Saving Money at the Grocery Store

Posted on November 12, 2008 by Barb

Our public library has a table where people can share magazines. I love this! It’s like a treasure hunt. You never know what you’ll find. I also like leaving my own magazines there instead of throwing them in the recycling bin for the garbage man.

This week I found the September issue of Good Housekeeping. Years ago, I subscribed to GH, but over the years its editorial mix changed to more of a celebrity/decorating/beauty type of magazine, and I stopped getting it.

But this issue had a few useful things in it, including a time vs. money list of grocery store purchases. Some examples weren’t that impressive. For instance, if you make your own ground beef patties instead of buying them preshaped, you’ll save 13 cents per patty (92 cents vs. $1.05 each). Using dried beans instead of canned beans will save you just 15 cents per serving (10 cents vs. 25 cents). Shredding your own mozzarella only saves 8 cents per serving.

But most of the examples made it clear that you can save a decent amount of money by shunning convenience (all price examples are per serving):

Romaine (head) vs. precut Romaine: 25 cents vs. 97 cents

Whole carrots vs. preshredded carrots: 25 cents vs. 48 cents

Baking potatoes vs. frozen steak fries: 20 cents vs. 43 cents

Jello cooked pudding mix vs. Jello refrigerated pudding: 20 cents vs. 62 cents

Celery (in a bunch) vs. precut celery sticks: 29 cents vs. 62 cents

Fresh green beans vs. fresh green beans in a microwave/steam-in bag: 37 cents vs. $1.33

My personal favorite is the brown rice example:

Raw brown rice (cooks in 30-40 minutes) vs. precooked brown rice in microwaveable pouch: 19 cents vs. $1.10.

And that’s per serving, so for a family of four that’s a savings of $3.64, just on rice!

(Here’s another article from Good Housekeeping about saving money when grocery shopping.)

Nominated!

Posted on November 11, 2008 by Barb

Renae kindly informs me that this blog has been nominated for a Homeschool Blog award. Thank you to whoever nominated it 🙂 I’m tickled to have been included!

If you have the urge to cast a vote for this blog, I appreciate it 🙂

Australia Says He’d Be a Burden

Posted on November 10, 2008 by Barb

Does this make any sense at all?

A rural area of Australia badly needs doctors. A German doctor and his family fall in love with Australia while on vacation and soon move to that rural area, where he becomes the only internist available to 54,000 people. Everyone is happy UNTIL…..the doctor and his family apply for resident status and are turned down by the Australian government.

The locals protest this refusal, and people across the country chime in, but so far, the Australian government has not relented.

Their reason for turning down the good doctor’s request for residency? His teenage son has Down syndrome and is likely (according to the Australian government) to be a drain on its health care and education systems.

Good grief! In a world where we regularly hear about male teens overdosing on drugs, transmitting social diseases, getting girls pregnant, and knifing or shooting each other (all the while running up plenty of hospital bills), the Australian government blocks the residency of one young man whose risk of health problems is a little higher than the average teenager?

Sometimes it feels like the world’s gone crazy.

Saving Flower Seeds

Posted on November 8, 2008 by Barb

I know it sounds silly, but I love going out to save seeds. It makes me feel like a good steward, I guess.

Today I picked all the seeds off my balsam plants along the front walk. (I bought a packet of balsam seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (they’re homeschoolers!) last spring, and they grew very well —wish I’d taken a picture of them in bloom to share here.)

Balsam plants are fun because once they bloom, little seed pods form along the side branches of the plants, and in the fall you can pop them open over a cup and all the seeds come tumbling out. (When my kids were little, they loved doing this 🙂 ) I’ll let these dry in the unheated garage over the winter, and next spring I won’t need to buy more balsam seeds.

Other plants whose seeds I’ve collected in the past include:

Cleome (the long stringy pods under the blooms are full of tiny seeds)

Marigolds (the old blooms are seeds; save them once they’ve dried up)

Hollyhocks (the seed pods contain comma-shaped seeds)

Four o’clocks (the seeds are hard and black and found inside the blooms-they’re ready in mid-to-late summer)

Store seeds in a dry place where air can get to them and where they’ll get good and cold over the winter.

You don’t have to collect seeds; if you just leave them, they’ll come up again in the same spot next year. But by collecting seeds, you can scatter them where you want in the spring, plus you’ll have more than enough to share with friends and neighbors. Or, if you’re like me and think you might be moving, you can take the seeds along to the next house.

In recent years, most people bought blooming plants instead of planting them from seed. Most of the people who do grow flowers from seed buy new seed packets every year. Saving seeds is something people used to do when money was scarce. I think it’s going to be making a comeback.