Budget Stretching

Just buy one of each size and use it as a pattern to make yer own. Now that is Stretchers on a budget

 

Aleppo Soap, yes its expensive but it last a long time, (1 bar of the 60% Laurel last me & DH aprox 2 months ) and since using it (can use for hair to) no skin irritation, no itching . Clearer skin. Less need for other skin products like moisturiser etc.

cheaper products not always work out as cheaper investments.

 

Rubbing alcohol, all now know of its use as a hand sanitizer, can be used to start fires, use in alcohol stoves, in a pinch made from a tin can, to heat food etc, will burn but not explode and fumes are much less dangerous than gas or kerosene, A small amount on a wash cloth was used in old days as a bathing alternative in hospitals to clean, sterilize, and reduce itching. The gallon or so I had of rubbing alcohol has saved me many dollars worth of hand sanitizer and it never goes bad. I wear support stockings, 82 and a bad heart, it stops the itching, dries very quickly and unlike skin creams, anti itch creams, does not soften the skin to the point your fingernails will cause major wounds Not meant as medical advise, you may have different results. .Can be used to make solutions like witch hazel, and if using a drinkable one, used to be called Everclear, can have dozens of uses with herbs for medicine or flavoring.

Two types of alcohol, one is poison or will make you sick on purpose so that the tax man can get his dollar or made of wood etc. The second made from the right fractions of grain and not poison but one can argue it is not healthy The grain one can be drank, traded to those who drink, used to clean and dissolve things, make medical and cooking things, almost no end of uses.

Baking mix, Bisquick is expensive ready made one, cheaper ones or home made. Make cheap waffles, pan cakes, muffins, tops for pot pies, dumplings, etc. Can cook sliced apples in it or use jams, jellies, fruits over the cooked ones. Use it to rotate prep stocks as well, mix powdered milk and dried eggs in it. Lots of food value and the kids never notice it. Would be good for give away food if things went bad, no one is going to riot and steal your pancake mix, but with sugar, eggs, milk, wheat flour, oil, it would have a lot of food value and enough bulk to fill your stomach and stop hunger pains and with a vitamin and mineral supplement would keep you alive for several weeks. Unlike rice or beans, can be cooked on cast iron fry pan over open fire in a couple minutes and the added cooking oil increases the food value, bacon grease is excellent in my mind.. Kind a survival form of Raman noodles for the college kids.

Oatmeal, generic or bulk, costs a fraction as much as breakfast foods, multiplies several times as cooking so is easy to store, carry, can be used to extend meats, think meatloaf, absorbs meat fats and retains them for food value, hard to use pan drippings from hamburger, can be used by people who have problems with wheat and easier for babies to digest I have been told, Can be used to thicken soups and transform liquid into a sauce that seems more filling.

Wife is an expert at cooking with basics, few bulk foods, potatoes, beans, rice, lentils, dried peas, carrots, onions, etc, and a few beef or chicken bones and she can feed us for days on what one resturant meal would cost. The same as the many things you can do wit a jar of spaghetti sauce. Spaghetti, chili mac, form of meatloaf, makes a meatless burger with oatmeal, etc. It isn't what you make, it is what you spend that counts.

 

Re:T5R's post #22. Would you consider listing which stretcher is for which fur bearer?

 

I will tomorrow I am too beat tonight but a couple can do double duty

 

My cats have a ball with those. Bat them around and chase 'em all over.

 

Hehe do it the easy way after remember which trapping supply house online catalog I grabbed that pic from Stretchers - Grawe's Lures and Trapping Supplies

 

Buy a bread machine. If money's tight, you can often find them at a Goodwill or other thrift store for less than $20.
While a good loaf of bread in the store costs $4.00, you can bake it at home for 30 cents! More recipes than you can shake a stick at! And you have no artificial ingredients or preservatives.
I have a timer on my machine so I can wake up to the smell of fresh raisin cinnamon bread or lemon poppyseed bread in the morning.

