Yummy focaccia bread! Credit: jspatchwork/Flickr

James has a specific question about saving money on bread in the San Fernando Valley.

Hi: I don’t know if you already have covered this, but the Entenmann’s/Oroweat/Bimbo Bakeries outlet store on Strathern in Canoga Park has closed permanently. We used to go there all the time to find cheap Boboli pizza crusts and discounted bread. Do you know of any other bakery outlet stores in the West Valley now? Thanks.

James, have you checked out the almost-stale bread rack at your local grocer? I know most grocery stores have a bread rack with bagels, muffins, and other bread products that are about to expire. I’ve snapped up delicious loaves of focaccia bread for $.99 this way!

Anyone else got advice for James? Leave a comment so everyone can benefit.

Got a hot savings tip or question? Email us!

By Bobbi Burger Brunoehler of BobbisBargains.

Meat muffins - yum!

I have recently discovered many mini-foods I can make with my muffin pan. I’m not really a muffin person, so the pan has lingered unloved in the cabinet next to the oft-used cookie sheets. Until now!

My new uses for muffin tins include:

• Omelets
• Pizza
• Chicken pot pies
• Meat loaves

The nice thing about cooking in a muffin pan is that it takes a much shorter amount of time to cook the item, saving a few bucks on heating your oven. Plus, you end up with individual servings just right for a lunch box.

Here is how I made the mini meat loaves:

Start with ground meat. I used a pound and a half. This allowed for one meal and left over for lunches. I used organic, grass fed beef. Yes, it is pricey, but I would rather spend the money on this grade of ground beef instead of factory farm grown filet mignon. I think it is a wiser financial move because I am giving my family food free of antibiotics. Needless to say, we haven’t had any filet mignon for a very, very long time.

Add the following and mix: (feel free to add whatever other extras are right for your family)

• 2 tablespoons bread crumbs (more if you want to stretch your meat)
• 1 egg
• 2 crushed garlic gloves
• 2 tablespoons salsa (medium hotness)
• salt and pepper to taste

Form meat mixture into balls and put directly into the individual muffin cups. Gently press the ball into the cup to form a flat bottom. The meat will shrink somewhat (see picture) so don’t fill so much that the juices will spill out and into your stove.

Top the balls with BBQ sauce or a sauce of your own mixture. I used a mix of ketchup & mustard.

Bake in preheated 400 degree oven for 15 minutes or until done. Note that this same recipe in a regular meat loaf pan takes an hour to cook.

If you run across a great ground beef sale, you can make up several batches of these mini meat loaves and then freeze them to save money on your groceries. One mini loaf is the perfect size for slicing up to make a man-sized sandwich or two kid sized sandwiches. These also travel well in a lunch box wrapped in a sandwich bag or container. Include a small container of spaghetti sauce or ketchup for a dip.

My family LOVES these “meat muffins.” I hope you do too.

Have you started using your muffin pan more?

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istolethetv/flickr

I remember my grandmother telling me how when she was a little girl she used every part of the chicken. She raised them and ate their eggs. When it was time for that chicken to pass onto the big chicken coop in the sky, the feathers went into pillows.

She cooked and ate the meat. Chicken fat (schmaltz) was rendered and kept for frying. The liver was made into pate. The bones helped make healthy chicken broth.

I thought that was the end of the chicken, but apparently I was wrong.

If you dry the bones and smash them to bits you get bone meal, an incredible soil nutrient that plants love.

Because most people are too busy to even think about deboning a chicken, we pay EXTRA for skinless and boneless chicken. Egad! We’ve thrown out the baby with the bath water.

Let’s consider the cost in lost nutrition of buying boneless chicken. Here’s the math.

Skinless, boneless chicken breasts can cost as much as $5.99/ lb. You cook those babies up, eat them and you are done. End of value. You got protein. And depending on whether that chicken was raised in a commercial farm or free range, you might also have gotten a bunch of antibiotics and hormones.

Let’s say that organic, free range chicken is going for $2.79/lb. You can get an entire cutup chicken for around $9. Make a fresh pot of chicken soup. Serve it as the main course for dinner for a family of four with a bit left over for lunch.

