I never do things the easy way.
My senior year of college, I made a pledge to stop buying bread. I thought, Why buy when you can make it?
I ended up just never eating bread. (Due to a combination of aversion to lugging huge machines and pure, unadulterated laziness and naps. Lots and lots of naps.)
My little “pledge” didn’t stop there- I can count the number of times during our marriage Mike and I have bought bread from the grocery store on one hand.
I confess – I’m, uh, sort of addicted to making things from scratch.
I’ve made everything from scratch – from ketchup to crackers to hummus.
It started out as avoiding excess packaging and convenience food preservatives. Buying blocks of cheese instead of shredded cheese, avoiding plastic tubs of butter and getting olive oil instead, or never, ever buying brownie mixes.
Then, it became an addiction. I couldn’t get enough of it – I wanted to see how much I could make from scratch. I made tons of homemade spaghetti sauce and raspberry jelly last year and froze jars in our freezer. I started buying dried beans instead of canned beans. We ran out of ketchup one day, so I made some. Yep – you can make ketchup (and it’s sans high fructose corn syrup. Score!)
I never keep breadcrumbs, eggs, or those frozen veggie bags on hand – I make them all from scratch.
Why am I telling you all of this?
Because I feel the need to justify the 25 pounds of apples currently sitting on my counter.
Give it a try. And check out this awesome article on whether it’s cheaper to buy sustainably or conventionally.
[My locally-grown apples, by the way? Cost 90 cents a pound. And it was a fun date with my husband, to boot!]
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