By Robin Shreeves •
October 2, 2008
Have you ever woken up to the smell of freshly baked cinnamon raisin bread? Or come down in the middle of the afternoon from working in your home office to the scent of a loaf of country white bread wafting through the first floor? I have. Frequently.
No, I don’t live above a bakery. I have a bread machine.
It makes delicious, fresh bread for much less than I’d pay for it at the store. I’ve never done a cost break down, but I’m going to guess that for my basic white bread, it costs about $1 a loaf. And, the average loaf takes me less than five minutes to throw together, plus the three hours or so that it takes the machine to do its magic.
My bread machine also has a dough cycle. That means that I can still bake bread in my oven if I want, but the bread machine will do all the mixing and kneading for me. It comes in handy when I’m making pizza dough.
“Sure,” you’re thinking, “making bread doesn’t cost a lot in a bread machine, but what about the machine itself? Won’t it cost a fortune?”
By Kelli Best-Oliver •
September 25, 2008
Sorry, vegetarian and vegan Eat Drink Better readers. This tip is for the omnis! We recently made the move from a vegetarian kitchen to a sometimes-omnivorous kitchen. Without getting into the nuances of both my husband and my’s food preferences, we’re more likely to eat at home if I cook meat sometimes, and I’d rather save the money and eat at home where I can control ingredients. One thing I recently tried as part of this new arrangement was cooking a whole chicken. Why deal with a whole chicken when you can buy the convenient prepackaged boneless skinless breasts? Because you can save a ton of money by buying a whole bird. Find out how, after the jump…
By Kelli Best-Oliver •
September 11, 2008
The other night, I was baking a sheet of puff pastry for a veggie-topped refrigerator pizza. Time got away from me, and I got the puff pastry out of the oven just as the bottom started to burn. Not wanting to throw the base of dinner away, and also not wanting to eat semi-burned food, I had to think of a way to get rid of the bottom of the burned crust. My successful solution, after the jump…
