Items to make quickly and cheaply (food/cleaning/body)

[Sleepeazie]

recently I made some shake ‘n’ vac and have also previously made a face scrub and a foot scrub.

I always try and make convenience food items myself, such as; stuffing, Yorkies, soup, sandwich fillings, wraps (not successful), flat breads and bread.

i know I want to try making chutney.

are there any items that you make without a second thought, but know/suspect others won’t?

im hoping to get some ideas for things I haven’t thought about making before.

this is a coat saving / lowering UHP exercise for me.

thanks x

• cost!

Have a look at Nancy Birtwistle.

Eg, cleaning spray: half water, half white vinegar, a couple of drops of washing up liquid.

I try to re-use wherever possible, and one food item that I was often letting go to waste was milk (I poured it into the compost bin). I now make cheese from it.

I buy cleaning products but buy one that will do many jobs not lots of separate ones.

Washing-up liquid and white vinegar can be used for lots of jobs. Bicarbonate of soda and citric acid are useful for cleaning and culinary purposes.

Thanks for your replies, I’ll look into your suggestions. I’ve already been thinking of trying to make butter - I just have to stop myself buying kit (which I’m sure is unnecessary) to do so.

Ive just started making cheap and cheerful rice/pasta meals by the bucketload, that I decant into reusable microwaveable pots and tell my boys to use in place of snacks - if they’re wanting more than 1 at a time. This has worked really well at cutting the snacking down aswell.

I have white vinegar and bicarbonate. I’d heard hydrogen peroxide is equally versatile, have you had any experience using this? I don’t want to buy for the sake of it, only if it’ll pay for itself.

Nancy Birtwhistle is wonderful. If you follow her social media she often puts really useful stuff up on there. Her books are great too.

Nancy Birtwhistle is my next rabbit hole i think. Thanks for both posters who recommended her.

If you can sew a basic seam then fabric gift bags from old clothes are really useful and save hours of wrapping time. Eg - old jeans or PJ bottoms - cut the legs just below the knee. Sew along the cut edge. Stitch a bit of ribbon to the side seam about 2 inches from the top (which is the ankle edge) - bottle bag. I make square and rectangular bags out of DH's old shirts and I have a lovely selection of bags from my daughters' old dresses. It means that even Christmas wrapping is less than a 30 minute job and I no longer need to buy wrapping paper for family presents.

A tutorial here https://mybrightideasblog.com/upcycle-jeans-into-wine-gift-bags/

I make apple butter and apple jelly using windfall apples, and/or apple peel, cores and pips left over from pies and so on. I have an apple tree, but if you don’t, look at whether local people out boxes of surplus in the early autumn.

Dried orange peel (just leave it in a bowl somewhere warm like a cooling oven, or the top of a radiator) makes good firelighters.

I make elderflower cordial and a fizzy version, and sloe gin, using foraged flowers and berries, and I pick and cook/freeze blackberries to use all winter.

I make my own bread. I use a soup maker so it’s easy to turn leftovers into soup - yesterday I had roast dinner soup, which was interesting.

Grow what you can; it’s amazing how much you can produce even in a tiny space. If you don’t have outside space, consider a garden share with someone nearby who can no longer do as much gardening as they’d like - you do much of the work, and share the produce with the owner.

Jams and chutneys are pretty easy to make as it's mostly just cooking down fruit/veg with sugar or sugar and vinegar and spices. If you've got old jars, re-use them as buying new jars is a fair chunk of the cost! Pickling and preserving other things isn't too complicated either, e.g. sauerkraut, it's mostly just packing vegetables with salt and letting them do their thing naturally https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/sauerkraut_19958.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/apr/28/how-to-pickle-bottle-and-preserve-almost-everything

As a teen I tried making soap. I didn't realise the dangers of caustic soda and ended up with peeling skin on my hands. I was too scared to ever use the soap once it was cured.