Reserve white breast meat to whip up chicken salad (shredded chicken, hard boiled egg, mayo and salt/pepper) for dinner the next night. Make a salads with greens, tomato, olives, cheese with chicken salad in the middle. Drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice. Serve with crusty bread.

But wait, there’s more. When you are deboning the chicken (after you have boiled it in the soup and are now taking out the bones and shredding it for the soup), take the boiled bones (remove any skin but keep the gristle) and put them in a small pot. Cover the bones with filtered water. Now slowly simmer for hours. All day would be good. Just make sure that you don’t run out of water. Keep the bones covered. Filter the broth and put in the fridge. The collagen from the bones should cause the broth to gel. Bone broth is nutritional gold since it is full of minerals which support the immune and digestive systems. Add it to rice or soups or sauces. Whatever will do well with a bit of liquid and a slight chicken flavor.

You’re not done yet. Now, take those bones and dry them by cooking them in a low temp oven (120 degrees) or microwave them. Now put the dried bones into a paper bag and pound at them with a hammer until they are crushed into bits. This is called “bone meal fertilizer.” A vital nutrient which provides plants with phosphorus and calcium which Miracle Grow sells a 3-pound bag for $14.99.

Are you now starting to see the money going down the drain when you buy boneless, skinless chicken instead of a real chicken with bones and skin and nutrients? By the way, the chicken manufacturers are definitely NOT tossing out all that good stuff when they sell you the overpriced skinless and boneless stuff. They are using it in a hundred different ways including selling the chicken feet as a delicacy in Asia. They must be laughing all the way to the bank.

I don’t really think that you or I are going to start raising, wringing the neck of and de-feathering our own chickens, but let’s at least get the most nutritional value out of the chicken as we can get. Or, maybe you ARE going to raise your own chickens. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

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serenejournal/flickr

In my post on snagging free and deeply discounted food, I listed a meal swap (or meal sharing) as a way to save money on food. Here’s how to set one up.

The idea behind a meal swap is that each person makes a big batch of what they are cooking and then divides it into smaller servings, packing the food so it is freezer ready. Everyone in the meal swap meets once a week or once a month (whatever is decided upon) and swaps what they have made.

This is different than a food swap in that everyone

takes one of whatever each other makes. In most swaps, you don’t have to swap unless you want to. This is more like communal cooking and sharing.

The savings in this system is not only the cost of the ingredients, but also the amount of time involved in cooking.

There are stumbling blocks to making this work, so I want to address those here. I have never done a meal swap, but it is a great way to save money and time.

1. Get a group of people committed to doing this. If you have seven families in the group and two of them aren’t dedicated, then you end up with only five dishes. It won’t be enough to keep it going.
2. Check for allergies. If one person is allergic to soy and another to peanuts and another to dairy and another to gluten it will be hard to make this work. There will be so many restrictions! On the other hand, if you gather together a group with similar allergies, it would be VERY helpful.
3. Decide on standards for ingredients. Do you only want organic veggies or will regular veggies do? Free range eggs only, or will commercial eggs be okay?
4. Agree about the portions and cost. Will it be fair for one person to bring in a huge container of soup and another person to bring a jar of jam? How do you maintain balance? I suggest everyone make an entree. (Check out our recipes page for ideas). You might add a side dish if everything goes well.
5. Decide upon a convenient time and place to meet and swap. Ideally, members either live nearby or have a common meeting place like work or church. This will make it easier to keep your swap going.
6. Reuse storage containers so Tupperware is not an additional cost.
7. Consider a liability waiver for each participant to sign indicating that everyone promises to uphold to the highest level of cleanliness and take responsibility for swapping. In other words, no one can sue if they get sick from eating what you make. So… make sure that everyone is knowledgeable about how to handle the cooking and storing of food. You might even consider, as a group, taking classes on food preservation.

Have you swapped meals? I’d like to hear how it went for you.

