groceries

9 cheap (and non-toxic!) “convenience” foods.

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groceriesNobody ever went broke underestimating consumers’ willingness to pay a premium for convenience. Spending extra to get on the plane before everyone else.

Picking up milk and bread at the 7-Eleven to dodge the supermarket hordes. Ordering takeout because they’re too tired to cook. Buying a one-ounce “toddler pack” of Cheerios to carry in the diaper bag.

Really? That grab-and-go pack of cereal works out to as much as $27.50 a pound! Fill up your own container, already.

Convenience food does have its place, especially if a $5.99 rotisserie chicken keeps you from ordering $40 worth of Thai food. (Or if ordering a strategic pizza allows you to spend time with family and/or taking better care of yourself.)

But if you keep certain frugal convenience foods on hand, you won’t have to resort to takeout as often (if ever).

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Goal-oriented groceries.

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Yesterday I filmed my first “Ask A Money Expert” video for MSN Money. I’d done several videos for MSN in the past, but this is a different format: Readers post questions on Facebook, to be answered by people like Jim Jubak and Liz Pulliam Weston. And now by me too, also (as the cat from Mutts would say).

The challenge was giving good information succinctly, since I had just 3½ minutes to answer a trio of questions. I’ll post the link once the finished product is available. In the meantime, I want to talk about one of the responses I gave.

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Lactobacillus love: Is it wrong?

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I never cared much for yogurt. It generally seemed too sour to me, unless it was turned into tzatziki sauce on a gyro sandwich.

Apparently I just never had the right kind of yogurt.

I’d heard that the homemade version was better than the commercial kind. I’d also read about people making yogurt in a slow cooker. After looking online for instructions I settled on a slight variation of the process described at A Year of Slow Cooking.

And then I improved on it.

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Frugal sniffles.

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Last summer I did a guest post over at Bargaineering called “Sick happens: How to prepare for an illness or injury.” For the past week I’ve been in the grip of la grippe and practicing what I preached.

It’s not actually la grippe, but rather some other kind of virus: sore throat, headache, malaise and a cough that snaps me forward like a willow tree in a high wind. I’m acutely aware that my Aunt Elna was alleged to have broken ribs while coughing.

At least I was ready for it.

 

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Garbage in, supper out.

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My apartment smelled delicious last night after I threw the following into a pot: chicken stock from the freezer, organic chicken stock from a carton, a bunch of spices, a little balsamic vinegar and half a can of tomatoes.

While it simmered, I diced carrots and cooked them along with frozen corn and peas. I added some pasta to the stockpot; after it was tender, I added about a third of a cup of leftover quinoa and the strained vegetables.

And wished it weren’t hours past suppertime. I wanted soup. But I had to wait until the next day, except for the few spoons that I tasted in order to, um, adjust the seasonings.

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Do you scrape burned toast?

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While making breakfast I scorched the toast. Automatically I scraped off the Cajun part before smearing  on some butter and homemade jam. Then I started to wonder: How many people would have just thrown it in the trash and started over?

I grew up scraping toast. My family would have considered it wasteful to toss charred chow, given how simple it is to fix.

Recently a thread started up on Not MSN Money, a community formed by so-called “refugees” from MSN Money’s now-defunct message boards. The thread, “What do you do with the heels from bread?,” asked readers whether they use them or toss them.

Guess what the answers were.

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