The top 5 items every frugal foodie needs

Multitasking is something lots of people are good at, but how good are your kitchen tools at multitasking? When you have a small kitchen, a small budget and value your time, there are five multitaskers you must find at garage sales to help maximize your hourly wage.

Big-ticket item No. 1: Bread machine

I live in Texas, and it gets HOT. Bread is expensive to buy, but super cheap and a lot healthier to make. I do not, however, want to heat up my oven when it's 110 degrees outside. My bread machine was free (thanks to a super awesome cousin/best friend who got it at a garage sale for 20 bucks and shared the love – thanks, TripleR!). It is the Cadillac of bread machines, a Zojirushi with so many settings you can't even shake a stick at 'em. It takes me three minutes to load and set it, and when we wake up in the morning, it's to the smell of fresh-baked bread. (Wipe your mouth, you're drooling.) Buy a bread machine cheap, and cross bread off the grocery list. BIG savings.

Foodie must-have item No. 1: Good knives

We have pretty expensive knives, thanks to some generous wedding guests. The thing is, we usually only use the paring knife, the 10-inch chef's knife and a cheapo bread knife we stuck in the block with the stuck-up Henckels guys. So, instead of buying the whole block for $399, you could just buy individuals and put them in a cheapo block. They're still mind-numbingly expensive for knives, but dull knives in the kitchen are dangerous, and these last for. Frickin. Ever. You'll thank you.

Mom must-have item No. 1: A blender

Smoothies are a mom's best friend, and no store can sell salsa that's as good as what Hubs can whip up in the blender. Plus, it's handy for making ranch dressing. Did I mention smoothies? Old, mushy fruit (and even lettuce, a.k.a. a “Shrek Smoothie”) goes into a baggie and into the freezer, then straight into the blender with a little milk, yogurt or just water for an awesome summertime snack. My kids think it's a treat. Gosh, even our snacks are multitaskers!

Girlie splurge item No. 1: A KitchenAid stand mixer

I would NEVER have purchased this for myself unless I found an awesome Craigslist deal, but Hubs went behind my back and bought it for Mothers' Day one year. It makes any kind of baking such a breeze, and kneads specialty breads for me so I can do other stuff. You can find lots of attachments for sale online that have been barely used that make it a sausage grinder, ice cream maker, pasta machine and maybe even a really good mixer. And it's pretty. So, so pretty. My precious...

Alternative to pricey stuff item No. 1: A food processor

There are plenty of pricey food processors out there, but lots of people ask for them when they get married, then sell them at garage sales about five years later after using them once. This is a must-have for making baby food, but can also mix and knead doughs just fine. It also whips up some dreamy pesto with fresh basil from the garden. Oh, and it chops veggies like a champ. Even those miniature versions like the Magic Bullet do just fine, and can also take care of a lot of your blending needs, too. They can even take care of a lot of your “blending needs,” too. Like frozen margaritas after a whole day of very organized freezer cooking.

DIY convenience foods: Feed the freezer

You've probably read blog posts or articles about super talented and organized people who spend one day a month “freezer cooking.” These people spend 8-10 hours putting together meals they can freeze and pop in the oven for quick dinners, and they are my heroes. I'm just not that organized.

Being disorganized and responsible for the entire homestead 9 months out of the year makes for some harrowing mealtimes, so yesterday I spent the entire day cooking breakfast. I rarely have a plan when I start cooking, so what I ended up with is a freezer full of breakfast rolls (dinner rolls filled with bacon, egg and cheese), french toast bars (using a failed batch of biscuits) and cinnamon rolls. I figure it's about a week's worth of breakfasts, and they're packaged in foil to go in the toaster oven for about 20 minutes in the morning.

Since these breakfast creations came about through trial and error, it's tough to compare them to store-bought frozen breakfast items. But, I'm pretty sure they're more healthy and cheaper being made from scratch. Freezer cooking is probably really worth it if you're organized. Personally, I prefer adding to the freezer a little at a time. If I make a pot of beans, I put half in the freezer after a quick soak. After cooking, I put half of the remaining cooked and seasoned beans in the freezer. That leaves me with a half-pound (before cooking) of pintos, which we can take care of in one meal. If I choose to reinvent the rest of the beans on subsequent days, I can do it by taking the frozen beans out in the morning. If not, they have fed the freezer stash and are a cheaper alternative to frozen pizza when I'm in a hurry or have stepped on half a dozen rusty nails and can no longer stand up to cook supper.

However you do it, one big tightwad rule is “feed the freezer.” Some families don't like leftovers, and can even recognize reinvented ones the next day. But, put those same leftovers in the freezer, wait a couple of weeks to reinvent, and, voila!: brand new food. It doesn't just work well for leftovers, either:

• Cheese. Calculating price per ounce for my price book, I discovered that a nearby members-only store had the cheapest cheese in town, but it came shredded in 5-pound bags. When I get it home, I fill five, one-pound freezer bags and put four in the freezer. Shredded cheese freezes like a champ, and can even be used frozen if you forget to take it out to defrost. Bread crumbs from slicing homemade bread, and the heels of some tougher loaves, go into a bag in our freezer labeled “bread crumbs.” When it's full, I give it a whirl in the food processor, pour in a little butter and some herbs, and it makes homemade macaroni and cheese downright gourmet.
• Fresh herbs. We use a lot of cilantro around here, but we never could use it fast enough to prevent the black slime from claiming it in the crisper drawer. Dried cilantro just isn't the same as fresh, so I tried a tip I read. Chop and freeze fresh herbs (works for all I've tried), just by themselves, in a jar. When you need some for a recipe, flake some off the top with a spoon, and you've got that fresh-herb flavor without the time constraints of fridge storage.
• Milk. Cow's milk from the grocery store has become less of a staple for us as we've found other ways to get our calcium, and a $3 a gallon, it's a good thing. To make it go even further, I buy whole milk and cut it to approximate 2 percent milk. I get the gallon home, pour half into a clean gallon jug and freeze it. I fill the unfrozen milk jug the rest of the way with water, and do the same with the frozen jug about two days before we need it. This trick effectively cut my milk costs in half. It isn't for everyone, but my children aren't toddlers and no one in my house needs whole milk, so this works fine. (If you do this, though, add milk powder before trying to make pudding or yogurt. Cut milk lacks enough milk protein to make most recipes “set up.”)
• Dry goods. Combat weevils in flours, dried beans and rice by putting them in the freezer for at least 48 hours once you get them home from the store. That amount of time in the freezer will prevent any weevil eggs from hatching (and believe me, they're in there), and if you put them in a sealed container right away with a bay leaf on top, your weevil problems will be gone.
• Water. If all your freezer-feeding efforts still haven't filled it to capacity, put plastic water jugs in the freezer just to make it run more efficiently. All those energy-efficiency experts say freezers and refrigerators run better when they're full, so save money by keeping them that way. And, when you find that 49-cent-a-pound turkey deal, take out all the water and dry goods, serve up some of the leftovers and fill your freezers with your latest stock-up buy!

What's that? You say you only have the freezer-fridge that's in your kitchen? Maybe it's time to talk about high-value tools that every frugal chef should watch for at garage sales...