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Craft service menu on a TV shoot. AverageJane/flickr

A friend of mine recently asked me, “So, where can I get free food?” Of course, this was just too good of a challenge for me to just let go.

The fact is that there are lots of ways to get free or deeply discounted food. I will start with deep discounts and work my way down to free.

1.  Grocery store clearance. Fresh & Easy grocery stores discount food on the day of expiration. They discount up to 75% off and place them in a clearance section of the store. More ways to save on groceries.
2. Vendors at Farmer’s Markets offer deeply discounted fresh fruits and veggies in the last 15-30 minutes of the market.

3. Become a coupon expert. With a good knowledge of couponing, one can get extremely cheap or free items. The trick is to make sure that you are getting things that you actually need/want. It is not a bargain if you don’t really want it.
4. Join a food coop. Find a coop near you. It’s almost always cheaper to buy in bulk and get rid of the middle man.
5. Coordinate your friends and neighbors to cook potluck style. Get your friends to each make a big dish of something and put into individual containers. Then trade. With a group of 7 people, if each person makes one large entree (like a stew or soup), then each person could end up with a full week’s worth of food.
6. Go dumpster diving. If the Bargain Babe can do it, so can you. The fact is that lots of perfectly good food gets tossed into dumpsters every night. (Note, check in your state if this is legal.)
7. Work on a film or tv shoot. If you happen to be in an area of the country that has film productions (and most of them do now), get yourself booked as an extra. They always feed the cast. Sometimes they feed the cast really well. Sometimes you will even get paid a bit of money. Look at your local Craigslist under gigs and search for “extras” or “casting.”
8. Get a job working in a place that serves food. One of the perks of such a job is that you get to eat. If you don’t want a job every day, then hook up with a catering service. Then you can pick and choose your availability. However, you don’t have to be wait staff to get fed. You could work the door, security, parking, entertainment, etc. They all get fed.
9. Get invited to parties. Hey, there is always food at parties. Become a social butterfly and get yourself invited to parties. Make sure you learn how to be a great guest.
10. Food banks and soup kitchens. Every state in America has some sort of food bank program. You can use the food bank locator to find one in your area. There are tons of links to other programs listed on the FeedingAmerica.org site. Perhaps you need a meal or perhaps you want to help others receive meals. Help feed the homeless and then eat dinner with them. It’s good in so many ways.

OK, so some of these ideas might not be for you, but believe me, I left off some ideas I had, like “crash a wedding reception” or “pan handle.” What ideas for free or deeply discounted food do you suggest?

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Stop wasting money and food! The folks over at All You shared a handy inforgraphic that compares the shelf life of food kept in the freezer and the pantry so you know how long items keep. Taking advantage of sales and stocking up is a good way to save money on groceries, but throwing food away is wasteful.

This weekend I’m taking inventory of everything that’s in our pantry. I want to cut down on my grocery bill even more and this is the first step to lowering my food budget. The fridge also needs a good scrub down. I’m using baking soda to leave it smelling fresh. Check out these other secret uses for baking soda.

[Source: Daily Savings from All You]

Substitute out pricey saffron - Klearchos Kapoutsis/flickr

With all the holiday cooking and baking that goes on, it is likely that you will open a recipe (like one of Yazmin’s non-traditional desserts) and discover you are out of an ingredient. Sometimes going to get that missing item can be impossible (snowed in) or expensive (saffron is $40 per ounce or more). What’s a cook to do?

Substitute!

If you understand what each ingredient is doing in the recipe, you can find something else that will do the same thing.

