Making Do Without Missing A Thing---Six Kitchen Appliances that Can put CASH back in your pocket

Welcome back to day two of the third week in our series "Making Do Without Missing A Thing". If you would like to start back at the beginning of this whole series, please click here. If you missed yesterday's installment on using your freezer to save you big money at the cash register when grocery shopping, then click right here.
   I am glad to see that so many people are interested in learning more about tips and tricks on saving money in the kitchen. This week we are focusing on covering six kitchen appliances that I have used continually to bring my family to the position of eating well, and best of all, eating healthy foods, all for under $200 a month. We actually only spend about $150 a month and the remainder goes right back into replacing things we have used from our pantry, freezer, or cupboards...or on fresh foods we can not grow for ourselves here in the wintertime in  Minnesota. :)

   As with the other posts, I wanted to share with you that when I am focusing on spending our family's hard earned money, it is intentional and I plan ahead. We have three beautiful children, two through adoption and one that we were blessed with three months early. My husband works really really hard, and we made the choice, long before we had children, that we would find a way for me to stay home. Little did we know at the time that God was going to give us our first child for only a moment before taking him back home....or that our second would come into this world three months early and very very fragile. I was thankful to have my aching arms filled with her 1 pound,  4 ounce frame, I just didn't know that would mean for the next three years her immune system would be so fragile that any idea of leaving her in daycare would be an impossibility.
   Perhaps you too, today, find yourself between a rock and a hard place. Maybe none of the choices you are confronted with today are easy, and there is not a good, clear path to walk. Perhaps one of the breadwinners in your family has lost a job and you came to the Welcoming House today looking for anything that can help you squeak through until another job provides. Maybe you are a family who has decided to make the transition and bring one of you home to be with the children God is blessing you with. Or maybe you are someone who is doing their best to be prepared against some of the rougher times in life by setting money and food aside to weather the increasing costs. Please know, if you are reading this, and you are here, then I am praying for you. I may never know your name, but I dont believe in coincidences. You are supposed to be learning this stuff for the same reason that I am supposed to be writing it--we need one another.

   I just wanted to preface today's post: The appliances we are going to talk about today were ones that I slowly set money aside to purchase. They are not as commonly found in a home as say an oven or a freezer, but many people have one or both, and they are becoming more and more popular.
   I use one of mine every single day, and I love the convenience of it. As I also have fibromyalgia, and have days where I simply can not knead the bread I make for my family, or even turn a top on a bottle, it is such a blessing to throw a bunch of ingredients into it and let it go.
  I am referring to my stand mixer, and that is one of the appliances that today's post is all about. The other appliance is my grain mill, purchased just over a year ago, that paid for itself within six weeks of getting it. The grain mill provides all of my family's flours for pennies on the table, and the mixer provides us with every kind of baked good, with butter, and with a thousand other things that it gets used for each year.

  I have a Kitchen Aid stand mixer that my dear mother purchased for me about six years ago for Christmas. I had been doing my best to save for one, but with a sickly child, and then a cross-state move that took almost all of our savings, my little pile of cash was growing very slowly. One of the best days of my life was when I opened that box, and I mean it, because I knew I would be able to make fresher and healthier things for my family without using my hands as much.
   If you dont have one, that is ok. Most of the recipes I am listing at the end of today's post you can make by hand...even the pasta one. I just find using my mixer quicker and easier that doing that. I do, however, find that it is one of those things that I can use all the time to replace items I would otherwise buy. It saves me significant money when it comes to our grocery budget, and so is completely worth the money to add it into my kitchen.
   My grain mill is used to make flour from wheat berries (what they call the wheat grains), corn meal from the popcorn that we purchase in bulk (yes, popcorn. It makes the sweetest corn meal.). It has been used to grind beans for different types of bread, and I am sure in the next year I will find more and more ideas to use it on. I actually decided to buy one about two years ago when I saw how inexpensive wheat grains were in comparison to buying wheat flour.

