Spending, Saving and Christmas
By Dictator hater for the Corbett Report
In order to become more self-sufficient, you will have to spend some money for the equipment you will need. In order to avoid all the preservatives and other chemicals no one can pronounce that are in most store bought food, you need to prepare your food from scratch whenever possible. This will save you money, but it will not always save you time. Much of saving money means relying on your own labor for things you used to pay others to do for you, such as baking breads and making pies.
Tonight I got out my trusty bread machine. It had been under a cabinet, I am almost ashamed to say it with the price of bread being what it has been, for almost eight years. I bought five pounds of bread flour (high gluten Better For Bread) for $2.00 and used only three cups of the flour and spent thirty cents on some rapid rise yeast. One tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of powdered milk were the only other ingredients required besides water for this particular recipe. It cost less than a dollar to make a loaf of fresh, piping hot white bread. If you buy your products in bulk (especially the yeast) this cost will go down even more. All you have to do is throw the ingredients into the machine and a few hours later you pop out a loaf of bread. What was I thinking, owning this machine and not using it for so long? There’s nothing like the smell of bread baking to make a house a home. If you have a neglected bread machine, now is the time to start using it again. Mine will be getting a workout from now on. Just make sure you have a good bread knife to cut the bread and you should be in business. If you do not own a bread machine, look around for a used one or try www.freecycle.com to see if anyone has one in good working order that they are looking to discard. These machines can be used for making pizza dough, rolls, bagel dough, whole wheat bread and more.
Even if you do not have a bread machine and you can’t afford one, now would be a good time to start making your own bread and baked goods. The cost of these once cheap ready to buy items is now taking a sizeable chunk out of our paychecks. Many recipes for homemade breads or rolls can be made in advance and frozen or refrigerated for future use. This will save time and money if you make up a large amount at one time and only take out what you need. This website tells you how. A dozen pre-made yeast rolls costs around four dollars at the grocery store. The savings on breads alone is huge when added up over a one year period.
This pie crust recipe is delicious, costs pennies and takes very little time to make. The instructions were very easy to follow. For an apple pie, it takes about four large fresh apples to fill a regular sized pie tin and their recipe for the filling can’t be beat, just buy the cheapest apples you can find, any will work in this recipe. Frozen or ready to eat bakery pies cost anywhere from four to six dollars each and you still have to use the energy to heat them in your oven for about an hour. Make your own and you will know exactly what is in the pie you are eating. Pies can be made in advance and put in the freezer, here’s how.
This year, we decided to skip most of our usual expenditures for Christmas. We contacted the friends and relatives with whom we usually exchange gifts and told them they wouldn’t be getting any goodies from us this year and we asked them not to send us any either, because we were cutting costs. Their reaction was totally unexpected. They were actually glad that no one expected them to go out and run up their credit cards for presents they would be paying interest on for months or years to come. You might be surprised to find that many of your friends and relatives are thinking the same thing. There is no shame in being frugal in times as tough as these. Putting up a false front while going into debt needlessly does no one any good whatsoever.
Since there are no children in the house, we decided to use our money that we usually spend on fun gifts, for useful items. But, they are items that are needed by anyone who wants to become more self sufficient and cut back on their spending in the long term. The initial outlay is a bit painful. We decided to buy a new pressure cooker/canner, a meat grinder and a meat slicer.
Canning our own food is something we all should learn to do now. This endeavor involves some initial outlay. In searching for a new pressure canner this past week, I found a great deal here on the All-American pressure canners with free shipping. I was torn between paying around $100.00 for another Chinese made canner and the All-American. That cheapskate in me just keeps popping out and has to be held at bay in times like these. There were two reasons for not going with the cheaper brand. First was the fact that the All-American canner is made in the U.S.A. Second, it is the Cadillac of all pressure canners on the market and has been for many, many years. Price, even when trying to save money, is not all there is to consider. Quality is extremely important when buying a piece of equipment such as a pressure canner. You will never be sorry you bought the very best or at least middle of the road in quality, if the wallet will allow. If you can’t afford the All-American, then suffice it to say, since this is such a very important piece of equipment to own, then buy what you can afford, just make sure you own one and that it will fit your needs. You will need to do some research on canners, especially regarding size, to make sure you buy the right one for you and your family. For example, a fifteen or sixteen quart sized pressure canner will only hold seven quart jars or ten pint jars. The quart size, in regard to pressure canners, reflect the amount of liquid they will hold, not the number of quart sized jars.
If you are going to can your own food, you will need canning jars. Try thrift shops and yard sales to find them at the lowest price, just make sure they are all perfect with no chips, cracks or other defects in them. Otherwise, you’ve wasted your money, they will likely break in the pressure canner and you will have wasted your food as well as having made a huge mess to clean up. I’ve scoured the internet for the cheapest new canning jars I could find and here is where I found them. There is no charge for shipping to your local store where you can pick them up once they are delivered there. Make sure you have on hand the lids and bands that fit your jars. The bands may be reused, but the lids may not. You will need new lids each time you can a new batch of food, so you will need more lids than bands at any given time.
