Marisa wrote about yogurt making about a month ago. I would like to re-visit the subject from an extremely frugal angle. With wild fruits coming into season (like mulberries), yogurt is a great way to serve nature's sweet bounty.
I can remember trying yogurt for the first time as a kid. Most of the brands had a distinctive sour taste, and fruit on the bottom. They came in 8-ounce containers, and sold for anywhere from 25 to 50 cents a cup. Now, with prices double that or more, and the cups shrinking to 6 or even 4 ounces (who can eat 4 ounces of yogurt and call it a satisfying experience?), I decided to re-visit the old fashioned way of getting yogurt. MAKING IT YOURSELF!
This isn't just for frugality. I really enjoy making things at home that most people buy prepared. Some of the things we purchase without questioning whether or not they could be created right in our kitchens are actually quite easy to make. Yogurt is one of them, and requires very little in the way of equipment.
There are yogurt makers that you can purchase. I have to tell you though that they are really not necessary. The only piece of equipment you might need to buy is a kitchen thermometer. You will need a thermometer that can read as high as 100 degrees Celsius (212 Fahrenheit) and as low as 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit). For your first batch only, you need starter. A tablespoon of good plain yogurt works fine as long as it has active cultures (check the label). After your first batch you just need to conserve some yogurt each time to use as starter for your next batch.
With the U.S. economy on the rocks, it seems like a good time to take another look at cutting costs in the kitchen. Here's a (decidedly non-comprehensive, not necessarily "foodie-ish") list of some useful budget cooking and eating sites. Please suggest your own favorite cheap food sites as well.
Cheap Cooking: a spare, photo-free recipe site that seems mostly dedicated to people cooking for families. But hey, recipes for rump roast and apricot chicken will work just as well for one - just divide the remains into Tupperware and take them in for lunch. Food storage tips and a cost calculator are super-useful.
Cheap Eats: a blog with recipes, tips, and techniques for cheaper cooking and eating out. Includes an archive of cheap restaurants (lots of fast food), a Hall of Shame (Wagyu beef burgers with foie gras), and a list or recipes for $3 or less.
Better Budgeting: This frugal recipe list tends towards the retro. Think ground bologna sandwiches, cubed steak, and Tater Tot casserole. But come on, who doesn't like Tater Tot casserole?
USDA Thrifty Food Plan: Check out the 78-page PDF on budget food planning, with sample weekly food planners and some admittedly less-than-inspiring recipes (the ingredients for Baked Cod with Cheese are 'cod' and 'Cheddar cheese').
Rebecca's Pocket: One woman's quest to eat organic on a food stamp budget. Includes recipes and musings on food history.
Frugal Recipes: The "heirloom" recipes from the early- to mid-20th century, such as Ladies' Cabbage and Frozen Cranberry Fruit Salad make this site just as useful as a food history archive as a recipe source.
The Culinary Review: Slashfood has mentioned this user-friendly new site in the past, with its recipe cost calculators, shopping tips, and price breakdowns for various Food Network chef recipes (Giada De Laurentiis champagne risotto: $8.83 per serving).
Red beans and rice doesn't sound like a very exciting dish, but the staple of Louisiana cuisine can actually be elegant as well as delicious, as long as you put as much care into making yours as BWJones did with his version of the dish. His recipe calls for rice, red beans, onion and a lot of spices, including sage, thyme, bay leaf, cayenne pepper, garlic, paprika and chipotle. His is topped off with crawfish, seasoned generously with Old Bay (not to be confused with Old Spice), although some would say that sausage (andouille, in particular) or ham sets the standard for the dish. The meat can be left off entirely for a less expensive or vegetarian version of the dish.
This is an easy recipe to master and an extremely versatile one. Not only can you play around with the spices, increasing and decreasing the heat, but it can work both as a side dish and as a main course.
If you order a dozen or so holiday cookies from a bakery, you don't expect them to be piled up on a plate and covered in saran wrap, although this seems to be a perfectly acceptable presentation for gifts of homemade cookies. It's true that it is the thought that counts and that good cookies will over come any packaging, but it doesn't take that much more effort to take that packaging to a new level, which will keep the cookies fresher and make a homemade gift a showstopper.
This week, along with their collection of eight great holiday cookie recipes that are all going to be a bit more impressive than your average batch of chocolate chips, including Coconut Orange Macaroons, Scottish Shortbread, Ginger Drops and Candy Cane Cookies, the Denver Post has some great tips for packaging. For kids, try packing up "blank" gingerbread cookies in a small toolbox with frosting, sprinkles and other things they can use to customize the cookies. For cookies that will long outlast the holiday season, giving an unbaked roll of cookie dough (choose an attractive one, like the Chocolate-Coconut Pinwheels the article includes) and baking instructions wrapped up in an elegant tube that will put any store-bought dough to shame. And for the baker, consider wrapping the treats up in or on a pan, so they'll have something to use when they want to bake a batch themselves.
