Mark and I love to eat…and we love to save money…but how do we reconcile the two together…?? Well, there’s another component that helps us to save in the kitchen – we both love home-cooked meals! Making some things from scratch has saved us literally hundreds of pounds/dollars each year – and the best part is that its healthy, too!
We have tried to pare down our kitchen cupboard during our three years of marriage – and I think these are the three main ways we have and will save in the long-run:
Porridge Oats/Oatmeal for breakfast each morning. A 1Kg bag of oats costs 56p and will last the two of us 5 days. Multiply that across a year and its roughly £40, or about $65. Compare that to Fruit & Fibre – a basic bran cereal with dried fruit – where a £1.45 box would last the two of us 3 days – a total of £175 {$280} per year!
Hand-baked bread instead of store-bought. Making a multi-grain whole-wheat loaf at home in our bread-maker costs about 60p compared to £1.20 per similar loaf in the bakery at our grocery store. Loaves last us from 2-3 days which means over a year that brings our bread consumption to £90 {$145} per year instead of £180 {$290}. We’ve been grateful for a new bread-maker that we were given for free – but even if you bought one, it should pay for itself in a year. So we save – and we love the bread {and its wonderful aroma}!
That’s somewhere around £425 {$680} each year we save just from making small, consistent changes to our eating lifestyle. How are you working toward a frugal + healthy kitchen cupboard? Share your ideas – I would love to hear them!
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March 22, 2010 at 12:13 am
Louise Simpson
I’ve been enjoying browsing your blog and came across your post, ‘Hand-baked bread instead of store-bought.’ We too have a bread maker which we use all the time and love, however we find the bread doesn’t stay fresh for any longer than a day and a half. Any tips on how you keep yours fresh for longer?
March 22, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Laura
Hey Louise! I started replying to your comment and decided it was turning into a blog post…so you can see my tips here: https://littlewoodbird.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/keeping-bread/
Thanks for asking – it got me excited about furoshiki again…! Happy bread making and let me know if you come across any other things that work for keeping bread…