Cooking the majority of your foods from scratch can literally save your life ...

Eating a regular diet of fast food, processed food and/or junk food over several decades leads to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other degenerative diseases. You can radically improve your health, lose weight and live longer by cooking from scratch with wholesome, fresh ingredients. ...

Yes, that means using a recipe. ;) But does this mean you'll have to spend twice as much time in the kitchen? Well, consider this: by cooking from scratch and buying your staples in bulk, instead of having to make a trip to the grocery store once or twice a week, you'll be able to reduce your shopping to as little as two trips a month. Not only will you be saving money on gas, you'll also be avoiding untold numbers of impulse purchases which are usually of the junk food varieties. So, yes, you’ll inevitably spend more time in the kitchen, but you’ll also spend less time wandering the grocery store aisles week after week. 

Where would you rather spend your time? In the comfort of your own home or in the chilly packed-out grocery store bumping carts and getting your heels stepped on?

Believe it or not, cooking from scratch need not be time-consuming if you break it up instead of doing it all at once.

HERE ARE 8 EXAMPLES: 

Example 1 - Pizza

Make your own pizzas (including the dough) instead of ordering in or buying processed, frozen pizzas. I can make an extra large pizza with generous toppings for only $5. To cut back on preparation time, prepare all your toppings in one evening (within an hour) and use these toppings for a whole month (having one large pizza a week). It’s easy. Buy a couple green peppers (organic is best), a large block of mozerella cheese (on sale), lots of mushrooms (in bulk, on sale), and whatever else your favorite toppings may be - chop ‘em all up, grate the cheese - and put everything in freezer bags. Then, every Friday night (or whenever you want pizza), pull out your pre-chopped toppings from the freezer and throw together a pizza in 10 minutes tops. All it requires each month is just that initial one hour session of preparing a month’s worth of toppings.

Now what about the dough? You can prepare two large whole grain pizza crusts in a mere 10 minutes if you have a bread machine. Freeze your dough in equal-sized balls - pulling out one ball per pizza the morning you plan to have pizza for dinner so that it has time to thaw during the day. When you’re ready to make the pizza, simply dust a cookie sheet or pizza pan with cornmeal, and stretch out the dough to fill the pan. Or, if you don't have a bread machine (and you can find them really cheap at thrift shops), you can knead the dough yourself. Homemade dough has no additives, preservatives or trans fat. Cover with pasta sauce and your favorite toppings. Bake at 400 degrees F for 15-20 minutes.

Example 2 - Pot Pie

Homemade Pot Pie is not only tasty, it’s easy-to-make, and very cheap. Why? Because you're going to use your leftovers from the last roast dinner you had. To increase the nutrition (by eliminating artificial ingredients), make your own whole grain biscuit topping from scratch. Use the leftover roast beef or roast chicken, potatoes and veggies. Stif in 1-2 cups of leftover gravy. Add seasonings as desired, and top with the biscuit mix. Bake till crust is golden and contents are bubbling. It takes me less than half an hour to put together a delicious Pot Pie and it's a great way to use up leftovers.

Example 3 - Bread Battered Chicken

Homemade Bread Battered Chicken with rice or potatoes. Make your own “shake ‘n bake” with whole grain bread crumbs from leftover bread loaf crusts (for every loaf of bread you eat, save both crusts in a freezer bag. Pre-crumble them as you put them in the bag). When you have enough, fill a large bag/tub and add your favorite herbs/seasonings and a little flour, and let it sit open overnight to dry out thoroughly. Now you’ve got homemade “shake ‘in bake” (minus the chemicals and artificial ingredients!) which you can set aside to use whenever you next decide to make chicken. (To save even more time, freeze the crusts whole, instead of manually crumbling, and then grind them up in a food processor once you have a bag full.)

Coat and bake your chicken. Serve with baked potatoes or veggie-topped rice/pasta (instead of using instant Sidekick pasta/rice packages that are full of table salt and processed ingredients). It takes 20 minutes to make a Sidekick anyway, so preparing a baked potato, a bit of rice or a bit of pasta won’t actually take you any longer.

*Now, you may be thinking that a no-name equivalent of SideKicks is probably cheaper than potatoes or pasta. But if you buy your bag of potatoes on sale, and if you purchase your pasta and rice from a bulk foods store, it’s certainly possible to prepare a healthier side dish for equal-to or even less cost than a SideKick. You also avoid chemical additives. (Recently, I purchased a 10 lb bag of white potatoes on sale for only $1.29.)

