Cooking at Home on a Budget with Beth Moncel #181

earning a degree in nutritional science. And now she has a massively popular site called Budget Bites, where you can find simple, delicious recipes that are designed for folks with small budgets. Beth has published a cookbook and she has developed a really cool mobile app as she continues to help others discover the joy of cooking while saving money. After housing and transportation. For most of us, food is

our next biggest expense every month. So we're excited to talk with an expert who sits at the intersection of food and money. Beth, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. You guys, we're so excited to have you. Bet. It's fun to have a food expert because Matt and I we talked about it sometimes, but we don't really know what we're talking about. Let's be honest, I definitely don't

know what I'm talking about. But we have a beer on every episode, Beth, because Matt and I really like craft beer, and it's also kind of this intentional thing where we're spending money on the things that matter to us right now while saving well for the future. Today on the show, we're drinking a beer called Whimsical Nature thanks to listener Doug sending in our way and so Bet. The first question we ask every guest is what is

your craft beer equivalent? What do you explourage on now while you're still trying to like save and be thoughtful about your money for future times. Um. So, I am a plant person. I love house plants and outside plants, and they can be pretty expensive, but they bring me so much happiness it's totally worth it, even if they

end up dying, which a lot of them. But my favorite thing, like you know, if I want to go treat myself is to go to the nursery, pick out a new plant, a really cool planter, and that plant will bring me happiness for a long time. That is awesome. Kate's gonna listen to this episode because she's actually she keeps up with you, you know, on social media and follows your recipes. As she's listening to this, she's gonna do some fist pumps because she totally has gotten into

the plants over the past couple of years. And I'm we're totally with you, because sometimes they do die. Like right here behind we've got we've got this one tree that has seen better days. For sure. We're not totally sure why it's so sad, but totally understand it can still bring happiness even though it has less leaves than it used to. I think Beth is Kate's like spirit

animal basically to be done with that spirit food bogger whatever. Yeah, well, Beth, we want to kind of dive into kind of your backstory a little bit regarding just with you know, your history with food. Did you grow up cooking? Have you always been a home chef? Yeah, I mean somewhat. I wouldn't call myself a home chef, um, but I did

grow up in a big family. We had seven people in our family, so my mom was pretty much cooking NonStop every day, you know, just to keep us fed, So I learned a lot about the basics just by watching her and hanging out in the kitchen while she was cooking. And um I you know, through that experience, learned that cooking can be fun and it can be a way to express yourself artistically. And I've always been a creative type, so I enjoyed that part of cooking.

And then I've also always really been into science, so I enjoyed that aspect of it too, Like you know, rainy days, I would experiment with candy making or things like that, which are very, um, you know, science heavy with food. So I did grow up learning the basics. And then, as you mentioned before, I got a degree in nutritional science and that taught me a little bit more, although that really didn't involve cooking too much. I think

we only even had one cooking class. But then after graduation, when I started a blog, that's when I really started learning. So over the past ten eleven years that I've been doing this, just forcing myself to try something new every week, that's where I've learned most of my skills. So so what led you to start the budget Bites blog? Then it sounds like it was a learning experience for you, like you were learning how to cook food. It wasn't necessarily just to start teaching out the get go. What

what made you started? Right? Yeah? I was definitely a personal project at first, and then after it started, I realized there was a huge need for it, so it kind of transitioned to something I was doing for everyone else. But um so, after I earned my first degree, which was a nutritional science, my student loans went back into repayment and I had decided at that point not to

become a registered dietitian. So there I was with like an enormous amount of student debt and working at a job that was like, I don't know, ten or thirteen dollars an hour, which is not enough to cover your basic needs and loans. So I was like, all right, I've already cut out every little bit of extra spending in my budget. The only thing that has any malleability at all was my food budget. Like everything else was a set expense. So I'm like, Okay, I have to

cut back somewhere. But I have this degree in nutritional science, so I know how important it is for me to eat good food and eat food that I'm satisfied with so I started really diving deep into how I was spending money on food, and so I started tracking everything, and I think that needs to be the first step for everyone is to actually figure out where your food

money is going. And then I started implementing the techniques that we had learned in school in our food service management courses on how to you know, manage the budget of a large food scale operation, like uh, you know, uh commercial kitchen or uh school kitchen, things like that. And I started applying those techniques to my kitchen at home,

