Money saving tip?

I had an unfortunate flashback to the mid 60’s.  An area newspaper had a column on money saving tips … such as Permies has.   Anyway, burned into my brain is the money saving advice to cut the middle out of a ribeye steak for filet mignon and use the rest for stew meat.

Hahaha - seems like another world doesn't it!

And here's me who's utterly delighted because I've finally found a supermarket which will let us buy a giant bag of offcuts, mostly bones, skin and fat with some meat trimmings, which I'm having the most wonderful time sorting into bags, freezing down, and rendering to make lard. The amount I paid has been more than covered by the amount of lard I got, and I have a ton of pork rinds still to play with (if gir bot doesn't pinch them all...), a big load of stewing meat, some strips of very fatty pork belly, and some beautiful big bones to make bone broth. Today's awesome discovery was that rice and beans is vastly improved by adding a handful of finely chopped pork skin that's left over from the rendering pan.

My best tip is learn the difference between 'wants' and 'needs', then prioritize them, accordingly, factoring in long term, mid term, and immediate timing.

Remember the depression era saying, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

Barter, whenever you can, and don't undervalue what you have to offer.

Shop the 'managers specials' & close-outs, checking carefully to make sure you're not buying something that will rot on the way home - then eat or preserve it, that day, and be realistic about whether you'll be able to.  

Be frugal, rather than cheap, whenever possible. Often, though *not always*, there is a great long-term savings in buying the pricier, high quality item once, instead of buying the cheap item, repeatedly - that is, if you can't make a high quality 'it', yourself, in a less expensive,  timely manner.

Know your own strengths & limitations. If you don't know how to make that widget (whether a want or a need!), is it something you can realistically accomplish, to meet your needs, in the time frame you need it? Or is it something that will likely cost you more than you have to spend, in the learning process (and would that make it worthwhile, in the long term)? Will you have to buy an expensive piece of equipment that won't pay for itself, in order to make said widget? If not, can you borrow or rent the equipment for a price that will pay you back? Could you put your widget on your Christmas, birthday, or other gift giving wish list, and be relatively assured that someone will gift it to you?

Hi Burra,

Indeed, it was another world.  Without too many gory details … I graduated high school at 6’3” and 120 pounds. My first three months in college I survived on a glass of Tang and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich…my daily food ration.

John F Dean wrote:Indeed, it was another world.  Without too many gory details … I graduated high school at 6’3” and 120 pounds. My first three months in college I survived on a glass of Tang and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich…my daily food ration.

I've been there. There was a time that I would have been reduced to begging on the streets had it not been too cold for me to take the baby outside for long as I had no way to warm up again when I came back in. That was the time I swore to myself that one day I'd have my own roof over my own head and get myself in a position where I could grow my own food and burn my own fuel to keep warm.  

That baby turns thirty later this year, but I think I'm finally pretty much there!

Out of interest, I just ran a few figures on the pork scraps and discovered that 50c worth would provide enough calories and protein for an adult for a day. Not that anyone in their right mind would want to live on it, but what an economical way to pad out rice, beans and whatever you can find in the garden...

There were some liver trimmings in the bag too. I've just converted them into 375 g (13 oz) of pork liver patê, using all the liver, a dollop of the lard I rendered yesterday, a glug of red wine I 'borrowed' from my son, some garlic, salt, pepper, dried herbs and a bay leaf.

Rosa helped, mostly by choosing a perfect jar and sticking the bay leaf on top to make it look pretty. To be fair it tastes pretty awesome too! The same supermarket we got the meat trimmings from also does Too-Good-To-Go boxes of surplus bread too, which we stock up on and load the freezer up with. I think it's going to be bread and patê for tea tonight!

Burra Maluca wrote:
Out of interest, I just ran a few figures on the pork scraps and discovered that 50c worth would provide enough calories and protein for an adult for a day. Not that anyone in their right mind would want to live on it, but what an economical way to pad out rice, beans and whatever you can find in the garden...

We use the pork leftovers from rendering lard, and the chicken skin scraps from rendering smaltz, for:
-gravy to put on biscuits (or whatever: greens, sweet potatoes) or sauce for pasta/spatzle
-throw them in cornbread batter, or in pancakes
-use them as a filling for steamed buns (preferably the kind you roll up in a spiral, cut, and steam, like cinamon buns)

I'm glad to see this post, even if it may have been tongue in cheek (I'm not buying a ribeye steak anytime soon).
My work has dropped off amid general economic panic and while I'm working on alternatives I am pinching every penny til it squeals. I've also been on the "bad diet" (to this day I can't eat lentils with curry powder or rice cooked with chicken drumsticks, which was all I ate my first two years of college). So thankful to have what I have now though, and trying to take one day at a time.
Right now we are working on REALLY cooking through the pantry. I have so much squirreled away, and 3 meals to cook for 3 people, and we're doing pretty good. Considering our largest non-work-related expense is food, it makes a big difference. The garden is just coming back (we are waiting for the fall rains to start, right now pickings are slim) but I was gifted a lot of citrus and I have many, many pumpkins, so there are some pleasant surprises on the table sometimes.

