Frugal Cooking: Baby Food

4 oz. jars of organic baby food range from $.60 to $.79 around here. Jazz Man is starting to eat three meals a day of solid food. When I manage to stock up on the $.60 sale at Safeway, that's $1.80 a day, or $54 a month. Considering that decreasing our grocery budget is a major concern, and that I sometimes manage to feed the adults in the house for less than $.60 a meal, it was past time to make my own baby food.

Earlier this summer we picked 30 pounds of blueberries at $1 a pound and froze them. Last week, we bought 5 pounds of local apples for $4.25. My first venture was apple-blueberry, which worked out to about $.12 a serving.

The most expensive food I've made so far, mango-carrot-rice, is about $.40 a serving. And I must admit, the food I make myself is really good. Much better than the jarred stuff. Overall, I'm pretty proud of myself.

To Make Baby Food:
Steam several cups of a fruit or vegetable. I use the microwave. Put cooked food, the water it was steamed in, and possibly a grain or cereal in the blender with more water. Puree. Add water to appropriate consistency for your child.

Jazz Man is incredibly picky about texture. I actually put the food through a food mill to make sure there are no chunks of any kind, then blend it to mix it all evenly.

I add cinnamon to the fruits, and I think I'm going to start adding cumin, turmeric, or paprika to the vegetables. There aren't really rules that baby food has to be totally bland.

There's a brand of frozen organic baby food (Happy Baby) that makes Baby Daal and a black bean-banana-quinoa thing. I'm definitely going to try to imitate those.

Miscellany

So, I'm not very good at sticking with things. My closet is full of three-quarters completed crafts. I dropped out of grad school. And I got four entries into this blog before getting distracted.

I'll try to do better. I could use the discipline.

On October 1st, The Chemist gets his bonus. I'm very excited. We will
1) pay off all the debt we've amassed since Jazz Man was born. That amounts to about $6000.
2) buy a new cook top. Our house is about to turn 20, and most of the appliances are original. We're hoping that the water heater and dishwasher make it another year. I'm a serious cook, so we tend to splurge on kitchen appliances. Totally worth it. My expensive oven is one of the joys of my life. We're going with the GE Profile cooktop, about $1100. I expect it will be worth every penny.
3) put $10-12ooo in savings so we won't have to go into debt next year. I think this is self-explanatory.
4) That leaves about $4000 (I've already subtracted tax withholding and The Chemist's IRA contribution). I'm going to put $1000 in The Chemist's woodworking account. I suspect we'll blow another $1000 on household miscellany - new sheets, a new kitchen faucet, a push broom, and countless things I haven't thought of yet. Ideally, we'll set aside the remaining $2000 for travel. We'll see. Wish us luck.

Frugal Cooking: Pizza

One of the easiest to control budget elements is groceries/food. It's not an area where we've been doing particularly well. I knew having a baby would be lots of work - I didn't know it would be months before I really started cooking again. We've eaten lots of take-out since the baby was born, and we're only now getting back on track.

Pizza is really phenomenally frugal food. I make my own dough, and just dig through the fridge and freezer for toppings. Sometimes I'll buy pepperoni, but more often our pizzas are meat free.

Pizza Dough
1 c. warm water
2 1/4 tsp yeast
2 1/2 c. flour (I use 1 1/2 c. whole wheat and 1 cup white)
2 Tbs olive oil (optional, but totally worth it)
1/2 tsp salt

Add the yeast to the warm water and let it sit a few minutes. Add 1 1/2 c. of flour and mix well. Add remaining flour, olive oil, and salt. Mix until dough comes together into a ball.
Knead dough 4-8 minutes. Place dough in a greased bowl, cover, and allow to rise one hour.

* I want to interject here to sing the praises of my standing mixer. I hate kneading dough, but my Kitchenaid does it for me. Getting to this step takes me about a minute and a half of actual work.

Divide and roll out the dough. This makes two medium or four small pizzas. When you're using up leftovers, it can be nice to have four small different pizzas. I place the pizzas on cookie sheets, sitting on cornmeal to prevent sticking. Allow the dough to rest ten minutes, then top and cook at 400 for 18-20 minutes.

Topping Ideas
Of course, there's the traditional tomato sauce, meat, and cheese. But last night I made a pizza with a couple tablespoons of alfredo sauce and a frozen veggie mix, topped with a little bit of feta. My second pizza last night was marinara sauce (I make my own with lots of veggies), black olives, red onions, and the last of a bag of Mexican cheese mix. I recommend using up any veggies in your fridge. Eggplant on pizza is awesome. So is shredded chicken. Don't limit yourself to tomato sauce. A couple of weeks ago, I topped a pizza with hummus, carrots, and roasted garlic.