and that's where everything kind of clicked. So it's things like reducing your food waste, um, making sure you have a plan for everything you buy, you know, stuff like that. So I started doing that at home, and I started getting really excited about the things I was cooking and how cheap they actually were when you actually take the time to figure out how much it costs to make

a pot of soup or something. And I posted that on my personal Facebook and people started asking for the recipes and I was like, hmmm, maybe I should put this stuff online. And I didn't even really know what a blog was at that time. It just like knew the words. So I started googling how to start a blog, and I went from there and it just has not stopped since. I feel like back then there was just like Deuce and like Cup of Joe, like the o

G bloggers that I feel like everybody. I mean I was familiar with them too, but like two years ago, like those were I mean, those were huge blogs kind of sparked that whole revolution. Yeah, it is funny because when I started, I thought food blogging was staturated at

that point. Little did you know part could go. Yeah. So, I mean, so one of the cool things that you do on your site is like you incorporate so obviously you have these recipes and they keep cost in mind, but you actually incorporate the price of you know, not only the ingredients, but like what the cost comes out to per serving. What led you to do that? Is it just because that's what you're tracking yourself, and you saw the need for that because there aren't a lot

of other recipe blogs who present that information like you do. Yeah. So, I think a reason most other blogs don't do it is because that pricing information is not going to be the same for anybody else. Prices very so much like even from storage store within a city or from city to see, even day to day. I worked in a grocery store, so I saw how often prices changed on items. But the reason I'm including it is just for example purposes, so people can see how much one single ingredient can

totally skew the price of an entire recipe. So UM, I started doing this because this is the method that's used in commercial kitchens to figure out how much their food should cost and how much it is costing them, so they know how much, you know, like profit to make off of it. And I think it's a really

good technique to use at home too. So when you start doing that, you see which ingredients you can have a little bit more leniency with, which are going to be your inexpensive based ingredients like the pasta, the rice of beans, inexpensive vegetables, and which ingredients you need to be really careful about how much you use, like cheese and meat and nuts and stuff like that. So I think it's a really important lesson for people to learn,

So I want to give that example. UM. I think it's even better if people try it themselves at least once, because it can be a really eye opening experience, But I want to have that example out there for people just so they can at least see it very cool. Yeah, Beth, you said that you worked at the grocery store, So as an insider, what would you say for us normal

folks going to the grocery store? Are the biggest things that you saw in play that part people from their money as they go about shopping, and so like, how can we actually save money the grocery store? As someone who worked in one, yeah, so I think that was a really valuable experience for me because the grocery store I worked at was Whole Foods and also known as Whole Paycheck. But if you know you're looking for there, you can actually get some really great deals, even at

a place like Whole Foods. So the way that people end up blowing all their money is the impulse purchases or Trader Joe's and Whole Foods and grocery stores like that. And I think regular grocery stores are kind of getting on board with this. They are making food more of an experience. They're getting you with these really fun foods, the prepackaged like, oh, that looks like it would be so much fun to eat. For dinner, so people are going there and having these food experiences instead of just

getting like basics implies. You know, so if you stick to the basics and you have a plan, you won't blow your budget. Beth, you mentioned budgeting and how you started with tracking your expenses, you know, when it went to groceries, Like, do you still do that now for folks or I mean, is that what you recommend or is there a like maybe a per person amount that

folks should be shooting for. Like, so I mentioned that because I'm a super number numbers nerd and I've tracked my family's grocery budget over the past ten years and we have consistently very normal thing to do, super normal to do. Yeah, and so like I know, for us, we average about a dollar per person per meal. Um, and that hasn't really changed as we've added kids and we're super cheap, we're pretty frugal. But do you recommend that for folks to shoot for a dollar amounts or

should they take other things into consideration? Um? Well, I don't think I would recommend one general amount for anybody because everyone is so different. Not only do you have different sized bodies that require different amounts of foods um. But everyone has a different budget and different lifestyle, so when you're thinking about your food budget, you do need to take into consideration not only how much food you need, but how much convenience you need, and that mix is

