I've blogged about my uber thrifty...like to the point they may be pointless...habits in the past. Things like giving up shampoo. Which of course worked out well and IS worth it to me. Make your own choices.
Watching some thrifty/frugal food youtubers and other cheapskate vloggers, I can see how far I've come/gone.
E.g. Watching grocery hauls where people buy selzer water. First I think "wow, that's a ton of plastic...more plastic than food" that they come home with, in their reusable bag!
Even the 2nd harvest I'm getting has less plastic packaging. Clearly I do not shop like a normal human.
Anyway, here are some ninja moves I've developed thrifty-wise:
1) Groceries
Grocery list is in general terms, rarely specifics.
I write "grain" meaning any type of grain, flour or starch. I can work with rice, flour, corn flower, wheat berries, etc. Whatever is on sale. It's a starchy for a meal that is shelf stable and dry.
I also put "veg X2" for 2 types of veggies. Whatever is cheap. Varies by season and you never know what's in the discount veggie bin.
Same with fruit. I put about how much or if I would like multiple types. I can generally get discounted bananas at 25cents a pound at a local store. They are not bagged, just starting to show spots which is fine Freeze some and use some right away for banana eggs.
I haven't bought meat in a store in recent memory so that's not on the list anymore. It could pop up again in the future in which case it will be whatever is cheap. I eat plenty of meat. I get it in other ways.
For spices/herbs I may be specific and always buy in bulk or from the deeply discounted rack or large bags from an international food store. Working on remembering to harvest more of my own. Right now I could use a poultry mix or some sage. But, no hurry.
I do like canned tomato products but right now am out and am getting used to not having them. When I do put them on the list it says "tinned tomato". Paste, diced, whole, sauce. As long as it is low sodium (health issue), and just tomatoes not sugar and tomatoes or overly seasoned in a strange way, I will get it. I can usually get things for 39cents or less for a 14.5oz can. I'm all for dried tomatoes and will can my own when I have a kitchen again.
I use the occasional bouillon cube, though there is only one brand I have found locally that is low sodium AND tastes decent. I only buy it when I find it on supersale or for a buck or less on the discount rack. 8 cubes of 2 servings each per box. I used my last one recently, last cube, and so if I see it when I'm back in a store, I might get it.
For non-food things, I'm doing better at shopping in my own storage. I recently brought the shirts from the back of the hanging storage to the front. It looks like I have 5 new shirts. All are of course from thrift and I have had them for ages, I just haven't worn them for months. I think I have 10 button down long sleeve shirts and 1 thick sweater in the shed right now and I wasn't even wearing most of the shirts. I wear a t-shirt or shell under the button downs and a longsleeve t under the sweater. I also have 3 sweatshirts, 2 are fine for work if we're doing fieldwork that day. Those are in heavy rotation. I keep 3 button downs at the office for meetings (even zoom meetings) that come up on fieldwork days, or after a tragic coffee spill. Wear one for an hour and hang it back up. They get washed about 2x per season.
2) Laundry: I bought more undies at the start of 'rona in case I needed to quarantine. I had enough to go a week or 10 days between laundry trips. Now I have enough to go 2 weeks. Since laundry is the main reason for going to town on the weekend, having more undies, hence fewer laundry trips, saved in multiple ways. 1) 5$ gas every other week at current rates. 2) if I'm not going in town, I don't run other errands and don't hit thrift stores where something on the list might be available. Things fall off the list if you wait long enough. Either I find something else that works, or figure out I don't really need the item. 3) I do 3 loads of laundry every 2 weeks instead of 2 loads every week. I use the bigger machines, and find by delaying a week, I only add one more load. I go ahead and wear my weekend work pants (Carhartts from thrift usually) for an extra weekend so no extras there. 1 or 2 more pairs of work jeans in the winter, possibly more in the summer when I'm sweaty, and some long johns, undies, sox, kitchen towels and gym towels, some t-shirts and long sleeve shirts only adds one load. Interesting. Might keep up with the 2 week laundry system after 'rona.
