Help! I'm poor and want to make good food!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Goons with Spoons > Help! I'm poor and want to make good food!

Noricae: Nov 19, 2004; cheese?

SoundMonkey posted:

If you're buying in bulk (and god drat can you save a lot of money that way), it doesn't hurt to put your stuff in glass jars. Ask me about getting sawtooth grain beetles (which are nearly loving immortal) from some bulk flour I bought

Oh yeah, great advice! Also those flour/grain pantry moths (they're -all over- southern California) live forever in the tiniest crevices and chew through bags and paper to get to things. Any bulk stuff I would recommend freezing for a couple of days to kill anything in it (heh, gross but not as gross as larva in it a month later). Loose grain? Cocoa? Dried peppers? Nuts? They eat all sorts of stuff other than flour.

This isn't something that "shop at a better place" fixes - Whole Foods, expensive vegan hippie places that have bulk stuff, and the like are all affected by it. Simply the nature of lots of open containers of stuff that hasn't been irradiated or coated with anything. Hell, I've had sealed name brand flour mixes develop bugs inside them - while still sealed. Blech. Someone's never touching pancake mixes again and all cake flour goes into the freezer and then bagged up (outside the sealed container).

I like those jars with a rubber gasket that make tight seals (from Cost Plus, etc) for this. Probably $3-4+ and upwards but well worth it.

Noricae fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Oct 17, 2011

# ¿ Oct 17, 2011 14:01

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# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 15:29

Noricae: Nov 19, 2004; cheese?

branedotorg posted:

The thing that made the biggest difference for me with those little bastards is pheromone based traps. If something dry is in the pantry for 8+ months i still find a little webbing in there & toss it but the problem is minimal compared to even just using glass storage.

Yep! Never do without these, even if you think you don't need them. Trap early, trap often! Put them by any bird seed, in your garage, outside by any bird feeders, etc. Oh god, I had the worst experience bringing home dried bulk peppers in grocery bags that infested my entire pantry. And these moths don't really die when there's no food - they make 3-4 more generations of smaller, and smaller, and smaller moths from no food somehow.

Weevils I only found in an Aunt Jemima mix that was -not- expired. It was so not expired it had over a year left on it. *shake fist*

CrystalRose posted:

I think this was implied (if not said outright earlier) by the people talking about freezing food, Glad/Ziplock containers are your friend. They have lots of single serving size containers which are prefect for storing lunch-sized portions.

I find those containers to be fairly expensive. I use sandwich bags, fill them halfway, flatten them into thin pancakes, stack them and freeze them. It's much more compact and a cheaper (and less waste generating) way of freezing sauces, blanched vegetables, pesto, tomato sauce, etc. Spread them thin enough that you can just break off hunks for use easily. For making premade lunches that you take & go the containers are good though.

Noricae fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Oct 18, 2011

# ¿ Oct 18, 2011 14:19

Noricae: Nov 19, 2004; cheese?

SoundMonkey posted:

I did finally get rid of them, then later moved to a new house, and while unpacking... a dead one between two tightly-stacked bowls.

This is my biggest fear when I move. I need an industrial freezer in the garage to put everything into for days when I move to a larger house, or something. I'm not afraid of bugs (put them outside usually if I find them in the house), but in my food is pretty gross (and those black dots in your flour? bug crap.)

Jonny 290 posted:

It's not quite fresh, but it certainly suffices for bachelor-mode stir fry weeks.

That's a good idea. I bet it's great for stir fry because you want the rice to be a bit dehydrated/stale too (and freezing does that after a few days).

As for vegetables - definitely freeze. Buy frozen or buy bulk in season, blanch and freeze. Stuff like spinach, kale, collard greens, chard is great done like this. About a minute in boiling water, remove, let cool, press out all the excess water and pack them into sandwich bags. They end up taking like 1/5th the room of the fresh versions and usually the above gets cooked down in dishes anyway. Defrost them, use in pasta, stir fries, toss them in a hot pan with olive oil & garlic and lemon, etc.

Also: for things like cucumber, squash, herbs, lettuce and anything that liquifies in your fridge (and is a vegetable) wrap paper towels around each vegetable (or around 1-2 if smaller) and then put them back into the plastic bag you had them in. It'll stay non-rotten for three times longer (like two weeks if starting with non moldy or rotten stuff). The humidity and contact with plastic is what liquifies stuff fast. -Don't- prewash vegetables that will be in your fridge (or counter). You probably want to label the bag or keep track of what's in your fridge full of mysterious paper towel bundles though.

Noricae fucked around with this message at 11:05 on Oct 19, 2011

# ¿ Oct 19, 2011 11:03

Noricae: Nov 19, 2004; cheese?

EgillSkallagrimsson posted:

Um, am I the only one in here who just tosses a few bay leaves in with the flour/rice, etc and then gives no gently caress about super airtight containers? I assumed this was pretty common knowledge among bakers and cooks for keeping pests away.

I do this with birdseed actually (especially since a lb of bay (a 2footx1foot bag) leaves at all the online herb places is $4-8 ), but they go stale, dry out and get ineffective pretty fast and they have to be pliable and somewhat oily for them to keep bugs away.

Apparently desert woodrats (aka packrats, related more to large gerbils and chinchillas) pad their nests with bay leaves regularly to keep the nests pest free. Hehe.

