seasonal foods Archives - Carma's Cookery

Saving with Baking Ingredients

Buy in bulk. Get ingredients like cocoa powder, rolled oats, flaked coconut, nuts and spices in bulk. These ingredients are easy to store and have a longer shelf-life.

Don’t be afraid to use things that are about to spoil. Do you have some bananas which are past their edible state? Use them in some banana bread. Do you have some leftover cooked rice? Turn it into rice pudding. Even leftover mashed potatoes can be used in your baking by making potato fudge.

If you have bananas about to turn but don’t want to make banana bread or muffins, freeze the bananas peel and all so you can use them for baking in the future.

Use your pantry. Just the basics from your pantry can be transformed into a great sweet treat. Here’s where you can be creative. Look at what you have in your pantry and refrigerator, look for recipes on the internet that use some of those ingredients and you’ll have a home-baked treat in no time!

For example, some peanut butter and brown sugar give you the basis for a peanut butter cake. Add some oats, flour, baking soda, shortening, egg, vanilla and chocolate chips and you’ve got what you need. Or what about peanut butter cookies that don’t even need flour? Just add some egg and vanilla and you’ve got a simple peanut butter cookie. Do you have some canned pineapple and some raw carrots? Then you can make a Pineapple Carrot Cake.

Use substitutions made from ingredients you do have. For example, if you don’t have buttermilk for a recipe, you can make your own sour milk (a good substitution for buttermilk) by pouring a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar in a cup of regular milk. Let it sit for a few minutes. Check online for more substitutions when you’re missing an ingredient.

Use seasonal foods. During the fall and winter months when apples are in season, use them in your baking. Don’t forget pumpkin! You can get a lot of tasty sweet treats in the fall and winter out of pumpkin. In the summer, adding strawberries to things makes for a tasty treat. An angel food cake with strawberries is divine. Think strawberry shortcake — either traditionally with biscuits (you always have Bisquick on hand, right?) or with a quickly baked yellow cake (buy boxes at your local dollar store and keep them for last-minute treats).

Budget Baking Technique

Save energy. If you don’t need a huge amount of cookies, then use the toaster oven instead of the regular oven to bake it in. It uses much less energy. On the other hand, baking in bulk and freezing for later can be energy efficient too. Do all of your baking at once and have dessert from your freezer for months to come.

Baking on a budget can really be quite simple. It’s so easy to save by doing all of your own home baking, too. And don’t think that just because you haven’t been able to bake before that you can’t do it now. The more you give it a try, the better you will get. It’s like anything else that is learned – practice makes perfect. So keep trying; you just might find that you can make some really sweet treats.

Sometimes living organically is just a matter of changing your perspective … or your buying habits. By changing when you buy certain foods (what season) or where you buy them (at a farmer’s market instead of the big-chain grocery store), and you may find that you are not only eating more healthy and nutritious food, but your are saving money on your grocery bill, as well!

Here are five more tips in my Organic Living series that will help you creatively incorporate healthier food into your lifestyle.

1. Buy better beef
Not only do you want to pay attention to what you eat, but if you eat meat, you need to pay attention to what you eat eats, as well. Most “grass fed” beef are still grain finished. Grass-fed beef is more nutritious than grain-fed beef. For 100% grass fed beef, look for a local farm you can buy from. If you’d like information about buying local, grass-fed beef, check out You Can Afford Grass-Fed Beef! – The ultimate guide to saving money by eating high-quality, local meat.

2. Watch the Glycemic Index of your fruit.
Foods on high on the glycemic index (GI) put more sugar into your digestive track and blood stream. This can cause problems whether you’re healthy or have diabetes. And although fruit can be healthy, you want to monitor how much and what kinds you eat. Most fruits have quite a high GI. The exception are berries (including strawberries) which are low GI and very healthy. Here’s a quick list of the top 5 low glycemic fruits:

Low Glycemic Fresh Fruits

Berries (an average of blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries) – 47 GI, 7g carbs and a glycemic load of 3
2 whole plums – 24 GI, 14g carbs and a glycemic load of 4
1 large peach – 28 GI, 14g carbs and a glycemic load of 4
1 slice of a large cantaloupe – 70 GI, 5g carbs and a glycemic load of 4
1 medium nectarine – 43 GI, 13g carbs and a glycemic load of 5

3. Shop smart for organic produce
It is a common myth that buying organic is more expensive. I know I’ve often thought, “I’ll buy organic when I make more money.” But this is often a fallacy. If you think you can’t afford organic, try buying foods that are in season. It’s both more inexpensive and healthier. You can find all sorts of inexpensive, fresh and organic produce at your local farmers market.

4. Store food for out of season
Have a favorite seasonal food? Buy it when it’s in season, then freeze it or can it. It’s healthier than buying it out of season. Foods being sold out of season can have a number of things going against them:

They traveled farther to get to you.
They were stored longer.
They many have been treated in order to survive the longer travel and storage time.

All this leads to lower nutritional value of the product, and sometimes an increase in unhealthful qualities, as well.

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5. Be careful with seafood.
Eating fish used to be a pretty healthy way to go. However, the aquatic and marine environments are becoming less and less ideal with increasing pollution. There are two ways you can get around this:

Don’t need fish too often, and
Avoid large fish like tuna.

Large fish eat small fish and build up higher concentrations of mercury.

Missed previous posts in this Organic Living series? Check them out here!

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Take Charge of Your Health!

Changing your eating habits can be tough. But it doesn’t have to be if you take a little time to think it out and create a plan.

This Healthy Eating Worksheet will walk you through the process of creating a healthy eating plan. All you need to do is print it out, set aside some time to complete it, and then fill it out. Then you can create your plan, knowing that you have addressed potential obstacles and came up with some creative ways to handle them.

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