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Cooking and Recipes

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When you "cook from scratch" as a lifestyle, it changes your cupboards and your refrigerator.

In over 40 years, I have never even used half of a bottle of vanilla extract--until now. vanilla bottlesIn the first 9 months of my new life I used up 2 small bottles, plus 1 and one-third large (16oz) size bottles! At first I really loved pulling out the zillion ingredients needed to cook from scratch. It was fun! But to tell the truth, it got old fast for every day meals. With no more convenience foods in the house, if you want to eat you have to cook. I wanted a way to have the "convenience" without the expensive and chemical-filled convenience foods. A bit of online searching turned up one answer: homemade mixes.

Homemade mix recipe sites:


cookbookBut it gets even better! You can also inexpensively purchase online powdered margarine, vanilla, shortening, cheese, and eggs to make your very own "just add water" mixes.

The Mix-a-Meal Cook Book by Deanna Bean, goes even further than simple homemade mixes by using dehydrated ingredients to make truly "just add water" convenience! All the benefits of cooking from scratch, but all the convenience of "just add water" mixes. Cooking from scratch just doesn't get any easier!




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The next biggest pain for me is that it always seems like the recipe I really want to make has one ingredient that I don't have. I could add it to the shopping list and wait a month until I go shopping, but I'm way too impatient for that. So I searched the web for ways to substitute cooking ingredients. Here are a few of the best lists I've found, and each is a little different from the others:



I'm too tired after work...

Well, how about the speed and convenience of home-made meatballs in a jar? or your favorite chili or cooked potatoes? Too expensive if bought at the store, but you can easily make your own in a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon. Come on! You owe it to your sanity and your budget to check it out before you say you don't have time: Home-made "Fast Food" Dinners for Busy Cooks.

Find more recipes on my Thrifty page. My Food Storage page has even more recipes and tips on cooking from your pantry.

Take a look at some of my favorite cookbooks at the Chickensense Bookstore.


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