Times of Extreme Frugality: The Tao of Ketchup

"Your money or your life!" 

This is not only the classic radio bit by Jack Benny, but also the title one of my favorite books about money:

While the investing advice is dated, the basic premise remains valid: time equals money. Is whatever you are contemplating spending money on, worth the part of your life you gave up to earn said money?

Or another way of looking at it, consider the tao of ketchup.

A bottle of Heinz ketchup will set you back less than $3 in the grocery store. In New York State, even at minimum wage, that is about 15 minutes of work.

My bottle of ketchup takes a bit longer.

Sometime in late winter, I set up my heat mat and grow lights, fill pots with seedling mix, and plant tomato seeds. 

If all goes well, they sprout and, over a couple of months, grow into healthy tomato seedlings.

In late spring, they get set out under a cold frame and, once the danger of frost has passed, are transplanted into the garden.

The summer brings weeding, watering, fertilizing, staking, and hoping the plants don't succumb to disease or insect attack.

If the garden gods smile upon us, sometime in August the tomatoes start to ripen.

Four quarts of tomatoes, some onions, and spices, cooked down and, voila!, ketchup. 

"Tower of ketchup" --get it?

Now, strictly from an economic point of view, I would be better off getting a job and buying the Heinz. But something in my soul, my tao, means I get very real satisfaction from growing and processing food from scratch and would rather spend hours growing tomatoes than 15 minutes working for someone else.

What is your tao of money? 

There is no one correct answer. Being frugal is a combination of being careful with time AND money and being mindful of what works best for you.

Counting the Cost

If frugality were an Olympic event, I'd be on the winner's podium.

If being thrifty were a movie, there would be an Oscar on my shelf (or repurposed as a doorstop or glasses holder).

I would describe myself as careful with money, others might see it as cheap.

Whatever the modifier, a lot of what I do is motivated by the desire to save money. And that includes cooking from scratch.

Conventional wisdom dictates that ingredients plus effort plus time yields lower cash outlay than buying prepared foods. 

Like most of life, it's not that straightforward and keeping track of actual expenses is a good idea. I recently made some choke cherry and rosehip jelly and attempted to figure out the cost benefit over store bought, if any.
 



Ingredients: 

Fruit juice. Back at Woodchuck Acres, free fruit was everywhere. The road was lined with choke cherry bushes and we had a planting of rosehip-heavy Rugosa roses. The harvest was so plentiful in 2010 that I had more than enough for several batches of jelly and canned a pint each of juice for future use. So for this jelly, the raw materials were free using my time (more about that in a bit) and some energy for heat and washing (more about that later also).

Pectin. One box purchased for $1.00

Sugar. 5 1/2 cups or about 38 1/2 ounces which is a little more than half of a bag (4 lbs.). I can't remember how much I paid for the bag, I think about $2.50, so let's call the price of the sugar $1.50.

Equipment, energy, time:

The jars and rings I have had for many years and reused some Tattler lids. I suppose I should figure depreciation on this stuff but I had enough of depreciation doing taxes, thank you very much.

Energy. Everything was washed in hot water, the lids were boiled and the jelly heated and I processed the final product in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. My attempt to figure out the cost here involved how many BTUs it takes to boil a gallon of water but I got lost somewhere between converting joules to BTUs (or was it the other way around?) and then the caloric properties of propane, etc. My final guess is I used less than 1/2 gallon of propane. Our propane cost us $1.99/gallon, so that totals another $1.00

My time. I'm retired so my time isn't worth anything to anyone except myself. I enjoy making jelly and think this is a good way to spend some of my life energy, so add in $0.00.

Total. The two pints of juice yielded eight half pint jars of jelly. The total outlay is $3.50 or $.44 per jar.

So in this case, homemade is cheaper. 

Cooking is easy to tally but other typical country endeavors are harder to list in terms of profit or loss.

Growing your own fruit and vegetables? Building sheds or fences? Livestock? 

Take chickens for example: Feed plus chicks plus building a coop plus fencing (a run if you cage them, your garden if you free-range). Is it worth it for the eggs and manure? How much is the joy of watching their goofy antics worth or the time you spent defrosting water pans in freezing temperatures or the heartbreak when they disappear to predators?

 Many times people say they want to move to the country and live a simple life, be self-sufficient and live cheaply--a wonderful ideal but please come to it with a healthy dose of realism. Not all do-it-yourself programs will save you money but you'll become rich in the things that matter. And that's real wealth.
 

 





 

Ground Down

In many ways, we've been through the mill this year.

Beck's Mill, Salem, IN

So it seemed fitting, that in the grip of holiday spirit brought on by online deals, I ordered myself a Victorio grain  mill.

I've never ground my own grain before but whole wheat flour in the stores hereabouts is lackluster--and expensive. Emergency Essentials sent me an offer I couldn't refuse and I succumbed--a small mill for less than $50.

Then  I had to locate some wheat to grind. My go-to guy for finding things locally had a lead on soft wheat grown a few miles away but not hard wheat (he'd bought a ton--yes, 2000 pounds!--of the stuff many years ago and was still using that. Now THAT'S preparedness). Hard wheat is necessary for bread which is our main use for flour.

So I searched the net. Many places offer hard wheat but the shipping is a bit much to justify the purchase. Amazon to the rescue! Not only can you order ORGANIC wheat berries from them but it qualifies for free shipping. Wow.