going to be different for everybody. So I think the first thing that you need to do is track how much you're spending on food, not just groceries, but eating out for I would say at least a month. Just do it once just so you know what you're starting point is, and then set a goal and go from there. And you can set multiple goals, like small goals at first, with one large goal, or you can you know, shoot straight for the stars. But I think it's a lot

better people start small. You know, you have a high rate of success that way, But you can figure out what your goal is that way, like how much you need to spend personally for your own lifestyle and your own body needs, because like I said, it's just gonna be different for everybody. Yeah, Beth, let's let's set up this fictitious scenario where someone has had a long day at work and they're not sure what to cook for dinner. Nobody really actually experiences that on a day to day

basis is totally ficti. They've just made this up right, very hypothetical. Right, Well, what recipe is there that prevents people from grabbing the easy takeout on the way home? Because speaking of budgets, like, that's something that blows our budget right the last minute going out to dinner or pick something up on the way home, or even worse, grub having it because the delivery fees are atronomical. So like, what are your favorite quick and easy meals to prevent

us from taking the quick, easy, but expensive option. Yes, there's so many things that you can do that are going to be just as fast or faster than getting take out, and it's gonna taste way better. So I think probably the easiest thing is some sort of stir fry. The reason that those are so popular with takeout is because they're so fast and easy and you can literally

put anything into them. So you can do that at home to grab whatever leftover vegetables you have in your fridge, chop them up, throw them in a really hot skillet for like two minutes. If you want to do some sort of meat or like you know, frozen tramp or something, you can throw those in there too, And then the sauce first or fry is so simple, just some soy sauce, maybe some chili garlic sauce and maybe a little brown sugar to kind of balance those flavors and that's all

you need. Pop that over some rice and you're like done in fifteen minutes. So something like that. Or you can go like the roasted vegetable and meat drought like again, whatever vegetables you have, throw them in a hot oven with a little oil and like whatever your favorite seasoning is, and you know, roast those and while the roasting, cook up some meat and you have like a really balanced dinner with like zero effort. That sounds amazing. Yeah, so mean,

is this something that you do personally? Like is this something you do yourself? Well? So these days the only thing I eat are leftovers from my photo shoots and like recipe testing, so I really know the life of a recipe cookbook. Like we don't cook for ourselves at home like ever anymore. It's just like whatever I have left over from that day's photo shoot, that's what it gets eaten. But that's not that's not a terrible life to live, No, not at all. It's a it's a

pretty perk of the job. Well the sturfright certainly that that description kind of had me getting a little hungry right there. Yeah, Actually, like the way you're describing, I was like, wow, that does sound so I could totally do that because my wife is for sure like the the you know, she does all the cooking for our family and she loves it. It's one of her passions. But I hear you say this, I'm like, oh, that

sounds like that's totally something I could do. And I'm a complete novice, so yeah, if it sounded like something I can do, then it's probably something that pretty much everybody can do. Awesome. Well, Beth, you know you you hinted that some of these different practices basically that you're able to that you learned when it came to these commercial applications of cooking, like just being in the food industry.

And so after the break, we're gonna talk about maybe some different ways that we can take these different strategies and approaches and apply those two cooking at home, and how we can use those practices to save us money. We'll get to that right after the break. We're back from the break, we're talking with death Monsell about cooking at home on a budget, which, I gotta be honest, pretty much all of us can stand to learn something from this conversation. Well, and by the way, we're calling

you Beth Mondseell. But like, do folks call you budget bites? Because I mean you're known online as budget bites. I think most people call me Beth actually know anyway, I don't see people just call Matt. How the money? Now? So like how the money? Matt? No, not really but all right, So, Beth, we were just talking about the expense of you know, the quick meal, picking it up

on the way home because you don't want to cook something. Well, I've heard it said be or some people have this reaction to eating at home and they say, eating well at home is too expensive and there's all these reasons that I can't do it because buying the better products at the grocery store cost too much money. So what would you say to people that say that eating well at home costs too much? Well, I think it depends

on what their definition of well is. Do they just mean tasty or are they talking about ingredients that are like locally sourced and things like that. Um, so it's going to depend a little bit on that. But I think the main thing is I think they're probably just choosing their wrong recipes. If you just keep it really simple and stick to really basic, simple ingredients and less package stuff, your bill is going to be lower than

