Almanac for Homemakers

Shop to Avoid Leftover Fruits "When estimating the number of servings from fresh fruits, allow for waste - the inedible parts, such as parings, trimmings, cores, and pits." Our Homemaker Heroine is having a rough time with her grocery shopping. Yesterday she had some vegetable issues. Today she is contemplating her life decisions. "Why didn't I just go for that math degree? I went and got an Art degree and now I'm unemployed staring at fruit for 30 minutes while the produce monger wonders when he should call 911 on the weird lady that won't put the raspberries down." I have no problems saving money on my fruit shopping. Here is a tip. Buy what you and your family likes. One day I went to the store and bought some grapes. They were gone within two days and that was with me hiding them. I just got some pineapple and I can guarantee you that will last me all week as I will be the only one eating it. The kids expr...

Buy Food, Not Packaging "When you set out to shop for food or home supplies, resolve to bring home as little packaging as possible." Even in the 1970's people knew that reducing packaging saves money and waste. I found an article from Zero Waste Nerd on ways to reduce your food packaging. Really it makes sense to reduce our packaging especially if you have the option to. If you can't then take advantage of recycling programs. Recently, BBC came out with article about micro-plastics in bottled water. Plastic trash is found all over the world. The bad part is that plastic takes a long long time to decompose. So all the plastic that we put in the environment is now coming back to us. Plastic found its way into our bottled water because it is in our natural water sources. It has been for a long time! Ocean, river, and lake clean up efforts have been underway since the 60's when we started seeing how plastics were effecting the envi...