Homemade Goodness

Okay, I feel like a bit of an idiot for not having figured this out before, but bear with me. Homemade things cost less!

Today I made jam for the first time. I always wanted to do things like canning in America, but it always seemed that by the time we bought the jars and all the ingredients it was too expensive. However, here in the amazing volcanic land down under things grow like crazy! People give us bags of fruit all the time. I've had about 3 kg of plums in the freezer for about a year. Well, not anymore. Now I have 7 big jars of plum jam, using recycled jam jars of course. This same jar of jam from the store would cost about $4. All of the the ingredients to make these 7 jars at home cost less than $5! Woo hoo! And no hidden additives.

I think that I am going to tackle home made bread next. I don't have a bread maker. I got rid of the second hand one we had, because it took up too much space and didn't always work properly. But I just found a great recipe for whole wheat bread that doesn't sound too hard. And the best part? It will cost about $.80-$1.00 to make. We pay on average $4 a loaf for whole wheat bread. We eat about 1 loaf a day. The only thing I don't like about the homemade is that I won't know the glycemic index or fibre content. But maybe I can figure that out. Eventually, when and if I get good at making this bread, I'm sure I can graduate to more difficult loaves that might be even healthier. I am so excited!

It is a lot of work. This jam today has taken me about 2 hours to make, not including defrosting the plums. But it was easy work. The hardest part was pitting and peeling the plums. Strawberry jam would be much easier. So far, it seems worth it to me to have healthy low cost foods for my family.