#waste not want not

Homemade Lemon Vinegar

Roasted Chicken Stock

See our tips on how to stretch the groceries you already have!

Got another garbage onion started, this time a sweet yellow onion. Looking at all the divisions in the center, it may send up shoots from multiple places meaning I can divide it and get more than one onion out of the deal. We’ll see!

For those who mentioned having trouble getting this to work, you do have to change the water daily. Not just add more, but pull the onion out of the dish, dump out the water, rinse out the dish, and put new water in (and obviously put back the onion). Other than that and temperature control (don’t let it bake in the sun or freeze in a draft), just leave it alone and it should sprout.

My garbage onion (I grew it from the root end of a store bought onion, something that normally goes in the garbage) finally sent up a shoot! And look at all those gorgeous roots!

I also had some sprouting store-bought garlic (you can see it on the counter behind the onion) so I decided to put those in some dirt as well. So one onion, five cloves of garlic.

I’ll probably sprout another onion bottom after dinner, since I have a couple of yellow onions that need to be eaten and my little sprouting dish is now empty.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who saves sauce packets from to go/delivery/fast food places, but how many people actually end up using them? Personally, I’ve found that sorting them into bags or containers like this makes it more likely that they will get used because I don’t have to dig for what I want.

For those that are wondering, the last place my fiance and I lived didn’t have a functional kitchen, so fast food was a frequent thing. We learned how to eat pretty cheaply that way though (lots of dollar/value menu stuff), and we have plenty of sauce left over.

Freezing onion and garlic ends, and bits of chicken fat, tendons, arteries, and other stringy bits I don’t like eating (it’s a texture thing don’t judge me) for use making chicken stock at a later date.

A hack I learned from a more seasoned urban homesteader: saving the juices from canned/packaged foods for later use in soups and other recipes. This container has my meat juices in it (it’s frozen which is why there are layers). I have one for vegetable juices as well, haven’t started one for fruits. As you can see, I’ve just added the broth from these chicken Vienna sausages. I know they’re terrible processed garbage, but they’re also cheap protein that never goes bad, and I’m on a very tight budget.

Anyway, the homesteader in question makes a point to buy vegetables canned in water and fruits canned in juice rather than syrup (she lives alone and no longer has the energy or physical ability to garden). She’s a vegetarian, but buys canned veggie meats and uses the juices from those to make surprisingly delicious vegetarian gravies. Canned veggie water gets used as soup stock, and canned fruit juices get made into interesting variations of fruit punch. Personally I think it’s way better than dumping it down the drain.

Made a spaghetti squash yesterday and decided to save the seeds. Whether I decide to try and sprout them or toast them and eat them is still up for grabs.

Maybe I’ll sprout a few and eat the rest…