Extracting Value

I recently watched a video from one of my favorite YouTubers – her name is Leisa, and the channel is Sutton’s Daze.  Leisa reminded me of a concept that I learned by watching my parents and grandparents practice it.  Anyone who lived through the Great Depression knew and lived by it, because it was an important means of survival.  

The concept: 

Don’t waste what still has value.

Leisa’s video gave good examples – the bones from a rotisserie chicken can be used in bone broth and vegetable peels and scraps can be put in the compost, given to chickens, or frozen for making stock.  The can of bacon fat at the back of Granny’s stove looked a little gross, but it made flavorful cooking oil, or was used in place of butter in bread dough.  Scraps of slightly stale bread can be frozen and collected for homemade croutons or bread crumbs.

Bacon Fat

I thought of a few more things that we do in our home to extract  value from things that might be thrown away.  My husband does a lot of the cooking.  He saves bacon grease in a coffee cup, but strains out the solids so that it is just beautiful white fat.  His mother was an expert bread baker and she used bacon fat for pie crusts, both sweet and savory pies.  

Saving Cracker Crumbs?

I often save the crumbs from the box of crackers or potato chips, to add to our coating mix bag.  We keep a ziplock in the fridge freezer with flour, a good amount of salt and pepper, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, parsley flakes, dried bread crumbs, cracker and chip crumbs and a small amount of grated parmesan.  This generic coating mix works well for homemade chicken burgers and nuggets, also added to meatballs and meatloaf, to coat fish or onion rings.  It takes seconds to add a bit of leftover crumbs to a freezer and you get a free coating mix without any weird chemicals.  

An Avalanche of Produce

Summer produce ripens all at once, but you don’t have to choose between canning in sweltering heat or letting it go to waste. With tomatoes,  I take out the stem and freeze the tomatoes whole.  In the colder months, when it makes more sense to heat up your kitchen with boiling water, you can make tomato products to freeze or can.  I thaw the bags of tomatoes in the sink overnight and then the skins slip right off those limp tomatoes.  This also extracts a lot of the water, so cooking sauces takes a lot less time.  I am told, although I haven’t tried it yet, that tomato skins can be dehydrated for a delicious tomato powder.

You can also freeze summer berries to make jam in the winter, when you want heat and humidity in your house.

Textile Talk

You can definitely extract more value from old clothing and household linens.  Worn clothing can be refreshed by over-dyeing, particularly faded jeans.  Worn clothing still has a lot of usable fabric – cut up that man’s poly-cotton shirt and reuse the fabric in quilts, patches for mending and upcycling.  I will have many more posts in the coming days that give you ideas and how-to’s for overdyeing, and reusing fabric.

Speaking of worn clothing – mending is trending!  There are lots of Youtube videos on visible mending, and library books on mending and darning.  Darning socks is regaining popularity!  Learn to darn and your socks and sweaters will last for years.  Darning and mending by the fireplace during a snow storm is the ultimate cozy project.

In Conclusion

I’m sure you can come up with other ways to extract more value from the things in your home.  You can choose one or two of these ideas, and start putting them in practice today.  Definitely start thinking “what else can I use this for” before throwing anything out.  You’ll feel so clever and confident when you make something for free out of scraps.