While the coffers at the bank are pretty empty, my storage room is relatively full of the stuff we have put away, but don't really eat. Beans, for instance. We have CASES of beans. Red beans, white beans and black beans, mostly. All dried and all mysterious to me. I mean, I know how to use them once they are ready to go, but getting them to an edible state is a true enigma. I have a pressure cooker, but it scares the BeJeeBees out of me because of that insanely rocking pressure deal at the top. Plus, our pressure cooker is industrial size (of course, because we can never do anything small around here) and I'm not sure I want to cook up 20 quarts of beans. Anyway, there are things that I still need to learn about my food storage.
Also, working for a start-up (that's my guy, adventurously jumping into a great NEW company) and running our business, we need to get a lot more out of our fewer grocery store dollars. Now, I would NEVER disrespect all the coupon shopping divas I know by dissing the whole coupon idea. I will say, though, that our family eats a lot of fresh and bulk food that you don't see running through the coupon section of the Sunday paper. The challenge now is to maintain our current level of food snobbery and save money while we're at it. To me, this equates to:
- Lot's less processed stuff
- More home made, home grown sauces, pastas, breads, and veggie dishes
- Broadening our pallet preferences
Also next time, a detailed family dialogue on menu making and food snobbery. I'm happy to be back. I'll post in the next little bit about this Fall's challenge.
3 comments:
Mariah,
I have a whole beautiful row of labelled grains that I never used until just last week. I attended a cooking with grains class at Education Week and it totally helped me figure out what to do with this stuff.
I have an electric pressure cooker ($60 from Costco last year) and it cooks beans in 28 minutes. Steel cut oats in 10, and Split pea soup in 8, and makes amazing potatoes in 8. I think we'll be using it a lot more this fall now that I know how to do it, and I think it has already paid for itself. Very convenient and I don't have to watch the clock, which is important because our evenings get a little crazy sometimes.
Pressure cookers scare the (hum-hah) out of me because of a little movie I saw on TV as a kid where one blew up. No, thanks.
I, too, have lots of dried beans but only every so often do I actually cook a big batch of them. I will be doing it more often though since I'm trying to reduce our grocery budget by 30%. (Eekers.)
As far as coupons and food snobbery, the savings comes in using coupons to buy all the paper goods, batteries, and hygiene items. If you grocery shop at Walmart, you can then pricematch the eggs and produce from other stores' ads.
I'm so happy to see you blog! :)
So, I've got to look into the electric pressure cooker thing. I use my electric rice cooker every week and love it. What else did you get from education week that was interesting?
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