Grocery set. Tips for a thrifty housewife

Today is a story about what saves the time of the hostess. Something that can be reused and what makes our stay in the kitchen "witchcraft" for the rest of the family.

Post content:
1. Square meatballs
3. All-purpose soup dressing
4. Pesto cheese sauce
5. Bolognese sauce.

1. Square meatballs

Meatballs- this is a very convenient semi-finished product for freezing. You can make a lot of them at once, so that there is a supply in the freezer. But their creation takes too much precious time. Therefore, we will adapt an ice mold for these purposes. Labor and time costs are minimal, and the form is original.

We will need:
. Minced meat for meatballs (half a kilogram of minced meat, 50 ml of milk and the crumb of half a loaf. Salt and pepper to taste)
. Ice mold (for this amount of minced meat you will need 3 standard molds)
. Wide knife or spatula

Cooking:
Pack mince tightly into ice cube trays. The denser, the neater our meatballs will turn out. Remove the rest of the minced meat with a wide knife or spatula.

We freeze.

After 6 hours, take out the form from the freezer and take out the finished meatballs. To make this easier to do, it must be lowered into hot water for 10 seconds so that the bottom and walls of the molds are under water, and the top (where the stuffing is) is not covered with water. Then carefully insert a thin knife into the gap between the meatball and the mold wall, press down and remove the meatball.

We put the finished meatballs in a bag or container for freezing and send them back to the freezer.

All! Now they are even in soup, even in the oven, even in a frying pan.

2. Concentrated meat broth - the basis for soup

I want to show an example of another way to rationally use money for food and your own time. We often cook soups. In fact, we eat them every day, only in summer they are lighter vegetable soups or puree soups, and in winter the soups thicken and get fat. Apparently, a chilly organism requires two qualities from food: the presence of meat and "so that the spoon stands." Therefore, it is better to cook the soup in two stages: first make a concentrated meat broth, and then dilute it with water and add vegetables to taste and mood.

From one liter of such a concentrated broth, 5 liters of soup with meat are obtained. Considering that a standard serving of soup is 350-400 g, then four liters of concentrate is enough for 50-57 servings of soup. The cost of one serving (excluding vegetables such as potatoes, cabbage, onions and carrots is always inexpensive) - about 5 ross. rubles. So soups are not only healthy, but also very cheap.

The most rich meat soups are obtained from pork knuckles. It is not expensive, and the broth from it turns out great. Pork knuckle can also be replaced with beef leg. How to make concentrated meat broth?

We will need:
. Pork knuckle - 1.5 kg. One kilogram of shank costs about 150-200 rubles. I strongly advise you to buy not frozen, but chilled shank, so as not to accidentally buy stale meat.
. Bay leaf, black peppercorns, 3-5 cloves.
. Salt to taste

Cooking:
Wash the shank, put in a five-liter saucepan and pour cold water for 1-2 hours. After that, scrape the skin with a knife to accurately remove all possible contamination. Wash the shank again and pour clean cold water.

Put the saucepan on medium heat. When the water boils, reduce the heat and remove the foam. The fire under the pan should be such that the water does not even boil, but sways a little.

The knuckle should languish in this way for about four hours. During this time, she will give all her juices and most of the fat to the broth. You can add water as it boils. 20 minutes before cooking, add spices and salt.

The readiness of the shank is checked very simply: the meat should be easily separated from the bones. It will be impossible to pick up such a piece with a fork - it will immediately fall apart. The finished meat broth will be dark yellow in color.

Remove the shank, strain the broth through a fine sieve. After removing the shank, about four liters of concentrated broth should remain in the pan.

Break the meat into small pieces. We no longer need the bones, skin and remaining fat (you can give these leftovers to the yard dog). Distribute the meat itself into four liter jars and pour the broth into them (but not to the brim).

Actually, the concentrated broth is already ready. Some of it can be used immediately, and some can be frozen. It is necessary to dilute such a concentrate with water in a ratio of 1/3 (veggies will take about another liter in volume). And then proceed as with ordinary broth.