For instance, cream of tartar is something that is NOT on the shelves of most cooks. But it tends to show up in holiday recipes. Cream of tartar can be used for three main reasons:

• to keep egg whites fluffy when you whip them
• to make breads and cookies rise when used with baking soda
• to give frosting its creamy texture

If you don’t have any cream of tartar, you can substitute

• vinegar or lemon juice to keep your egg whites fluffy (use the same quantity as the cream of tartar in the recipe)
• baking powder replaces cream of tartar AND baking soda – 1/3 teaspoon baking soda and 2/3 teaspoon cream of tartar equals 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• forget about it in the frosting as it’s not really necessary

Other great substitutes:

• Honey – replace with 1 1/4 cup sugar and 1/4 cup water
• Cardamon – use a combination of cinnamon and nutmeg
• Evaporated milk – mix 2/3 cup non-fat dry milk with 3/4 cup water – makes one cup evaporated milk substitute
• Yeast – baking soda and lemon juice in equal amounts to make up the missing amount of yeast – added at the end of your mixing

Unfortunately, there appears to be no really good substitute for the most expensive spice in the world, saffron. There are substitutes for the color: marigold petals, safflower or food coloring. A somewhat workable substitute for the flavor is turmaric. Trader Joes carries their own brand of saffron which is cheaper than most places and has a passable flavor.

A great source for substitutes for just about anything is The Cook’s Thesaurus.

Do you have a substitute that you use in cooking?

MizGingerSnaps / Flickr

I share five must read blog posts about saving money every Friday.

Dining out? Save money on eating out with these ten tips. (The Digerati Life)

The most common car repairs and how to avoid them. (Mainstreet)

Money managment tips for newly married couples or spouses who argue about money. (Money Crashers)

Save money and energy! Reduce your heating bill with these frugal ways to keep your home warm this winter. (Wisebread)

Frugalista? Stay in fashion and learn how to buy shoes on a budget. (The Centsible Life)

Fast food is NOT cheaper: NYT

With fast food prices ridiculously low – every chain has a dollar menu, it seems – it’s not surprising that so many people believe junk food is cheaper than healthy grub. But it’s not, says a recent New York Times article:

In general, despite extensive government subsidies, hyperprocessed food remains more expensive than food cooked at home.

The writer compares the price of a McDonald’s meal for four with a home-cooked chicken dinner and a home-cooked rice and beans dinner. Guest how much more expensive fast food is???

McDonald’s meal – 2 Big Macs, 1 cheeseburger, 1 6-piece Chicken McNuggets, 2 medium fries, 2 small fries, 2 medium Cokes, 2 small Cokes

Chicken dinner – whole chicken, lettuce (for salad), potatoes, four slices of bread, a lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper, and milk

Rice and beans – pinto beans, rice, onion, two green bell peppers, three slices bacon, salt and pepper, milk

The prices of the meals are $27.89, $13.78, and $9.26, respectively. The chicken dinner saves you 51% compared to fast food, while rice and beans saves you 67%.

Scary fact: there are five fast-food restaurants for every grocery store in the U.S.

The story debunks more fast food myths.

Myth No. 1: Fast food is cheaper per calorie.

Reality: With so many people obese, and so many fast food calories being “empty” calories that don’t keep you as full for long, this argument doesn’t hold water. “Measuring food’s value by the calorie makes as much sense as measuring a drink’s value by its alcohol content. (Why not drink 95 percent neutral grain spirit, the cheapest way to get drunk?)”

Myth No. 2: Organic food is way more expensive than Mickey D’s.

Reality: Sure it is. But there are plenty of non-organic options that are super healthy, like beans, whole grains, dairy, vegetables, rice, vegetables, meat, fish, peanut butter, and bread.

Myth No. 3: Some people live in a “food desert” where the nearest grocery store is 10 miles or more away.

Reality: 93% of people with “limited access” to a grocery store have access to cars, so it’s really about making a choice to spend time driving to and from the grocery store, and then cooking dinner. Who’s got time? Well the average American watches 1.5 hours of TV a day, so there you go. The real issue is that cooking dinner is seen as extra work, not as a way to provide your family with the very best.

Check out all our healthy recipes, including easy weeknight dinners, how to make a great salad, and a frugal lemony pasta dish.

I was invited onto NBC to talk about the Festival the night before (June 24, 2011). Check out my conversation with Ana Garcia on Nonstop LA!

View more videos at: http://www.nbclosangeles.com.

A picture of one of my salads with sliced baby squash.

I love a good salad. I’ve been told by many that I make FABULOUS salads. I tell people that it is easy. Just open the fridge, chop up whatever is in there and, ta-da, you have a salad. Let me be more specific.

