What are your frugal and sustainable tips and tricks?

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This isn't a recipe thread but

I had no idea making dill pickles is so easy.

1/4 cup sugar
2 T sea salt
Two cups water
Two cups white vinegar
Heated (and checked/stirred so dissolved)
then poured into pints, each with
Cut cucumbers
half clove garlic
Half tsp mustard seed
Half tsp whole peppercorns
A big sprig on dill (or two or three sprigs)
Lid
Let cool to room temp
Refrigerate 24 hours (rounds) or 48 hours (spears) before tasteing it
Or 5 days for close to best flavor
Keeps weeks, flavor still improving

Credit to site I saw in a quick net search - https://www.loveandlemons.com/dill-pickles-recipe/

I should have waited the 48 hours to taste test them before saying anything but I'm just so amazed at how easy this is. I'd heard pickles are easy but tried non-dill types and didn't think so especially.
 
Well, it seems they last months rather than weeks. (that makes sense, pickling is an ancient method of preservation; of course, often a few details make all the difference in whether ancient methods working safely).

And you can reuse the brine if you keep it clean. Flavors dilute eventually.
Mustard seed is optional.
So are: Coriander seeds, Dill seeds, Allspice berries, Red pepper flakes, Fennel seeds, Bay leaves, Cinnamon stick, Cloves
So are: Apple cider vinegar (instead of the white vinegar). Just be sure the water/vinegar is at least half vinegar. It can be all vinegar.
And I suppose other kinds of vinegar.
Also carrots, cauliflower, green beans, asparagus, zucchini, small tomatoes,

This should be fun.

Lol, I wonder if the dill is optional. Are dill pickle recipes so much different than the "soak the cucumbers in salt water" type or the bread and butter type because they have dill in them or do people just typically put dill in this kind of pickle even though it isn't needed?

Oh.
https://extension.oregonstate.edu/sites/default/files/documents/8836/sp50533lowsaltpickles_0.pdf

And Basic Pickle Brine

And is there any real difference between dill pickles and dill pickle relish - other than the size of the cucumber pieces?

I don't know yet but found these about crunch:
adding a bit of tannins will help - so grape leaves, oak leaves, horseradish leaves, black tea leaves
So will - something about alum, sugar (maybe), chilling the vegetables first, maybe the salting thing.... I should probably go off down these rabbit trails without disrupting this thread anymore. :oops: Sorry for any inconvenience.
 
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saysfaa said:
Well, it seems they last months rather than weeks.
Click to expand...

If you water bath pickles they will last a year or more. So when you have lots of cucumbers you can make a bunch.

saysfaa said:
And you can reuse the brine if you keep it clean. Flavors dilute eventually.
Click to expand...

Water from the cucumbers dilute the brine. For refrigerator pickles sometimes I'll reuse 1 time. If I water bath for longer term storage I do not reuse.

saysfaa said:
So are: Apple cider vinegar (instead of the white vinegar). Just be sure the water/vinegar is at least half vinegar. It can be all vinegar.
Click to expand...

You can use apple cider vinegar but it makes the pickles get dark in storage. Doesn't affect flavor. I prefer white vinegar because the pickles look better after being stored a while. I always use all vinegar no water for pickles I store. Check the label of the vinegar to make sure it is 5% acidity. I've seen some the was only 4%.

saysfaa said:
I don't know yet but found these about crunch:
adding a bit of tannins will help - so grape leaves, oak leaves, horseradish leaves, black tea leaves
Click to expand...

When I was a child I remember ladies putting a grape leaf in each jar. I never knew why until I was an adult making pickles myself I read it some where. Never tried it myself but we have scuppernong vines. May try it in the future.

saysfaa said:
maybe the salting thing
Click to expand...

I do this to draw out some of the water from the cucumbers. It also helps keep the crunch.

I do not make dills, usually bread and butter types. This is my experience. Hope it helps!
 
⚠️ Burning trash saves money!

I lost a few big trees in the past 2-3 years. I cut up the tree trunks into rounds, then split the rounds into campfire wood for our backyard fire ring. But the tree stumps of big trees are really a pain to take out. Instead of renting a stump grinder for $100 per day, I got a fire ring that I roll from one stump to the other. Then, I just have small campfires all summer long and by the fall, the stump is pretty much gone. Works well but takes a long time.

I also have a 55-gallon metal barrel with the top and bottom cut out. The idea is put that barrel over a stump, load it up with wood, and have it burn down the stump. The other day, I had the barrel over a stump and at the same time Dear Wife had 2 bags of kitchen garage to take to the waste disposal center in town. Well, we put all our kitchen scraps and leftovers in our kitchen chicken bucket, so no wet food gets into our garbage cans. Although both garbage bags were full, they were light as a feather.

I decided to take out all the burnable trash from the bags, dump then in the burn barrel, and burn down that stump some more. Turns out that everything in both bags was burnable, so it all went into the burn barrel. Then I topped it off with some wood sticks, etc... and lit the fire.

OK, so I saved a 20-mile round trip into town to toss the trash bags, even saved the clean garbage bags for reuse, and burned out my stump some more. It was like a win-win-win scenario. I saved money, time, and got some good use out of burning all that paper trash at home on that tree stump.

I realize that a lot of people are not allowed to burn anything - let alone trash - at their house. But our kitchen garbage turned out to be mainly used paper towels and food container stuff that was not recyclable. The fire dries them out and burns them nicely.

1692072354644.png
 
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My husband is an avid fisherman. Especially during the spring. He was cleaning the fish before bringing them home.

I had him to start bringing me the carcasses, heads and all. I pressure cook them until they crumble easily. I use the liquid to cook brown rice, wheat and sometimes scratch. I pack up the fish meal, freeze it and add it in portions to my chickens evening meal. It's 70% protein and has tons of calcium and collagen. So my girls get plenty of nutrition to make them productive and keep them beautiful. I've had 1 chicken have a hard molt, and she was refeathered completely inside of a month.

The best part...it's relatively free. My husband now collects carcasses from his buddies.
 
Mason Farm and Ranch said:
I had him to start bringing me the carcasses, heads and all. I pressure cook them until they crumble easily. I use the liquid to cook brown rice, wheat and sometimes scratch. I pack up the fish meal, freeze it and add it in portions to my chickens evening meal. It's 70% protein and has tons of calcium and collagen. So my girls get plenty of nutrition to make them productive and keep them beautiful. I've had 1 chicken have a hard molt, and she was refeathered completely inside of a month.

The best part...it's relatively free. My husband now collects carcasses from his buddies.
Click to expand...
Excellent!

I make bone broth. Do the fish bones make the broth taste "fishy?"
 

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