eating out, like, no question. I mean, because when you're eating out, you're paying for the communians with someone else making it for you. You buy the single ingredients on their own, and you spend fifteen thirty minutes putting together, and it's a fraction of the cost. Even when you go for those higher price items like organic or you know, something local. There's just no question about it. If you're trying to make really fancy things like beef wellington, maybe

it's gonna be really expensive. But those aren't the only foods that are good. I mean, really basic cuisine is delicious, especially when you're making it at home because it's fresh. Yeah, I will say, you had dule over your salivating talking about veggies and stir fry when normally he is a kind of beef welling. Well. Yeah, Like, what are some

other ways than that we can reduce that cost? You know that we're able to maintain a pretty slim budget at home, you know, while we're cooking nutritious meals that we're proud of. Yeah. So it's funny because people always say that eating healthy is really expensive, But the same principles that I learned for eating healthy in my degree for nutritial science are the exact same principles that I use for cooking on a budget, and those are things

like sticking to whole grains, beans, and vegetables. So people like vegetables are so expensive, but they don't have to be. I think they're expensive when you are focusing on the really trendy, like super foods, but that totally discounts how valuable really basic vegetables are, like sweet potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbage. Those are all like a dollar a pound, which is a fraction of what something like ground beef costs, and

they're super healthy. You fill up your diet with those things, and you're gonna be sitting pretty, you know, and not spending a lot of money. Yeah. Speaking of the principles that you follow, Beth, you kind of did a write up on your website of some of the principles that you follow in order to reduce how much you spend on food and how other people can kind of do the same. One of the things you mentioned is is

planning your meals ahead. So can you talk to us a little bit about meal prep or make a head meals and how those can help us save money. Yeah, I think the planning a head thing is really important. Even aside from meal meal prep. It's when you go to the grocery store without having any sort of plan in mind, You're just gonna grab a bunch of random things.

Those things will probably go to waste because you didn't have a plan to use them in the first place, or you didn't have a set plan, so you might be missing other ingredients that you need. So even if you pick like one or two recipes a week that you know you're gonna make and plan when you're going to make them so that you actually do um, that's gonna save you so much money and you know you won't be tempted to go eat out those nights or

whenever you eating the leftovers. So having the plan before you go into the grocery store is so important. And then as far as meal prep goes, this is really just something that I like to do personally. It's not for everyone, um, but I really appreciate having leftovers. Kind of like we were saying before, it's it's another way to prevent those busy nights where you want to order Postmates or something because you're just too tired to cook.

So I like to cook batch meals of things like soups and stews, pasta, diicious things that I can freeze single serving portions of. And if I have a variety of those stashed in my freezer, if I get to a night where I'm just like too tired to cook, I can grab something out of the freezer, something homemade, something delicious, something I know I love, and reheat it really quickly in the microwave and I don't spend any

eggtra money that way. I love leftovers, Like I'm with you, Like every day I work from home, and so I come walking out of my office, I can come to back to the house and I take a look at in the fridge and I'm just always looking for just a solid leftover from the past day or a couple of days ago. And specifically, I feel like for me, at least, the best way, I always fry up an egg, and ideally I can find a leftover that I can

put a fried egg on top. It's like, yes, the unofficial slogan is put an egg on it, like land where they're like put a bird on it. I'm like, I can put a fried egg on pretty much anything. I'm like, hey, Kate, check this out. I made this. Rolls her eyes at me. Well, So when it comes to like meal prep, that's how you describe batch cooking, right, Like you're making all these single serve things ahead of time. Do you have a strategy and approach for like portioning

that out? And I'm talking about the actual containers, Like do you use tupperware that's like it's like made to you handle like a full meal? Or do you use glass? Do you use like the like the cheap circle you know, industry containers that you can buy like pieces at once. So I think I'm going to write a blog post

about this soon because everyone struggles with tupperware. Yeah. So I started out with the blue zip top or blue zip block containers, you know what I'm talking about, Like you can buy them the packs of like four or six and the store. I still really like those because they are very durable, they're super inexpensive. They come in a bunch of different shapes and sizes. They can go straight from the freezer to the microwave. UM I find

those are really useful. But I have also gotten into the glass containers, and I like the really simple ones made by either Pyrex or anchor Hackeing I think is the other brand that makes a really good priced UM glass container. So they don't have any a shield, bells and whistles like dividers or anything. The lids are really simple plane lids. They don't have like clamps on over anything,

