Saturday concepts 10/6/18

Saturday concepts.

 10 things never to buy: 

1.  Bread crumbs,  why pay upwards of two dollars a pound for someone else’s dry bread and throw away the heels of your bread or bread that is getting stale.  Break it up and put it in the  food processor. Pulse until crumbs amd place of sheet pan in the oven after you have cooked something,  when dry, place in a mason jar or storage container,   
2. Baby carrots,   Baby carrots started as a way for a farmer to palm off his ugly carrots.  He devised a way to cut them into Baby carrots  and sell them for more than two times the price of a regular carrots.  One pound of baby carrots are upwards of a dollar.   Five pounds of carrots are 2.28 at Winco.  Less than half price. 
3. Parmesan cheese in a green can.   It’s old, it’s dried out, and it has wood pulp in it.   You can get Parmesans cheese or a blend or Romano for a good price.   Use any hard cheese that has a good price,   It’s just better and you aren’t eating a tree. 
4. Junk food.   Studies of people’s grocery carts show that 1/2 of a typical cart is drinks and snack foods.  Yes, Virginia, there are people that are paid to study your cart.   Their object is to get you to spend more money,   Your health will thank you not to oblige the marketing tactics.  I bought a quart of root beer the first time in years,   I thought granddaughter should taste a root beer float once in her life.   1.67 plus .17 sin tax.  I could serve a whole meal for that! 
5. Cut up fruit.  Many times lately, it is the thing on the tainted list.  Anytime you are buying something that takes a persons time to prepare, you are going to pay more.   Simple fact.   
6. Baked goods.   Caveat here. Pumpkin pie has been 2.99 to 3.99 here,   By the time you buy pumpkin, canned milk and eggs and pastry shell, you are spending more for scratch than buying the pie.  Especially of you have a dollar off coupon,   Bit, making a muffin mix, you can have a muffin made in a matter of five minutes and six muffins are five  bucks.  
7. Hamburger meal in a box.   If you break down what you are getting in that box and look at the science experiment ingredients, it would tell you it’s just plain rip off and nit good for you,   When my daughter and I dissected a box that cost upwards  of two dollars. (Yes, I know you can get them at the DT) . It had 1.57 ounces of a cheese sauce mix that didn’t contain cheese and 4.2 ounces of pasta.   At the time, you could get pasta for 88 cents a pound.   
8. Some cold cereals and boxed Mac and cheese have detergent in them.  Tsp is what we sold at the paint store to people that wanted to get the grease off of kitchen walls before painting,  you needed to wear rubber gloves because it ate  your hands up.   Just saying. 
9. Spices in jars.   Bulk spices are really a lot cheaper and if you already have jars, you can just refill them.  I went to the store for dill weed.  A one inch jar of dill was six dollars.   I went to the bulk section and bought enough to fill a jar, and..wait for it.....it was .17.   
10. Seasoning mixes.   Ranch dressing mix, taco seasoning, sausage seasoning..all a fraction of buying it in that envelope.   Many times, the packaging of something costs more than the product.   Dry buttermilk is really expensive.  It was fractions of that price when I bought it on amazon in a plastic bag.   Save your jars.  Especially ones like the Classico pasta sauce jars.   A mason jar lid works for them.  I have got Classico for as cheap as a buck and it costs .80 for the jar.

And, one thing to buy...

It doesn’t pay to make your own pasta sauce,   Hunts and Del Monte  sauce is less than a dollar at Winco .  Sometimes, you can get sauce in a jar for close to a dollar.   By the to,e you buy he tomatoes, you aren’t saving any money to scratch cook the sauce.

Always buy tomatoes with the seasoning already on them if you can for the same price as the 

tomatoes themselves,   It just saves time and money,   

It is a falsehood to say that cheese is cheaper in a brick than grated cheese,  Cheese is cheese.  A pound of cheese is a pound of cheese whatever shape it is in.   Check your prices.   Often grated cheese is cheaper..  now, sliced cheese is always more expensive.