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Make more and more or take from the store?
Yesterday, I referred to an interesting article on the cost-effectiveness of making basic foodstuffs at home. The author's method there was to ignore the value of one's own labor but meticulously calculate the costs of ingredients and the energy costs of oven or stove. Most of the items she looks at--bagels, yogurt, granola, jam, crackers, and cream cheese--come out well. The first two should absolutely be made at home, since they're not only cheaper but also far better. The granola isn't so cost-effective, but it's so good that "budget be damned," she says. The crackers were a wash, about the same price and neither better nor worse, just different, while the jam was a wash in that it costs about the same unless you can get free fruit from someone. The cream cheese was the only clear failure: she made something, but it wasn't what we usually think of when we talk about cream cheese.
But of course, you know that already, since you clicked on the article yesterday or, at the very least, today when I mentioned it a second time, right?
Besides the bagels, I too have made yogurt, and strongly agree about the value of doing so--and not only can you make yogurt, but you can make amazing frozen yogurt if you have an ice cream maker--and it's frozen yogurt that tastes like frozen yogurt instead of tasting like some kind of flawed ice cream clone, as it often does in commercial outlets.
We've recently been trying some canning of various things. A few weeks ago, it was tomatoes that we bought at a farmer's market. I didn't do the math, but I'd be really surprised if it's cost-effective, especially considering how much work I put into it. Maybe I was doing something wrong, maybe there's an easier way, but even with the cheap box of seconds that we got, it didn't seem like a good value. Now, if we had a garden that was producing more tomatoes than we could eat, that calculation would certainly be different. If anyone has tips for easy tomato canning, though, I'd be happy to hear them.
More recently, we went apple picking, and even though we went to the less touristy orchard where the apples were on $.69 instead of the $1.65 closer to Chicago. Even at that price, though, I don't know that the applesauce was any cheaper. It did turn out to be a thicker, richer apple sauce, even without sugar. That said, we made some more tonight, and it went very well, and I think I've figured out something that I didn't do as well with one portion of the first batch: not cooked enough. Still, it didn't seem like a great value. We're also looking forward to making some apple butter from our applesauce, but that hasn't happened just yet (tomorrow, we're pretty sure).
It's a shame we don't have chickens, because I'm sure they'd love all the leftover parts of the apples, which would also help the economics of it. We also used the leftover water in which the apples were boiled/steamed as a beverage, which may help too.