Tips and tricks

These are tips and tricks that save time and/or money anyone can use.

1. If you are using blueberries for cooking, check the price of frozen vs fresh.   When blueberries arent. Season, froze can work as well as fresh.   If making muffins , try dusting the berries with some of the dry batter first.   
2. Making your own bread crumbs is a lot cheaper than buying them and throwing away your crusts.  
3. Breadcrumbs , chopped nuts, and parmesan makes a good breading for chicken cubes / chicken nuggets.   Air frying or baking in a convection oven is more healthy.   
4. When using nuts for baking, try buying broken nuts in the bulk isle (winco) saves time and money.  
5. Buying small amounts of spices that you don't use on a regular basis are best purchased in the bulk isle.   The cost difference between that 1 inch square ‘jar’ and the bulk price is remarkable.  When I bought enough dill to fill the once inch bottle it was .17.   The bottle cost over six dollars.  
6. If you are new to bread baking and don’t want the investment of a three plus package of yeast at cosco, you can buy small amounts of yeast in the bulk isle. 
7. Anything you eat on a regular basis that doesn’t spoil quickly is a good candidate for bulk.   We buy flour, rice and real oatmeal at Costco in bulk.   The beans are not a good choice for us.   We don’t use enough.  Sometimes it makes sense if you have a group of people that would split a bag of something.   
8. Prepping for dinners in a marathon hour session can make dinner time a lot less hectic.  Those of us that wake up early can be wasted by dinner.   LOL
9. Scratch cooking most things is a great budget stretcher.   Tortillas, pasta sauce, and mayonnaise is not a good candidate for scratch.   Either they are too labor intensive or expensive.   
10. You can preserve lemons with kosher salt (not course ) and lemons in a jar with a tight fitting lid.   You can also dehydrate eggs when they are cheap and plentiful.  It beats paying over two dollars a dozen.  Drying the plentiful zucchini  is also a great money saver.  Most of us can get it free from friends and neighbours.   Dried parsley is sooo much fresher than what you buy in a jar.   Save jars.