Top with butter if desired.

Snacks and Desserts

Homemade yogurt cheese

Yogurt cheese isn't actually cheese, but it can be used in place of cream cheese

in many different recipes or applications. Yogurt cheese is simply yogurt with the

whey strained out.

Ingredients:

1. 1 cup of unflavored yogurt

Directions:

1. Line a sieve with a piece of cheesecloth or a flour sack towel. Place it in a

large bowl.

2. Scoop one cup of plain yogurt onto the fabric.

3. Cover the whole thing and place it in the refrigerator for a minimum of 2

hours. The longer you allow it to drain, the thicker the end consistency will

be.

When it’s done, transfer your cheese to a bowl and season it up.

For sweet cheese:

This makes a delicious spread for bagels or toast, and a nice quick topping for

cupcakes.

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Stir in any combination of the following:

• 1 tbsp. or honey or sugar

• Cinnamon

• Nutmeg

• Allspice

• ½ tsp of vanilla extract

For savory cheese:

This makes a tasty spread for sandwiches or filling for stuffed vegetables or

chicken breasts.

Stir in any combination of the following to taste:

• Salt

• Pepper

• Garlic (finely minced or powder)

• Onion (finely minced or powder)

• Horseradish

• Cayenne pepper

• Thyme

• Basil

• Chives

• Finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes and Mediterranean spices like oregano

and basil

Haystack Cookies

Ingredients:

• 3 cups of oatmeal

• ¾ cup of sugar

• ¾ cup of milk

• 5 tsp of cocoa

• 1 tbsp. of vanilla extract

• 1 cup of natural peanut butter

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Directions:

1. Line a large baking sheet with waxed paper.

2. In a saucepan, stir together all of the ingredients except for the peanut

butter and the oatmeal.

3. Heat until these ingredients are combined then add peanut butter,

constantly stirring until boiling gently.

4. Boil for one minute, stirring intermittently.

5. Remove from heat and pour into a bowl containing the oatmeal.

6. Stir to combine, working quickly before the mixture can solidify.

7. Make the cookies by placing large spoonfuls of the mixture onto the paper lined baking sheet. Press them down gently with the back of the spoon.

8. Alternatively, use your hand to roll balls of the mixture and then press

down – this will make the resulting cookies a bit rounder if you prefer a

tidier looking cookie. (Be careful, though – the mixture is hot, that whole

boiling thing, you know!)

9. Place the cookie sheet in the refrigerator overnight, uncovered, to allow

cookies to become solid.

10. Store in an airtight container in cool conditions – keep them in the fridge if

the weather is warm. Reuse the waxed paper by placing it in between the

layers of cookies.

Leftover Magic

Following, you can find some yummy recipes using the leftovers from the recipes

preceding this section. Leftover Roast Stew

Ingredients:

• Leftovers

• Water or broth Directions:

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Most of the prep for this stew is done when you are putting away your leftovers.

Stirring in the additional liquid before you put this in the refrigerator will allow

the flavors to meld until you are ready to make your stew.

1. In a large storage container, stir 1-2 cups of water or broth into your

reserved cooking liquid. If you have leftover gravy, stir that in, too.

2. Cut the rest of your roast into bite-sized pieces, then add it to the liquid.

3. Add any leftover vegetables to the meat and liquid.

4. Add one can of mixed vegetables, including liquid.

5. Put this in the refrigerator for 1-2 days.

6. Heat on the stove top at a simmer for 20 minutes. You can serve this with

crusty bread. If there isn’t quite enough for a family meal, serve it over

wide noodles or rice for a filling, hearty dinner.

Spaghetti Pie

This is a great way to make the most of your spaghetti dinner leftovers.

Ingredients:

• Leftover spaghetti with meat sauce

• 1 serving of cooked pasta for each family member

• 1-2 eggs

• 1 cup of cottage cheese

• ¼ cup of fresh-grated Parmesan cheese, plus additional for the top

• 1 tsp of garlic powder

• ½ cup of toasted bread crumbs

• Optional: extra chopped fresh vegetables like tomato, mushroom, bell

pepper, spinach, and onion

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and cottage cheese with garlic powder and

Parmesan cheese. Alternatively, you can also blend this together in a food

processor.

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3. Stir in cooked pasta until it is well coated.

4. Stir in leftover spaghetti sauce and optional chopped vegetables.

5. Pour the mixture into a greased oven-proof pie plate or skillet. (I use my

cast-iron frying pan for this.)

6. Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes in your preheated oven.

7. Mix extra Parmesan and toasted breadcrumbs for the topping.

8. Increase heat to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Remove foil, top with additional

Parmesan and toasted breadcrumbs, and bake for an additional 15

minutes, until the top is lightly crisped.

9. Remove the pie from the oven and allow it to set for 15 minutes before

slicing.

