Really good food costs either time or money

There's no doubt about it, really good food (organic, freshly cooked, scratch-baked) will cost substantially, either in our time or our money. We could feed ourselves on junky cheap stuff. I could open packets of ramen, or blue box mac and cheese, night after night. But I want better. I want delicious, fresh-tasting vegetables and fruit. I want well-seasoned, but not overly salty meals and snacks. I want cheese, not cheez. But the good food I want comes with a cost.

To feed my family well, I choose to spend more time than money in making that happen.

• I choose to bake and cook almost exclusively from scratch
• I choose to hunt down bargains

• I choose to work with less-convenient packaging

• I choose to keep a garden and orchard
• I choose to preserve whatever I can each summer and fall
• I choose to forage wild foods when possible

• I choose to repackage institutional-size containers into more home-kitchen friendly sizes when I come home from the wholesaler
• I choose to shop at multiple stores

And so, I choose to spend a lot of time procuring and preparing food each day.

When you see my grocery totals for each month, they're made possible by the hours of work I put in each day. Your choices may be different. You may be in the position to spend more money and less time in meal management for your household. Or you may be choosing a blend of time invested and money spent.

This came up with me, personally, after church a couple of weeks ago. A gentleman friend of ours asked me what I do. I replied that I'm a homemaker. He countered with, "yes, but what DO you do?" (Emphasis on the first DO.) I could just be insulted and saunter off to my own corner. But instead, I chose to "educate" him on how some of us manage meals for our families, through labor in place of dollars. As I delved into the details of baking all of our bread, keeping a garden and orchard, canning and freezing for winter meals, and cooking almost everything from scratch each day, he began to have a look of incredulity in his eyes. I didn't even go into how and where I grocery shop. This was such a novel idea to him, that a modern-day homemaker might do many of the things that his grandmother had done.

I think our family DOES eat very well, almost every single day. Because we enjoy really good food. That is a priority for us. And I've found the way to make that happen, with an investment of my time, in place of our money.

Gotta go. I've got to get that golden brown, with fruit bubbling up over the edges, cobbler out of the oven!

Another one of those "you know this, right?" things: turning a cereal box into a sturdy mailing container

Needing a box to ship a rather small package, I resorted to an old frugal trick for making a box as small as possible. I used a cereal box, cut it down and turned the outer half of the two-piece box inside out (for writing a mailing label on the plain brown cardboard).

Cereal boxes can be pretty flimsy, as is. But there's a way to reinforce that flimsy cardboard with a second layer of flimsy cardboard. (Trust me, you do wind up with a somewhat sturdy box.) This isn't a substantial box that you might ship fragile items in, but non-breakable items-- definitely. AND, this is also a great trick for making small gift boxes to be over-wrapped in gift wrap, when you don't have a suitable gift box.

The holidays will be here soon enough, and I just wanted to make sure you knew how to make one of these boxes (you'll be needing to save various food boxes, for an assortment of sizes, and if your cereal consumption is like ours -- practically non-existent -- this could take a month or two).

How is this frugal, you ask? Well, this is frugal in two senses, if making a shipping box. One, by making a box as near as possible to the item's size, the box itself, and any fill material will weigh less, therefore costing less in shipping charges. And two, if my option is make a box that fits right now, or wait a few days until I come across a suitable box, I may wind up paying expedited shipping charges, because I'm running out of time to get a package in the mail. Getting that box made, packed and off to the post office, pronto, means I can use the slowest (cheapest) mail delivery option, and still have my package get to its destination on time.

I'll show you how I cut down a food box into a smaller box. Here's the one I made to send the giveaway spices to Mary (the winner of the drawing last week).

I used a store brand cheerios box and a pasta box, a ruler, pen and scissors, and glue stick and packing tape.

With the cereal box, I undid the bottom flaps on the box (the top flaps having already been undone to use the cereal), and flattened the box. I used the ruler to measure and mark the halfway point on the box to cut it into 2 equal halves.

After cutting the box in half, I redid the bottom flaps on one half, and secured with packing tape.

As is, the bottom flap will easily push in. So, I reinforced the bottom flaps on the inside of the box, with a piece of pasta box, cut big enough to cover the inside of the bottom of the cereal box. As luck would have it, the side of the pasta box (with flaps) was just the right size to use inside the cereal box, with flaps extending up the sides of the cereal box a couple of inches. I used the glue stick to glue this reinforcement into the cereal box.

With the other half of the cereal box, I carefully undid the side glue. If you look at the inside of the food box, you'll find the seam, where a large piece of cardboard was made into a rectangular tube.

Using a table knife, I very carefully slit along this seam, keeping as much of the cardboard overlap intact as possible.

I turned the cardboard inside out, and wrapped it around the other half box, to get the right fit. I "let out" the outer cardboard just a smidge, enough so this piece of cardboard will fit snugly around the other finished half of the box. If you have help, pull the outer box snug against the inner box, and at the same time, tape the outer box in place, along this seam. If you are doing this on your own, you may need to tape the outer box along the new seam, flat on the table, then slide/push the inner box into the outer box.

** important -- when you are done with this step, you want to have the flaps of the outer box at the open end of the inner box.

Fill the container as full as possible, adding packing material, as needed. Add a second piece of cardboard (I used the other side of the pasta box), to the top of your packing, to reinforce this end, when closed and taped shut.

Close the flaps and tape the box shut.

You now have a brown surface for writing your to/from information. I use a Sharpie permanent marker for the to/from, then I cover over with clear packing tape. I also, go around the box, with packing tape, one more time, to secure the side seam that I taped into place. And I tape all other connections of the inner and outer box.

It's not as quick and easy as if you had a box just lying around the house. But when you don't have a small enough box (or, in my case, any box at all), then this is a great little trick.

Cutting down a food box takes me about 20 minutes, total. My alternatives were to buy a box for a couple of dollars (and then pay shipping fees on top of the box price), or to go with Priority Shipping (the box is included and available at the PO), which would have cost several additional dollars in postage. So, for my 20 extra minutes, I saved a minimum of $2 or $3, which is an hourly wage of $6 to $9.

Mary, if you're reading this morning, could you comment on the condition of the box as you received it? Did it arrive intact? Should I have added extra tape or reinforcement anywhere? Thanks for your feedback!