It’s Friday once again, and frugality is the topic of the day.

I have to say, these roll around so soon on me, and I wonder what I would write about this topic one more time.

Today is one of those days, when I have no idea.

But the beauty of writing, for me, is that things mostly occur to me as I start typing. And so, here I am.

Frugality for me is an action rooted not just in saving money, but a whole lifestyle worth of benefits. 

I will talk about one of those HUGE benefits in this post today.

Frugality for me also means good health.

When I go to the grocery store, and buy a few good quality ingredients, then I am being frugal with the amount I buy and spend. But definitely not depriving my family in terms of quality or quantity. Only buying as much as we can use without wasting, and then making good use of what we have…that is the reward and satisfaction of frugality in this case.

Limiting our purchases to ingredients– produce, oil, spices, flour, nuts and seeds, dairy, eggs- and not to finished packaged products means I will be reducing the amount of ultra processed foods we will be consuming. I will also have control over how those ingredients are prepared (by me!) to be consumed.

Cooking at home with the best ingredients, and using ways of cooking that do not destroy those beautiful ingredients means I am being frugal with my grocery purchases, AND giving us all a gift of health…and love…and my time and effort.

Some of my adventures lately in the kitchen have involved using my sourdough discard in some way or the other. We baked cookies with some (see yesterday’s post). I also made rotis with the rest. 

As I was making the dough for these rotis for dinner last night, my big brainwave. It was this:

When I do bake some bread this weekend, why can’t I add the discard back to the dough, so all that flour in the discard gets used up, since I would be using more flour for the dough anyways! 

I felt so proud of this revelation, as I’ve never heard anyone else talk about this in all my reading on sourdough bread baking online or in books. This way I get to be frugal with flour, and avoid waste! I will report back on how this experiment goes 🙂 The only downside I can think of is maybe it will be quite sour with all the extra starter in the bread dough? We shall see…

I started fermenting some fermented kimchikraut (as I call it) with all the vegetables I already had on hand- a huge head of cabbage from my CSA, a beet, a carrot, yellow onion, apple, garlic, ginger, hot red pepper and daikon radish. The head of cabbage that I got last week from my CSA was so huge that I knew I couldn’t just cook it all for dinner in one go. So I decided to make some saurkraut. But then I realized I have all these other vegetables to play with, so kimchikraut was born…I love how the beet gives it this beautiful colour. And hopefully we get to eat it next week 🙂 Some vitamin C for this cold cold winter would be great in fermented form, right?

I am also always sprouting. And then I pack those bean sprouts for lunch for my husband and I each day…a healthy crunchy delight that does good things to my body. And dried beans are dirt cheap and don’t need much packaging to come home, and can be stored forever! Frugality wins galore!

I also made another BIG batch of granola over the holidays. Then I froze most of it so we can slowly use them over the next few months as needed. Again, I get to use good ingredients (I mixed and matched whatever I had at hand- a few pistachios, a few almonds, 3 kinds of seeds…anything goes!), control quantities and quality of sugar and oil, and have a lot more for a lot less money than I could get for this quality of granola if I buy it. This one is a no-brainer for me. I am always aghast at how expensive granola is at the farmer’s market! 

• Making yogurt each week

• Roasting vegetables for lunch

• Fermenting extra vegetables

• Buying dried beans and lentils and cooking them for dinner

• Buying produce directly from the farmer through a CSA

• Soaking grains before cooking

• Carrying reusable bags and produce bags to the grocery store

• Getting creative with leftovers or random ingredients in the fridge

These are some ways that I can think of that help me be frugal AND healthy with food. 

Frugality in the kitchen certainly equates to good health for me.

And of course, this with the philosophy that frugality is not about deprivation, but optimization.

So buy as much as you need, buy good quality, and buy mostly ingredients instead of products…

That is my way of healthy living frugality. And that makes my kitchen the powerhouse hub where my family’s good health stems from.