Bread, She Said

One of the easiest ways to cut back on spending is by making your own food.  There is nothing more versatile as a grocery bill.  Buying all organic, grass fed, humane, non-gmo, etc., is still cheaper than eating every meal outside the home.  Here we concentrate on whole foods, as clean as we can find, but to say we don't buy junk would be a big lie.  I do try very hard to make most of our meals from scratch though.  I don't use mixes, except brownies because I truly haven't found a brownie recipe that rivals Ghirardelli, but for almost all other food, I make my own.

Growing up in a frugal home and by that I mean FRUGAL HOME, my Mother used to set unwanted crusts of bread on the counter until they dried out, then she stored them in an old plastic bread bag until she needed crumbs for meat loaf, mini beef loaves, crusts or toppings. I don't exactly recall how Mom made the crumbs out of the crusts, but I faintly remember her taking the discarded inserts of  cereal bags and a rolling pin and crushing the bread.  I use a slightly different method.  I freeze the crusts until I have a sizable amount, then I process them with an S blade in my little food processor, then refreeze.

Why would I go to the trouble to make my own bread crumbs when you can buy them pre-made at the store?  There are a few reasons:
1. I know exactly what kind of bread crumbs they are.  Are they from organic, sprouted bread, whole wheat, multigrain, etc.?  I will know.
2.  Less waste.  Granted, I could easily chuck our crusts at any of our animals and all but the cats would devour them, but there is no extra packaging when I make them at home vs. buying at the store.
3. It makes me feel self sufficient.  I love that feeling.
4.  Cost.  I am not taking any money out of my pocket to make bread crumbs. 

So much of what we buy can be made at home more nutritiously with no preservatives or crazy ingredients..  Back in the late 90's, I was on a mission to make all our food from scratch, no boxed or pre-made anything.  Granola, bread, pizza, frostings, salads, you name it, I made it.  We were trying to save money to pay off property we had recently acquired, but also, I had recently learned about rBGH ,(recombinant bovine growth hormone), in dairy products.  It scared me, that companies had a right to put weird junk in their products that I was unaware of.  I watch (ed) little news and I started questioning if what I was feeding my children was safe or even healthy for them.

Since my "all food from scratch binge", I have not been as good at making "all" things from scratch, but I still do my share.  The children are raised now, but the past two years we have been caring for our granddaughter four to five days a week plus I care for a few children her age and my level of interest in great tasting, healthy foods has increased. 

I definitely could jump on a soap box and spew how extremely I feel the food we eat makes up the health of our bodies;  how I feel growing babies and children should have the absolute healthiest form of nutrition possible to build the strongest cells and immune systems to fight off all the pollution and chemicals we can't control.  I could go on and on about all the junk people pour into their bodies on a regular basis and how our bodies can only fight so much before something breaks, but I won't.  It's not a secret which foods are healthy out there and which ones aren't. It's not a secret if the majority of your intake is junky food, it's not good for you.

Making your own food at home is smart.  It saves money, reduces waste, is healthier and is a great life skill to have. Now, if I could just get my husband to stop buying all those packages of candy!