Money in Your Kitchen

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. There is money in your kitchen! The room of your home where you keep your fridge and your stove, your pots and your pans, your cutlery and your crockery is a treasure of stored value.

The way to find this money is to use your kitchen for …(drum roll please!) …COOKING!

Yes, I know this is a novel idea. And yes, cooking results in dirty dishes. I’m even willing to admit that you might not even know how to cook!

I don’t care. I want you to learn to feed yourself, and to save money while you do it.

Gentle Reader, there is nothing quite so satisfying as a delicious meal that has been prepared with your own hands. I say this a person who often socialized with my friends at restaurants in the Before Times. Steak – sushi – Thai – Greek – Italian – chain restaurant – bistros, cafes, and holes-in-the-wall! I loved them all, and I freely spent money on food prepared for me by others.

That said, very few meals – save for everything I ate in Italy – have been as sumptuous as the ones I’ve made for myself. If you eat out a lot, then you’ll understand me when I say the following. After a while, it all starts to taste the same.

Treats are special when they’re rare

We all know this. If you only eat out once every three months, then it’s a treat. It happens 4 times a year! It’s rare and that rarity makes it special. You might get dressed up. Possibly, you turn it into a special occasion. Dining out becomes an event and you anticipate it. You might savour each bite because you know it’ll be another 89 days before you eat out again.

But when you eat out everyday, it becomes part of your routine. It’s as mundane as brushing your teeth but exponentially more costly! When was the last time that you truly and deeply savoured the meal you picked up at the drive-thru window? Or had delivered to your home in an insulated carrier bag?

Get into your kitchen and cook for yourself. Turn those restaurant meals back into a treat! In the process, the money in your kitchen can stay in your wallet.

This week, I was lamenting to my sibling that I needed a new recipe for the extra lean ground beef that I’d taken out for dinner that evening. Trust me when I say that COVID19 has robbed me of my love for my own spaghetti and my homemade hamburgers. I’ve made them too often since the pandemic was declared and I don’t want to make them anymore! Though younger and much taller than me, my sibling is very wise in the ways of the kitchen. My younger relative suggested that I make Korean Beef.

Taking the suggestion to heart, I went to the World Wide Web and typed in the words “Korean beef recipe”. A plethora of results instantly appeared on my screen. I chose the following recipe from Damn Delicious, and I was not at all disappointed. What I love about this website is that so many people leave comments, tips, and insights into how to tweak the recipe. (I readily admit that the recipes can be made as-is and are still very, very tasty!) One such commenter suggested adding julienned carrots to the dish.

However, there’s another marvelous invention in our universe called YouTube. It’s almost as good as the local library when it comes to a free resource for learning how to do stuff. I went to YouTube, searched for “how to julienne carrots”, and happily julienned my first carrot a few minutes later.

Another commenter mentioned that his family liked a lot of sauce, so he’d doubled that portion of the recipe. Guess what? I like lots of sauce too! So I followed his lead and doubled the sauce for my dish. No regrets! Doubling the sauce was a simple, easy, foolproof tweak that would increase my enjoyment of my own cooking.

So I made the recipe, doubled the sauce, and added my julienned carrot… and I wound up with this…

Then I added a little extra something….

Together, they produced the following…

And it was delicious! As another very wise friend would describe it, I served myself a meal that was yummy-yummy-in-my-tummy! There were enough leftovers for lunches and dinners the following days.

While I’m quite certain I could’ve ordered a pizza for $9.99 from a well-known chain, I’m equally certain that the pizza would not have tasted nearly as good as my homemade Korean Beef. Yes, I had to do dishes but it was a small price to pay for having a wonderful meal at home. And I received the added benefit of keeping the money I found in my kitchen. :-}

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Weekly Tip: Start an automated transfer to a savings account. The last time I checked, EQ Bank was paying 1.70% on deposits. I’m as un-impressed with that rate of return as you are. The point is to automate your money so that it’s there when you need it. The money siphoned off via automatic transfer is to plump up your emergency fund. If you’ve already got one that’s nice and fat, then use this automated transfer to save up money for your annual expenses: insurance premiums, property taxes, professional dues, etc…

Maybe you like to invest in big chunks. Fine. Set up the automatic transfer. Every time the account hits your pre-determined amount, transfer the money to your investments and then keep your mitts off it until you retire. Automatic transfers reinforce the savings habit so, if you haven’t already done so, set up your automatic transfer today.