Also: if you’re worried that you just don’t have the storage space for pasta and rice purchased in bulk, remember this: you serve yourself at a bulk foods store and you pay by weight, so, it’s your choice whether you want to buy a giant bag of pasta or just a a small bag. Either way, it's usually cheaper than the prepackaged rice and pasta. If you can, buy a month's worth because this will cut down how often you need to do a shop.

Example 4 - Sphagetti or Pasta or Stir Fry

Everytime you make pasta, make 2-3 times as much sauce as needed. You can save the leftovers in glass containers/Tupperware in the freezer. Then, on days when you don't have time to cook from scratch, just pull out some sauce the night before and put it in the slower cooker on low in the morning before heading off to work. Or, let it thaw all day and warm it up in a pot when you get home from work. This concept works for anything, really. Making stir-fry? Make double and freeze. Making alfredo? Make double and freeze. Having these kind of ready-made meals in your freezer will save you from buying "convenience" foods (processed) on days when you don't have time to cook!

Speaking of alfredo, a basic white sauce is really easy to make from scratch (butter, flour and milk!) and is much cheaper than buying a jar of white sauce. Once you've made your white sauce base, just add whatever grated cheese, mushrooms, spices, etc., that you feel like. It's a nice change when you tire of tomato sauce.

Example 5 - Yogurt

Avoid processed. lunch-sized containers of yogurt - they're full of sugar and have little nutritional value. Spend less money and simply buy a tub of plain yogurt (with no added sugar) and mix with unsweetened applesauce and 1 teaspoon of jam (organic is best). You can also experiment with plain yogurt mixed with small, chopped pieces of orange or banana, or your favorite canned fruits when you can find them at a good wholesale or sale price (make sure they are canned in natural fruit juice - not syrup). Mixing plain yogurt with fruit is healthier and cheaper than buying the lunch-sized cups. Of course, you can buy a tub of no-name yogurt already mixed with fruit for less $$ than plain yogurt mixed with your own fruit, but then you'll be consuming a large portion of sugar and additives as well.

Example 6 - Biscuits, muffins, cookies, cakes

Make your own biscuits, muffins, cookies, cakes, etc. But make them from scratch, not from store-bought mixes. It won’t take you any extra time than the boxed mixes. Flour, sugar, baking powder (the common baking ingredients) are extremely cheap. Whole grain flour (my favorite is kamut) is more costly, but it's worth it for your health. Avoid bleached flour. It takes only 10 minutes to whip up a muffin, cookie or cake batter, and making these baked goods from scratch will produce delicious snacks and desserts that are devoid of artificial ingredients, preservatives and trans fats. *Note: remember to use butter or olive oil to avoid trans fat.

To further save money, you can reduce the sugar content of most muffin, cake and cookie recipes by 1/4 to even 1/2 without affecting the taste! Use powdered milk (purchased from a bulk foods store) mixed with water in your cake and muffin recipes instead of regular milk. With the money you save here, you can afford organic milk to drink instead of non, thus reducing your exposure to antibiotics and growth hormones. Be sure to buy all your baking supplies at a bulk foods store. Things like raisins, chocolate chips, sugar, oats, etc. are much much cheaper purchased this way than in pretty (and small), over-priced packages from the grocery store.

An advantage to making your own pie crusts is that you’ll be able to save money on dessert pies and butter tarts which are costly from the bakery. Rather than dishing out the cash for a costly grocery-store pie full of man-made sugars, artificial ingredients and preservatives, you’ll be able to bake a delicious pie or tart from scratch.

The Internet is an invaluable source for recipes. Type in the type of pie recipe you want in a search engine and you’ll have countless recipes to choose from. Pick a recipe with basic, inexpensive ingredients as opposed to the fancier, more expensive/complicated recipes out there. You don’t have to be a gourmet chef; the easier the recipe, the better. Be sure to make your own pie filling rather than buying a can of pie filling. (An exception would be for pumpkin pie - pumpkin puree is cheap and has no additives.) *The cheapest pies to make are apple and pumpkin. If you’ve acquired blueberries, strawberries and rhubarb from a farmer’s market or farm, this will also allow for inexpensive pies (and muffins!). If there’s a really good sale price on peaches, make a peach pie.