That, in fact, is all. It turns out a big saving not only in money, but also in time, since the preparation of the next portion of the soup will no longer require cooking the broth. And twenty liters of soup is a long time even in such a greedy family as yours.

3. Universal dressing for soup - a lot and at once.

With the onset of cold weather, cold soups, okroshkas and light pureed soups practically disappear from my menu. They are replaced by hot and thick dishes: cabbage soup, borscht, hodgepodges, pickles, etc. I noticed that for the preparation of most "winter" soups, you need to do the same operation: boil the meat broth and fry the onion with carrots (parsley root, celery or parsnip) in vegetable oil. On average, the soup is cooked for about 2 hours. Of these, it takes an hour and a half to complete these two operations. If you optimize these two processes, then cooking soup, even for a very slow housewife, will take no more than half an hour. How?

We have already dealt with the preparation of the broth, its freezing and storage above (using the broth prepared for the future gives +1 hour of free time). Now it's time for the roast. Everything is simple here - you need to do a lot of it at once, so that it is enough for several times. I calculated that making a bulk all-purpose soup dressing (for six large pots of soup at once, takes 30 minutes), but saves two and a half hours of priceless time in the near future. I'd rather spend those two hours walking with my baby than chopping onions and peeling carrots. And you?

Soup dressing.
Total and active cooking time is 30 minutes.
Quantity - for 6 large pots of soup.

Ingredients:
. Onion - 2 pcs. . Carrots - 2 pcs. . Celery root - 1 piece (small or ½ medium). Bulgarian pepper - 1 pc. (in winter, you can use already pre-frozen and chopped). Garlic - 4 cloves. Tomato paste - 4 tbsp. (or tomato sauce 6 tablespoons). Parsley - a bunch. Dill - bunch. Vegetable oil - 1 cup (you will need a lot). Salt - 3 tablespoons

Cooking:
1. Peel the carrots (4 minutes).
2. Pour 1/3 cup of vegetable oil into the pan and heat over low heat (1 minute).
3. Peel the onion, finely chop and fry in vegetable oil (4 minutes).
All roasting is done without a lid on a small fire.

4. Peel and finely chop the garlic. Add to onion and stir. Fry. (4 minutes).
5. Three carrots on a coarse grater and add to the pan.
Add another 1/3 cup oil and fry, stirring occasionally (5 minutes).

6. We clean the celery and three on a coarse grater.
Add the celery and the remaining oil to the pan, stir and fry (5 minutes).

7. We clean the pepper, remove the seeds and the stalk. We cut into cubes.
Add together with tomato paste to the pan, mix and fry (3 minutes).

8. Add finely chopped greens, mix, salt and fry (2 minutes).
Salt to taste, and then two more times the same amount. I use 3 tablespoons of salt. It's okay that the dressing will be salted - it will only be better stored, and the future soup does not need to be salted.
All is ready. It took us almost 30 minutes to prepare the soup dressing.

After the dressing has cooled, it can be put in clean glass jars (I fit in one liter jar). Pour the centimeter remaining to the edge of the jar with vegetable oil and send the jar to the refrigerator. In this form, it will be stored for up to two weeks. If part of the dressing is used, then the top layer in the jar must be covered again with oil.

4. Pesto sauce - cook, store.

With the advent of this sauce in our family, they practically stopped adding mayonnaise to all dishes. Now the place of the universal additive is taken by Pesto sauce (“cheese sauce”). In addition to its classic use - in the preparation of pasta or lasagna, it can act as a salad dressing, added to soups, vegetable stews, meat or mushroom dishes, and simply spread on bread. In general, like mayonnaise, only tastier and healthier.

The almost daily presence of pesto sauce on our table does not mean at all that we need to cook it every day. You just need to be able to store it so that it stays fresh for up to two weeks. It is for this period that a half-liter jar of this sauce is usually enough. Once cooked - and in the fridge it smells like an Italian restaurant. Homemade sauce is several times cheaper than in stores, and it tastes better. It is quick and easy to prepare - nothing needs to be boiled, fried or baked. I'm telling.

