FatCat's MoneyConfessions - helping you save (& make) money, one click at a time
Making Dough
My money saving attitude is very short term. Luckily, long term is just a whole bunch of short terms all stapled together. When it comes to doing a little bit of effort to save money I generally start out very keen. But, as anyone who's seen 'The Matrix' Trilogies can tell you, something that starts out exciting never continues to be exciting 'ad infinitum'.
I became mad-keen on making my own bread. I picked up a second hand bread machine for $25 and got cracking. Second hand bread machines are a dime a dozen. It's one of those purchases that seemed like a good idea at the time but just fills up cupboard space. A whimsical decision by someone with too much money can be turned to your benefit.
Making your own bread is initially a bit of effort but so long as your excited about it you'll be fine. Until the elation lifts. It's all well and good when you start. The smell of fresh bread in the morning, The thrill of creation. It only takes fifteen minutes to do.
But alas fifteen minutes becomes too long. You can promise yourself that you're going to commit to it but that rarely works. You have to acknowledge that you're going to lose steam over the course of a venture.
So here's the trick,..
Use that initial burst of enthusiasm to figure out how to get that time down as low as possible. Instead of measuring the three and 5/8ths of a cup of flour each time. Weight it and then the flour section drops from three minutes to 40 second. Waiting for the water in the jug to settle so you can read the measurement? Drill a hole in a cup so that excess water runs out and you're left with the exact amount you need.
It now takes me slightly more time to make fresh bread than it does to put bread in my trolley at the supermarket. It's fresh, it's all eaten before it goes off and it costs around 80 cents a loaf (including power) rather than $3 at Woolies or $4 at the bakery.
If you only eat one loaf per week, that's a saving of over $110 in a year.
How are you cutting corners off the grocery bill?
I became mad-keen on making my own bread. I picked up a second hand bread machine for $25 and got cracking. Second hand bread machines are a dime a dozen. It's one of those purchases that seemed like a good idea at the time but just fills up cupboard space. A whimsical decision by someone with too much money can be turned to your benefit.
Making your own bread is initially a bit of effort but so long as your excited about it you'll be fine. Until the elation lifts. It's all well and good when you start. The smell of fresh bread in the morning, The thrill of creation. It only takes fifteen minutes to do.
But alas fifteen minutes becomes too long. You can promise yourself that you're going to commit to it but that rarely works. You have to acknowledge that you're going to lose steam over the course of a venture.
So here's the trick,..
Use that initial burst of enthusiasm to figure out how to get that time down as low as possible. Instead of measuring the three and 5/8ths of a cup of flour each time. Weight it and then the flour section drops from three minutes to 40 second. Waiting for the water in the jug to settle so you can read the measurement? Drill a hole in a cup so that excess water runs out and you're left with the exact amount you need.
It now takes me slightly more time to make fresh bread than it does to put bread in my trolley at the supermarket. It's fresh, it's all eaten before it goes off and it costs around 80 cents a loaf (including power) rather than $3 at Woolies or $4 at the bakery.
If you only eat one loaf per week, that's a saving of over $110 in a year.
How are you cutting corners off the grocery bill?
Tags: bread, cooking, groceries, shopping
Views: 1
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Natalie Bochenski on -
Home-brand pasta is a saviour. 50 or 60 cents for a 500 gram bag of spirals or penne - awesome.
I also like to go shopping closer to closing time - then you often get "reduced" items, particularly in the bakery, meat and dairy areas.
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Permalink Reply by Matthew Reader on -
$110 a year - and that's just counting the money side of it. There's also - as you put it - the thrill of creation. As we rush around in this modern world of ours we miss out on what were once everyday "thrills", and we lose the ability to do anything ourselves. Everyone is too busy running around saving time. And spending money doing it. Which is exactly what companies want us to do.
Matt
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Permalink Reply by DNABeast on -
You should try making your own pasta. For about the same cost you can make the jump from a cheap meal of pasta to an inexpensive one. Just make sure you pay a decent amount for the pasta machine. Those things? Well, you get what you pay for.
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Permalink Reply by Natalie Bochenski on
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Ah, but it's time that counts. You mention time in your post - knowing myself, I know it would be highly unlikely I'd remain keen enough on home-made pasta to keep up production of it.
I have a juicer, which I rarely use. It's not the actual juicing, it's the cleaning up of all the equipment afterwards.
Although if you were able to make big batches of pasta that lasted, it would be all right.
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Permalink Reply by DNABeast on
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This is exactly what I've been working on. I can now make a big batch and separate it into a meals worth and flour it and pop it in the freezer. It takes a fair bit of effort to make it initially but grabbing it from the freezer and dropping it in the water takes less time than packet.
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Permalink Reply by JG on -
What amazed me was when buying TipTop's bread mix (Hey! It was the only thing in the supermarket) that it came out EXACTLY like crappy week old TipTop from the supermarket!
I don't know how they managed it.
Everything else from our bread maker ($75 at Aldi) has come out fantastic so it can only be a work of misguided genius from someone in the bowels of TipTop.
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Permalink Reply by DNABeast on
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Oh, I should point out. My bread maker said to only use the best baker's flour but once I tweaked the recipe the truly cheap Homebrand flour works fine.
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Permalink Reply by The Wah on -
My life is littered with the 'Sexy New Hobby'. I get obsessed with whatever obsesses me this month. Purchase the best version of it. Use it or do it till I become proficient (no expertise, just proficiency) and then get uber-bored.
The item or skill then gets cast aside into the 'Cupboard of Lost Dreams'
In answer to your thread, I started saving the most money on my grocery bills the day I became a vegetarian. I am sure most people reading this think I must be some sort of mad lunatic hippy and they could never ever stop eating meet.
Meat is really expensive. You stop buying any or even as much meat and watch your grocery bill tumble.
Then you have more money to throw into the 'Cupboard of Lost Dreams' :)
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Permalink Reply by The Wah on
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The 'Cupboard of Lost Dreams' is a state of mind. It is inside every cupboard. It is like Narnia after their stock market crashed.
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Permalink Reply by Bytta on -
I agree with you.
Our nature and brain are not wired for long-term purposes or projects :D
Since i dont eat bread or pasta a lot, is there anyone here knows how to save on rice?
There's no way i would turn my mini garden into a paddy field.
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