but there's still water tight. So I think those really simple glass containers are awesome, and those are my two big choices. I don't like those black containers that a lot of people use for meal prep that you buy in packs of twenty, like you were saying, because you know, the main reason is because they feel cheap and gross, and your meal is just not going to be very enjoyable when you're eating it off of a gross plastic

tray like you're in a school cafeteria. Right, Yeah, I feel like so much of that does have to do the experience. I think back to my bachelor days, I would throw everything in ziplock bags and man leftovers in a ziplock bag. Just don't do it for me, you know, Like, who wants to see a bunch of mashed potatoes like smear down the side of a nipluck bag, Like it's going to encourage you to not eat that stuff. Yeah, when I see people eating up the paper plates, I

get really sad. I'm like, oh, that looks so unenjoyable, totally. So speaking of the containers, that you put them in, containers that go well in the freezer is a great thing, right, so that you can store for the future. So how long in your opinion, can food typically last in the fridge before you have to move it to the freezer? And then what are the foods that are kind of perfect candidates to buy and freeze as you're kind of

prepping for food in the future. So when you are planning to freeze something, you want to freeze it sooner than later because the longer it stays in the refrigerator, the more likely things are to grow on it, basically, so you want to catch it at its freshest, but you don't want to chill it completely in the refrigerator first, So I usually say overnight because that will help maintain the quality after it's freeze frozen and thought, so chill

it overnight in refrigerator and then you know, pick however, main servings you wanna freeze, pop them in the freezer, and then they're going to be good in the freezer for about three months, sometimes longer. So what happens in the freezer is that food just kind of slowly dries out over time and gets that freezer burn. So I usually reckon then three months, but I am you know, admittedly I eat things that are in their way longer than three months. So it just depends on what your

tolerance is for a texture and flavor changes. And then things that you can buy and stash in the freezer. So definitely um expensive things like meat, if you want to buy a larger quantity of meat, usually get a better price. So what I do is like buy a larger pack and then I divide it into single recipe portions, pop that in the freezer, and then I could just

grab one out whenever I need to make something. Cheese is also a great thing to keep in the freezer because again it's less expensive if you buy a larger quantity and it freezes super well. Um, most of the time, you can't tell any difference with the frozen and thought cheese. The only thing it's not good for is slicing because it gets a little bit more crumbly, so you're not gonna want to make sandwich slices out of it. But

for everything else it's perfect. And there are a lot of other things like breads I like to keep frozen since I don't eat them very quickly, so to prevent them from getting moldy, I just stash them in the freezer and grab a slice or two out whenever I needed things like that. So you're just talking about buying things in bulk sometimes, like buying cheese or something like that. Which are So do you shop at Costco? How do you feel about the warehouse clubs as a place where

people to go in order to buy food and save money. Um, so, I'm really not a fan of them, But I think that's just a person. I think we just became not friends. Well here's the reason, since it's just me and my boyfriend, and for a long time it was just me, I don't I just didn't need that much stuff, you know what I mean. So like having to pay the membership fee, I don't think really would have paid off for me. If you have a big family, I think it could

totally be great. But if you don't have a lot of storage space too, that's another issue, which is something I've never really had a lot of storage space, whether it be just in my kitchen or apartment in general, or even in my freezer. So again, buying in bulk wasn't really you know, a good option, but buying slightly larger quantities at a regular grocery store, not like at

a normal storage like at a non bulk store. It's still a little bit more than you know, their normal packages, but it's not such a huge quantity that you're gonna have storage issues. Yeah, Joel showing it up to his house with like thirty pounds of turkey. Look, Emily, I've got thirty pounds of turkey. She's like, that's great. What have we gonna do with that every night for the next two years? Right? Right? Uh? Well, that that leads us to ask them like where, like where are your

your favorite places to shop for your different ingredients? Yeah, so, I mean this has changed a lot over the years. I've been doing this for eleven years. I think now So my current favorite is Aldi. I finally moved to a city that has an Aldi two years ago, and it's very close to my house and I am loving it. Man, Okay, so you're no longer friends with Joel because he's totally in love with Costco. But we're in the Aldi family. We've got one. It's like maybe two miles from our house.

