Budget Busting in the Kitchen

Many of you know a few tricks, but these are some of mine. If you only have a little left to spend on food after taking care of all those bills, you need to make it stretch. And you also need to make sure you get a balanced diet. We’ve all heard the urban myth about the college kid who made a buttload of porridge etc. etc.

Anyway, over the next few days I’ll be sharing some budget-stretching recipes, but these are my generic hints and tips.

1) Own a freezer. It doesn’t matter how small it is, you can store a lot of stuff in there, including serving-sized portions of leftovers.

2) Where possible, buy in bulk. Remember economies of scale? Companies save cash by purchasing pallet loads of whatever they need. Obviously, they don’t sell pallets to plebes, but you can do the next best thing once you find where they sell it.

3) Be prepared to shop around. I know, going on a several hour journey to save a few cents isn’t sane, but knowing every last cheap vendor in your area makes a whole bunch of sense. Especially if you have a couple of places that let you buy items by the box load.

4) Change your purchasing to cash only. Cash is way more tangible than e-cash. Cards of any kidney make it easier to spend more. After all, when you hand over money, you get less back - but when you hand over a card, it remains apparently unchanged.

5) Learn how to cook for yourself. Pre-packaged, pre-processed, chemically altered and otherwise “convenient” food winds up being more expensive. Home cooked does take time, but you know exactly what went in there. Plus, if you cook a LOT, you can have plenty in the freezer for those “blah” days when you don’t feel like raising a spatula.

Just doing these five things can change your personal economy. It won’t happen overnight [especially if you have to buy a freezer] but it will make a change.

Final installment! For now, anyway.

Last steps of prepping the planters is to place a the cloth over the stones to prevent soil escaping the planter. You can also use any old rag that comes to hand, or dryer fluff if it doesn’t.

I put the lid back on to stop the local wildlife from stealing the cloth.

Why not just put cloth in the bottom, you may ask. Well, stones aid drainage and give water a path to escape. The plants I’m planning to put in those pots are ones that like dryer roots.

If you don’t like the idea of using rocks at all, try it with mesh and cloth [trust me, you NEED the mesh!] and share your results. I’d be interested to know the outcome.

Next step: Making soil.

You need a compost tumbler - they’re available in all sizes at big garden shops - a source of mulch, and a LOT of time.

Step 1: Gather household organic waste. Do not gather things like bones or plastics as they do not rot as easily as the rest of it. As a general rule, if it’s soft and goes rotten, it’s mulch/compost.
Step 2: If possible, gather lawn clippings. If not possible, any old source of cellulose will do. Old newspapers, shredded junk mail, you name it. You need cellulose to absorb the moisture from the other organic wastes.
Step 3: Place in tumbler and tumble. This is some lawn clippings I put in the previous day. As you can see, they still resemble lawn clippings.
Step 4: Add more. Often. In goes the assembled organic waste from today.

Compost takes a LOT of time. Most compost-tumblers I’ve seen have little grilles placed in their construction somewhere for the finished compost to fall out. Just place a convenient vessel underneath and you’re set to gather the compost when it’s ready.

We used an old kiddies’ wheelbarrow that was lying around neglected. You can use anything you please.

According to the instructions for my model, a proper compost can take as little as six days to create. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Compost is, in essence, a very rich soil that plants adore. If you’re planting carrots, you may want to mix in some bark-chip potting mix to prevent mutant carrots from forming.

Me, I don’t give a pink flying crap about getting mutant carrots. For me, that’s more carrot for the buck.

More on my little eco-garden when events dictate. 

Welcome back, frugal freedom fighters. This post is showing you the basic preparations for a planter box, or set thereof.

The tools for today are some cheap plastic gutter mesh [the stuff you put in gutters to keep the leaves out] a pair of decent scissors [if you bought wire mesh, use side-cutters!] and the paperclip staples I showed you how to make last time.

Step 1: Measure the mesh to fit, but make sure it fits up the sides of the box a little way.
Step 2: Cut along the joins. You will notice that the mesh does not want to stay where it’s put and tends to spring back on you.
Step 3: Press mesh into shape and weigh it down.
Step 4: Say hello to my little friend. The long side allows you to position the other side for maximum mesh manipulation :D
Step 5: Position staple.
Step 6: Press into the foam. This will kill your fingertips after a while. Not literally, though.
Step 7: Repeat steps 5 and 6 everywhere you reckon you need to keep the mesh in check.
Step 8: Now do the other side.

Put a layer of rocks in the bottom, just enough to mostly cover it.

And now, a teaser. What am I planning to do with that old rag?

Stay tuned, freedom fighters! 

I’ve learned some things about tumblr, now, so this is a two-parter. Should I make you wait for part 2? We’ll see.

I initially wanted the boxes and setup closer to the washing line [it made sense to me] but hubby put the whole box and dice on some bare-ish earth at the other corner of the house. As you can see from the tool set, it’s going to get weird.

If you don’t want to go to the bother of making staples, you can just use regular staples from your office stapler. I didn’t have any of those that worked, so I went with paperclips.

Creative geniuses will tell you the paperclip has over two thousand uses. This is one of them. And how to make it.

Step one, open a paperclip into a V.
Step two, cut the longest side in half.
Step three, flatten the rest of the paperclip.
Step four, cut the longest side in half. It’s preferable to do the cutting steps inside a walled container so the bits don’t go flying off into inconvenient places.
Step five, Voila! Three planter staples for the price of one paperclip.
Step six, now do all again until your hands are ready to croak.

Then I dragged everything outside, ready to make planter boxes.

Stay tuned for part 2, frugal freedom fighters!