This week in saving money!

In our quest to live a more frugal and sustainable lifestyle, I have undertaken a lot more "home making" tasks than I am used to.  I have begun baking some of our bread, hanging clothes to dry, using cloth napkins, etc.  Over the last few weeks I made some great home made bread (not in the bread machine!), bought some clothes drying racks and made some baby food.  The clothes drying is going to be the hardest for me to get used to.  Our laundry "area" is in our kitchen, its basically a pantry closet.  So to hand the clothes to dry, I am leaving them on the racks in the middle of my kitchen!  Our kitchen is a good size so they are not really in my way but it does seem kind of odd to see them hanging there!

Every time I walk past the drying clothes I just remind myself that every time I don't run the dryer I am saving $$$!!

So I am not new to making baby food, I made my own with Little N.  I am a bit more educated now than I was then, so I am learning new things, like avocado is a great first food for babies, who would've thought!?  So a few weeks ago I made some peas, and then last week green beans, both from frozen veggies I already had in my freezer.  After feeding the peas and green beans, we realized that you are supposed to start with yellow veggies first, oopps!!  Oh well, I think he will survive!  So this week we are starting through the "yellow" veg.  Over the weekend I had bought some frozen yellow squash, frozen sweet potato, and frozen carrots.  I bought all frozen because its not in season and quite pricey to buy fresh right now.  After getting home I thought that maybe the yellow squash was not what he should have, I thought it was butternut squash.  So I checked online and yup, butternut squash is better to start with.  I learned that with yellow squash babies have a hard time digesting the skin until about 8 months, and it also doesn't have as many nutrients as butternut squash.  So back to the store I went today to buy a fresh butternut squash, because I couldn't find frozen.  To my surprise the butternut squash was only $.94 a pound, so the one that I got only cost me $2.10!  I had looked at the jarred baby food to price compare and I saw that for 2 containers of Gerber baby food it was $1.10, so $.55 per serving, that's kinda pricey!  After coming home and cooking my butternut squash, I divided it up into containers (normally I would use ice cube trays but of course I don't' have any!).  I got 15 servings out of that one butternut squash, I wish I had taken pictures of this process but of course I didn't think about it!  Anyway so doing the math, at $2.10 for the squash it ended up being $.15 per serving!!  WOW!!  Look at what a little extra effort bought me, an extra $6.15!  It only took about an hour total to make too!  When I do the frozen veg, I just toss it in the food processor after cooking for about 5 minutes on the stove and then puree!  As Big E would say "easy peasy"!   I also learned that you don't' need a fancy baby food maker, just use a blender or food processor, or you can even just mash it up with a fork!  Making your own baby food is not that hard and saves so much money!!

Here are a few websites that I have found some wonderful easy baby food making recipes!!
www.wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com
www.homemade-baby-food-recipes.com

Also over the weekend we did a little organizing project in the boys room!!  Stay tuned for the results of that whole process!!  I am quite pleased with how it turned out!