Not going to town for laundry weekly, and people being idiots, made me stretch my grocery trips out to every 2weeks after the farmers market closed for the season. Pantry/no-spend grocery challenges have stretched that out even more. As I type this it has been 42 days since I've set foot in a grocery store or paid for food in anyway. I've GOTTEN food....eggs from the chickens, 2nd harvest left overs, bread with a gift card, gifts, and shared it out, but haven't gone to a store or otherwise paid out of pocket for any. Not even a restaurant.
The 2 weeks between laundry/town trips was also a good time to wean myself off of fancy coffee. I would buy one per week for about 2 - 4$. Not much by many people's standards, but a unnecessary cost to me. I get good beans to grind from the discount grocery store, and use the old ones at work, and drink up the tea I have rather than have 3 or 4 cups of coffee. I have a hand grinder so I also have to preplan my coffee. This saves the drive through cost AND the idling the car costs while sitting in the drive through.
3) Woodstove cookery. It's not a "cookstove" but you know...cooking is just food + heat. So it works. I have taken to roasting things inside the fire box. Not while it's BLAZING and over heating, when it's all died down a bit and is coals. Push the coals to the back. Set a whole pumpkin or squash or onion toward the front, by the door. Close the door. Wait. Every now and then, open the door and spin the squash/pumpkin/onion around a bit. Cook all sides. You don't have to get the seeds out of the squash/pumpkin before cooking. I do poke a hole or two so it won't blow up in there. Once it feels pretty soft and before it's totally charred, take it out in a pan. Peel the skin off, cut off the top. Scoop out seeds and guts. I put the seeds in a bowl of water to clean up and save some to plant and roast the rest on top of the stove. The first time I did an onion, I wrapped it in foil. This seemed messy and the outside of the onion was still charred. Now, I just don't peel them at all. Set an onion in the firebox. Spin it around now and then to get a new side toward the coals. Remove when it feels soft. It's a bit sticky. I peel off the charred bits, mostly it's the papery skin that chars. I wasn't eating that anyway. That takes the ashes with it. Then, I stab it with a fork (because it's hot) and dice it up a bit. Throw it in soup, on rice, or with pasta. EXCELLENT caramelized (if you burn it a bit, call it caramelized) or sweated onion. Great soup without frying an onion in a small space. I assume I could do garlic in there as well but I've been boiling that in the soups. That's been working well.
On top of the stove I can bake...usually burning the bottom because it's hard to control. Put a small pan of muffins or cake or biscuits on a trivet (I use a real trivet or a few jar rings that are beyond using on canning jars any more) Put a BIG roaster upside down over the whole thing. Or...a small soup pan fits over my little cake pan which makes a nice chocolate wacky cake (the one with no eggs).
4) Soaking pasta is my new thing. If you soak it, even cheap spaghetti, for a couple of hours before throwing it in hot soup (using it for noodle soup this week) or bring the soak pan up to a boil, it's done fast. When the wood stove is going I don't have to worry about saving fuel so much, but there isn't a ton of room on top of the stove. If I'm making a sauce or soup, that's pretty much all the space. MIGHT get the little cake pan on there for a side of biscuit type bread or bannock or cake. If I want pasta, much easier to presoak it off the heat, then throw it in the hot soup. Ready in about 2-3 min. Taste for done-itude.
5) Back to thermos cooking. I've done it in the past but with being home a lot since March 2020, I'm doing it more.
Thermos pasta. Fill thermos with boiling water. Put the top on. Let it sit about 5 min. Measure pasta that will take up about half the interior space of the thermos. Boil more water. Pour out the first boiling thermos water (I use it for doing dishes or something) which was to pre-heat the thermos. Put in the pasta. Fill up to the bottom of the cap with water. Close TIGHTLY. Rotate it around a bit to help separate the noodles. Do that now and then for the next 10-15 min. It's not very picky about timing. I use a thermos with a pour top so I open that a bit and pour out the water (good for soup or rehydrating dried veggies for a side dish or soup). Put the pasta on a plate. Eat.
Thermos rice and thermos rice with lentils have also worked well. Use LESS rice than half the interior size of the thermos. Takes a bit of trial and error. Set the thermos on its side and rotate it now and then. This takes a couple of hours usually. Sometimes you might want to reheat it to eat, or reheat and put back in if it's not done. White rice cooks faster but also goes to mush easily.
