Days 5 & 6

After my pity-party on Wednesday, we rose back up to the challenge to finish the week off respectfully. Thursday night Kali and I came home and made our famous "Fridge Fantastico". Not necessarily fantastic, but very edible. We take anything in the fridge, including veggies, meat, and sauces that are close to being thrown out and throw them in a pot instead. Now, they obviously have to make sense together. No pizza sauce and chicken soup. We made a nice chicken and noodle stew with carrots, celery and red peppers. Not a bad collection. If Kali will eat it, it must be alright! I highly recommend this recycling philosophy to remedy tossing veggies and leftovers that are beyond original appeal. One requirement: the ingredients must still look fairly good. No mold, no mushiness, no funky smells. I did take out some frozen chicken breasts for this concoction, and they went well. In fact, chicken bouillon is a staple in my cupboard!

PIZZA

By cleaning out the fridge a little, I got back in the mood of cooking. I decided to try cooking fresh what we might otherwise buy pre-packaged or frozen. I mentioned earlier that we ate our last frozen pizza, so I decided Friday we would give scratch pizza a shot. Crust and all. Between the web and my cookbooks I found a crust recipe that looked good and easy. I made our list of groceries for the week, and Kali and I trotted off to the store after work on Friday. Yay! We made it to the weekend! Thankfully, I have a daughter who loves to be in the kitchen with us. This is where we can blend playtime and cooking together. When she was smaller we couldn't do this. Now she not only understands what's going on and what not to touch, she can also help in her own way. Our first pizza crust experience went okay. It was fairly easy and tastes good. Our only problem was ultimately my fault. I forgot that you want to pre-heat the pizza stone...our crust stuck to it. I used a blend of all-purpose and whole wheat flour, and we all liked the taste. We prefer thin crust, and this recipe was not thin at all. It tasted more like bread. We will continue to try different recipes and find one that we like best. Overall, though, it was a good experience and worthwhile both time-wise and taste-wise. Clean up was average for scratch cooking.

Time spent cooking: 1 hour
Time spent cleaning up: .5 hour

This is also the first time I was able to calculate whether we saved money. Before today, we were working with food I hadn't kept track of. Now my spreadsheet is paying off! While my numbers aren't exact, I think they're a pretty close estimate:

Tomato sauce (mix of paste, sauce, spices): $.75-$1.00
Crust (flour, yeast, oil, water, salt): $.50-$.60
Meat (canadian bacon, pepperoni): $2.50-$3.00
Cheese (mozzarella, cheddar): $1.75-$2.00
Toppings (pineapple, peppers, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes): $1.50-$1.75
TOTAL SCRATCH COST: $7.00-$8.35

You're probably wondering why I include a range. Costs on things change...sales and discounts happen. Some things we have expensive taste in (Tilamook cheddar) and other things we don't (cheap pepperoni). As intricate as my spreadsheet is, I'm not going to figure out exactly how much a teaspoon of salt costs. I'm confident that we can make wise decisions based on these estimates. Based on this first pizza experiment, we found that our scratch pizza costs as much as a fancy frozen pizza, and is way cheaper than a pizza parlor/delivery pizza. Taste is like that of a good delivery pizza, and better than a frozen pizza. Clean up and prep is obviously more than both delivery and frozen. Overall, we decided that it is worthwhile to make pizza from scratch for both the taste and cost. Because we are able to blend cooking and playtime on this, the time consumption is worthwhile as well. While toppings (veggies) are not the most expensive items, they do add up. Once we get a garden in, and begin harvesting our own vegatables, that will also factor into the cost.

LATTES

Another experiment we've been working with all week is Ryan's latte addiction. We both enjoy a good latte, but my husband absolutely adores them! Luckily we started making our own lattes a couple of years ago, but got off the scratch habit when we both started working. This week he started making them at home again. The savings on this project are much more obvious:

Time spent cooking & cleaning up: 0.25 hour

Milk (16 oz): $.36
Espresso: $.25
Caramel: $.18
Whip: $.11
TOTAL SCRATCH COST: $.86

Again this is an estimate...in fact, I think it's even lower as I had to estimate how many scoops of beans are in the bag (how long a bag will last). Regardless, WOW! We pay $3-$4 per 16 ounce latte at different coffee shops. Let's take this one a step futher...if you had a latte each day of the year, your scratch cost is $314. If you spend $3/day on a latte at a coffee shop for a year, the cost is $1095. That's a yearly savings of at least $780! You could buy a top-of the line espresso maker and still have money left over! Overall, we decided that it is very worthwhile to make lattes from scratch for both the taste and cost. Ryan also pointed out we save money on the fuel!

Whew! One week almost complete. Today we will spend our Saturday cleaning, baking, and, most importantly, playing! I think this week was a very practical start to our challenge. We had moments of weakness, and moments of success. Onward ho!