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Fab Frugal Friday: Ginger in a snap!

January 29, 2010 in Frugal Tips

We have been loving the frugal tips given to us by readers for our blogiversary giveaway! Freida reminded me of a great one for getting the most out of your ginger. I learned this one a while back, after countless chunks of fresh ginger sadly went to waste after not being used in time. (I do use it in a lot of recipes, but sometimes you just can’t get to it all!)

The easiest and most efficient way to store ginger is to simply peel it and pop it in the freezer. So when you’re first prepping it for a recipe, go ahead and peel it all. (I find the best way to do so is with the edge of a spoon, like so:)

Once you’ve used what you need, pop the rest into a ziploc bag, and into the freezer it goes. Then, once you need it, you can grate it straight out of the freezer with a microplane. No need to thaw it first!

Alternately, you can slice the ginger and cover it with mirin or dry sherry in an airtight container, which will keep for a few months in the refrigerator.

Thanks Frieda!

– posted by Anne

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Fab Frugal Friday: Queso Fresco & Creme Fraiche

September 25, 2009 in Frugal Tips

Creme fraiche and queso fresco are two ingredients you might encounter in your recipe travels that, while great additions to your cooking, can be pricy and/or just plain hard to find, depending on where you live.  Fortunately, there are easy and thrifty ways to make each of these at home!

Read the rest of this entry →

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Frugal Tip: Time Travel

July 6, 2009 in Frugal Tips

Indian Pudding

Indian Pudding

This morning, NPR featured Christopher Kimball, host of America’s Test Kitchen and editor of Cook’s Illustrated, talking about a great approach to eating frugally: cook as though you were living in the 1800′s!  Of course, back then, whole, unprocessed foods were the norm.

“At one time, the American kitchen was by definition a frugal kitchen. Because ingredients were so expensive in the 1800s, a whole industry formed around “taking large pieces of food, breaking them down, preserving them and reusing them; and the food was really good,” Chris Kimball, host of America’s Test Kitchen, tells NPR’s Renee Montagne.”

He offers up tips on cooking with steel-cut oats and shared recipes for Indian Pudding and Kentucky Burgoo. Good stuff! Read or listen to the story here.

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Fab Frugal Friday: More food for thought

May 29, 2009 in Entrees, Frugal Tips

We promise we’ll get back to the recipes next posting (by Sunday). But I’ve been wanting to share this excellent article for a while now. frugaldad weighs in on how the budget affects the kitchen, and how to stay healthy as well as frugal, in “Help! The Recession is Making Me Fat!” An excerpt:

As more and more Americans look for ways to save money on groceries I imagine we will see a steady rise in obesity rates, already high relative to the rest of the world. I’m one to talk. I’ve been guilty of slashing the food budget and eating cheap things at each meal like cereals, boxed noodles and rices, etc. and have seen my own waistline expand.

After discussing things with my wife we have agreed that we should continue to spend a little more for quality foods and look for other places to sacrifice. Being the frugal person I am, I still look for deals, even on high-quality food items, and use a couple strategies to keep costs down.

He makes a lot of the points we’ve been going on about, like reducing the amount of meat in your diet, and gives some ideas we’ve never thought of, like shaking off your produce before placing it in the bag (hey, every cent counts – why pay for excess water?), and some things we’re planning to cover more in the future, like gardening.

Be sure to read the comments, too! Enjoy.

– posted by Anne

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Fab Frugal Friday: The Incredible Bulk

May 22, 2009 in Frugal Tips

One of the best things you can do for your wallet (as well as your diet, actually) is to start making use of bulk foods. Even at Whole Foods, sometimes referred to not-so-affectionately as “Whole Paycheck”, the bulk section is an infinitely more frugal way to shop. The savings are incredible – not to mention the fact that along with not paying for packages and marketing, you’re also taking one such package out of a landfill. Frugal AND green!

But it’s not only your budget and your carbon footprint that will benefit – using dried beans instead of canned, for example, improves the quality of your cooking dramatically. Try it, you’ll see! And it’s not just beans, it’s pasta, grains, flours, other baking supplies, nuts, nut butters, dried fruits, granolas, cereals, teas, herbs, even soup and meal mixes, the list goes on and on.

If you’ve never investigated this before – check it out! I’m always looking for ways to improve my pantry efficiency, and the bulk department can be an excellent foundation for this.

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Fab Frugal Friday Tip

March 6, 2009 in Appetizers, Frugal Tips

I know. I KNOW.  This seems like a very low-brow thing to have on a blog that is trying to be ‘upscale frugal.’ But trust me, this is a great frugal thing to do.

First, an explanation. I love proscuitto. I could eat it by the handful while closing my eyes and daydreaming that I am frolicking in the hills of Tuscany. I would eat it every single day if it weren’t so very, very expensive. One of the things I love to do with proscuitto is wrap it around a crispy bread stick that has been spread with a little flavored cream cheese.  Yum!

Then, like there was a little light bulb that began blinking above my head, I remembered that salty, peppery shaved meat that we used to eat as kids – you know the kind in the white square plastic package that is so paper-thin you can almost see through it? I tried both the “corned beef” and the “ham” as replacements for proscuitto and was amazed to find that THIS WORKS! Not only does it work, it is truly delicious! It is a fraction of the cost of proscuitto, it is not chewy and tough like proscuitto, and just as yummy on breadsticks. Trust me and try this tip!

– posted by Donna

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Fab Frugal Friday Tip

January 30, 2009 in Frugal Tips

Fresh is not always superior. Just take spinach, for example.

One 10-ounce box of spinach costs about $.99 or less, and the same amount of fresh spinach could be four times that much. If you are making a spinach salad, of course fresh is the only way to go. But, if you need to put spinach in a cooked recipe, frozen spinach is a fraction of the cost and performs just as well as fresh. You must thaw the spinach and then squeeze it dry with a smooth kitchen towel before using in your recipe. The extra step is well worth it in price and taste, too.

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