Guest post from Mandi at Life Your Way
This week I’m excited to release my brand new ebook, Easy Homemade: Homemade Pantry Staples for the Busy Modern Family, which is on sale for just $0.99!
If you’re regularly using coupons and building your stockpile for pennies on the dollar, or free, the idea of making homemade pantry staples may seem silly to you. But while you may find coupons on taco seasoning and ketchup, you may not find them as often on pesto and sour cream.
In those cases, not only does homemade give you more control over the ingredients, but it can also save you a pretty significant amount on your grocery budget as well.
And chances are you can make more things from scratch than you knew!
For example, did you know that you can “expand” your buttermilk by mixing it with milk, which costs a lot less?
Simply mix one part buttermilk to four parts milk and let it culture for 24 hours on the counter. When it’s done, you’ll have five times as much buttermilk for a fraction of the cost!
You can then mix one part buttermilk to four parts heavy cream and let that culture overnight at room temperature, and in the morning you’ll have sour cream!
Or use a gallon of milk to make homemade yogurt for pennies per ounce, a savings of one-fourth to one-tenth of the cost of yogurt, depending on what brands you’re buying and whether you’re using coupons on your yogurt.
For a long time, I thought that the trade off for these savings was the time I would spend, actually making kitchen staples from scratch. What I’ve discovered, though, is that many of these recipes are a lot easier than you’d expect, and since it doesn’t take much more effort to make something in bulk, I can make a few things every week and keep my kitchen well stocked, saving money without investing a whole lot of time.
Katie at Kitchen Stewardship estimates that when she makes yogurt, she’s earning about $35 an hour based on the time she invests in the process and the cost savings she “earns” for her family. Not too bad!
Discover more than 60 recipes for homemade kitchen staples like these in Easy Homemade, which is available for your Kindle, Nook or a full-color PDF to read on your computer for just $0.99 this week only!
Click here to get your copy today.
You’ll also find me sharing more about the what, why and how of homemade pantry staples at these great blogs:
- Real Food Baby Step: Homemade Pantry Staples | Keeper of the Home
- How Cooking from Scratch Has Changed My Pantry | Kitchen Stewardship
- Popcorn (Ultimate Recipe Swap: Afternoon Snacks) | Life as Mom
- Homemade Does Not Have to Mean Gourmet | Simple Organized Living
- Strategies for “Easy” Homemade | The Happy Housewife {8/16 @ 2pm ET}
- Homemade Taco Seasoning | For the Mommas {8/16 @ 8pm ET}
- Baby Steps to Cooking from Scratch | Simple Mom {8/17 @ 2am ET}
- How to Store Bulk Homemade Pantry Staples | I’m an Organizing Junkie {8/17 @ 8am ET}
- Fresh-Squeezed Lemonade | Deal Seeking Mom {8/16 @ 12pm ET}
Mandi Ehman lives in wild, wonderful West Virginia with her husband of ten years and four beautiful, spunky little girls. As a full-time work-at-home, homeschooling mom, she runs Life Your Way, a site that blends intentional and creative living, and Jungle Deals & Steals, where it’s all Amazon, all the time.
I love these types of e-books! Had my husband print it out for me today. Can’t wait to give some of these recipes a try.
I love my french press! If America’s Test Kitchen AND Alton Brown tell you that coffee in a french press for 4 minutes is the best coffee ever, then you know it has to be good!
I’m a huge French Press fan, too!
Just got it! This coupon code was still working to make it free: HAPPY100
I just got it for .99 the code doesn’t work anymore. Can’t wait to start using some of these recipes.
I just bought this book for 99 cents. Why is there only 13 pages? And its only about coffee? Am I missing something here? I’m dissapointed
Emily, it sounds like you received a corrupted file; please email me at [email protected] so I can get you the full ebook!
Thank you very much! I just now emailed you. My email is [email protected]
Anyone else having trouble with the links from this post? Every one I have tried comes “back page not found”.
How do you store home made yogurt since it is not airtight?
I store my yogurt in mason jars in the fridge. It’s not air tight, but it seems to keep pretty well.
Just tried, and says the “Code has expired” so the 100 free ones must be gone…to bad! I was so excited! Thanks anyways.
Thanks so much! Can’t wait to read and try!
Thank you Mandi and Crystal for the ebook. We’ve been going through sour cream at an alarming rate this summer and I’m thinking I’ll have to try making my own very soon!
I almost bought this yesterday but decided to wait before purchasing. I just got it for free! Thanks so much. I hope to use many of these recipes as they look great!
So excited I got this for free!
This is great! Thank you so much!!!
I am so excited to read this! Thank you for the free copy!!!
easy breasy! Thanks for the free ebook!
My homemade yogurt experience was iffy. The recipe I tried made a lot. I was aware that homemade yogurt sometimes doesn’t get that thick, and at the suggestion of others I added gelatin. The yogurt was nice and thick, but after only 1-2 days in the refrigerator it got clumpy and we were afraid to eat it. We ended up throwing it out. I’m afraid to try again. : (
BUT – my homemade taco seasoning was a hit. I found a recipe that was sodium free and my husband loved it. Maybe store bought taco seasoning is cheap with coupons, but finding the low sodium kind is hard in my area. The best part? I save space because I already had all the spices I needed to make taco season, why store taco seasoning on top of all the other seasons IN taco seasoning?
The homemade sour cream and buttermilk recipes sounds interesting. I might try those.
Angie,
I make soy yogurt and need to use gelatin to get it to set up properly. When my yogurt seperates or gets clumpy I use my hand blender or a whisk and stir it up. This would probably work for your yogurt too.
Angie,
I make homemade yogurt all the time. Please don’t use gelatin (I really don’t like thinking about what gelatin is made of, but that is MPO). Use a 1/2 cup of powdered milk and instead of starter, use 8 ounces of plain greek yogurt. Make sure you are tempering the yogurt with the milk – I didn’t do that once and it came out very gritty. Here is a recipe that I have used several times over: http://www.food.com/recipe/homemade-thick-or-greek-style-yogurt-473412
Good luck!
Crystal and Mandi,
Thank you for the free ebook! This is exactly the kind of resource that I have been looking for! 🙂