Leftover Potato and Ham Soup

Ingredients:

2-3 cups of leftover Slow Cooker Potatoes and Ham

1 cup of milk

2 cups of water

Directions:

1. Once you’re finished with your potato and ham dinner, add 1 cup of milk

and 2 cups of water to the leftovers before refrigerating.

2. When you’re ready to make your soup, use a potato masher to break up

the potatoes well. If you want, you can run the entire batch through the

food processor, but my family prefers the chunks of meat and potatoes.

3. Stir the soup together well once the potatoes have been mashed up.

4. Heat this up, bringing it to a simmer. If it’s too thick, you can add more

milk or water. (Milk will make it richer, but if your supplies are limited,

water will be fine.)

5. Top the soup like you would a baked potato, with Greek yogurt or sour

cream, shredded cheese, and chives.

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Chicken broth

Don’t throw out that chicken carcass! You can get more bang for your poultry

buck by making broth with it. Use this same process for turkey broth.

1. After dinner, remove most of the meat from the bones and place it in the

refrigerator. You'll be left with a rather desolate-looking carcass.

2. Put that in your crockpot along with the reserved skin, neck, and giblets (if

you didn't use those for gravy). Add some veggies like carrots, peppers,

and celery. Add a couple of tablespoons of salt, a head of garlic and 4-6

onions. Note: there's no need to peel the vegetables as long as they are

organic - just wash them well.)

3. Fill the crockpot with water and add your favorite spices (not sage, if you

intend to preserve the broth - it tastes terrible when canned or frozen). I

like to use whole peppercorns, salt, oregano, and bay leaves.

4. Put the crockpot on low for 12-14 hours and let it simmer undisturbed

overnight.

5. The next day, strain the contents of the crockpot into a large container - I

use a big soup pot and a metal colander.

6. After allowing the bones to cool, remove any meat that you would like to

add to your soup. Take all of the meat that you put in the refrigerator the

night before and cut it into bite-sized pieces. I like a mixture of light meat

and dark meat for this purpose. Also, cut up the meat you removed from

the crockpot.

Canning the broth

If you’re not an experienced canner, my website has specific instructions on

sanitizing jars15, pressure canning16, and adjusting for altitude17.

1. Place approximately 1 cup of poultry in each of your sanitized jars. If

you’re only canning the broth, skip this step.

2. Add 1-2 cloves of garlic to the jars.

15 http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/canning-101-jar-prep-12152012 16 http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/canning-101-pressure-canning-12152012 17 http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/canning-101-altitude-adjustment-12152012

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3. You will have a rich, dark, beautiful stock from the overnight crockpot

project. Ladle this into the jars over your cut-up poultry and garlic. Leave

1 inch of headspace at the top of the jars. If you run out of broth, top it up

with water - don't worry - your broth will still be very flavorful.

4. Wipe the lip of your jars with a cloth dipped in white vinegar. Place the

lids on and process them in your pressure canner for 90 minutes at 10

pounds of pressure, being sure to adjust for altitude.

Your result will be a deep golden, rich, meaty soup. This is an excellent base for

poultry and dumplings, as well as any type of broth-based soup.

Freezing the broth

1. Allow your broth to cool completely. Use a heavy-duty freezer bag (I like

the kind with the actual zipper.)

2. If you are adding poultry to the broth, place the desired amount in the

bottom of the freezer bag. If you aren’t adding the poultry, skip this step.

3. Ladle the cooled broth into the bag, leaving 2 inches of headspace at the

top.

4. Seal the bag securely, then lay it flat on a cookie sheet. Repeat this

process until all of the broth is bagged up.

5. Freeze the broth flat overnight. After that, it should be frozen solid. Label

the bags with a Sharpie, including the date. The flat bags of broth can be

stacked in the freezer for about six months.

Chicken fried rice

This recipe is a great way to extend a single serving of meat to provide dinner for

an entire family. Feel free to get creative and use other types of meat and

additional veggies. If the vegetables are pre-cooked, add them at the very end,

giving them just enough time in the skillet to get warmed up.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of cooked chicken (or other meat), cut into bite-sized pieces

• ½ cup to 1 cup of cooked rice per person

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• 1 small onion, minced

• 2 cloves of garlic, minced

• ¼ cup of shredded carrot

• 1-2 eggs (Use 1 egg per 2 cups of rice, not to exceed two eggs.)

• 1 cup of frozen green peas

• 2 tbsp. of soy sauce

• 1 tsp of Asian fish sauce (optional but it adds a lot of depth and does not

impart a “fishy” flavor)

• 1 tsp of powdered ginger

• 1 tbsp. of cooking oil (I like sunflower or organic canola – oil must stand up

to high heat cooking methods)

Directions:

1. In a large skillet or wok, heat cooking oil over a medium heat.

2. Crack eggs and mix them in a bowl with a whisk. Reserve them for later in

the cooking process.

