Tuesday 20 November 2018

The road to frugality - suggestions 2 and 3

These suggestions are only that, suggestions and come in no particular order.

Suggestion 2 - If you don't already do so, learn to cook from scratch. I am appalled that so many people buy ready prepared vegetables and fruit. I have to admit to occasionally using bought sauces and the odd meal but usually, it is in an emergency or as a treat.

Why would you buy ready prepared fresh vegetables and fruit. Obviously some things such as baby sweetcorn and beans, it is how they come but carrots, cabbage, swede etc! For a start it costs way more and you have lots of packaging to throw away. Also, if you are growing some food yourselves, the peelings are great for the compost heap. It is far cheaper to buy these products whole. Anything leftover could be frozen or used up in soups, stews or salads. Don't know how to cook. Go to your local library, or online, loads of ideas there. I do wish schools would bring back proper cooking lessons, one of the worst things education did was to stop that.

Suggestion 3 - Make your own cleaners, washing machine detergent, soap etc. We really don't need all the posh, expensive and harsh chemicals in these things. Planet friendly but often expensive alternatives are available to buy and many recipes are online to make your own. Check out my tutorial tab for two different washing machine detergents, costing pennies to use. I now prefer the later version which uses a small amount of bought washing detergent rather than soap. I no longer use the citrus cleaner as it makes me sneeze non-stop for some reason:(

Also, I use large containers of white vinegar instead of fabric conditioner. For the most part, it works very well. 

14 comments:

  1. Great suggestions. It's worrying really how many people just don't know how to cook, or don't even bother, preferring ready meals and takeaways. I know people often say it's a question of not having the time, but if you get yourself organised and have a batch cooking or baking day, even half a day, once a week you can make and freeze loads of things.

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    1. Very true. We like to batch cook. Batch baking especially for Christmas is very useful as is cooking.

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  2. I had 'proper' cookery lessons at school and I learnt nothing of any use, to be honest.
    I think the logistics of it all nowadays would be unmanageable, sadly.

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    1. I learnt quite a bit but found out more after leaving.

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  3. I took a Foods class in high school, and my son took a basic cooking class in junior high (his high school does offer cooking classes, but he's not able to fit it into his schedule. The class is held across from my daughter's preschool classroom and always smelled so good when we walked by last year! I don't have to walk her up this year, so I miss it). I learned some baking techniques, but the only meal I remember cooking was pork chops and boxed stuffing- I'm a vegetarian, so that wasn't at all useful for me. Thankfully, with the internet and plenty of library cookbooks, I learned to cook well, but it took some time. It'd be nice if the schools were able to incorporate healthy cooking classes, showing how to prepare vegetables and balanced meals, but I agree with Joy, I don't think it's possible unless there's an entire upheaval of the education system and they stop focusing so much on testing, which takes up far too much time.

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    1. Very true. Cookery lessons for my son involved reading packet ingredients and discussing them!

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  4. Vinegar really does work well as a cleaning product.

    God bless.

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  5. I had a really good education for cooking (and home economics as well, as well as cleaning toilets and milking cows and feeding pigs and planting trees and thinning carrots...) but that was completely different school to any other school for 13-15year olds. We even had computer programming lessons, and that was mid 80's. I still use my cooking book we had at school, and so does my classmates.
    But it doesn't matter if I don't use the skills I have, if I just let things slip because it's easier, I'm tired, I have no time... Oh the excuses I have! I could write a book about them.

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  6. Batch cooking is certainly the way forward I do it on a regular basis so there is always a meal in the freezer.

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    1. Especially for those days when you don’t feel like cooking.

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  7. I cook every day, Two or three times a day. I used to think making items from scratch was hard and time consuming but over time its become routine and easy. Like any new habit it just takes time and repetition. Now I cannot imagine opening a can of Chop Suey and pouring over packaged crunchy noodles like my mother did. Yuck.

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    1. Ugh, me neither. Must get back to bread making again, have been a bit lazy recently.

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