Aht, aht. Before you start to argue you can buy these groceries cheaper and with less time than making them homemade, ask yourself to really look into those ingredients. Ask yourself if you can spare 5 minutes to make your own brown sugar. Ask yourself if you can use those chicken bones from wing night for soup broth. You can! I’ll teach you how. Grab my hand, friend. Let’s go.
Mayonnaise
This grocery made at home is a tough one for me as a mayo fan and more importantly, a Duke’s mayonnaise fan at that. Southerners, raise up!
But that ingredient list!!!! NOT OKAY, Duke’s.
Soybean oil. Really, look into the affects of soybeans. Gross. Not to mention the laundry list of other ingredients I cannot pronounce.
Making your own mayonnaise at home is SO easy and super affordable. Oh and it tastes just as good as Duke’s but better because I know what’s inside won’t hurt me.
Avocado Oil.
Lemon juice.
White vinegar.
Farm fresh egg.
A pinch of a good salt.
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Wide mouth mason jar and an immersion blender (arguably the best from scratch, homemade kitchen investment!) In about 2 minutes, you’ve got a whole-foods, healthy mayonnaise!
A note about mayo groceries:
Oil– you can use olive oil but you’d want a light one. Olive has a strong taste that can overpower the mayonnaise.
Lemon juice– bottled juice is fine!
Eggs– I don’t trust store bought eggs so I wouldn’t eat one raw. Since the egg in this recipe (and all mayo recipes) is raw, use farm fresh eggs if you can. Ask your friends, someone knows a egg farmer!
Check out the full recipe and blog post on How to Make Your Own Mayonnaise.
Brown Sugar
I honestly didn’t know brown sugar is just more or less amounts of molasses mixed into regular sugar.
More molasses makes dark brown sugar. Less makes light brown sugar.
Two grocery ingredients, perhaps 3-5 minutes and you’ve got yourself shelf stable brown sugar in a mason jar.
1 cup of sugar plus 1 tablespoon of molasses makes light brown sugar.
1 cup of sugar plus 2 tablespoons of molasses makes dark brown sugar.
Mix in a bowl well until all clumps of molasses are incorporated into the sugar. Store in an air tight container in your pantry.
More on How to Make Your Own Brown Sugar in this blog post.
Powdered Sugar
Friend, let me tell you! When I found out about how powdered sugar was made, I WAS MAD.
Took me a minute to calm down and honestly, I’m still feeling some type of way about the LIE that is powdered sugar.
You got a blender at home? Ten extra minutes to spare? Okay, great. Put a cup of regular ol’ sugar in the blender and process it 10 times.
This is why powdered sugar is sometimes referred to as 10x sugar. It has been processed 10 times to make the sugar super fine.
Additionally, you could sift the powdered sugar afterwards to make sure you get the finest powder or else your icing could be crunchy. Ask me how I know.
More details on powdered sugar and how-to video demonstration in this post.
A friend shared with me one time how thankful she was I shared this hack on social media. One day she needed powdered sugar but couldn’t run to get groceries at that moment. So she made it at home using that tutorial above. Now that’s convenient!
Chicken Broth or Chicken Stock
I haven’t always kept a gallon freezer bag of chicken bones in my freezer to add to until full of bones, onion, carrot, and garlic ends. But I do now.
Now that I know how easy it is to make your own broth groceries at home for all your fall and winter soup pots.
I also like to use chicken broth as the water measurement when making rice. The broth gives the rice a nice savory flavor without the fake ingredients of store-bought chicken bouillon.
My favorite way to store chicken broth is pressure canning (the only acceptable and safe way to shelf-stabilize meat products like chicken broth) using the Presto Digital Canner. Here is my unpaid and honest review of my canner.
Alternatively and just as effective is freezing chicken broth in freezer bags or ice trays to store for use later. Say goodbye to chicken broth groceries and hello to homemade broth!
Vanilla Extract
My 12 year old who has a peanut allergy has taken up baking in the last year.
He’s great at it too!
He knows the ingredients in his baked goods, where it came from, what the label says, and that he can trust it.
But he is going through a hefty amount of vanilla extract and we do not buy imitation vanilla flavoring! We make it ourselves. The real stuff.
Here is the how-to on making vanilla extract.
Spoiler alert: it does take 6 months to a year before it is ready. Time will pass anyway, use it to your advantage!
A summary of these groceries you can stop buying today:
Sure, most of these are affordable. Convenience food is often like that.
Consider what it would cost in 2024 to load your cart with the perimeter aisles of groceries (generally the healthiest options are found here) and fresh, organic produce.
Take that cart versus what it would cost to fill the same cart with boxes and bags of ultra-processed “food stuffs”.
I think you’ll find you get more for your buck with the junk but the quality is laughable and the nutrition is non-existent with the boxed and bagged groceries.
That’s convenience foods for you.
When we take the time to slow down, consider food making an art and science, and appreciate the labor that goes into hand-crafting a wholesome and nutritious meal for our family, I think you’ll find that it’s not convenient.
Does that mean you shouldn’t make from scratch meals because they aren’t convenient? Absolutely not!
It means “value based spending” may need to be a part of your family’s budget.
Is the Netflix subscription more important that the food budget? I can’t answer that for you but this I do know…
We are living in a world that rushes you and distracts you every second it can…
… making convenience foods a convenient option while it sacrifices your health and wellness.
So, make your choices. Do your thing! Be grateful for first world amenities and conveniences but know that majority of the time it comes at a cost we will pay later. “Buy now, pay later” kinda health.
When you commit to start making groceries at home, meals from scratch, a small herb garden, supporting local farmers and ranchers, etc… you are essentially micro homesteading. Way to go, friend! Bring back those lost traditional skills!
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