Re: The Cost of Living

[Hellbunny]

[Mod note: This is a reply to a post that has been deleted]

I think im going to try and start a vegetable patch and grow my own.
I tried a few years ago but failed misserably! My carrots turn out dolls house sized. I did grow some half decent potatoes in lockdown though

[VirgoGirl]

My hubby likes growing fruit and veggies. We've had tomatoes, sweet potato, gem squash, stawberries, blue berries, kiwi fruit, passion fruit, lemons, naartjies, cherries, cucumber, prickly pears, spinach, we have a banana tree but its not carrying bananas and his latest venture is dragon fruit. Oh and we've had corn too!

[moonbynight]

I'm not really much of a gardener, and I live in a desert, so not really ideal for it.

I would like to maybe put in a few fruit trees, as those don't really require much in the way of daily maintenance. Apricots apparently grow well here, and I suspect cherries would work, too. Also thinking about planting blackberries or something along the fenceline - one of my dogs keeps jumping the fence to go after the neighbors' chickens, and that would help with that, along with providing berries to both of us. But I think that would require ongoing irrigation.

[Orla]

I spend too much time on TikTok and I’m interested in doing some canning, but I know to get started requires some special equipment. I’d like to find some of it second hand, but so far haven’t had any luck.

[satehen]

I went into Boots (U.K. shop) the other day to buy some conditioner. What the hell happened to the prices in there?! I usually buy Dove or Pantene for around £2-3 a bottle. They were £6! When did that happen?

[Mintcake]

@satehen
I use both brands. Which particular one and what size bottle are you referring to? 6 quid sounds steep.

[satehen]

This was a month ago @Mintcake. The Dove is back to a sensible price now, it was a 400ml bottle.The Pantene is now half price reduced from £6. I would normally pay around £3 for that size, not £6.

https://www.boots.com/sitesearch?search ... %20shampoo

[TW…NTL]

I spend too much time on TikTok and I’m interested in doing some canning, but I know to get started requires some special equipment. I’d like to find some of it second hand, but so far haven’t had any luck.

If you’re considering canning, I’ll say that fermenting is fun, too! Making my own sauerkraut and kimchi is saving me oodles of money, and it’s exciting to tweak ingredients and fermentation times to get exactly the flavors I like.

[Silo]

I spend too much time on TikTok and I’m interested in doing some canning, but I know to get started requires some special equipment. I’d like to find some of it second hand, but so far haven’t had any luck.

You don't really need much more than a large stock pot or two, some mason jars, and a set of tongs. That's all I have when I make jam, and you can get most of that at a thrift store.

Of course, that would get kind of tedious if you're trying to do a crap ton of canning - you can only do a small batch at a time.

There's also freezing, which is easier than canning especially if you're only dealing with smaller harvests. I blanched my tomato harvest this year, skinned them, and froze them in ziplock baggies to put in my deep freeze. I'll be using those throughout the year to make sauces and stews.

[MarieGreen]

I never see the point in canning from a nutritional pov but then I made my own jam last year from foraged blackberries and now I barely eat sugar

Loads of stuff freezes well if you want to preserve. Then if it's about making something flavourful for winter, I prefer chutneys.

For general saving money though I work in the food industry and I was really thinking about home food waste this weekend. I've just made a vegetarian lasagne sauce /bolognaise in the slow cooker from veg that would have been thrown out in a day or two. I also used some of the trimmings from a salad I'm making and it occurred to me I could stick a plastic tub in the freezer and just collate bits of tomato, pepper etc for future pasta sauces rather than throw them out. Cheese also freezes surprisingly well if you're going to use it in cooking later.