This should not come as any surprise, but when us frugal folk run out of something, what is it we do? It seems to be a frugal reflex for many of us that we simply make do. This frugal technique is really being put to the test in my house this week. Here are some things we're running out of and how we're managing:
- laundry detergent -- I melted some bar soap in water on the stove and mixed it with the remaining detergent in the bottle. This should get us through a week.
- vegetable oil -- an obvious substitution, we're using more of saved meat fats. After my daughter cut a raw chuck steak off the bone the other day, I rendered the swath of fat from it. This gave us about 3 to 4 tablespoons of cooking fat. We also have saved other fats in the freezer to draw from. I'm not completely out of oil, but we're saving what we have for for recipes that really do better with oil.
- hair conditioner -- I have several practically empty tubes of conditioner that have come with home hair dye kits. I have squeezed most of the conditioner out of the tubes. However, there's always more product stuck to the inside walls of the plastic tube. While standing in the shower, I blew each tube up then held it under the stream of water from the shower head. I could shake enough product up with this water to make a watery conditioner. I did this with each tube several times and was able to get my hair fully conditioned. I have enough other practically empty bottles and tubes to get through at least one more shampoo.
- my "chill pills" -- these are a supplement containing Lemon Balm, L-theanine, and GABA. L-theanine is found in green and black tea. And Lemon Balm is an herb that I grow in my yard for tea. I've been making an infusion to drink from some decaf green tea and Lemon Balm leaves each day. I can't replicate the GABA, but I'm doing okay with much less of the stress supplement. I previously took 4 dummies per day (2 in morning, 2 in evening). I'm taking half that for now.
- natural peanut butter -- a favorite lunch for me is an open-faced peanut butter sandwich on homemade bread. I noticed we're almost out of natural peanut butter from WinCo. So I was wondering if I could make a sandwich-worth of peanut butter with roasted peanuts and my mortar and pestle.
Next I pummeled the chopped peanuts a heaping tablespoon at a time in the mortar with a pestle. This took some elbow grease, that's for sure. But after a couple of minutes I had a dry paste.
I added a couple of drops of vegetable oil to the paste and worked the mortar and pestle until I had a good texture. I repeated with the rest of the chopped peanuts until all done. I also added a drizzle of honey to the final batch.
The finished product is akin to crunchy natural peanut butter. It's a bit gritty and thick. I mixed it with soft butter when I made my sandwich at lunch. Delish and I have a favorite.
Tomorrow I'll make a larger batch using the small cup with the smoothie blender. A pitcher blender can also be used for larger batches, adding a bit of oil to help it come together.
I'm making do as best as I can. What are some ways you've made do recently? Have you ever made peanut butter? What tools did you use?
Hi, Lili-- When it comes to making lemonade of lemons, Sweetie, nobody does it better than you! :) As i was reading the start of your post, I was remembering that I'd heard you could make "natural peanut butter" from peanuts and oil in the blender; so I giggled when you mentioned that later on. Glad your original experiment was a success. People say they want their peanut butter to have a peanut-y taste (remember the old commercials... was that Peter Pan? LOL), and you shouldn't be able to get MORE peanut-y than yours!
ReplyDeleteI had a funny make-do story I was actually going to tell you. Tuesday, I was thawing elk steaks for dinner, and planning to pull a ziplock bag with some old shredded elk and some old hamburger buns out of the freezer to make quick BBQ sauced sandwiches for lunch. I told DH and DS if they noticed the steaks were thawed, to put them in the fridge, please. It was a busy day, and when I came back from running errands, I asked DS to "start the meat" for me for our lunch. He'd told me earlier that the steaks still weren't thawed, and when he started the meat, he asked what temp to start at. I said "low" to thaw, and we'd "do sauce one it was warm." 10 minutes later, I checked the meat, and somehow we'd crossed our wires and found half-thawed steaks in the pan! We got a good laugh out of it, and I put on my thinking cap. In the end, I sliced the partially-cooked steaks thin, stir-fried them the rest of the way, added some leftover diced onions, dusted it all with flour, seasoned well with salt and cracked pepper, added butter to make roux, added water to make just a little bit of sauce, cooked that until it thickened, added sour cream and green olives, spooned it over some whole wheat spiral pasta, and announced "dinner for lunch". LOL It was delicious, and we had BBQ sandwiches for supper. Have a great day! Sara
Hi Sara,
DeleteThat was a great save! And it sounds like it was delicious. Thanks for sharing.
Sounds delicious, Sara. I think I would have liked the dish you made better than the BBQ.
ReplyDeleteHee, hee, Live and Learn. It was yummy. Luckily, my husband was home at lunchtime, too; so we all just had midday dinner, and enjoyed it very much. Sara
DeleteI haven't made peanut butter before, but have read about it. I'm glad you have figured out that you can use a blender to make it because using the mortar and pestle is a lot of work! Do you buy peanuts in bulk because we usually don't have that many on hand?
ReplyDeleteHi Live and Learn,
DeleteThe mortar and pestle was a good arm workout. I only wanted to make a small batch and didn't want to have half of my peanut butter stuck to the blender blades. But a blender will be a lot easier for future batches. Yes, I buy a couple of pounds of roasted peanuts from the bulk section at WinCo every few weeks. We all love snacking on raisins and peanuts (GORP). As it turns out, it's slightly less expensive to make my own peanut butter from peanuts than to use the grinder in the store for natural peanut butter.
Yes I've made homemade peanut butter before I just used my blender and some oil to make it smooth with a tiny bit of sugar added.
ReplyDeleteHi,
DeleteI'm glad your homemade peanut butter turns out well in the blender. I like the little bit of sweetness, too. I added honey to mine.
I know I have mentioned it before but my husband has a food allergy that includes citric acid. I can't find one liquid hand soap for him to use in the bathroom so I will be grating his sensitive skin dove with some water for him to use.
ReplyDeleteCheryl, I haven't investigated the ingredients list, but I wonder if any of the products like Cetaphil, CereVe, Vanicream, and so on, would have a usable option? My dermatologist has suggested that I use the Cetaphil or CereVe face washes (they come in a pump-style) as hand soap. Generally I can locate a less expensive generic version, as they are kind of pricey. Dove also has a liquid pump body wash in the sensitive-skin formula. Good luck!
DeleteHi Cheryl,
DeleteI've made liquid hand soap by melting bar soap in water on the stove. I just add a chunk of soap to the water and let it simmer. It's easy and works well. You have a few choices for how to dispense it -- you can put it into a pump dispenser, but if it thickens too much at room temp then it can be hard to pump out. You could also put it into a jar and dip into it. Or you could put it into a squeeze bottle. A squeeze bottle will dispense thicker liquids better than a standard pump one. Good luck. Homemade liquid soap is better for my hands, as I have dry skin that gets irritated by commercial hand soaps. It doesn't strip skin oils, but then it doesn't clean really greasy hands very well either.
Yesterday, my husband asked for some rags for house painting. I like t-shirt rags but he prefers terrycloth rags. In the past we bought these in large bags for our jobs and still have some. I've made do using the white terry ones for handtowels. I crocheted a few inches at the bottom and gathered the top with a few more inches of crochet for a loop. I actually prefer these "towels" to thicker hand towels because I can hang it conveniently where I need them. Remember the towels hanging from oven doors? So now these commercial white terry rags are too good to be used as rags and I asked my husband if our worn kitchen towels will do. I wanted to change them out, so this was the perfect opportunity!!
ReplyDeleteLaura