Homemaking on the Homestead

Calculating the Cost After making tonight’s low cost meal I thought I would share how you calculate the cost of food items that are a little trickier to figure out.   I am referring to things like pasta, rice, beans, etc..   how do you determine what a cup of pasta or beans cost?   You will need a small scale to do this.   Having a scale in the kitchen is very handy.   I bought a small postal scale from ebay years ago and have put to good use!   The first thing you need to know is the price you paid for your item and how much it weighs.   Let’s use pasta for this example (I had to do this today to calculate how much I spent on my dinner, so it is an easy one for me to share).    I bought a 10lb box of whole wheat elbow macaroni from my food co-op Azure Standard.   I paid $21.35 for it.    The next step is to find out is what 1 cup of dry elbow macaroni weighs.   I put it on my scale and it weighed ...

This week it was time to head back to Costco as well as our usual Winco for our groceries. It had been 3 weeks since we'd been there. Our first stop was Winco and this is what we got... Our regular supply of fruits and veggies, a half gallon of milk and half-n-half for our coffee and yogurt. The Jimmy Dean sausage was on sale and I picked up one for the freezer. I also got 3 cans of spaghetti sauce for the pantry and a bag of bbq chips and hot dog buns. I have hot dogs in the freezer and no buns. So now both are in there waiting until we have a craving for some hot dogs! :) The total for Winco this week was $32 Next stop was Costco... I was out of cheese completely so I picked up 5#'s of grated cheddar and a pack of cheese slices. I've never tried this brand before as I'm typically a Tillamook cheese person but we decided to give it a try...    Despite my plan to not buy any meat p...