Pesto
Total and active cooking time - 20 minutes
Cost - 3 $

Ingredients:
. Hard cheese - 200 g. If you have the opportunity to get pecorino cheese (sheep cheese), then use it. If you live in reality - then Parmesan. And if in a tricky way, then any other hard cheese to taste. The taste of cheese is not so important here - all the same, garlic and basil will be in the foreground.

Basil - chopped, about 1 cup If in our northern countries it is very difficult to find basil in the autumn-winter period, then it can be replaced with 2 tablespoons of dry + a large bunch of fresh parsley.

Nuts - 100 g. If financial resources allow, then pine nuts. But sauce options with walnuts or hazelnuts also have the right to be. The only warning about walnuts is that they must be fresh, harvested no more than 3 months ago (we have fresh nuts on the shelves at the end of September and are quite suitable for consumption until February).

I advise you never to buy already packaged walnuts, since they only have a statute of limitations on the very fact of packaging. Old walnuts are bitter and can spoil the whole sauce. It is better to buy by weight and be strictly interested in when the crop was harvested. Fresh walnut kernels have a light skin. If, despite the request for fresh ones, they try to slip you dark brown or shriveled nuts, then you have every moral right to be rude to the seller.

Garlic - 4 cloves. We in the family really love garlic in this sauce, so we exceed this rate by 2 times. But for the first time, try to get by with a minimum of 4 large cloves.
. Olive oil - the amount depends on the density of the sauce.

Cooking:
Peel the garlic and crush the cloves with a garlic press. Finely chop the basil, mix with garlic and, armed with a marble mortar and wooden pestle (or an aluminum saucepan and a wooden pusher), crush everything together until smooth. You should get a vigorous green and very odorous mixture. Particularly lazy and in a hurry can use a blender, however, the mixture chopped in a blender is less odorous than crushed by hand.

Cheese grate on a fine grater.
Finely crush the nuts and add to the future sauce.
Mix the cheese with a mixture of garlic, basil and nuts.

You should get a fairly viscous mixture, resembling plasticine. To dilute this mass and add plasticity to it, add olive oil in a thin stream. At the same time, the future pesto sauce must be stirred all the time.

That's it, the pesto sauce is ready.

For storage, transfer it to a clean, dry half-liter jar (tamping tightly), and pour 0.5 cm of olive oil on top. Such an oil pillow, firstly, will prevent the sauce from drying out and spoiling, and secondly, it will reduce the intensity of its smell (I warned that in the refrigerator, in which there is a jar of sauce, it will smell like in an Italian restaurant). If the sauce is used, then the oil from the jar must first be drained, and then added again so that it completely covers the sauce. It is stored in this form for up to two weeks, but, as a rule, is eaten even earlier.

5. Bolognese sauce. Cooking, freezing and storing.

One of my friends works in an Italian restaurant. She once admitted that restaurant customers are almost never served fresh, freshly prepared sauces. For example, Bolognese sauce is prepared once a week in two five-liter saucepans, and then frozen in portions. If an order comes from a client for a dish with this sauce, then it is taken out of the freezer, and while the pasta is being cooked, it is thawed and served as fresh. She claimed that not a single person could yet understand that he was eating a frozen convenience food. Nobody complained, only praised. So I thought: why not take this principle into service? If this is practiced in a good Italian restaurant, then the more it is permissible for me.

The results of my subsequent experiments with Bolognese sauce showed that, indeed, it not only freezes well, but also tastes no different from freshly cooked. Since then, I have been making this sauce at once in large quantities. I freeze in portions in 200 gram cups. Thanks to such stocks, dinner is prepared almost instantly: while pasta is being cooked, 2 cups of sauce are defrosted in the microwave (for me and my husband). And after 15-20 minutes, not just banal pasta is served for dinner, but Pasta with Bolognese sauce (sounds!). Also, this sauce can become the basis for cooking lasagna, served with potatoes or stewed vegetables.

