Frugal Tip

Bill and I just starting growing our owns herbs this year, although I should say "herb" because so far we only have mint. We've always talked about doing this but just never get around to planting anything. Even the mint was pre-planted from Bill's parents house. (LAY-Z!) But what a money saver! We buy fresh parsley and cilantro every week from the grocery store. Now, it's only like $2 total but still, that's over $100 bucks a year. Anything more fancy than that like basil or sage costs $2.50-$3.00 and comes in this cheap plastic box that still allows the herbs to go bad in about 2 days. When you only need a few tablespoons per recipe, that's not money well spent. (Keep in mind that this is grocery shopping in Iowa. You may have a better selection in your town.) I know that if we had herbs right on our patio, we'd use them much more often. So my tip to you is to plant your own herbs. Be careful though, use pots because many spread worse than weeds. Even with our pot, we think we're going to have mint around our patio's perimeter come next year. Did someone say mojito party?

Another tip that I cannot claim as my own comes from the newest Food Network celebrity - Melissa D'Arabian. She just won the Next FoodNetwork Star and is really great. She's not professional trained but somehow whips up these clever and super yummy looking meals. I wouldn't be surprised if she became the next Rachael Ray. Anyway, her tip is that once you get down to the whites of scallions (green onions), put them in a little bit of water and watch them grow. Bill and I are currently working on this experiment and you honestly would not believe how fast they've been growing. The picture below is after 1 week and I've changed the water once. Notice that they're skinnier than what you'd buy in the store so I'm not sure if they'll fill out or just keep getting taller. We'll see I guess! I'll report back.