I have been watching a lot of how to save money videos and radio whenever my back is out, I tend to listen to the radio when I am working in my art room. Like on the news sometimes, I have heard some whoppers.
First of all, it is not cheaper to buy a block of cheese and grate it yourself. Cheese is cheese. Check the price per pound. I have been getting it for under two dollars a pound. Always check your per pound unit price. It makes no sense to work any harder than you have to. Now, if you want a specialty cheese instead of sharp cheddar, Mexican blend or mozzarella, it is probably going to necessitate your grating it yourself. But, for what we use for everyday cheese, it just isn’t to your advantage to buy a brick.
We toured the Tillamook cheese factory years ago. They make a huge block of cheese. Then it goes to a station here it os out through a giant cheese slicer where it is cut into two pound bricks. The pieces that are leftover go into what I would describe as a bus boy tray. These trays go on to the shredder to be made into bags of cheese. In other words, shredded cheese is the leftovers.
Next whopper is that it is cheaper to have your food delivered. It is just common sense that if you ask someone to do your labor , it is going to cost you more. If you price check the items, you will find that they are more expensive than you can find elsewhere; or sometimes, even at that particular store. Even if they wave a delivery charge, you should tip the delivery person. You loose the control of price comparison, and looking for alternatives if something is priced too high. It’s true you avoid impulse buys, but that’s a high price for not having self control. If I only want a few things and I don’t want to see markdowns or special buys, I send my hubby to do the shopping. He will usually come home with just what is on the list, and only deviate if he sees the item cheaper. He has shopped with me long enough to know what’s a bargain.
When we were both out of work, he would go with me to shop. I truly thought he was just walking around aimlessly and bored. One day we came upon a end can display of 8 ounce cans of tomato sauce marked .25 . He said, “ that’s not a bargain, they were a dime last week.”
He is a lot more savvy a shopper than he was when we were first married.
The best rule of thumb is of someone has to extend their labor on a product, it is going to be more expensive. A bowl of cut up fruit is going to be a lot more expensive than buying the fruit and cutting it yourself for example. A rotisserie chicken will be about three times what it cost to buy it and cook it yourself. There are ways to cook a whole chicken that takes less than 10 minutes.
For the most part, any boxed mix or bag dinner in the freezer section, will be a lot more expensive than making it from scratch. The exception is pasta sauce when you get it on sale. By the time you buy tomatoes fresh or canned, you have spent more than pasta sauce especially if you get it on sale. The exception is of you grow your own tomatoes. And, as I was reminded by a reader, some people are sensitive and can taste metallic from canned food. You can get pasta sauce in jars. I got Classico for a dollar not long ago. It costs .80 for the jar and a canning jar lid works on it. I don’t think I would can in them, but I use them for dehydrated food and food storage. We are trying to avoid plastic when we can.
Virtual paycheck. It is a concept not everyone can grasp. If you compare the price of something made from scratch with the ready made product, you will find the price difference. Now, time how long it will take you to make the product from scratch. Divide the time by the profit. This will give you the amount per hour that you are saving. If you make Starbucks lemon pound cake, it is about 212.00 an hour. If you make tortillas, it’s about ten cents an hour. I have purchased tortillas for as little as .50 a package. Use your time wisely.
The concept that using an insta pot takes just as long as making a dish in the stove is a misconception.
It is true that the pot has to come up to pressure, and then it cooks sometimes in a fraction of the time. The difference is in the fact that you can take a few minutes to load the pan on an insta pot, and after you program it, you can walk away. Instead of watching a pot, you can finish the rest of dinner. In the time it takes to cook spaghetti complete with meat sauce, you can make a salad and butter the French bread. Maybe even set the table! Lol 😂
Stew cooks on 35 minutes, not two hours. Chicken breast from frozen on 15 minutes. If you de frost it on the microwave and cook it, it won’t be as moist and it will take longer. Now, I, not going to tell you that it will have a crispy skin, but boneless, skinless chicken breast won’t have skin anyway.
The bottom line is that you can’t always believe everything you hear and common sense has to prevail. When buying food, do the math.