Bolognese sauce
Total cooking time - 40 minutes
Active cooking time - 25 minutes
Number of servings - from the given amount of products, seven 200-gram cups are obtained.

Ingredients:
. Minced meat - 400 g (beef + pork). Onion - 2 pcs. Garlic - 6 cloves. Pepper green mild - 3 pcs. Tomatoes - 5 pcs (in winter, you can replace it with 3 tablespoons of tomato paste with 1 teaspoon of sugar). Olive oil - 50 ml. Dry wine - 120 ml. Dried basil - 1 tbsp. (in the summer, you can use fresh - 1/3 cup chopped). Dried mint - a sprig (usually dried mint is sold in the spices department, but if it is not there, then you can gut a bag of mint tea, which is sold in any pharmacy). Salt to taste.

1. We put a kettle on the fire (boiling water will be needed a little later to blanch the tomato).
2. Fry minced meat in olive oil.

Since there will be a lot of sauce, I advise you to cook it either in a large and deep frying pan or in a saucepan with a thick bottom.

3. While the minced meat is fried, finely chop the onion and garlic. Add to minced meat and also fry, stirring constantly.
During this time, we manage to finely chop the green pepper.

4. Peel the tomatoes (this is where we need boiling water) and also chop finely.
When minced meat begins to brown, add chopped pepper.

5. After 3 minutes, add the tomatoes. Close the lid and simmer everything together for 10 minutes.

6. Add wine, spices and herbs. Stir, cover and simmer for another five minutes, after which the finished sauce can be removed from the heat.
That's it, Bolognese sauce is ready.

Tip: To freeze, you need to let the sauce cool down and only then pour it into plastic glasses. You can store at -18C for up to two months (I'm sure it will end much earlier).

P.S. I googled the recipe for this sauce. I found about two dozen recipes of different composition of products that claim to be the “real Bolognese sauce”. I do not guarantee that my version of the sauce is “the one”, but I guarantee that it is delicious.

Economy hostess menu for the week

The article is not mine, copied. But I liked the material.

I must say right away that the article is from 2013, but there is something to think about!
Food is becoming more expensive every year, and spending almost half of the salary on food is a very real situation. This happens not only because of the high cost of products, but also because of our laziness and disorganization.

Imagine you bought some product, but forgot about it, putting it deep into the refrigerator. It has gone bad, the money is wasted, and you need to buy new sausage, cheese or cottage cheese, or greens, which deteriorate very quickly. A trifle, but unpleasant. Or you are so tired after work that you don’t have the strength to cook, and therefore you grab ready-made food or semi-finished products in the store, which are significantly more expensive than the usual “grocery basket”. It is quite possible to save on products. To do this, you need a little cunning and a systematic approach to shopping.

Menu for the week. The menu will help you plan the consumption of products and make life much easier. It takes very little time to compile it - after all, few people cook hot food for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Remember what you usually eat in the morning: for sure, it will be enough to stock up on muesli, bread, cheese and ham for sandwiches, eggs, cereals or ready-made porridge. Working people usually have lunch at the office, and those who eat at home during the day may well dine on the same dishes. By purchasing this set of food, you will be provided with breakfasts and lunches for the whole week ahead. Consider several options for lunch and dinner. Experienced housewives combine the same combinations of products so that different dishes are obtained.

To the store - with a list. Supermarkets are designed in such a way that the buyer "picked up" the excess by spending as much money as possible. A shopping list is a surefire way to avoid temptation. It is useful for inveterate spenders to take a limited amount of money with them. If you have an irresistible desire to please yourself with an unplanned dessert, enter a rule: no more than one "extra" purchase per trip, or set a limit: do not exceed the planned "expenditure" amount by more than, for example, 3-4 lats. A good opportunity to practice mental counting: when you take a product off the shelf, remember its cost and add it to the price of the next product. It is recommended to round up so that the final amount does not come as a surprise to you.

