🍞 The Ultimate Frugal Food Hack: Stop Wasting and Start Saving!
Do you really like eating the crust of bread? If you're anything like me, you probably don't. For years, I either reluctantly ate them or simply tossed them out. But as an advocate for efficiency and frugality, throwing away perfectly good food is painful!
It turns out there's a simple, high-value use for those often-discarded ends and trimmings. This is the Frug Life secret to getting maximum value from your groceries.
From Bread Crusts to Gourmet Croutons
When you're eating your favorite loaf, don't throw away those crusty ends or day-old slices!
Freeze and Collect: Toss the crusts and any leftover bread pieces into a bag and store them in the freezer.
Make Croutons: Once you've accumulated a decent amount, you can turn them into homemade croutons—saving you money on the store-bought versions.
Season Simply: Cube the bread, toss it with a neutral oil (like vegetable or canola), and add your seasonings. Salt and pepper are standard, but feel free to get creative with a pinch of cayenne or a ready-made seasoning mix.
Bake Low and Slow: Bake them at a low temperature, around $200^\circ\text{F}$, until they are perfectly dry and crunchy.
Use Every Crumb: Be sure to save all the small crumbs from this process! These can be used as homemade breadcrumbs for coating chicken, binding meatballs, or topping casseroles.
The Secret to Free, Flavorful Stock
Bread isn't the only thing we should stop wasting. Every time you cut vegetables, you likely throw away the pieces that are excellent for making stock.
The Freezer Scrap Bag: Get a large bag and store it in your freezer. Every time you chop vegetables (carrot peels, onion ends, celery leaves, mushroom stems), throw the trimmings into the bag.
Add Bones for Flavor: For richer, more complex stock, add any bones you have. After carving up a rotisserie chicken (like one of those great deals from Costco), throw the carcass right into the scrap bag.
The Frugal Feast: When the bag is full, it's time to make free stock! Simply throw the entire contents—vegetables and bones—into a large pot of boiling water and let it simmer for several hours. You now have a flavorful, nutrient-dense stock base for soups, sauces, or gravy.
In fact, you can use that flavorful chicken stock to make stuffing with the very bread you saved! This is the core of the Frug Life philosophy: maximizing
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