In our household, we consume a lot of milk. From breakfast cereals to egg wash for French toast and cream soup bases, we can use as much as 12 Litres or 3 gallons a week. It all depends on the season and what the meal plans are for that week. Because of this, I often kid around, saying we should get our own dairy cow. However, since a dairy cow in our current location is an impossibility, we have taken to buying our milk "en masse". Basically, when we get low, during our next shopping trip, we will purchase as many as six 4L /1-gallon jugs. Since we live in a rural area (A small hamlet with zero legitimate grocery services), doing this ensures we don't have to visit a store for milk every 2-3 days. This saves us making a roughly 100 km (60 mi) round trip, an hour and a half of our time, and about $10 to $15 in fuel costs, just for milk. When we get home, we simply open each jug, pour out 2 cups of milk from each one into the currently open jug, recap them, and put them in the freezer. This helps keep the milk past the expiry date in case any of the jugs were getting close. When we get down to approximately one-third of a jug of milk remaining in the refrigerator, we remove a jug from the freezer, place it in a large bowl to catch any condensation (and possible milk spillage), then wait roughly 24 hours for the milk to thaw. When the milk has thawed completely, we give the jug a good shake and bingo, good to go! Now I cannot stress enough how important it is to remove those 2 cups of milk from each jug. If you do not do this, when the milk freezes, it will expand. This expansion can and has caused the jugs to split and crack. IF a split or crack occurs, you may not notice it initially, but as the milk thaws, the jug will leak. Hence, the large bowl when thawing. Now I know this tip may not seem helpful for everyone, but keep in mind that unless you are within walking distance of a grocery store, any reduction in trips that require the use of a vehicle will save you money and time.

Who's got interesting Saturday plans? On my end I am taking some time to make up a shopping list for some recipes I want to cover in the community then, weather permitting I'll be off with a fellow Ham to go do some repeater work and swap over an antenna to hopefully increase repeater range and output quality. After that it will probably be some quality time with my lady while she's got a day off from work.

I've been wondering... How many people actually track or calculate the cost of their home-cooked meals? The way the cost of food has been rising here in Canada, and I am going to guess many other parts of the world, watching that grocery budget has become an almost mandatory chore. One way we manage our household food budget is to set a per-meal budget. This meal is usually our supper or evening meal. We don't usually do a family lunch or breakfast, so we haven't really done any costing for those. Over time, we have figured out who eats how much or how many of a particular meal item. Now, we have a family of four and try to keep each meal in the range of 10 to 12 dollars each. Note, I said per meal, not per person. It is NOT an easy task at first, but with practice, it can become almost second nature. In a general scope, we do this right in the Grocery store using some or all of the following: - We do our shopping weekly to maximize our chances of finding reduced pricing on items. We also shop weekly to make use of weekly flyer deals; however, we don't often use coupons because they are usually for items we do not purchase. - We check all the discount racks in our local grocery stores for any price-reduced produce and bakery items first. For bakery items, we mostly look for 100% whole wheat bread and any style of bun that could be used as a base for a meal. In the produce department, we look for things we can repackage and freeze, such as broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and green or yellow beans, to name a few. We will also look for things like garlic bulbs and onions because they are actually usable far past their assigned expiry date. - We check the meat department for any reduced-price meats such as ground beef, pork or chicken. These are usually marked down by 30 to 50% depending on which grocery store we are at and how close to expiry they are. There is nothing wrong with them other than that they are within a couple of days of their best-before date. We extend that by repackaging and freezing everything into meal-specific portions. In this department, we usually skip any pre-sliced/prepackaged sandwich meats as they tend not to be a good value and often blow our per-meal budget to pieces, even with a discount.

I'm sure we've all been there. We make a dish or prepare an item for a meal and we end up having left overs. Saving on plastic wrap and aluminum foil is always a good idea. Below are three tricks I use to stretch the expensive stuff. Tip #1 Retasking Take out containers. If you're lucky enough to have a treat and get plastic take out containers, or you know someone who tends to get take out often, saving those containers can be a way to get extra value from those meant to be used once items. In our house we get these not from take out but from those times when we purchase something like discounted chicken strips or side dishes from our local grocery store Deli. Not only do we get food items but we also get various sized containers that can be repurposed for refrigerator or freezer storage. The more heavy duty the containers seem the longer they last. Tip #2 Repurposing Dollar store Shower caps. It may sound silly but dollar store shower caps with the elastic make great reusable bowl covers. We'll often use these around our house for those times when plastic wrap doesn't stick well to the bowl in use. Our usually come in packages of 5 for a dollar. We just was them out and hang them to dry before putting them back in the drawer. Tip #3 Reusing bread bags to store Block Cheeses Those larger blocks of cheese can eat up a lot of plastic wrap and don't store well with aluminum foil which doesn't often seal air tight. In order to keep cheeses fresh for extended periods we leave it in the original plastic wrapper as much as possible and then store that inside a bread bag. This allows us to create a better barrier to keep the cheese from drying out. it also gives us an extra flexible barrier to hold on to when slicing or shredding the cheese. This extra barrier helps lower the likelihood of mold by allowing us to keep our fingers off the cheese. Even washed hands can spread things that will cause mold. As an extra tip for block cheeses, if you wish to reduce the formation of mold on your cheese simply moisten a paper towel with regular vinegar and wrap the cheese block in it. The paper towel should be moist but not dripping wet. If you can wring an excess of vinegar out of the paper towel it was too much. By doing this the acid in the vinegar acts as a deterrent for mold growth and will significantly reduce how fast mold will grow on your block cheeses while having a minimal effect on the flavor of your cheese.

Happy Monday All! I just wanted to wish you all a good start to another week. I'd also like to announce that later this afternoon, early this evening, I'll be adding some content to the Kitchen topics category. It's not going to be fancy stuff, and some of it may be common knowledge for some. Feel free to pop in there and share any tips and ideas you may have as well. The goal is to create a catalogue of tips that may inspire you and others to be creative in your repurposing. I'm curious, what's on your Monday to-do list?