   I knew that the flour you get at the store has most often sat in a warehouse for weeks or even months before getting to you, and had opened too many bags of flour that was quickly going rancid. I knew there had to be a better way. Add into that the fact that flour normally only stores for a year (with the exception of all purpose flour--but that will end up in your body looking like paper mache since it is stripped of all nutritional value to be shelf stable), and wheat flour begins to go rancid within a couple of weeks due to the high oil content. Wheat and popcorn, properly stored (again, we use food grade buckets or small metal trashcans) will last for upwards of 30 years with no change. You read that right. 30 years. So by purchasing that one little appliance I can watch the wheat market and buy a month, six months, or even a year's worth (if I have the storage capacity) for pennies, and my family will have all the bread, cookies, buns, pasta, etc, that I can make in my mixer for a fraction of the cost.
   For example....a good loaf of bread at the store will cost you somewhere between $3 and $4. If you were to make that same bread from scratch, using your hands, a bread machine (which most people purchase and which most thrift stores have by the dozen because people don't know how to use it), or a mixer......even if you were buying the flour to make it rather than grinding your own, you are making each loaf for right around 30 cents. Seriously. Want to get to that number? Here are a couple tips. Go to your local bakery, or food co-op (such as Azure standard), favorite mom and pop restaurant, whatever, and ask to buy a block of yeast. I pay just around $4.00 for an entire pound of yeast. I get it from the bakery of my husband's work (he works at a grocery store), I bring it home, package it, and store it in the freezer. It will keep up to a year or more and still be potent. Second, if your bread recipe calls for milk, and quite a few do, invest in dry powdered milk. I have found the best tasting milk in powder form is the NIDO brand milk made by Nestle. I have found it every single time in the Hispanic section of Walmart with all the other foods I love to drool over. Get it. Those are two big costs in making bread, and you will cut your cost well in half by choosing to do that.
   I make four to six loaves a week and have found significant savings in doing that. I also make all our pasta, pizza crusts, quick breads, muffins, tortillas,and cookies, and they are healthy with no additions or preservatives. I know what goes in them, and I am paying pennies on the dollar to have as much or as little as we want. How much do you pay for any of those items?

  I was in the grocery store the other day and priced a couple of them out: For a dozen chocolate chip cookies from the bakery (which are the kind my kids like) it was just under $7.00. I about died. Perhaps I should go into business making everyone else's cookies for them! :) A lot of people cant afford that, so they are buying the standard cookies right off the shelf in the bread and baked goods aisles. Have you ever turned that package over to look at the ingredients? Not only are a lot of those ingredients absolutely impossible to pronounce, they are chemicals that are put into the batter to make it last longer and stay shelf-stable, not for the health of your kids. And even at $3.50 a package, that is still so much more than I am paying to make a couple dozen cookies from my Master Cookie Mix.
   Or how about tortillas? A single package of Enchilada Size tortillas will cost you anywhere from $2 to $4 for 10 tortillas. With my home recipe, and my mixer, even without grinding the flour myself, I am only spending less than a dollar for about 20 of them. That is money back in my pocket, every single time I make enchiladas.
   I am , instead, trading money for time and deliberate attention to figuring out how I can cut a little here, and a little there, until we are well within our means and not breaking the bank each time we go grocery shopping. And even if you are a full time working parent with kids, you can do this. Kids love to help cook, and many small kids can even make tortillas or dump in ingredients in a mixer for cookies or bread.
   Finally, lets talk about how using my grain mill has saved on that end as well. I can get 25 lbs of wheat berries from lots of places for anywhere from $12 to $17. It gets even cheaper per pound if I buy them in 50 lb bags. Each cup of wheat berries I grind is going to yield me just over 1 1/4 cups of flour. The only kind of flour I can get for about $12 for 25 lbs is all-purpose flour, which is completely devoid of any nutrition, and yet most baked goods you purchase on the shelf are made from it. Wheat flour, often up to three months old, sells for about $7 for a 5 lb bag in most groceries. Mine is fresh, can store forever almost, and I can make just as much as I need in a very short time. All in all, my cost per cup of flour is well under half what I would pay in the grocery store. For those of you who are trying more and more to be gluten free, then please realize that a grain mill will save you SO MUCH MONEY when it comes to making any baked goods. You can purchase the grain for a huge discount through health food co-ops and stores and use it without paying the high price of gluten-free mixes or goods in the store.
  I also make cornbread, corn tortillas, Masa for tamales, etc. I can buy popcorn in bulk (and so can you) and it will store for quite a while if the seal is tight. It costs me much less to use this than to buy the prepared masa in stores, corn tortillas that are treated to stay fresh, or the Jiffy corn bread mixes. I blogged about that here if you are looking for a great master mix to have on hand to make things easier. All I did was ask around at the local grocery stores, chat up the managers, and have a short talk with the one who heads up the dry goods department. They can order in larger amounts most times, but don't do it unless they know it is a guaranteed sale. He was happy to sell me a case of 5 lb bags of popcorn at the sale price just a couple months ago. It took a little effort on my part to find the best price, and now we are enjoying our popcorn in many different ways.
   The Best price I could find stand mixers for was here, which is an Amazon link. I would encourage you to look around and check for the best price. I see them go on sale a couple times a year, and I think you could beat that price if you tried. Also check your Craigslist connections, and even pass the word around to family. You might be pleasantly surprised and get one passed to you from someone who just has it sitting on the counter un-used.
   For my grain mill I did a lot of shopping around, and I ended up buying it from Melanie at Back to the Basics, a page on Facebook that always has great information. She is a dealer, and if you have a FaceBook account, her page is here. I know they are in the process of setting up a new store and website, so if her information changes, I will change the link. The grain mill I purchased is the Nutrimill, which looks like this:

image from http://www.pleasanthillgrain.com/index.aspx#Nutrimill
Otherwise you can copy and paste the above link, because they have the next best prices on the Web for grain mills.