Presoaked wheatberries cooked up in a thermos very nicely. I preheated the thermos as above. Boiled the berries in water in the appropriate proportions for about 5 min, then put in the thermos and rolled it around now and then for a couple of hours. Great texture. I ate half with dinner with some oil and spices and saved the rest as breakfast with some jam stirred in like it was oatmeal. It is almost impossible to overcook whole grain berries.
6) Shop in the storage.
Before I go to the store, I often (not always, I'm not a monster) check the current stock. Since March 2020 it's been safer to be in the storage unit than the store so doing more of it. For groceries, check the pantry/stored food stock BEFORE making a list. Figure out what can be made with what's on hand. I often take out what would be good to eat up first and put that on the visible shelf at home or the office. E.g. If I get too much fruit, focus on eating that. Often, turns out I don't need anything and can skip a store trip.
For other stores (hardware, thrift, clothes) checked stored stuff. I have a back stock of sox an pants bought at thrift in 2019. It was a good year for wool sox and cotton-no-stretch jeans. Rather than getting something new, wear those. No one gives a crap what I wear. Sometimes I find hardware bits and bobs in the tool storage so don't have to buy then. If there is something I do need, I hit thrift first if it looks safe to go in the store. Some things I can't get at thrift. like butane for the tiny non-woodstove. I've started ordering that in bulk rather than getting cans a few at a time. It costs more upfront but hasn't seemed to increase overall consumption. We'll see in spring when I don't have the woodstove going. With being home so much, I may be using it up faster.
7) Use up what others are throwing out or I have in stock but don't super like.
There is AWFUL coffee at work. In a nice can. Or rather there was. I drank it up. It is B.A.D. And it is G.O.N.E. Now I have a nice 3lb coffee can to turn into a chicken feeder by filling it with chicken food. Or to use as whatever. And, it's gone. Stretched my decent coffee supply about 3 weeks by drinking it up and now the decent coffee tastes really good.
I found some instant espresso powder in the back of my home pantry shelf (2 or 3 shelves in a book case by the "kitchen" which is a table). It's not horrible. Especially if you put a bit of baking cocoa with it. Then it's actually decent. I have another serving or two. It wasn't getting fresher. Might was well drink it up.
I famously don't care for peaches. Mushy. Canned peaches from 2nd Harvest are less awful because they are underripe and have some texture other than mush. They come packed in pear juice, unsweetened. Nothing wrong with them. I drink the juice and eat the peaches with breakfast at work. I'm generating a lot of empty cans which I hope to turn into a solar collector like this:
I could heat a solar dehydrator or the chicken coop or a tiny greenhouse We'll see. For now I get to spend my time cutting the bottoms out of cans.
8) Candle nubbin candles.
I like candles. They fix the light from too many LEDs (the head lamp or flashlight or solar light I use for general and task lighting). I also use a little candle heater.
Cans that have an integral bottom, not a welded or crimped on bottom, think salmon cans, make good containers for candle nubbin candles. So does the "CAN-dle" that I got at thrift a few years ago. It's a low flattish can that had a 3 wick candle in it for emergency heat and it fits in my candle heater (which does not heat the whole wee shed no matter what idiot youtubers say. It's more candle than heater). When I get candles, thrift or gift almost never new, burn them. There is usually some candle nubbin left that didn't burn. I store that in a tin or bag. When the CAN-dle is used up, or mostly, or I have a good appropriate can, I put a bunch of nubbins in it, melt it on the woodstove...carefully. Not when it is SUPER HOT more when it's died way way down. Take it off...carefully. Let it cool. Right before it is totally set, I jam in a few dollar store birthday candles (40 for 1$) or smallish candles from thrift or gifts. I found wicks at thrift once and found that letting the candle nubbin candle totally cool, then drilling a hole about wick size worked really well. These don't burn perfectly, are usually a hideous color but they give light and I don't have to throw out the nubbins.
For those thinking of gifting me...think unscented! They don't attract bugs AND they mix better in the nubbins. Adding vanilla to bayberry to "wet forest" does not make for a nice smelling candle. More like someone over ate cookies and pooped under a tree.
