Thursday, April 14, 2011

My Money Saving Tip for the Day

This is such an easy little money saving tip but one which I have never got around to doing...until now!
With dairy prices in NZ going through the roof I was looking at a more economical way of managing our cheese use. I am not a huge cheese fan but my children and husband are. At one stage we were going through a 1kg block each week. Lots of toasted cheese sandwiches going on, I suspect!
The only cheese I really use is in the meals I cook for dinner and this is almost always in a grated form. To buy cheese already grated is extremely expensive so when I saw these cheese blocks on sale for $4.00 each, I decided to make my own. They were due to expire in 5 days time but they were perfect for something like this which will be frozen anyway.
I used one zip lock bag for each 750gram block and labelled them with the date. I also made sure to lay them flat so that they would be easier to access in the freezer. I ended up with three large bags of grated cheese for $12.00 and not only did it save a lot of money, but it saves me so much time when preparing dinner.
If I am making dishes such as lasagne or mac and cheese, I throw the cheese in straight from the freezer, otherwise I take it out and defrost it if I want it fresh. This only takes a few minutes. I am so converted to this method that I will be doing this all the time in future as I love anything that saves time and money! Give it a go. :)

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