It's not even that not even that far, but like I can ride my bike there. We got an Aldi tattoo on his back like Superman, just except for it's on my back. You're right, Yeah, No, I love my little Aldie. I love that it's small so I can like get in and out without having like this huge ordeal. Like I think that's another reason why Costco is not

for me, Like it's just too much to deal. But yeah, it's it's colost convenient and easy, and I love that they have like a mix of the basics and then also kind of like more trendy items, Like there's a lot of gluten free, a lot of organic. They're some fun stuff, but not so much that I'm going to blow my grocery budget. Yeah, it's a good place, so I'm not Yeah, what items do you like to get organic or and like what items you know, do you

just not care about getting organic? So this is interesting. Last year I did a partnership with stony Field Organic where I got to go out to one of their farms out in Vermont and learn all about the organic farming process. And it was so cool, Like I learned so much that I didn't know about organic because before then I didn't really have an opinion about it. I'm like, I don't have enough information to even have an opinion. But I really loved the farming technique for so many

different reasons, not just health reasons. I think it's great for the environment, it's great for the farmers with their business model, you know, like all of that stuff. So the thing I try to buy organic when I can now. But I think probably the most important in my opinion, which might not be that informed, is probably like the meat and dairy products. Okay, so meat and dairy are ones that you prioritize organic, and then a lot of

the other ones just not as important. I mean, I guess I don't have super strong but I don't know if I can say they're not important, but you know, for you at least, Yeah, in my my half hearted attempt to do better. Yeah, I'll buy the organic when it's available. But I wanted to ask you another way I think that we obliterate our food budget sometimes is by kind of the portions that we put on our plates.

And we've kind of especially when we're going out to eat, the portion that we get is often absurdly sized, right, and so is entre for you and your family, right, But it's but everyone in your family gets their own, and so Matt. Now we've talked about sharing an entree with your spouse, with your partner, and how that can be a good way to save money when you're eating out at least, how do you control your portions when

you're cooking at home. Is there kind of the best way to create a portion size that works for you so that you're not eating too much? Yeah? I think it's gonna be a little bit of a learning curve for everybody, because again, you know, people need different amounts of food. But what I do, I think the most important thing to do is to portion it as soon as you're finished cooking, because if you chill the entire batch of whatever you're cooking in one big, you know,

bowl or container or whatever. You then have to portion yourself each time you want to serve yourself, and that's going to change depending on how hunger you are. So if it's already free portioned, then you don't have that variable and you might eat that portion and then feel fine, Whereas if you had portioned it right before you ate and you're starving, you would have given yourself twice as

much and spent twice as much basically on that meal. Yeah, there's a problem with us as people, right, like, like it takes so long for us to realize that we're full. I guilty of this, and I just keep eating. Like if there's like we normally keep it on the table because our girls want more, and we make sure that we're not wasting food by giving them too much on their plate, and then we end up having to toss

it on the trash. But then the problem is I've got this giant cast iron, you know, skillet full of like stir fryers, and it's made and I just keep eating and I don't stop because it's sitting right there in front of me. But yeah, like you said, removing that from you kind of creating these guardrails to kind of keep you from doing that to begin with, I

think is wise and something I should probably do. Yeah, And I just I think that most people don't realize how much of a literal interpretation that is of their budget. Like the more you eat, the more like dollars you're you know, eating. I don't know how I want to put it, but you have wasted money basically that I

am consuming that I do not need to consume. Our entire culture is kind of based on food as entertainment, so it can take a while to kind of rewrite that habit in your brain and figure out other ways to entertain yourself or keep yourself intellectually stimulated without using food. Is that tool, Well, that's I love that best. So these are all ways that we can cook at home for less money basically, and you know, we we've kind

of been knocking on grub hub. But like there's also these different you know, meal in a box things like blue Apron. What are your thoughts on those? Like is that a smart way to to get folks started cooking if that's not something they've done before. I think it can be a useful tool, but I don't think it's a good tool to use long term, um, I think it can help people get over the intimidation of cooking or inspire them to try new flavors, which is always

a great thing. But as far as something to use on a day to day basis, I feel like it's just way too much packaging and you can just get better prices for the ingredients on their own. Sure. I appreciate those thoughts, and we've got we're gonna we've got some more questions for you that we want to get to after the break, and specifically for folks who are considering something like, you know, a meal delivery service, but because they just haven't gotten used to being the kitchen,