3. Add garlic, onion, and chicken. Stir-fry for a few minutes until everything is

lightly golden.

4. Add carrots and stir-fry for another minute or two.

5. Add eggs and let them cook for 1 minute without stirring so they get a

little bit firm. Then, stir constantly for a couple of minutes so that they

break up as they’re cooking, leaving only tiny pieces of egg throughout the

mixture of ingredients.

6. Sprinkle with ginger powder, then stir in soy sauce and optional fish sauce.

7. Increase heat to high, then stir in rice and peas.

8. Stirring constantly, cook until everything is heated through.

Serve topped with chopped green onion and optional dried crushed chili

peppers.

For a Thai-twist, add ¼ cup of peanut butter and 1 tsp of cilantro during step 6.

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Chicken and Dumplings

This is an easy, “from-scratch” way to make a hearty meal out of some of

the chicken and broth that you have canned or frozen.

Ingredients

• 4-6 cups of chicken broth with meat

• 2 cups of flour (You can use a gluten-free flour blend)

• Extra flour for dusting the counter and the rolling pin

• 1 egg

• 1 cup of water

• Salt, pepper, and parsley to taste Directions:

1. In a large mixing bowl, combine flour and seasonings. Stir in water and

egg, combining well. You will have a dry, crumbly mixture.

2. Squeeze the dough by handfuls and put it on a counter that has been

dusted with flour.

3. Roll out the dough until it is flat, about ¼ inch thick.

4. Using a pizza cutter or a sharp knife, cut the dough into strips or squares,

according to your preference. Allow it to dry on the counter for up to 2

hours.

5. When it’s time for dinner, bring broth and chicken to a hard boil on the

stovetop, using a high heat.

6. Drop the dumplings in, being careful not to splash yourself with the hot

liquid.

7. When the dumplings rise to the top, they are done. To be certain, dip out

one dumpling and cut it in half to let it cool. Taste it to make sure it isn’t

still doughy inside. If it needs more cooking time, return the other half to

the pot and cook it for a few more minutes.

8. Serve dumplings and broth piping hot.

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Bernadine’s “Chili Mac”

If you have leftover chili, but not quite enough to make a meal for everyone, try this

classic dish. It is adapted from a recipe created by my honorary childhood aunt, a

lovely lady who just turned 101 years old and ran a school cafeteria for most of her

adult life, back when the food served there was made from scratch, from real

ingredients, and on a strict budget.

Don’t let the name fool you, there’s no macaroni in sight, making this safe for

those on a gluten-free diet. (If you absolutely insist, you can use macaroni

instead of rice.)

Ingredients:

2-4 cups of leftover chili

4-6 cups of cooked rice (brown or white will work)

cup of shredded cheddar cheese

Butter for the baking dish

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Grease the bottom and sides of a glass baking dish.

3. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the chili and the rice.

4. Pour the chili and rice mixture into the baking dish and cover it tightly with

foil.

5. Put it in the oven for 30 minutes.

6. After 30 minutes, remove the foil and top the casserole with shredded

cheese.

7. Return it to the oven for another 5 minutes, or until cheese is melted and

bubbly.

8. Allow the dish to cool for 5 minutes before serving.

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Afterword The kitchen is the heart of the home. It’s where we nourish the ones we love,

spend time together, and build a healthful foundation for our days. I hope

that you find some inspiration in these tips and tales from my frugal family

kitchen. And if you’re reading this because you are going through difficult

times, please take heart. By dealing with the challenges creatively, you are

well on your way to conquering them.

Best of all, if you have children, if you include them in your quest for frugal

solutions, you are teaching them skills that will see them through their own

difficult times. Kids need to know that not everyone has a “Whole Foods

Shopping Spree” kind of life so that it isn’t such an overwhelming surprise

when they get out on their own. By teaching them skills like shopping, scratch

cooking, and how to make their leftovers delicious, you are setting them up

for success, not culture shock.

About Daisy Daisy Luther is a coffee-swigging, gun-toting, single mom who lives on a

homestead in the mountains of Northern California, where she unschools her

youngest daughter. She is a prolific blogger at her two websites:

TheOrganicPrepper.ca, where she writes about preparedness, frugality,

food, and health

DaisyLuther.com, where she writes commentary about current events,

the war on liberty, and politics

Daisy is the author of:

The Pantry Primer: How to Build a Whole Food Pantry on a Half Price

Budget

The Prepper’s Water Survival Guide

Have Yourself a Thrifty Little Christmas and a Debt-Free New Year

The Prepper's Canning Guide: Affordably Stockpile a Lifesaving Supply of

Nutritious, Delicious, Shelf-Stable Foods

She is the co-founder of PreppersUniversity.com, where she teaches live

courses to help others be more prepared for any disaster, large or small.