Recession buster tip #10 Cook at home and save money $$$

It seems simple enough but cooking at home contrary to popular belief is definitely cheaper if you avoid supermarkets for your meat, fruit and vegetables.

With the success of Masterchef, people are not only cooking at home but is entering the vernacular of daily conversations.
Even a friend of mine emailed me a recipe that he had tried and raved about it, Gary’s Fried Rice & Open Beef Kofta it’s great to see that finally are seeing the benefits and enjoyment that can be had by cooking at home, it’s simple enough to learn and you can save money

The findings of a recent survey confirm that in households where there is a male/female relationship, the female still cooks the majority of the time.
What does this mean, well if the wife/female doesn’t want to cook and the male partner can’t be bothered or is too scared in fear of being told off then the easiest option is ordering take out/take away food.

So give your partner some encouragement and limit the criticism to get some extra help in the kitchen.

Compare the size of our rubbish bins to out parents & grand parents. Now we have a huge dedicated bin for recycling and another for general waste.
Why do we need so much more space for rubbish, well buying more stuff, especially packaged food will quickly put your garbage bin under pressure.
Sixty years ago we made everything, all our meals were cook at home or we prepared our lunches for work/office.
A modern supermarket may stock 20 000 to 30 000 different items.

Prior to the fifties, Supermarkets didn’t exist, we went to a number of speciality shops for our food supplies: the Grocer for packaged, dry or canned foods, Green Grocer for fruit & vegetables, Baker, Butcher, Milk Bar/confectionery shop.

Yet we managed fine making our own cookies and other treats, jams and break fast cereal was porridge, toast, fruit or the good old bacon & eggs (Ok if you;re doing manual labour), lunch was sandwiches, fruit and dinner made from scratch.
We had our milk home delivered with a trip to the local Milk Bar satisfying our basic requirements of flour, sugar, bread etc.

Somewhere along the way our basic range of products exploded, have a look at the pasta source aisle, how many products are there?
Making a great pasta source is pretty simple, why pay for a processed product with preservatives, chemicals & artificial flavors when there are simplier alternatives?

The main point is all these products have packaging and can be made at home but “I don’t have the time”.
Well maybe ask yourself what you are doing with the other 8 hours you are not working or sleeping.
Yes modern life is crazy yet we can make some decisions about how we manage all our activities.

Just like dining at a restaurant, adopt similar rules:
1.You cannot leave the table until everyone have finished
2.Excuse yourself when leaving the table
3.No home style habits, cleaning ears with anything on table, licking the plate clean, slurping soup, lifting the soup bowl to your mouth to get the last 50ml os soup, passing wind, burping, shouting, screaming, arguing, slotching with elbows on table, falling a sleep etc…
4.Serve up some nice bread, ciabatta, sour dough with some nice olive oil
5.Keep the portion sizes small, if your using the large restaurant style plates, the food should occupy no more than 25% of the surface area, you won’t starve.
6.No competitive style eating, chew your food slowly and savour the flavour
7.TV switched off, computer switched off
8.Engage in conversation, talk about all these silly rules, how your day was etc

Quite often we buy additional food on an almost daily basis. Our quest to cook something ends up in the supermarket aisle with the “must have just in case” acquisitions filling up our pantries, be it frozen vegies or tins of food. We venture home like little squirrels, adding more stuff into food storage.

Why not do something crazy and trawl through your fridge/freezer or pantry, you will be surprised what can be accomplished witha little imagination, tins of tuna, packets of pasta, frozen vegies are at the ready for some make shift food.
Best of all it enables you to use the food that is being stock plied by inactivity, otherwise all this great food goes to waste and ends up in rubbish bin.