Good afternoon everyone!
Today's topic is one near and dear to my heart. It's something I, and almost everyone else is contending with in our world; How to make do with higher food prices. I've waxed philosophically about watching for sales, gardening, canning, bartering, shopping mark downs, and cooking from scratch. All of these are amazing skills you can use to help you not only make do, but come out on top when prices hit the roof. I wanted to dive in a little more to the scratch cooking, if I may. What I'd like to show is how, not only are there savings in cooking from scratch, but there's a greater degree of control in what is put in our families bodies. It's healthier!
So with that thought in mind, I looked up a few items on the Walmart webpage. These are Walmart brand items. I want to price compare the Great Value brand, which is usually the least expensive, with what I spend making that same item at home. The savings is more than just a few pennies. The cost of ingredients I'd use to make this at home comes from Walmart's site as well.
Shall we begin: Great Value Biscuits: Ingredient list
Enriched Bleached Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Palm Oil, Buttermilk, Leavening (Sodium Bicarbonate, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate), Contains Less Than 2% of the Following: Sugar, Whey, Salt, Sodium Caseinate, DATEM, Mono and Diglycerides, Enzyme
Could be worse. In all the wordiness, I do see Flour, Water, Buttermilk, Baking soda/Powder, Salt, and Whey. But I also see Palm Oil, DATEM, Mono and Diglycerides. So still not as good as what you can make at home in my opinion. Plus, this package contains 20 biscuits for the lovely price of $4.52. That's .23 per bisuit
Compare To My Frozen Biscuits: 6 cups of Unbleached Flour (you can still use white; it will be a little cheaper. You can also do half white and half wheat): 3 tsp Salt, 3 TBS Baking powder, 1 cup of Butter, 2 cups Milk.
My recipe makes 27 good size biscuits. The Cost of those 27 biscuits? $3.10. That's .12 per biscuit. That's almost half the price of the store bought. To have 27 Great Value biscuits would cost you $6.10.
That's a $1.42 savings! My calculations are based on Walmart prices for standard sizes. Should you choose to use Buttermilk, you'd add a little bit more, due to price difference in buttermilk and the addition of a pinch of baking soda; but not much difference. These are incredibly easy to make. My recipe is on my recipes page.
In fact all of these recipes are included on my recipes page. Have a look!
Great Value Chocolate syrup. Cost is $4.18 if you buy the value size. Which is the better price between the 24 and 48 ounce sizes.
First red flag is the High Fructose corn syrup, then more corn syrup? Xanthan Gum? What the heck is Vanillin? Chocolate syrup was one of the first things I began making at home due to my son's allergy to what we then thought was corn, but later found out it was any corn product grown in the standard industrialized farming method. Organic Non GMO corn products caused no reaction.
Compare to my homemade chocolate syrup. Ingredients: 1 cup cocoa powder, 1 1/2 cups sugar, dash salt, 1 tsp REAL vanilla, and 1 cup hot water. Makes 24 oz. Cost to make: $1.69 for 24 ounces or $3.38 for 48 ounces. While the savings isn't astronomical at only .80 ( not bad though) the homemade version is a much healthier alternative. No ingredients where you need to look up the definition. Plus I get the added benefit of knowing there isn't a trace of anchovies( gag) in my chocolate syrup. Ways to reduce even this cost is to make your own vanilla. Incredibly easy to do.
HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN VANILLA: Buy 10 vanilla beans and 1.75 liter of Vodka or Rum. I have mine in Rum. Run a knife down the length of the bean, putting a slit in one side. Submerge the beans in the vodka/rum. Just stick them down in the bottle. Put in a cool dark place and shake once a week. Vanilla can be used in 6 weeks, but it's best if you can let it steep about 6 months. Once you start using your homemade vanilla, you can just top off the bottle with additional vodka/rum. I usually will pour off 2 ounces into a separate container, and then add 2 ounces of vodka or rum to my big bottle of homemade vanilla, and just let it keep on making vanilla. No need to buy beans again for a long while. Real vanilla at Walmart; their brand, is $5.98 for 2 ounces. My homemade vanilla is .83 for 2 ounces. That's a significant savings.
Okay, last example lest I bore you to tears: Great Value brand Hamburger helper. I'll admit this one is hard to compare. Mainly because the only ingredient our recipes share is the pasta. I do have to buy pasta and that's where similarities end. One box of their hamburger helper, which somehow doesn't have tomato in it, is $1.28 for one 5.5 ounce box. I'd need 2 boxes to feed this crew. That would cost me $2.56. Plus look at the chemicals! Yikes.
My hamburger helper is 8 ounces pasta, 1 lb ground beef, one medium onion, 1 28 ounce can tomatoes, 1 tsp salt, pepper, and whatever spices strike my fancy. Minus the ground beef, my hamburger helper comes in at $2.23. While not a huge savings, it's a much healthier meal. It also takes the same amount of effort to prepare. I simply brown the ground beef with a chopped onion. Add the pasta, salt, pepper, and tomatoes. I fill the tomato can about half way with water and swish it around then add that to the pan. I stir it all together. Put the lid on and let it simmer til the pasta is soft. That's it. No mystery. Also, since I grow my tomatoes, this is cheaper than the $2.23 I've calculated based on the price of a can of tomatoes. Mine are pennies. Watching for sales can make it even cheaper.
The point of this post is to give an idea of how to save even more at the store by making your own. I have way more recipes on my page and try to add new ones when I find them. The savings for just these three items, not counting the vanilla, is $2.55. If you do an equal comparison of the biscuit prices you're looking at a savings of $5.65. What else can you buy that you couldn't before with a few more dollars in your pocket? Think of the things you buy prepackaged at the store. How much do you think you could save by making it yourself? I'd hazard to guess it could be significant. It's a huge way to save without ever worrying about a garden or livestock. It's a huge savings without the added benefit of a sale. It also has the benefit of feeding your family well.
Check out my recipe page and see the things I make here. Maybe some of them will be useful to you. What are some things you make from scratch?
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