Grab a large container. Get out your cutting board and your best knife for cutting veggies into small pieces. I like my salad pieces to be smallish so I can combine different flavors for the perfect bite.

Here are the ingredients I used for the last awesome salad I made.

I used these ingredients because they were in my fridge and I thought they would taste good together.

1. Hard boiled egg – cut into cubes
2. Carrots – long thin shreds using the veggie peeler
3. Celery – small “c” shapes
4. Baby spinach
5. Chopped pecans – put halved pecans in a sandwich bag and smash with the back of a big spoon
6. Raisins – nice juicy ones, not old dried up raisins
7. Chicken – I had some left over fried chicken that I cut into squares after tossing the skin
8. Feta cheese – get a chunk from Trader Joe’s and crumble by hand for the best price
9. Black olives – cut into fourths
10. Tomatoes – heirloom from farmer’s market cut into cubes
11. Red onion – fresh and thinly sliced
12. Mushrooms – fresh and thickly sliced
13. Pasta with garlic sauce – happened to have some left over with the sauce I got from a food swap
14. Baby spring salad greens – I get these weekly at the farmer’s market. Put a crumpled paper towel in the bag to keep the greens from wilting so fast
15. Dill – just a bit, too much will be overwhelming
16. Fresh lemon juice – a grabbed a nice fresh lemon off my neighbor’s tree and squeezed the juice over the salad. I like my salad a little soggy, so I put on the lemon juice when I make the salad, but you can put the lemon and the oil on when you are ready to eat.
17. Salt and pepper – use pink Himalayan salt and fresh ground pepper for the best flavor
18. Olive oil – the best you can afford. Don’t put this on until you are ready to eat.

Chopping all of this up takes a bit of time. But, if you invite over a friend to chat or watch a movie or listen to a book on tape, the time goes by fast.

By the time you are done, your salad will feed four people for a meal. If you are eating solo, you will want to save it. I make my salads in a large shallow rectangular container that has a lid. It gives me a large surface area to work with while creating my masterpiece, yet I can easily pop on a lid when done.

As long as your ingredients are fresh, your salad will last for at least a couple days in the fridge, perhaps longer. I prepare salads ahead of time and put into smaller containers to take with me for lunch. I toss a few crackers in a sandwich bag for extra crunch.

If you want some more inspiration for great salad ideas check out these farmer’s salad recipes.

Tips on preserving summer fruit at the Festival!

Want to learn how to preserve summer produce that is ridiculously low-priced? Albertsons specialist Heidi Diller will show you how at Frugal Festival Food! on June 25 in LA.

Today’s book giveaway is for “Vegan on the Cheap.” Contest ends tonight at 11:59 p.m. EST so make sure to comment today for a chance to win.

Comments poured in for yesterday’s contest to win “Poor Girl Gourmet.” The five winners have been announced!

Don’t miss the first ever festival to save money on food! Frugal Festival Food! is June 25 in LA and supports the LA Regional Food Bank. Get your tickets now!

Greencolander / Flickr

I share five must read blog posts about saving money every Friday.

Women’s skills are profitable for companies. So why is it that CEOs are not scrambling to attract and retain female employees? (DailyWorth)

Renting a car? Before doing so, read about 6 car rental rip-offs to watch for. (MoneyTalk News)

Start gearing up for the summer heat. Here’s how to buy a window AC unit. (Fabulous and Frugal)

What’s better: being self employed or having a 9 to 5? Before deciding between the two different work lifestyles, compare these four factors to make the best decision for YOU. (The Digerati Life)

Could you eat for $4 a day? Donna did! She had three meals plus snacks on what the government considers a limited budget. (Surviving and Thriving)

LOZO is raffling off five $50 American Express gift cards to celebrate it’s upcoming new tool that finds coupons for your grocery list. You get one free raffle ticket with admission so everyone is eligible to win!

The Stand is bringing free hot dogs and chili to share with everyone at the Festival. YUM!

Get your tickets today!