It's hard to calculate the cost of home-made pizza when you're just using up leftovers. I promise though, it's very cheap.

What We’ve Done Right

We aren’t badly off at all. Really, you read news about people with $40,000 in credit card debt, and I feel pretty good about us. I used to work in consumer lending, reading people’s credit reports all day, and I know just how badly it’s possible to mess up your finances. We’re nowhere near it.

In fact, on occasion, we’ve made some pretty good decisions, money-wise. Small and large, here are some of our winners.

Owning A Home: We may have bought too much house – that’s a discussion for another day. But I don’t question our decision to buy when most people I know rent. We’re going to have our home paid off before we retire, and that’s security. Also, it’s in an awesome neighborhood with the kind of neighbors you can borrow a pressure washer from so you don’t have to buy one. It’s also in reasonable walking distance of four different grocery stores.

Used Cars: My BMW station wagon is hardly the car of poverty. But we bought it five years old, for $2000 less than it currently blue books. It gets surprisingly good gas mileage on the highway. Also, I adore it. Our other vehicle is a ten year old Toyota Tacoma. Certainly, there’s nothing luxurious about it, but it’s practical for The Chemist’s woodworking, and costs very little to maintain.

Walking: When Jazz Man was very little, walking with him in the Baby Bjorn was the only reliable way to get him to sleep. I got in the habit of walking several miles a day, and doing most of my shopping on foot. This saves gas, wear on the vehicles, and health care costs. Also, since Target and the mall are over two miles away, I’m much less likely to go unless I really need something specific. And since I have to carry stuff home, I’m less likely to impulse buy much.

Education: The Chemist has a PhD in, oddly enough, chemistry. This gives him tremendous earnings potential. I have a Bachelors in chemistry, and while I’ll probably never work in chemistry, have a bachelors degree opens a lot of employment doors.

Saving Change: Of course, I know that if I dutifully deposited my change in my checking account, I could be earning interest on it. But I also know that I’d never actually do it. So instead, we have a piggy bank right next to the door and we put change in it whenever we empty our pockets. When it’s full, it can be as much as $60 if there are a lot of quarters. Sometimes, at the end of the month, that piggy bank is the difference between overdrawing our checking account and staying solvent.

Good Fortune versus Saving Money

Right now, I feel like if I’m happy in my personal life, then my finances are in shambles. If I’m miserable, then my money is doing ok.

In 2004 we bought our first house, moved into a great neighborhood, and promptly spent more than we should have furnishing and fixing up said house. I remember being marvelously happy – except when I was stressed about money.

In 2005 I had a miscarriage. We paid off all of The Chemist’s high interest rate student loans, the truck, and several credit cards.

In 2006 my father died, I built up an emergency fund, prepared to quit my job, and paid off all non-mortgage, non-student loan debt except for $10,000 on the BMW.

In 2007 I quit my boring job, gave birth to my first child (Jazz Man), and promptly discovered I was in over my head. As it turns out, I wasn’t as prepared to give up my income as we thought. Babies cost more than we thought. The emergency fund is gone, and we have about $1500 in credit card debt. Again.

So, my goal for 2008? No tragedy + financial security. Maybe if we deprive ourselves a little, that will fool my luck gods into thinking I’m unhappy, so they’ll grant me money luck. Or maybe I can just learn to pay attention to money and do it on my own.

The build-up to extreme frugality

Starting in November of 2007, I’m going to be frugal if it kills me. Well, maybe not that extremely frugal. I promise to buy medicine and stuff. But I am currently ambling along, spending more than my husband’s paycheck every month, and it has to stop. It has to stop now.

Really, we aren’t in such bad shape. Certainly, people are worse. We have more than 20% equity in our home. The vast majority of our debt is either our mortgage or our student loans. We don’t live extravagantly, and we don’t carry credit card balances for more than a few months. We’re doing ok.

But I’m stressed about money. Always. I want to be debt-free. I want to have an emergency fund. I want to contribute lots to our retirement and our son’s college education. I want to start saving for our son’s eventual braces. I want to be on sound financial footing.

So, in October, my husband gets his (big) bonus. We’ll use that to pay off some debt, buy a new cooktop (and possibly a water heater), replenish our savings. Once all that is spent, for one year, I am going to achieve frugality.

I hope.