Tuesday notes relativity

It is a habit of mine to watch grocery hauls.  Its a matter of studying the shopping habits and prices in other parts of  the country.   Its interesting to note that the same thing can be as low as 28 cents one place and 1.10 another.   Prices can even vary drastically in the same area.   A lot of how much is spent depends on how much money is available and the fact that many people add everything from crock pots to shampoo to their basket.   As a rule of thumb, buying non food items at the grocery store is usually not a good idea.   You are paying a lot more than you need to.   Grocery stores assign a different profit margin to categories of merchandise.   Sundry items are their moneymakers.   

I have seen grocery hauls for as much as 2600 an 942 dollars and as low as 32.00 a week for a family of four.  Setting a budget is the first step.   Kinda like dieting....if you have brownies in the house, you are going to eat them!   LOL.  

There was a time when both my husband and I both lost our jobs within a week or so of each other.  Needless to say, we cut all spending.   We took the mantra that what resources we had might have to last a long time.  We were also building an addition on the house.  Four of u lived in 400 square feet of the basement .  We had a kitchen that was unfinished.   I had a folding table with a microwave and a chopping block on wheels that housed a one burner hot plate.   

One Sunday I started a soup bone in a stock pot on the hot plate.   My son came up to me and asked what was in the pot.   I told him soup.  He took one look and said , well, it doesn’t look like soup.  

Trust me, by dinner it will look like soup.   I proceeded to cook the bone, pull the meat off the bone and add stock and veggies.   By dinner time, it was soup.   

He went to school and told his teacher that he had homemade soup for dinner.   His teacher, bless her heart, told him homemade was sooo much better than anything out of a can.   

Living on a budget and knowing how to stretch a buck is a good thing. Even if you are in a position to live more than comfortably, knowing how is a good skill.   If you know how to live on a dime, living on a dollar isn’t hard to master.   

There are all kinds of recipes out there and u tubers that show you how to do almost everything.  Somethings like making soda crackers, seem fruitless, but knowing how at least would teach children that they just don't come out of a box. Like my son who realized that soup doesn’t necessarily come out of a can. 

I discovered   yesterday how to make sweetened condensed milk.   It is really expensive and you can make it for pennies.   My concern was that you put hot syrup into a blender bowl.   Maybe if you heated the bowl first with hot water.  Or used an emulsion  blender. Its one of those things you usually only use at holiday times.   It is still nice to know how to do in a pinch.   

Needless to say, having basic ingredients in your pantry gives you great flexibility vs having boxes or bags of ready made ...and it does it cheaper as well.  

Buying food efficiently and cooking efficiently has its merits.