Dishes - lifesaver. These are cheesecakes, omelettes, scrambled eggs, casseroles and sandwiches. They are beautiful because they can be made from almost what is left on the shelves of the refrigerator. Rice or pasta from yesterday's side dish for lunch can go to a casserole in the evening, and leftover potatoes and half a sausage are used in a morning omelette. Before you go to the store again, take a look around the refrigerator: perhaps there is enough food left in it for another day.

Logistics in the refrigerator. Do not clog the shelves so that you cannot see the rest of the products behind the saucepans, bags and packages in the first row. Arrange the most voluminous purchases against the wall, arrange jars and small packaged products on the side shelves. Each time you look into it, figure out which of the products can go bad in order to put them into action first.

Keep accounting. Write down all expenses or keep receipts. At the end of the month, this will allow you to analyze how much money was spent on food. You can compare the cost of the same products in different stores and decide which one is more profitable. You may need to break down purchases into groups: dairy products will be cheaper and better in one place, and meat in another.

Feel free to find a cheaper store for "basic purchases". Convenience stores usually located near the house greatly inflate the prices of everyday products. This is done with the expectation that the inhabitants of the surrounding houses will run for bread to the nearest store, and not to the one where prices are lower. Be smarter: find a shop with better prices in the area, try to buy all the necessary products there.

Seasonal vegetables and fruits - and health, and savings. You don't have to buy strawberries and grapes in January and pay big bucks for watermelon and blueberries in the fall. Seasonal fruits and berries are much cheaper. In addition, imported exotics are less useful than those that grow in your lane: they cause allergies much more often, and the probability of containing nitrates in them is much higher. So we buy apples and sauerkraut - and provide ourselves with the necessary vitamins

Try to buy less ready-made products, cuts, semi-finished products, and so on. e. A whole chicken, in terms of price and weight, will be much cheaper than minced chicken or ready-made cutlets. It is more profitable to buy a whole piece of cheese or sausage than the same products in sliced ​​​​and packaged form. Ready-made pizza, lunches from the "only reheat in the microwave" series should appear on your table as rarely as possible.

Home savings: how to save at home, useful tips, do-it-yourself household items

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If in your family food costs make up the majority of expenses, then you probably thought about how to save on food without compromising health.

Tastier and healthier!

Is it possible to save money on food? After all, proper nutrition is the key to health. But you can replace expensive products with more budget ones. By the way, many inexpensive products are often healthier and even tastier than expensive delicacies.

■ Avoid non-perishable milk: soft-packed milk is much cheaper. If yoghurts are too expensive, replace them with kefir, which you can make yourself - from boiled milk and sourdough.

■ Don't buy canned pates. Buy the liver and make the pâté yourself.

■ Want to pamper your family with salted salmon? A carcass of red fish is much cheaper than a fillet, and salting it at home is as easy as shelling pears.

■ Instead of a package of sliced ​​herring, buy barrel herring and cut them at home.

■ Instant coffee is not only more expensive, but also less useful than coffee beans. You can grind them and cook a fragrant drink yourself.

■ The simplest example of savings is sausages and sausages. They are not cheap, and only manufacturers know how much meat they contain. Buy meat and cook it: beef can be boiled, and pork can be baked in the oven.

■ Meat seems too expensive? Partially replace it with chicken, and buy it whole, not in parts - it's much more economical.

■ In winter, do not rush to buy ready-made pickles - making sauerkraut or carrots in Korean is not difficult at all.

■ If you can't live without sweets, arm yourself with quick homemade baking recipes. Pumpkin pie is cheaper and healthier than store-bought cake.

■ Try to eat less potatoes and replace them with all kinds of cereals. By the way, you can also save on cereals: instead of instant oatmeal, buy regular oatmeal. Cereals, flour, pasta, sugar are better to buy in large packages - it's much cheaper.

✓ Linen bags are best for storing flour and cereals. Before you put food in them, boil them in a solution of sodium chloride - so there will be less chance that pest bugs will start in the cereal.

Secrets of Proper Storage

Learning to save on products also means learning how to store them properly. Think about how much money you throw in the trash along with moldy bread, wilted potatoes and spoiled meat! Let's save money by saving food.