Canning cat and dog food could be a real money saver and a life saver for our animals. As of the present time, there is little to no information on this subject. I will be writing more about this in the future for Corbett Report as many have concerns about how they are going to be able to feed their pets and the animals they depend upon to guard their homes in the event of a complete economic meltdown. Canned and dry pet food will disappear, along with everything else, from our grocer’s shelves.
Meat grinders are important because you can make your own ground beef, pork, chicken or whatever type of meat you want to use in ground form. Many hunters use meat grinders for wild game. You can choose a manual grinder, which is probably the best type to own in the event we are thrown into the stone age with no power. You can pick one up for around $25.00 or so. Just make sure you receive fine, medium and coarse grinding blades with the one you choose, they all have different uses and most do come with all three. If you can afford an electric grinder, they are a great tool to own at present, especially if you are planning to use it a lot. Make sure, if you purchase an electric grinder that it has sufficient horsepower. This is not an item to cheap out on when making your purchase. Many grinders are also sausage casing stuffers, which is great. I won’t go into what is contained in the sausages and hot dogs that we buy at the grocers, suffice it to say you’d probably never eat another one if you really knew. I chose this grinder that seems to be more than enough to fit our needs, we will be using it quite frequently. There was also a ten percent discount coupon on ebay that you may still be able to take advantage of, if it hasn’t expired by the time you read this article.
Meat grinders can also be used to make raw cat food and raw dog food. If you decide to make your own raw pet food, as I do, make sure that you do the research needed to ensure your pet is getting all the nutrients he needs. Cat food is harder to make than dog food, because cats need extra nutrients in a special balance of taurine (for heart support), vitamin A, B vitamins, etc. I am a firm believer in a raw food diet, especially for cats. It’s great for dogs, as well, but if you have large dogs, it might be cost prohibitive. Here is more information on raw feeding of cats and here is information on raw feeding of dogs. I have found that raw feeding my cats is a huge saving on vet bills, they are healthy and active. The twelve and fourteen year old Persian rescues that own me act like kittens since having been switched to a raw diet. I’ve also been able to avoid having a dental performed on one of my dogs, which involves anesthesia and several hundred dollars, by feeding her raw beef rib bones a few times a week. It has completely cleaned all the plaque from her canines, they are now sparkling white. Make sure that all raw food has been frozen for several days before ever giving it to your pet. And if you give your dog raw bones to eat, make sure that you take them away from your dog before they dry out. They can splinter and cause internal injuries, just as cooked bones can. Never, never feed your dog or cat cooked bones. Knowing how to raw feed your animals could come in very handy in the event that you only have raw meat to feed them. If the supply lines are cut and there is no more canned or dry food at the grocers, this will be very important knowledge to have, before it happens.
We purchased the meat slicer in order to stop buying deli meats and other high priced sliced meats at the grocery store. This is another item you do not want to cheap out on when making your purchase, but you don’t have to have one that is restaurant or butcher quality either. Middle of the road is good and I found this model to be just what we needed without breaking our bank. Roast turkey at our grocer’s deli is around eight dollars or more per pound. I can buy a turkey breast, roast it myself, know exactly what is in it and whose hands touched it for around $2.00 to $3.00 per pound and slice it deli thin for brown bag lunches. Compare this also to buying a turkey sandwich at the restaurant and you will see that it will not take long for this piece of equipment to pay for itself. For example, sliced pork steak cost more than a pork roast. If your butcher will slice this for you, the way you want it, for free, then there is no savings, but if not, you will save anywhere from twenty to forty cents per pound on presliced meats. This can add up over time. Of these three “Christmas presents” we bought ourselves, this is probably the most frivilous of the three.
I can’t say that I am at all disappointed in receiving these items instead of the usual kinds of Christmas presents that would be under our tree. In fact, I am very excited to have been able to purchase them with the cash we have saved by not eating out, foregoing Starbucks type lattes and other things we have done to tighten our belts these past months.
It’s time we all do some rearranging of our priorities and figure out what is necessary as opposed to what is simply a want. It’s also time we all grow up and stop being afraid of hard work. We must spend our time doing things to save our hard earned money and stop saying we don’t have time to do things to help ourselves when we are spending hours in front of the television every night.
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you have a Merry Christmas this year. At the end of it all, love is the most important gift we exchange. Let’s make that our priority in the coming year, it’s going to be more important than it has ever been if the world continues in the direction in which we are headed. I don’t see an end to it anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean that we have to give up and live in despair. We’re Americans, true Patriots and we have always survived whatever came our way with dignity and ingenuity. The coming year and the years after can be no different, we are what we are.