Another thing similar to the bay leaf suggestion is boric acid. I wouldn't sprinkle it everywhere (because I don't want to kill spiders and all sorts of beneficial bugs), but I make little packets with two pieces of paper glued together with a bunch of boric acid in between and put them behind bookcases/on the shelves with books. These tend to keep silverfish away and anything that eats paper will preferentially go for the glue filled packets. Boric acid is also a good cleaning agent, a whitener, and safer/cheaper pot cleanser or scrubber etc. Get a giant container of white vinegar too (food grade) and you'll double the cleansing power of it, and have vinegar for pickles, souring milk to make buttermilk imitation, and lots of other cooking uses.

Noricae fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Oct 20, 2011

# ¿ Oct 20, 2011 14:53

Noricae: Nov 19, 2004; cheese?

Darryl Lict posted:

I buy bulk deli containers from Smart & Final.

I need to check Smart and Final for these - it's a good alternative for not having a Costco membership. So do you also save jars and plastic containers from cream cheese too? Because I do

Glass jars I feel particularly bad throwing out, especially if they're jam jars or nice screwtop pasta sauce jars. A lot of my smaller bulk foods are in those rectangular Ragu/related pasta jars; the ones with leaf patterns and such on them.

Also canning! The above pasta and jam jars can be used for canning if you get the universe two piece canning lids. Isn't there a canning thread somewhere? It's a pretty awesome way of preserving for beans. If you're nervous about it (for stuff that isn't that acidic) just store them in your fridge after canning.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2011 00:46

Noricae: Nov 19, 2004; cheese?

picklejars posted:

I know many have mentioned vinegar for cleaning, and wanted to add that you can save a ton by making your own laundry detergent.

What's washing soda? Baking soda, industrial grade? That looks pretty neat, especially for people that have allergies.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2011 14:32

Noricae: Nov 19, 2004; cheese?

picklejars posted:

No, it's different. You should be able to find it in the laundry aisle or online.

Oh and it really is awesome for allergy and asthma sufferers.

Ok! I've never seen it, but also have never looked for it. Yep, we use no perfume detergents but even they smell like something and this looks even milder, to be honest. Neat, and thanks!

# ¿ Oct 22, 2011 14:52

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# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 15:29

Noricae: Nov 19, 2004; cheese?

My Little Puni posted:

I now have a shelf full of jars of rice, beans, pasta, flour, sugar and spices for the coming weeks and I'm pretty excited

*cheer* I get motivated to cook things if I have a nicely arranged row of glass jars full of dries stuff to look at. Of course, that ends up being stews and chili and soups a lot, but it's a good fallback.

Yep! Dough freezes well. If you freeze dough I recommend that you put it on little wax paper squares, and let it rise already because the texture will suffer if you freeze it unrisen and it will take forever to proof again or bake/rise. It's much easier to bake it though and then freeze it - or bake it and leave it a bit not browned, and rebake it or toast it again when defrosted. Pork/meat buns I would freeze unbaked and bread I would freeze baked. Wrap both in wax paper and then a plastic bag (uh, I have unused vegetable plastic bags that I accumulate when I go to groceries that I use for this purpose; I don't go to pick up bags but one or two generally ends up being torn off and I change my mind.)

Cheap meat: go and find a large piece of pork shoulder (butt) and slow cook it (either in a slow cooker or a large pot, so braise it). Shred it and it'll make tacos, chili, sandwiches etc for a while. Butt tends to go for $1.5-2 sometimes on sale where I am, especially at Mexican markets, so it's also a good fallback "what do I cook this week" for me. Pork belly can also be cheap (depending) and you can cure your own bacon (there's a thread here floating around) for a fraction of the price of bacon. For chicken? Buy whole chicken (I've seen this be 60-70 cents/lb for factory chicken, but I've also seen smaller local farmers sell them for $1.20-1.40ish a lb in the spring) and either learn to take it apart on your own or roast it and use the bones for soup.

You can try making your own cheese too, or at least substitute any ricotta and mozzarella for homemade versions (buy rennet tabs, also cheap in spanish groceries, or online, and some acid). Otherwise, actually I find Trader Joes (if you have one near you) to be the best quality for price cheesewise - they sometimes get very fancy cheeses on closeout (like Valdeon blue - sycamore wrapped and super strong).

Rice - have a rice cooker? I use mine a lot, and it's one of the best single taskers I have in my kitchen (the only other one being the coffee grinder, to be honest). You definitely don't need a rice cooker, but it saves time and gets rice perfect. You can put all sorts of stuff into rice before cooking it: various roasted nuts (pine nuts), saffron, sundried tomato, small amounts of tomato paste, various reconstituted seaweed (I recommend hijiki seaweed - tiny strands of black seaweed especially used in rice), mushrooms, and if you have a rice cooker various browned (and mostly cooked) meats and vegetables on top of your rice.

Rice substitutes that you can find for cheap at your bulk foods (Whole Foods is mine generally, and oddly - since it's one of their few decently priced sections): buckwheat, quinoa, wheat berries, and probably any other grains they have. Buy some red lentils and throw them in with your rice - they cook super fast and are nutty tasting.

Spices: sign up for a Penzey's catalogue, and maybe see if there's a store near you. Even if you don't buy spices there (I don't, mostly - they're great when compared to McCormick's, but there are cheaper bulk sources by mailorder) the catalogue very often comes with 1-2 totally free spice coupons per quarter in them and they're almost always glass jars (collection of spice jars, ahoy). Occasionally the spice coupon is a "pick 1 free anything," which is nice. Of course I always end up buying a couple of things when I visit to pick up my free jar, which is their point, but still...

Noricae fucked around with this message at 08:15 on Oct 23, 2011

# ¿ Oct 23, 2011 08:07

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Goons with Spoons > Help! I'm poor and want to make good food!