Ways I Save...

"I buy my freedom with my frugality".

Vicki Robins--Your Money or your Life

Bacon and Ham
It really is SO much fun for me
to see how far I can make something stretch whether it be money, or food.
It is rewarding to me.

Part of being frugal means you have to deal with handling "meat" or other so-called unpleasant things, but, it feels good to take care of your family and be a
"Pioneer woman".
Women in older times didn't have a choice but to deal with things like this or their families would starve.

SO, I used to feel really good about my frugality, because I used to buy packages of bacon when it was on sale (3 packages for $5.00) and then I would come home and cut the packages in half and then freeze them in quart sized bags.

Well, I have actually reached
a NEW level of frugality in this area...
here is what I do now.

Last spring Tracy and I were shopping and noticed a bag of Bacon Ends and Pieces which was 3 pounds for $3.78.
We decided to try it out and so we came home and repackaged it and ended up with 11 snack sized bags.

We have bought these on 2 different occasions and they taste great and work really well for flavoring beans and they are yummy to scramble with eggs for making Breakfast burritos, or, Omelette eggs.

Not only are we saving money,
but calories as well
as we are using about half the amount of bacon we would be using if we just cut packages of bacon in half.
We have found that you don't need much bacon or ham in a bean dish to give it flavor.

The cost of each snack sized bag...
just 36 cents

When making breakfast eggs, I use
1/2 of a snack bag of either ham or bacon
and so one snack bag will make up two morning egg breakfasts.

I do the same thing with ham.
We usually buy 2 hams during the holidays when they are on sale and cook one at Christmas and then one during the year.

I make a yummy ham dinner and then
cut all of the remaining ham into small pieces and
put it in snack sized bags as well and put them in the freezer.

BTW...
I can fit all of these snack sized bags in a one gallon freezer bag and so it doesn't take up much space at all to store this in the freezer. I have 2 gallon sized bags (laying flat) in our freezer storing our ham and bacon.

There is never an excuse to not be able to cook up a bean dish because with these helpful money saving tips that we do, we have everything on hand to make whatever bean or legume dish we decide to cook up.
(OR, my kids Favorite...Omelette Eggs)
************************

I think Benjamin Franklin was wise
in the following statement he made and it really does work.

"Watch the pennies
and the dollars will take care of themselves."