Some of my friends and I recently had a conversation about the cost effectiveness of cooking. There is a prevalent belief out there that cooking at home saves you oodles of money. Yes and no.The major expense comes in the upstart costs of stocking your kitchen cabinets, especially when you have a palette for exotic dishes from dozens of different ethnic styles.
There is a distinct satisfaction, however, when you start accumulating so many of these ingredients - namely spices - that you have them on hand and don't have to be buying new ones with every recipe. That's when your grocery bills really start to plummet.
Even just two months into this little game, I am finding that I have built myself a sturdy arsenal of spices and am getting to the point I don't need to buy any. Take, for example, the pho I made this week. I had most of the spices I needed, along with the onions, garlic and some other veggies. I ended up spending just $25 at the grocery store - most of that on meat - and will likely get five days worth of dinners.
Now that's what I call cost efficient.
Hey Tiff,
ReplyDeleteGreat advice. We talked about this the other day, but I thought I'd comment about it as well. I've found this spice company that has pretty much whatever you can imagine, something like 250 plus spices. It's called Penzeys (Penzeys.com), and their prices are reasonable. For folks who care whether their spcies are irradiated, I checked and they don't do it.