 

Quote for truth

Bread maker
Crock pot
pasta sheet roller/cutter
and now a Instapot pot
The kitchen arsenal for cooking both fast and cheap. Allows use of less than premium cuts of meat to be turned into good meals. Turns flour into all sort of yummy goodness.

The not so fast versions are
a KitchenAid mixer with dough hooks and a zucchini 'spirializer'
pressure cooker

A good freezer allows cooking larger batches and freezing for use on busy days - thus no need to buy pricey (and sodium laden) 'prepared foods'.

I'm assuming here everyone has a wheat & grain mill with both stones and burrs.

EDIT to add
Actually, learning how to cook with basics (flour, for example) can eliminate of the cost of factory foods - and really cuts the grocery bill.

We raised our kiddos on DairyX no-fat dry milk. Cost a fraction of store milk.

 

Planning meals = savings as well.

Over in Zombieland, a fellow had a wife that went shopping daily.

I offered this:
:
Does she shop for that days (or the next days) meals? I'll assume she is not French or Euro - if she was one of those raised without a fridge, she was likely raised that way - that is, to shop day to day. Good luck on changing something that ingrained.

Suggestion - sit down and plan a menu for the week - tell her it will help eliminate 'leftovers' and save money.

A menu doesn't mean that on Thurday, you must have beef stew.
It means that one meal that week is beef stew.

If you plan ahead, then you can buy ahead. Save time and money. Buy items for favorite dishs when on sale and so on.
As for preps - if you have 6 months worth of menu planing, you can make better focused bulk buys.

Back in the day as a storage food dealer, I worked with folks to help them buy storage food.
Started with a 50lb bag of non-instant, non-fat dry milk. Make a gallon and pay yourself for the milk sort of thing.

Folks were surprised how quickly they built up 'savings'. Next cycle was to replace the bag of milk and use the food 'savings' to bulk buy 200 lbs of wheat and a wheat grinder (hand crank) - and start making bread. Rinse, repeat.

One fellow we worked with noted that with his wife no longer shopping for milk and bread, he was saving a fortune - his wife always purchased a ton more than bread and milk when she hit the store.

Imagine your savings with a little planning.

 

Setup stock pot, simmer, and use all bones chicken bones, wilted vegetables, anything else in the fridge that is good, but to wilted to cook up. Add favorite spices and trimmings from garden and produce and end up with stock, strain and freeze what you will not use in a couple days. Makes very good soup base, frozen can be used in small amounts 1 or 2 cup containers for rice, pasta, etc to give it a little more flavor and to make fried rice, pasta dishes, bean soups, lentils,etc The stock you buy in the stores is expensive and has too much salt for me or my wife with our bad hearts. ;Bacon grease, wilted carrots, heart and outer leaves of cabbage, lots of garlic, always buy celery with as many leaves as possible and cook the center stock with leaves and heart etc for stock, same with beet greens, leek greens, cabbage cores,green beans from the garden that are too tough to cook, etc. Take all small bad tomatoes from greenhouse and cut out bad spots, add spices, onion, garlic, celery, etc, boil down about 1/3 rd, run thru Foley food mill to get rid of solids and use for a base for soup, sauces, etc. Mom and Grandma seldom threw anything away and knew how to save every dime.

 

interesting... so you boys do the cooking and planning in your family or just the planning for everyone to do you will at your direction? or is it an actual group effort?

 

I want to be sure you're not missing the big picture @Ganado. My family did meals that sound very much like Duane's. Mom did all that, along with canning, making preserves, drying beans into leather britches for winter meals, doing the laundry and nursing anyone who was sick, mending and making our clothes, house cleaning, laundry, ironing, and daily garden chores. Mom paid all the bills and was a meticulous book keeper.

So what did Dad and the boys do? We ate, and then we'd lay around on the living room floor to digest the wonderful meals, while Mom cleaned up the dishes.