On Thursday morning, residents of Cape Hatteras in North Carolina were in for a bit of a surprise, especially those who liked Doritos. A damaged tractor-trailer-size shipping container washed up on the beach, bringing with it thousands of bags of the Doritos -- Cool Ranch, Nacho Cheese and Spicy Nacho -- that it contained. Locals, from shopkeepers to fishermen, grabbed as many bags as they could carry from the water and from where they lay strewn on the sand. One person even filled up a pickup truck with them - all in the name of "helping with cleanup," of course. The chips were almost entirely undamaged, thanks to their airtight packaging.
The feeding frenzy only lasted through the morning, as the container was secured, still containing an undetermined number of bags of chips, by the late afternoon. The boat that lost the container has not been tracked down yet, although the missing shipment is sure to be noticed when the crew reaches its eventual destination.
American Inventor Spot did a taste test of several types of non-name brand sodas, not comparing them to the major brand equivalents, but just to see how they stood on their own. After all, you can get quite a deal when you buy the store-brand soda instead of a national brand. With brands from Albertsons and Wal-Mart, they rated each soda on flavor, aftertaste, scent, consistency and design before giving it an overall score. Their favorite was Dr. Bold, a Dr. Pepper facsimile from Albertsons.
The problem with generic sodas is that because they vary from place to place, it's hard to know when you're going to get a good one. Fortunately, they're usually inexpensive enough that even if the soda isn't that great, you're only out about a quarter, but I still like to know where I can get a good one. For example, Safeway Select sodas are always on sale and are very good, not to mention that they seem to come in an almost endless number of flavors (though you might want to think twice before buying the diet orange). It's worth picking up a six pack or four when you have a chance.
Do you buy store brand sodas, and if so, tell us where in the comments.
Health magazine put together their list of what they considered to be the "best foods for busy women." What they
clearly meant to say was the "best pre-packaged meals/snacks for busy women". There isn't anything
necessarily wrong with this sort of meal, but I would hardly go so far as to say it is the "best," since my
definition of "best" does not generally include a lot of shelf-stable pre-packaged meals. Nevertheless, here
are their picks:
Breakfast South Beach Diet Denver-Style Breakfast Wrap Post Raisin Bran Cereal Bars
Do you have a couple of hard-boiled eggs sitting around? Instead of throwing them out, assuming that you kept them refrigerated or, at least did not cook them more
than a day or two ago, peel the eggs and put them to good use. Hard boiled eggs do not keep as long as their
uncooked counterparts, so don't try cooking with the ones you used in an Easter egg hunt that might have been in
the sun. A large egg has about 70 calories and is an excellent source of protein, with about 6 grams per egg.
There are approximately 5 grams of fat in an egg, with 3.5 of them unsaturated, and they are all contained in the yolk.
For more information on eggs, look here, but if you're just
looking for a recipe or two, food blogs are a great place to look.
Perusing the latest issue of Cook's Country, a
publication I quite enjoy, I was astounded when I came to the "When Things Go Wrong in the Kitchen" section at
the back of the magazine. It is intended to be funny, but what it really shows is that people need to learn when to
throw things away. No matter how thrifty you are or how closely you need to watch your wallet, sometimes it is simply
best to throw away your mistake and start over from scratch. A good time to consider this action is when food is
burnt, bad or if you have been eating leftovers for more than a couple of days.
Witness the following incidents, all harvested from the kitchen disaster stories in Cook's Country:
A woman wanted to make homemade noodles the way her grandmother did. The recipe looked like it would not
make enough, so she added to it until it was several times the original size. She and her husband ate noodles for more
than two weeks and it was years before they wanted to eat them again.
With the U.S. economy on the rocks, it seems like a good time to take another look at cutting costs in the kitchen. Here's a (decidedly non-comprehensive, not necessarily "foodie-ish") list of some useful budget cooking and eating sites. Please suggest your own favorite cheap food sites as well. 
If you order a dozen or so holiday cookies from a bakery, you don't expect them to be piled up on a plate and covered in saran wrap, although this seems to be a perfectly acceptable presentation for gifts of homemade cookies. It's true that it is the thought that counts and that good cookies will over come any packaging, but it doesn't take that much more effort to take that packaging to a new level, which will keep the cookies fresher and make a homemade gift a showstopper.
American Inventor Spot did a taste test of several types of 
Health magazine put together their list of what they considered to be the "
Perusing the latest issue of 
What Can I Get You Folks? - Server Revenge
Reality-Show Celebrities Serve Up Chef Curtis Stone's 'Hundred-Dollar Burger'
Foods Celebrity Chefs Hate