   So as we conclude today, I just wanted to pass on the basic recipes (and one kid-voted recipe) that I use my mixer and grain mill for. I hope you get as much use out of them as we do!! Check back for the next post as we talk about appliance four for your kitchen that will put Cash back in your pocket!

Many blessings to You and Yours, 

Heather

Pizza Crust (use this recipe to make homemade pizzas to add to your freezer)
2 1/2 tsp instant yeast
1 cup warm water
1 tsp salt
1 TBS olive oil
1 tsp sugar
2 3/4 cup flour (whole wheat or 1/2 wheat and 1/2 AP Flour)
   *I make about 10 of these up at a time and place them in my cupboard so all I have to do is grab, add water and oil and within a few minutes I have pizza crust ready to roll out. It also freezes amazingly well, so you can make two pizzas at a time and freeze one for the next week. For thin crust, this will make 2 round pizzas. For regular crust, this will make one, or a 9x13 cookie sheet pan. 
 

EZ Whole Wheat Bread (credit goes to Crystal at www.everdayfoodstorage.net for this recipe. My husband owes her his life because he no longer needs to eat bricks and pretend he likes it)
(makes one loaf of bread)
1 1/4 cup warm water
1 Tblsp active dry yeast
1/4 cup honey or 1/3 cup sugar
2 3/4 cups whole wheat flour (or whatever combination white/wheat you like..I use 100% hard white wheat.)
1/4 cup wheat gluten (I do not use this, but it makes the bread even loftier)
1 tsp salt
2 Tblsp nonfat non instant dry milk
1 Tblsp butter/margarine/oil
1 Tblsp vinegar
1/4 cup potato flakes (NOT potato pearls)
Mix ingredients in order listed in mixing bowl of mixer with dough hook attachment (like kitchen-aid) for 12-15 minutes. Let rise until double, 1- 1 1/2 hours. Punch down, and shape into loaf or rolls. Let rise again until double and bake 375 degrees for 20-30 minutes until golden brown and sounds hollow when lightly tapped.

Whole Wheat Pasta (I make this using my Kitchen Aid attachment--it can be frozen or air dried as well)
 2 cups flour
4 eggs
2 tsp salt
1/4 to 1/2 cup water
   * mix dry ingredients in mixer, turn off and add eggs. turn on and let mix. add water 1/4 cup at a time until dough  holds together. Let the mixer knead it for you for about 3-4 minutes until smooth and elastic. Let dough rest, covered with a wet towel for 10 minutes. Either roll out thin and cut into strips for egg noodles, or let your pasta attachment roll it thin and cut it into noodles for you.

Flour Tortillas
2 cups bread flour

 1 tsp salt
1/4 cup shortening or lard
3/4 cup warm water
   Mix and knead until smooth and elastic. Divide dough into 10 balls and cover with a wet towel. Allow to rest for 20 minutes, then roll into rounds. Bake on a hot stone or baking sheet in a 450* oven for 3 minutes. When the tortilla puffs up like a balloon, it is done, remove it and move it to a rack to cool. You can also cook these in a hot skillet, flipping over to achieve the dark spots you are used to on store-bought. I put into an oven-safe container lined with wax paper that has a lid, and they stay moist and ready to roll until I am done making the batch.

Corn tortillas are made with 2 cups of masa harina (which is 2 cups of corn meal and 1 tsp baking powder), and one cup of water. It dries out very quickly, so you must keep the dough covered with a wet towel while you are working with it. It rolls out very easily, and you can even purchase tortilla presses at Hispanic groceries for very cheaply. I pan fry my corn tortillas and use the method I describe above to keep them fresh for our table.



Pie Crust recipe (freezes really well so make a big batch)
2 1/2 cups flour
1 Tbs sugar (less if making for a non-sweet pie)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 stick lard or crisco (1/2 cup)
1 beaten egg
2 tsp vinegar 
   *makes a two crust deep dish pie 

Toffee Bars (easiest cookie bars in the world)
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup butter or 1/2 cup butter and shortening , each
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups flour
1 Hershey chocolate bar or large handful of chocolate chips

   *Combine everything but the chocolate. Pat into a 9x13 pan and bake at 350* for 20 minutes. Break candy into pieces, or scatter chocolate chips across top of pan when ir first comes out of oven. Let melt then spread across top of bars. Let cool completely and then cut into bars.