What did you do to save $ today?

[psmeme]

 

[ducks4you]

Freezer got fried, so I had to can-for-storage all of my frozen grape harvest. Ended up with 13 1/2 quarts.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

Godchild and I made lotion. She used some kind of tea in her mix.
I used plantain and elder from my yard. The beeswax was my own. Not sure what it would have costed us to buy that amount of lotion, filled with chemicals.

 

[IW]

Bought some more canning jars and baking supplies to see if I can get hubby off grocery store doughnuts and breads. Wish me luck...

 

[Denim Deb]

Luck! You have your work cut out for you.

 

[BarredBuff]

Yesterday we slaughtered 24 meat chickens, and will be canning them today

 

[Mattemma]

Was planing to go to the store,because the kids do not like the dry milk.Ah,but it is snowing.Sooooooo that means I saved probably $50 by staying home. I always buy more at the store than my planned purchase.Kids will just have to suck it up and drink the instant stuff.

BarredBuff- do you skin the chickens during slaughter to avoid the feather plucking part? I was thinking I might pluck 1 or 2,but skin the rest.

 

[Marianne]

The question wasn't directed to me, but! We skinned the few that we did.

Speaking of chicken skins, I use whole chickens to make dog food. I keep the chicken skin and fat in a zipper bag in the freezer. It doesn't take long to get enough to render. The clean fat goes in a jar in the frig, the crispy skin goes in my stomach. Yum.

And that's what I'm doing today, rendering chicken fat. I love cooking with that stuff - frying, dumplings, meat pie crusts, etc.

Oh, BTW, I can get packages of trimmed fat from my grocery store for free, so there's always fat for critters.

 

[BarredBuff]

Yes always skinning because the plucking gets old! Especially since we home can it

 

[rhoda_bruce]

Well, I was begginning our normal annual New Years meal yesterday, when my neighbor showed up, asking me if I wanted some ducks. Her husband is kinda trigger happy and he shot his limit for the day on wild duck and prairie hen.
They gave me 5 ducks that I was plucking, then she returns telling me that her husband wanted to know if I wanted the prairie hens.....he had skinned them and removed the breasts and the rest was mine. It took me a while to finish all that, but I hate to see waste and in truth, I will get a lot of meat from it. I have 4 sandwich bags with the giblets, which I will use to make rice dressing mix and I'll have about 7 meals from the hens.....one really nice meal with the ducks. And I think I can safely say, I can sew the casing for a pillow....I believe I probably have just about enough feathers to stuff it.
All it probably costed me was work.