I’m not much of a cheapskate by nature (I don’t raise an eyebrow at the price tag on a well-made skein of yarn) but I sure am when it comes to basic necessities that are made very cheaply by gigantic companies. Spending five dollars on sliced sandwich bread with scary ingredients, or buying a box of bandaids, or even spending a couple bucks on pasta makes me feel cheated.
I’ve been slowly but surely dispelling some of my own ideas of what “basic necessities” really are, and in every instance, my cheap, made-from-scratch solutions have been better than the purchased versions. No scary ingredients, no trips to the big box, no packaging to try to recycle, and, best of all, no gigantic corporations benefiting from my inability to provide for myself. Well, less, at least.
Of course, there’s a reason most people have allowed these things to pass from the realm of homemade to pre-made: it takes time! And making certain things, like clothes, requires serious skill. But for those of us who enjoy craftiness and practical applications for creativity, why on earth would we opt for convenience?
So here it is, Jenny’s List of Shit I’d Rather Make Than Buy, and How To Do It (part one).
Bandaids
Use a tiny scrap of paper or cloth (the size of the cut) and a strip of masking tape. The tape will stay on when wet far better than a bandaid, and doesn’t hurt as much when you take it off. I also like that you can make the perfect size bandage depending on what you need, instead of maintaining a ridiculous supply of pre-made ones.
Bread
Now that I’ve been making bread fairly regularly for a couple months, I can’t imagine going back to the supermarket crap. I do still like the occasional loaf from a local artisan bakery, but it really doesn’t get better than homemade. I can’t decide what it is about homemade bread that I like best; the money-saving, that there’s no crap in it (just look at the ingredient list of your next supermarket loaf), the act of making it, the taste and smell of it, or the smug satisfaction and total ego-boost that comes when I pull two perfect loaves out of the oven. Homemade bread is just magical.
I’ve come to think of white “all purpose” flour as being special occasion flour—I use it for some desserts and specialty breads like challah and popovers, but that’s about it. For day-to-day bread, muffins, quickbreads, and pancakes, I just use whole wheat flour. (And none of that “half all-purpose, half whole wheat” bullshit that so many cookbooks recommend. If you have a good quality, relatively fresh whole wheat flour, you don’t need to dilute it to get good texture.) Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food convinced me that refined grains, like white flour, ought to be the exception, not the rule; we simply haven’t evolved to handle the white stuff. Besides, whole wheat flour really does taste better for most applications—try some yeasted whole wheat pancakes and you’ll see what I mean.
Like so many skills I’ve picked up, I didn’t have an experienced baker to teach me. Certain books have been indispensable, though. The Tassajara Bread Book has a gajillion recipes, nearly all using whole wheat flour, but the best part is the 40-something page illustrated guide to the basic method of bread making. It covers how to mix, knead, shape, and slash the dough, plus everything in between. Their basic “Tassajara Bread” recipe has been my go-to since I started baking in earnest.
The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book was one of the first tomes of whole wheat baking, and while I despise the ethereal writing style (what exactly does the dough look like when it “sighs”?) and have had exactly zero luck with the recipes, it’s packed with information that will help you understand some of the science of bread making in an approachable way.
Last week I picked up The Bread Bible at the library, and within a minute of flipping through it, I knew I had to buy it. It is incredibly precise, incredibly informative, and incredibly thorough. My only complaint is that the author is far more exact than I would ever want to be in my own kitchen, but that problem is easily remedied by not following instructions to the letter. I’ve only made two breads from this book so far—a loaf of braided challah and two loaves of cinnamon swirl bread—but both have been exceptional. I’m looking forward to trying dozens more.
Broth
This has got to be the best one yet. Since Chris and I have been making our own broth every few days from kitchen scraps, I’ve looked back on my years of buying vegetable broth with shame. How much money have I wasted— hundred dollars? Two hundred?—on underflavored, overpriced, overpackaged broth?