■ Keep bread in the refrigerator so it doesn't get moldy. If you keep it in a bread box, put an apple there - so the bread will stale more slowly.

■ Fresh meat can be stored in the refrigerator for up to four days. If you plan to cook tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, wash it, cut it and put onion rings.

■ Before you freeze fresh meat and fish, do not be too lazy to butcher these products: clean the fish, and wash the meat and cut it into pieces. Place each serving in a plastic bag. Remember: you can not re-freeze the fish!

■ To store cheese and sausages, use cling film, which must be changed every time you take the product out of the refrigerator. To prevent the cut of the sausage from drying out, put a piece of lemon or carrot on it.

■ Do not store oil in an oil can with a transparent lid, as it oxidizes faster.

Household chemicals: easy to find a replacement!

If you want to keep your home clean and safe, try using natural cleaners.

What are we replacing?	What do we replace?
Dish cleaner	Warm soapy solution with baking soda
laundry bleach	soda ash
Stain remover	Lemon juice, citric acid
Toilet bowl cleaner	A mixture of baking soda and vinegar
Air freshener	Natural aromatic oils that are sold in pharmacies
Universal detergent	Warm soapy water
polish	1. Cornstarch 2. Napkins with silver ioans 3. A teaspoon of olive oil + half a glass of lemon juice
Carpet cleaner	1. Baking soda paste with mineral water 2. Cornstarch
Window cleaner	1. Two tablespoons of vinegar in a glass of water 2. Lemon juice 3. Just hot water
Descaler	Vinegar
Pipe cleaner	Half a glass of baking soda and half a glass of vinegar, which after half an hour should be poured with boiling water
Sanitary cleaner	1. Sliced ​​raw potato 2. Mustard Powder

In Russia, it is not especially customary to save. Although this habit can be not only useful, but also enjoyable. After all, with the money saved, you can buy a lot of good things for yourself and for your family.

1. The art of making a shopping plan can save a lot of the family budget. And while there is a lot of talk about writing lists, not many families heed that advice. Think over your menu for the week, and based on it, make a shopping plan. Firstly, you will understand what to cook, and secondly, you will know exactly what is really worth buying.

2. Consider seasonality in the choice of vegetables and fruits. Beets and pumpkins are stored for a long time, so in the fall you can buy them for future use. And winter is the season for avocados in Israel, so this is the best time to get them.

3. Buy meat in large chunks and cut it into portions at home. Often we don't choose foods just because we don't know how to prepare them. Check out the recipes ahead of time.

4. Learn to cook with basic foods. You can make your own cookies and it will be cheaper than buying them.

5. Buy whole chicken. You can cut it yourself, and you will have both a soup kit and a fillet.

6. Choose those products that are on sale. You can buy them for future use.

7. Take the time to compare the price of staples in nearby stores. In Russia, it is not customary to save on trifles, but it is the “trifle” that ultimately allows you to buy truly valuable things. How often do you go shopping? If you save even 100 rubles from each trip to the store, how much will you have by the end of the year?

8. Look for items on sale. Don't be afraid to buy an "extra" pair of shoes if the price suits you.

9. Get a small collection of spices. With them, even simple dishes will be much tastier.

10. Pay tribute to soups on broths. Meat on the bone is cheaper than tenderloin.

11. Buy perishable foods in small portions.

12. Learn to freeze food. For example, greens are cheap in summer, buy some and freeze for winter.

13. Get into the habit of keeping a spending journal. This way you will be able to understand exactly how and on what you spend money. A month later, you will see the main "gaps", due to which it is not possible to accumulate a sufficient amount of funds.

14. Pay attention to sites where you can find products on promotions. Check them out every time you need to buy something.

15. Learn to buy groceries online. It will be much easier for you if the basic set of cereals, spices, vegetable and olive oil is always at hand.

16. Don't buy yourself things that you can't afford. Credit is always very expensive money, no matter how tempting the promotion in the store is.