Oh, and we tended the garden, mowed the hay fields, tended to the management of Michigan mud and snow during winter and spring, Brought in the garden harvest, helped with shucking peas and stringing beans,
we brought home game and fish, cleaned the barn and garage, plowed the fields, planted, fed the dogs, and kept all manner of mechanical things working smoothly around the farm. Oh, and us boys got up and walked to the bus stop in the dark, because we had the longest bus ride in the county (45 minutes), and Dad got up at 0400, made a thermos of coffee and drove 45 miles to work in Detroit so we could have a roof over our head and pay all the bills.

I left that life over forty years ago, and have started my own family. That Woman does all the same stuff Mom did, except ironing, because she scorched one of my uniform shirts and I started doing it all myself again. She cans, dehydrates, cooks, bakes, washes, cleans, tends animals, and nurses wounds, picks fruit, tends the plants and keeps the house beautiful.

What do I do? I eat, and then I lay around on the living room floor to digest the wonderful meals...

Let me make something clear. That Woman does nothing at "my direction." She is an independent operator who is a full partner in this thing we call our life. She looks out for our interests in the areas that she has mastered, and I look after the things that I have mastered. Together we have been through some pretty rough weather and hard times and we've got each others backs. This is how we stretch budgets, pay bills, make babies, and raise children. Together. If it isn't the way you do it, you're welcome to come lay on the living room floor with "us boys" after supper while That Woman cleans up the dishes.

 

lol
Yes, I do the cooking ...sometimes. My Dear Wife also works full time, and she cooks sometimes. We both do dishes...sometimes (no dishwasher in this house other than us). When the kids were still at home, they took turns cooking et al so as to be ready to move out on their own.

I am a logitician/planner by training (college even!). So I do menu planning, my DW does the edit.
I make a list of required items from her edit and my DW does the procurement. This has worked for us 45 years, so the proof is in the pudding.

If it helps, my oldest son does IT and most of the cooking because it is something he enjoys.
My DD marked a Plumber who trained as a cook. She shops, he cooks...again, it is something he likes to do.

The youngest is a former Marine. He eats to live..so is an expert Instapot guy...

life is wonderful because of the variety of how folks live...

 

Ganado, we both cook, bring in firewood, tend to the greenhouse, clean house, take out the garbage, etc. She is 80, I am 82, neither of us is in great health, she has been "retired" for 18 years, I still work part time, and it is all we can do with the help of children and friends, to live in our own house. She does not have the physical strength to lift the gas can to fill the lawn mower, so I fill it, she enjoys machines and running the mower, so she mows the lawn. Life seems to work best if each does what they like best and share in doing the tasks that no one likes but have to be done. No offense meant, but a lot of the people I know that were very involved in all the fuss about Women's lib and individual life styles, and men screaming about their rights and independence, 50 years ago, are now lonely old people living in assisted living or a nursing home. In our past it seems that over time we learned that the family that worked together, lived together, grew old together, in which the children helped their parents in their old age as the parents had helped the children in their youth, had many benefits. Likewise that a faith in God and the comfort in the membership of a good church did a lot to help in the real long term question of what really happens when we get old and our time comes.

Old dog, very set in my ways, very comfortable in my life, body is failing, but God has given me the gift of still having my mind, a good woman to keep me company, a warm place to live, course he expects me to cut the wood and feed the fire, but in turn he gives me the ability to do so, enough to eat that I am over weight, and enough money to pay the bills. The greatest gift we can have is to complain about the present generation and the future. To do so you have to be alive, in your right mind, and have enough time and comfort to worry about the future.

Stay away from crowds, be gray, stay warm, and enjoy the small things in life.

 

My husband does most of the cooking because he is better at it. Sometimes I will cook or one of the kids will cook. Usually the kids clean the kitchen, unless they cook. The person who cooks doesn’t have to clean. We both work full time. I get paid more but that doesn’t matter to us. Its not a competition. Usually I handle the bills. He mows the lawn because I have horrible allergies. We both split snow removal duties. Things are fairly split in the household. BTW the hubby also loves the instapot. Half pressure cooker half crockpot.

 

good to hear shared duties

 

Not sure if it is budget stretching but I spent time this weekend cutting up all the old t-shirts into rags. The rags will be used for cleaning and in the garage. A box of rags from Home Depot cost $12.00