The recipe is so simple: take all your vegetable scraps that you think might taste good, and put them in a big pot. Fill the pot with water and some salt, and put the lid on. Bring it to a boil. Then simmer it. When it looks pretty and smells insanely delicious (anyone who walks into the kitchen should breathe deeply and say, “Ohh, what smells so good?”), turn it off. Strain or scoop out the solid bits (great for worm compost, once cooled) and put the liquid in mason jars. Use it for everything: soup, rice, quinoa, sauce, bread, muffins… now that I’m not shelling out big bucks for packages of broth, I feel free to use it to flavor everything, and my cooking is all the better for it.
I once read instructions for broth-making that warned against using scraps, reasoning that if you wouldn’t want to eat it, you wouldn’t want to make flavor-juice out of it. When it comes to scraps that are truly past their prime (like, if they’re fuzzy), sure. But leek tops? Carrot peelings? Completely dead, wilted celery? Papery onion skins? These are some of the best broth ingredients around. Prolonged boiling can coax flavor out of even the most pathetic looking veggies, and since you’ll take all the solid stuff out anyways, it doesn’t matter what the texture’s like.
There are some guidelines though. Unless you want a bitter broth, I’d stay away from brassicas entirely (e.g. cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kale). Any kind of leafy green is just going to get limp and bring no flavor to the party—unless it’s good and herby like basil, of course. And make sure you get all the dirt off your veggies before they go into the pot, unless you don’t mind relinquishing the last inch or so of your pot o’ broth—I often don’t bother, since we have so many vegetables around here, and whatever we don’t manage to eat will go to the chickens or the compost.
The best part, of course, is that you can turn waste into deliciousness. The second best part, though, is that you can throw out the one-flavor-fits-all mentality of packaged vegetable broth and get into customizing. Imagine a vegetable broth made to complement its intended dish! Chris made an amazingly savory broth last night out of dumpstered mushrooms and wild fennel, and I can’t wait to find the perfect application for it. I’m thinking of trying an earthy, herby pilaf… or maybe turnip soup?
Eggs
Supermarket eggs are downright nasty (and useless) compared to the good stuff. Pastured eggs cost a bundle, but hens don’t! Seriously, now that I’ve gotten used to having a chicken coop in the yard, I can’t imagine going back to store-bought eggs. Having your own chickens is super easy (most days it they take less time to care for than kneading a loaf of bread) and incredibly rewarding. You can’t beat it for freshness, and properly pastured eggs (i.e. eggs laid by hens who get to eat plants and scratch around for bugs and grubs) are more nutritious, flavorful, and easier to cook with than the industrial versions. Besides, most egg-laying chickens in commercial settings live horrible lives. (Yes, even organic, vegetarian-fed, so-called “free-range” ones—check out chapter nine of The Omnivore’s Dilemma if you don’t believe me.) And who wants to support that?
Mayonnaise
No, Best Foods ain’t the best. Homemade, mayonnaise is actually edible, believe it or not. And easy. If you’ve got a whisk and a bowl, you’re already halfway there. Read my previous blog post on making mayonnaise.
Pasta
Homemade pasta is even easier to make than homemade bread, with many of the same benefits. It’s dirt cheap. It tastes about a million times better than anything you can buy. And there are no mind-boggling ingredients! Granted, it takes way more time than dumping a plastic bag of factory-made stuff into a pot, but it’s very nearly always worth it—especially if you have farm-fresh eggs.
Toothpaste
My last tube of Aquafresh ran out a few weeks ago. I thought I’d experiment with using straight baking soda, and I haven’t looked back since! Two dollars for a new tube every few weeks is hardly an exorbitant amount of money, but it’s still my money that’s going to GlaxoSmithKline, the second largest pharmaceutical in the world, and that tube still has some ingredients I’m not so sure about it. Of course, Arm & Hammer isn’t exactly a mom and pop operation, but two dollars of baking soda ought to be enough for a year’s worth of clean teeth.
Using it is just stupid simple: rinse your toothbrush, dip it in the baking soda, and brush. It took me a couple days to get used to the slightly salty taste, but now I prefer it to the artificial, tongue-deadening faux-mint flavor.