Around the same time I also tried a facial scrub made with oatmeal and hair moisturisers- one using raw egg and the other using olive oil. I've never made them since. I think the olive oil took several washes to get out! 😬

I grow a lot of fruit/veg. I also love foraging and getting anything in bulk for free/nearly free when in season. Somethings I've made:
-Sloe gin, sloe vodka, plum brandy (I actually rarely drink it though, so we have lots of bottles)
-When I had a glut of apples, I cooked them down and used the pectin to then make rosemary jelly, mint jelly, chilli jelly etc
-Lemon butter/curd. Delicious on toast or as the base for a lemon meringue pie
-Membrillo (quince paste). Its pricey in the shops for a tiny bit, so if you can get some quinces, its easy to make yourself and freeze into small portions
-I make chutney every year from garden produce
-Pickle cucumbers, courgettes and beetroot to eat with salads/cold meats/cheese
-I only recently learnt that you can batch cook rice and freeze it into portions. I do a kg bag at a time and overall saves me a lot of time.

@ReignOfError I make elderflower cordial and a fizzy version

I tried making pink champagne with pink elderflowers, after watching Sarah Beanie make it. I sterilised the bottle and followed the instructions. It did start to bubble and fizzle, but the next time I looked, there was a grey scum developing and it just didn't look/smell right. I didnt fancy a bout of botulism so threw it out.

Does yours get a grey scum? What was the final smell like?

Home made tsatsiki. I can make it in the time needed for two wholemeal pittas to warm in the toaster.

My own bread
I start the yeast when I make my early Saturday morning coffee. mix & knead the dough, and put it to rise before going to shower and dress. Knock it down and leave to rise a second time then go do the weekly food shop. Turn the oven on when I get back. Bread for the week by Saturday lunchtime, but only taking about 20 mins of actual effort.

I've used hydrogen peroxide but only for whitening teeth (don't try it) and bleaching my hair.

I don't think you'd get your money's worth using it for cleaning.

@Sleepeazie , you won't save money making your own butter.

The cheese is a good way of using milk that is not quite fresh enough to use otherwise. Full fat milk is best (it is anyway)
You don't need a kit.
I use a thermometer but you don't have to have one, a cheesecloth but an unused clean muslin would do.

"Around the same time I also tried a facial scrub made with oatmeal and hair moisturisers- one using raw egg and the other using olive oil. I've never made them since. I think the olive oil took several washes to get out! 😬"

My hairdresser recommends an olive oil conditioning treatment. The trick is not to wet it before shampoo or it will emulsify (not sure this is the word I want) and be a bugger to get out. Rub your shampoo in thoroughly first and then rinse with hot water.

Butter is v easy with a food processor or stand mixer and you end up with buttermilk to make soda bread with. It doesn't keep as long so I keep it in the freezer and get out small pieces as needed. I always keep my eyes open for yellow stickered cream.

I make a really gentle but effective foot scrub from sugar and olive oil.

I do have an immature apple tree (planted last year) so hopefully that will bear fruit soon. Apple jelly sounds delicious.

I also have a small veg patch that I grow vegetables in and a rosemary bush plus strawberry plants. This helps my soup making.

i also make simmer pots (odds and ends of citrus fruits/cinnamon sticks/cloves etc) in place of air fresheners.

there is a park nearby that has sloe berries and elderberries and I have been meaning to pick some and experiment so thanks for reminding me of that. They also have some immature pear/apple and 1 or 2 other - community trees.

This is something I’m really interested in, I also see a lot on Facebook about American canning which I think is such a great idea . It just feels a bit overwhelming, (correctly) sterilising and preserving large quantities.

I actually have loads of jam jars, as i have been toying with this idea for a while now. Thanks 🤩

Some great ideas (and the tip about the caustic soda- ouch) 😣

Thanks for this. I’m making a list of all these ideas _ and it’s definitely going on it 😊

tzatziki is a great idea 💡. I make bread periodically, actually made some today - the no knead kind - not as keen on the texture as my normal efforts.

I love your routine for making your bread - that’s what I need is to make some of theee things habits.

You can make jam, marmalade and cake in a breadmaker. I haven't tried it but it sounds dead easy.

I did wonder. I’ve seen it mentioned for ‘bleaching’ jobs e.g laundry. Thanks for the feedback 😊