Hi Tereza,

It was intended as tongue in cheek, but the thread goes where it goes.   Who knows, maybe someone out there needs advice on how to use a ribeye steak.

I rendered the last batch of pork trimmings down yesterday. This batch was fatty skin that had been cut off, mostly complete with a bit of meat. I decanted the lard while it was still warm and put the left overs to cool down overnight. I cut them into pieces this morning, laid them on a silicone tray and popped them in the freezer. I'm hoping that they will freeze well enough that I can pop them in a bag and grab a handful to add to rice-and-beans as needed to add a bit of flavour, protein and deliciousness to a frugal meal.

John F Dean wrote:It was intended as tongue in cheek, but the thread goes where it goes.

I was going to source some pork cheek so I could cook up a 'tongue-in-cheek' dish to post here, just for fun.

Only whilst pork-tongue is €1.85 a kilo, it seems pork-cheek is €10.99.  Which probably explains why I've never cooked any...

But to be going on with, here's a meal I had about a year ago with pork tongue (cooked in the hay-box), corn bread from the too-good-to-go box (with real butter, because I'm frugal but not a tightwad!), and pumpkin from the garden cooked up with onions and ginger and peppers and peas.

Seems like the best money saving change here would be mindset.  I am not sure why someone would cut the center out to the ribeye and then use the rest for stew meat.  This wouldn't be cost savings, as ribeye is much more expensive than stew meat.

The issue here is the intent to save money.  If you want to save money, then treat the entire steak as if it's filet mignon.  You don't need to cut out the center because the entire thing should be fairly tender. Cutting out a tiny portion of expensive meat and then relegating the leftovers as scrap meat is not budget minded.

If you make the entire meal as if it was a filet, then you are changing your mindset.  Look for how great you can make your food, rather than this bit of mind tricks.  Are you svaing money by using ribeye as stew meat?  Stew meat is two bucks or three bucks a pound and ribeye is ten bucks a pound.  You should use the ribeye at least for ribeye, but there are methods to improve a steak that work better than cutting the center out.

I just read an article on Insider. The title says it all:

“My party of 2 spent $120.00 at Gordon Ramsey Burger.  Our meal at the chef’s chain restaurant was a surprisingly great value.”

2 drinks, 2 appetizers, 2 hamburgers, one order of fries, and one desert.  I am a little sketchy on the desert, but I am pretty sure it was one.

And, as if it matters …yes we are talking hamburgers …and yes the price does not include a tip.

Hi Burra,

This AM my wife and I had a flashback to our first year of homesteading.  Our garden was great on tomatoes, onions,  green beans, corn, and potatoes.  We raised 2 feeder pigs and some chickens. We bought 100 pounds of navy beans, and 100 pounds of flour. The combination of those items made up  95% of our meals.  

That son of mine asked in a different place today if they had aparas. I'd told him to bring what he could from anywhere he found it available so I could compare quality and price.

This bag was smaller than the ones we usually get, with plenty of fatty skin, less meat and more bone.

But then, instead of 89c a kilo, this was completely free. And that's my kind of price!

I have to little things to contribute, some of it might already be covered by some of the previous posts.

My grandfather used to say something (translated from German) along the lines of "We are too poor to buy cheap!" Meaning you have to think what you need and then buy the quality that lasts. If you buy cheap, you end up buying more than once.

And one of my favorites: Don't buy on Amazon. Not because they're more or less evil than others. Simply because it's so much harder to buy anywhere else (offline, other web shops) that by the time you actually want to go through with the whole process of buying it (and not just click one button) half of what you thought you wanted or needed wasn't that necessary after all.

Benjamin Dinkel wrote:I have to little things to contribute, some of it might already be covered by some of the previous posts.

My grandfather used to say something (translated from German) along the lines of "We are too poor to buy cheap!" Meaning you have to think what you need and then buy the quality that lasts. If you buy cheap, you end up buying more than once.

And one of my favorites: Don't buy on Amazon. Not because they're more or less evil than others. Simply because it's so much harder to buy anywhere else (offline, other web shops) that by the time you actually want to go through with the whole process of buying it (and not just click one button) half of what you thought you wanted or needed wasn't that necessary after all.

Superb advice. Your grandfather would have been a kindred spirit to Terry Pratchett's Samuel Vimes from Ankh-Morpork, who coined the incisive Boots Theorem:

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.