Example 7 - Bread and Buns

Make your own bread or buy it from a bakery shop rather than a grocery store. If you have a bread maker, it takes only 5 minutes to toss in the ingredients for a loaf of bread, pizza dough, dinner rolls, you name it. You can find cheap machines at thrift shops or garage sales instead of buying one new. Or, you can simply knead the dough yourself if you don't mind getting your hands floury. Again, you avoid all the artificial ingredients and preservatives of a grocery-store loaf, and you save a fortune if you buy your flour in bulk. (Be sure to buy your yeast in a jar or from a bulk foods store as well - it’s far cheaper than those tiny grocery-store packets.) If you can't realistically see yourself making your own bread, find a bakery that sells day-old unprocessed bread, buns, etc. at a reduced price. Buy half a dozen reduced loaves at a time and freeze them.

Example 8 - Oatmeal and Breakfast Cereals

Stop buying processed breakfast cereals unless you find exceptional sales prices (in which case, buy ten boxes). Not only are they outrageously priced, they have little nutritional value (despite what the box covers say). They are sweetened with hefty doses of glucose/fructose, corn syrup, etc. which are man-made sugars that wreak havoc on your body - increasing your risk of diabetes and heart disease. But, if you absolutely can not do without Cheerios, Corn Flakes, etc., they can be purchased at a greatly reduced price through a bulk foods store.

Homemade hot cereals, such as oatmeal, are extremely cheap. I can eat oatmeal for breakfast every day for less than a dollar a week. Seriously! The key is buying your oats from a bulk foods store. It takes only 10 minutes to prepare: 1/2 cup of oats to 1 cup of boiling water. Add raisins and cinnamon if desired and sweeten to taste (brown sugar or honey). Add a touch of milk. It’s nutritious and there are no artificial ingredients.

Muffins can also be a satisfying breakfast. It takes less than 10 minutes to prepare a batter and about 20 minutes to bake in the oven (30 minutes altogether), but this needn’t be done in the morning when you’re trying to get ready for work. Bake them on a weekend and eat them throughout the week. You can further save time by always making a double batch whenever you bake something and then freezing one of the batches until you’re ready to eat them. For breakfast or a snack, just warm your muffin and add some butter. (If you’re interested in reducing the fat content of your muffins, decrease the sugar by 1/4 to 1/2 and substitute 1/2 the butter with unsweetened applesauce.) To increase the nutritional value of a muffin, be sure to select recipes that include fruit or vegetables, such as apple cinnamon, oatmeal raisin, carrot, pumpkin spice or zuchini.

Make your own oatmeal-crisp dry cereal. (If you want an easy recipe, please post a comment asking for it and I’ll send it to you.) This recipe is delicious, nutritious and far cheaper than processed, store-bought oatmeal-crisp cereals. Basically, in a large casserole dish, you mix together oats, some flour, some melted butter, some milk, and some honey or brown sugar. Bake for an hour (this will create a tasty granola). When it has cooled, break apart the chunks with a wooden spoon and mix in your favorite dried fruits, nuts, seeds, etc. (Note: Dried strawberries and blueberries are expensive but if you can’t do without them, this recipe may not actually cost less than store-bought; but the advantage will be that you’ll avoid man-made sugars, like corn syrup, as well as a host of preservatives.)

To really save money with this recipe, I suggest mixing in cheaper varieties of nuts - such as walnuts instead of pecans, and cheaper fruits - such as raisins and diced dates instead of dried strawberries. Once you’ve mixed your favorite ingredients, store in a Tupperware container and serve with milk (as you would any dry cereal). Tastes wonderful and stores for a month or more. (If you’re worried about it spoiling before you can eat it all, simply freeze half the cereal until you’re finished the first half of the mix.)

In Conclusion:

These are, of course, only a few examples. Get creative and see how many of your favorite foods and meals you can prepare from scratch! Granola bars are another easy recipe. I’ve recently learned how to make bagels. They’re cheaper than store bought and taste superb.

Your body will thank you, your wallet will thank you, and best of all, you’ll feel a degree of satisfaction and contentment that you’ve likely never experienced through microwaving and eating a TV dinner. If you eat snacks and meals made from scratch you’ll find you have more energy and may even lose weight. That sluggish feeling of lethargy that comes from processed, ready-made foods will no longer plague you.

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(c) Bekah Ferguson - 2007

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Comment(s) :	[quote=Bekah Ferguson][quote=Guest User]Then I know you will join me in shouting grateful prayers of joy for the abortifacient drugs, which do not kill the fetus, but merely switch the mother's life-support functions off. The fetus dies, naturally, of poisoning by its own metabolic end-products.[/quote] That's like shutting of the dialysis machine against the will of the patient and then daring to suggest that the death of the patient is thus "naturally, of poisoning by its own metabolic end-products."[/quote]

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