50 lbs of wheat arrived a few days ago (the UPS man is beginning to dread coming here)and the mill yesterday. I tested it last night with peppercorns and it worked great. But the real test was whole wheat flour.

I poured in 1 cup of wheat and started grinding. Set at the finest setting, the flour came out silky soft. It took about 10 minutes--that's with breaks for photos--and was fairly easy to turn. I can feel it in my shoulder but then I'm in wretched shape.

The 1 cup of berries yielded almost 1 3/4 cups flour.

I wanted to test this high gluten flour on bagels but was pressed for time so I mixed up some muffins. I did add 1/4 cup white flour as the recipe calls for 2 cups.

Man oh man, do these taste good! I'm not a fussy eater and have the palate of  a toddler, but I'll go out on a limb and say the fresh flour made quite a difference. Although mostly whole wheat, these aren't heavy or dense and have a...wait a minute, I've got to "test" another one...sweet, nutty flavor.

The grinding is an effort but since there are only two of us, we don't use mounds of flour and when the grandkids come visit, this will be a great way for them to burn off some of that excess energy!

Kitchen Treasure Hunt

There’s nothing like moving to shake up your well-trod habits.

At Woodchuck Acres, I could bake a pizza with my eyes shut. Flour, oil, salt stored here; bowl and measuring cups there; sauce, etc. here.

The Lick Skillet kitchen is larger, true, but there is less pantry space, some of the drawers need fixing, and there's an extra refrigerator hogging one wall. To clear out some boxes, we just shoved stuff where we could in a hurry. The tomato sauce is easy to spot in the picture but how about the flour, the spices, and where oh where did I put the cookie sheet?

Somehow we did locate the makings for our weekend pizza, but all bets are off for dinner tonight.

Oh well, it’s too hot to cook anyway.

Mother of Invention

They say necessity is the mother of invention; I say it's vinegar.

Somewhere in the deep past, humans discovered fermentation with all of it's delightful end products. Sometime after that, they must have overlooked some wine and left to itself in a forgotten corner, it turned to vinegar.

Did our ancestors toss out the sour wine in disgust? No, they found 1001 uses for the product, everything from pickles and salads to laundry and weed killing.

On the homestead, vinegar is a great lazy person project--mix it up and forget it for 3 or more months.

This winter I decided to try making honey vinegar and a small batch of apple cider vinegar. In previous research, I was interested to learn that the first step in making vinegar is making alcohol. This would be a lot easier if I drank alcohol but I was starting from scratch so the process takes longer.

For both kinds of vinegar, I used the mother from a bottle of Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar. The mother is the scummy stuff that settles out when the bottle sits for awhile; it is cellulose and bacteria which through the magic of chemistry will turn your alcohol into vinegar.

The apple version was made using apples from our trees, cut up, mashed, and hand squeezed and strained. I added the mother and covered the jar with cheesecloth (REAL cheesecloth. I found in a previous attempt that the stuff that passes as cheesecloth is too loosely woven and the end product is fruit flies).

The honey concoction used 1 part honey to 8 parts water by weight plus the mother.

Since vinegar needs warm temperatures, I kept both jars near the stove for 3 months.

Today I strained out the flora and fauna that had grown and tasted both. The apple cider vinegar has a fairly strong flavor, the honey less so but both qualify as vinegar in my book. I wouldn't use either in canning as the acidity needs to be certain but for other culinary uses they should be fine.

About one hour of preparation and 3 months of total disregard--my kind of undertaking.

Made to last

I am not one to wax rhapsodic over kitchenware.


I have the usual assortment of pots and pans, bowls, spatulas, etc. They get used and work well. But cast iron? I LOVE my cast iron,  especially the cast iron breadpans.


I've been baking our bread for years and using Pyrex pans I got ages ago. They did the job even though they're looking kind of scruffy by now. This year with some birthday money (thanks, Mom R!), I treated myself to two cast iron bread pans from Lehmans.


Oh my, what I've been missing all of this time!


The dough loves it's second rising in these and bakes evenly with a great crust. Loaves have less gaps and holes, even when I'm in a hurry and don't form them as tightly as I should. The finished bread doesn't stick to the pans and you don't have to wash them, just wipe them out and store.

And if you drop them, you may break a toe but never the pan!


Cast iron and bread are a match made in baker's heaven.

Meals Before Wheels

We're eating mostly from our pantry these days (to save some money and because empty jars are lighter to move than full ones.)

At this point the shelves hold:

Tomato products: stewed, sauce, bbq sauce, catsup
Canned chicken, turkey, a bit of ham, and ground beef.
Rice, pasta in various shapes and forms.
Dried beans.
Potatoes, garlic.
Maple syrup and honey.
A few jars of blueberries.
Applesauce. Lots and lots of applesauce.
Peanut butter and
Jelly. About 43 jars of jelly.
Olive oil.
Flour, baking soda, etc.

I do have a drawer full of herbs and spices and the usual suspects (mustard, butter, popcorn etc.) in the fridge and the garden has lettuce, radishes, and weeds. The freezer contains chicken, bacon, hot dogs, and the last few of our own eggs.

I am not a great cook. I am not an inventive cook. I am an adequate cook, so

Meals will be interesting from now until the move.