Simple Ways to Save

By Ben Goe

During the pandemic, I wrote an article about sensible shopping habits and minimizing trips since we were maintaining our social distance. I also touched on minimizing food waste. Now, with inflation and food prices on the rise, making the most of the food you purchase remains practical and prudent.

With perishables, the most obvious goal is maximizing shelf life. It’s always a relief when your produce lasts long enough to enjoy it after a few days at home. A few tips: keep mushrooms in paper rather than plastic bags in the fridge and dampen the bag every few days. Cut tomatoes can be refrigerated to prolong their use, but otherwise don’t refrigerate raw tomatoes, hard squash, onions, or potatoes — store

them in a cool, dark place instead. Apples can be refrigerated up to 6 weeks, and pears for about 5 days after ripening, but both emit a good deal of ethylene. In fact, most fruits and vegetables produce ethylene as they ripen, and the presence of more ethylene, in turn, speeds up ripening and decomposition. The Bluapple product we sell does a surprisingly good job of solving this problem. The replaceable packets inside the Bluapple absorb ethylene, greatly improving the life of all the produce in your fridge.

If you find yourself with more fresh veggies than you can use, especially asparagus, green beans, kale, and corn, they can be blanched, drained, and frozen in single layers on a baking sheet before freezer bagging. Leftover herbs can be dried in a very low temperature oven and jarred for later use. Better yet, a planned purchase of sale items is another great way to squeeze more out of your pennies. Stock up, eat what you want, and put in a solid pack-and-freeze session. Those 89¢ mangos will make for a cheap taste of the tropics when the sun stops shining.

Another great tip is finding staples that can be easily made from scratch. I have a book called Make the Bread, Buy the Butter – What You Should (and Shouldn’t!) Cook from Scratch to Save Time and Money, and it’s pretty comprehensive if you really want to get into it. The author, Jennifer Reese, compiled 120 recipes for (mostly) everyday pantry staples, each with an overall “make it or buy it” recommendation, level of hassle, and cost comparison. Peanut butter, if you don’t have access to an excellent food co-op with a peanut butter grinder (hint-hint), is much cheaper to make in a food processor at home from roasted peanuts and a little oil. I’ve made tahini at home as well! The trick is to just leave the toasted sesame seeds in the food processor for a REALLY long time, turning it off occasionally to keep it from overheating. Bread is inexpensive and easy to make, and we have an abundance of locally grown and milled flours. Dry beans and other legumes are incredibly inexpensive compared to canned, and if you have an Instant Pot or other pressure cooker they are very simple.

I like to use vegetable and meat stock in place of water when making legumes, but the cost of boxed or canned stock can add up. Better Than Bouillon makes a great line of concentrated bouillon pastes. If you cook your own chickpeas, homemade hummus is another brilliant way to make the most of your budget – use the same trick as the tahini – keep it in the food processor for much longer than you normally would, until the texture changes to whipped and creamy. Food processors are an invaluable piece of equipment for the home cook. Things like mustard, tahini, tomato paste, hummus, pesto, and mayonnaise become quite simple to make at home when you have one. And they help cut down on packaging waste and the price you pay for that package; did you know the cost of packaging has increased 20-30% since the pandemic? Bring your own and shop in bulk!

There are a million other things that can be made at home, and dozens of uses for scraps. Soup stock, tepache, rumtopf, shrub, and kvass are all essentially made from fruit, vegetable, and herb scraps. Even crackers and pasta are very cheap to make at home and quite easy, especially if you have a pasta roller. Although, Co-op pasta is quite affordable and equally irresistible. Granola, too, is a cinch, and heck! Making your own yogurt and kefir from leftover milk isn’t any harder if you want to take the time; the Co-op carries the cultures needed. Make an extra-large batch of waffles or pancakes and freeze them for a quick popin-the-toaster breakfast.

Lastly! Be curious. Have a favorite expensive condiment? Look at the ingredient list. It might be easy to figure out. Lebanese garlic sauce is a great example: four ingredients (garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, salt) and a blender or food processor. If you can buy it, someone has made it at home. You can, too.

In-Season Produce

July

Benton, Chelan, + Rainier cherries assorted apricots + nectarines yellow, white + donut peaches

BROWNFIELD ORCHARDS

Strawberries

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August

Gala, Gingergold, + Zestar apples Bartlett + Star Crimson pears

Blueberries

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September

Honeycrisp, Fuji + Cosmic Crisp apples

BROWNFIELD ORCHARDS

Table grapes

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Heirloom melons, Japanese + Italian eggplant

EDIBLE ACRES

Blueberries

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In Season All Summer

Herbs, lettuce, corn, cabbage, kale, tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, zucchini, radicchio, broccoli, edible flowers, and so much more...

FROM OUR LOCAL FARMS INCLUDING: MOONDANCE FARM, BOLDLY GROWN FARM, WAXWING FARM, WELL FED FARM, SKAGIT FLATS, RALPH’S GREENHOUSE, LONG HEARING FARM, HIGHWATER FARM, NAPPING LION FARM, THE CROWS FARM + HEDLIN FAMILY FARM