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If you're buying in bulk (and god drat can you save a lot of money that way), it doesn't hurt to put your stuff in glass jars. Ask me about getting sawtooth grain beetles (which are nearly loving immortal) from some bulk flour I bought  Check the dollar store for large glass jars, I think I paid $1.25 each for my huge ones, and they're great for pasta and grains and whatnot. Also, as has been mentioned, buy a huge thing of white vinegar for cheap, it's useful for so many cleaning jobs around the house. I'm sure it's obvious, but buy store-brand stuff as much as possible when it's something where you're not stuck on the brand name. At the store here, the store brand stuff is typically 15-20% cheaper than the stuff next to it, and for things like pasta and basic ingredients, you're not losing much in the way of quality. Make your own pizza. It's pretty easy, you can shape then freeze excess dough for later, and tomato paste costs something like 49 cents a can here. One of my biggest problems when trying to save money was that pizza was sorta my treat food, and a relatively expensive one at that. I've saved a lot, and eaten a lot better pizza, by making it myself.
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Oct 17, 2011 01:55
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Noricae posted:Oh yeah, great advice! Also those flour/grain pantry moths (they're -all over- southern California) live forever in the tiniest crevices and chew through bags and paper to get to things. Any bulk stuff I would recommend freezing for a couple of days to kill anything in it (heh, gross but not as gross as larva in it a month later). Loose grain? Cocoa? Dried peppers? Nuts? They eat all sorts of stuff other than flour. Yeah, I shoulda mentioned that, it's not like you just get them from shopping at greasy stores or something (although you'd probably be more likely to), it's just sort of a hazard to be aware of when buying bulk food. And yeah, the ones I had chewed through plastic bags routinely to get at the delicious flour within. They also live for a good while for small insects (up to 3 months I think). I did finally get rid of them, then later moved to a new house, and while unpacking... a dead one between two tightly-stacked bowls. That was it though, free of them now and my flour's in a big fuckoff jar as god intended. I also had a pretty decent macro lens then, here's what the little bastards look like (to give you a sense of scale, it's around 2mm long, and the white crud on its back is grains of flour).  EDIT: And yeah, I think they live pretty much everywhere, or some relative of them. SoundMonkey fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Oct 19, 2011 |
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Oct 19, 2011 04:09
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My Little Puni posted:My plan is to work on this no-knead bread thing. I would love to just freeze a shitload of dough (can you freeze dough?) and then just take it out when I need more bread. I've pre-formed pizza bases and frozen them before, it worked great. As a 'furthermore' to the coupon/bulk thing... I just went shopping today, and thought I'd apply what's been said in this thread, to see how much I'd save. I only bought two things that weren't on sale (milk and eggs). The rest was either loyalty-card-discount or coupons. I got enough stuff to feed myself for two weeks or more, for $49. The total discounts earned through coupons and special offers and such was $24.41. With five minutes of looking at a flyer and cutting out one coupon, a $75 grocery bill became a $50 one. You can save unimaginable amounts of money this way. As an example, I bought two boxes of frozen chicken breasts (for when I'm lazy) - $15 per box, but with a 2-for-1 coupon, that's a drat good deal. And with the loyalty card points I earned from buying those, I got myself two nice cloth bags for free to carry my stuff home in.
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Oct 23, 2011 02:46
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