Grow, bake, ferment and brew to save money and your soul

If you want save on costs from yogurt, pickled vegetables, jams, herbs, all the vegetables you can eat, and make your own sourdough pizza and sourdough bread, you can.

But you’ll have to change the way you think about time and food, say two Aucklanders who grow, bake and make their own things.

The grower and mentor

John Thomson had a steady job when he decided to invest in his family’s future by taking the plunge and studying business management full-time at Massey University.

With three boys growing up in the house, he immediately realized that going from two incomes to one would be a challenge. After the mortgagethe cost of food was the highest bill of the household, so he started growing his own food.

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Thomson said he hadn’t cracked the numbers, but knew the household food bill had fallen significantly.

The family lived in Auckland, where Thomson plants every open space in his garden with vegetables. They recently moved to his father’s farm near Waiuku, where he now has a 30m by 3m vegetable garden.

Thomson said that in order to cut costs, he needed a mindset change in his approach to food and cooking.

For example, like many families, the Thomsons ate takeout when it suited them, but this changed when he entered a full-time college. With three boys growing up in the house, a pizza night meant buying at least four pizzas, and with some eating gluten-free, a single pizza can cost up to $25.

“Now I keep thinking how many vegetables I could grow with that money,” he said.

The family’s cooking habits changed. For example, Asian dishes like stir-fries were full of flavor but required relatively little meat, and as a bonus, they could use vegetables that were nearing the end of their lives, Thomson said.

“Always try to plan for how cheap you can get something and how far you can let a piece of meat go.”

Thomson didn’t plan his vegetable garden, but planted as much as he could.

If he harvested too much, Thomson would canning or blanching and freezing vegetables. He also made jam and dried the corn he grew to make flour. Some vegetables, such as carrots, can last for months in the refrigerator, he said.

Thomson advised growers to always let some plants go to seed to save them for the next season. If that was too much of a hassle, buying seeds instead of seedlings would have been more cost effective.

A tray of six cauliflower seedlings may cost about $3 to $4, but a pack of hundreds of seeds can cost as little as $2 and can last for years, he said.

He said a change of attitude was beneficial when it came to tedious work like weeding. Weeding used to be a pet hate, but he now saw it as a way to harvest weeds to compost for future use to grow more vegetables.

Thomson said he used pesticides sparingly to protect his crops.

The baker and fermenter

Morne Cawood makes his own sourdough for baking bread and pizza, ferments his own yogurt, pickles all kinds of vegetables, brews his own mead and eats some fresh produce from his garden.

He had some idea of ​​the cost savings of his own efforts, but said he mostly baked and brewed because he liked learning new skills.

It seems fate also played a part in his newfound obsession. Cawood said he was gluten intolerant but loved bread. However, this challenge turned into a sourdough love affair.

High-quality sourdough bread at Wild Wheat in Auckland costs about $7, but can be baked yourself for about $2. A quality sourdough pizza in Auckland costs $20 or more, but Cawood said homemade costs about $5.

“It is not a cost-effective exercise. It might save me money, but it won’t save me time,’ Cawood said.

Cawood said he got up early on Sunday to make sourdough for two loaves of bread and four pizzas. He made one large portion for the week because it took the same effort as one loaf of bread.

The entire dough process took more than two hours, as the dough was kneaded and rested a few times, he said.

Sourdough may sound fancy. But it was just normal flour and filtered water in which lactobacillus bacteria are allowed to grow and eat most of the gluten, he said.

Cawood said he bought pantry staples like flour, rice and nuts from Bulk Food Savings. Although it was a cost-effective measure, he said he did it mainly because he liked discovering the best ingredients, at the best price, and liked talking to people selling new foods.

“It’s cheaper than Countdown. We go once a month,” Cawood said.

The need to be more sustainable, coupled with Cawood and his son Thomas, who ate a lot of yogurt, meant that he also started making his own yogurt.

Instead of buying a 2 liter bottle of milk, he now bought a 3 liter bottle. The family drank two 2L a week and made yogurt from the remaining liter. This also meant there was one less plastic container each week to recycle, he said.

Even after six homemade batches, the cost of yogurt broke. After that, he only paid the milk costs, Cawood said.

Cawood said a major reason he baked and grew his own food was because he learned that he could make food cheaper than he could buy, and that it suited his own taste.

“I do it because it is good for my well-being. Some of it is technical. You can learn about sourdough for years and still get better. It’s satisfying to know that you’ve kept the bacterial culture alive for months and knowing how it changes has improved the taste of your bread. You learn more about food than someone who just buys it,” he said.

The key was that many people try and fail, but if they fail, they just have to try again, Cawood said.