they don't know how to go about it. Let's talk about some kitchen cooking skills and and how to get better in the kitchen. Let's get to that right after the break. All right, we'll back to the break. We're talking with Beth Mansel and her website is budget bites dot com, and Beth, I love how accessible your recipes are. I've been kind of going over them on your website and there's nothing that seems too terribly difficult for me, and as a complete amateur in the kitchen, that makes

me feel good and I love too. You've even got tips to spice up a bowl of instant ramen, and I might have recently purchased a Costco size box of instant ramen, so I do need your tips on how to spice up that bowl of instant ramen, make it actually taste good and especially for our college listeners. Um also, how can they take instant ramen and make it better? Sure, Yeah,

that's one of my favorite things to do. I'm one of those rare people that not o d on ramen during my college years, so I still love it, but I try to, you know, kind of limit it because it's probably not something you should eat every single day. But I do have some ways to make it more tasty and kind of up the nutritional value a little bit. So UM Ramen is one of my favorite things to

use for using up the leftovers in your refrigerators. So when you get to the end of the week and you see you've got all these vegetables in your refrigerator that you didn't use, you can just like toss those into your pot of ramen. So things like um, leftover spinage, you could do, mushrooms, you can do. What else do. I like to put in there bell peppers, um, green onions, So any little leftovers like that that you have, you

can throw that into the broth. I also like to kind of beef up the broth a little bit, so to speak, with things like garlic and ginger, which I almost always have on hand, and then you can add like other sauces, things like toasted sects. Me oil is really good, just a couple of dashes of that, maybe some hot sauce. I even experimented recently with putting canned coconut milk into the broth, and that was absolutely amazing, Like, yeah,

sounds good. Yeah, that's something hits on that before as well. If it kind of takes it to that, like takes it from instat raman to like tie ramen level. Yeah. Would you ever go math throughout and put a Friday in it? Oh? Absolutely, I do that all the time. Actually I don't fry it. I just like poach it or self boil it and put it in. Oh nice. Oh and you mentioned ginger as well. You said you always have that on hand. Is that because you have

those little ginger tubes that you get at aldi? Um no, So when I do Yeah, I do fresh because it's way less expensive. And so if you buy like a knob of ginger, and you can buy any size, A lot of people don't realize you can break those ginger knobs apart, kind of like you separate a bunch of bananas if you only want a few, So you can break off a piece of ginger bring it home. I like to wash it really good because I don't bother peeling mine, and then I just stash it in the

freezer in a freezer bag. And when it's frozen, it's way easier to grate with, like um, a fine hole cheese grater, because normally it has is like stringy bits in it that kind of clog up the greater, but when it's frozen that doesn't happen. So I keep a knob in the freezer at all times, and when I need to use it, great off as much as I need and pop it back in the freezer. Awesome tip. Yeah that's the secod alright, Beth. What about folks who are looking to get started in cooking at home but

they're completely overwhelmed? Right, Like, these are folks who haven't spent much time in the kitchen. What are some practical steps to making cooking less intimidating for them. Um. So, first, pick a really really simple recipe. I mean maybe like a pot of soup, because that for soup, all you do is throw stuff in a pot and heat it up. Um, you know, things like that. And then also take advantage

of YouTube and things like that. There are so many tutorials out there, video tutorials to show you how to chop and clean things. If there's a vegetable you're unfamiliar with, I guarantee you can find a video on how to clean and prep that um vegetable. But start small. I think that's the most important thing. Don't go for that really fancy recipe on your first go, you know, stick to that simple ster fry or a pot of soup and work your way up from there. What would we

as a civilization do without YouTube? I know, how did we survive? Right? Seriously? How do we learn anything before YouTube? We went to the library, I guess we did, you'r. It's a totally different way of learning. But YouTube is like so easy at our fingertips. I use it all the time, Beth. Most folks know that you're supposed to have a couple of nice knives, maybe a couple of

good thick pots and pans. But what are some of the tools that a lot of people overlook that are really useful in the kitchen as they kind of begin to cook more at home. Um, So I use my cheese graters all the time. So you can either get like a box grater that has different sized holes on each side, or I just have a flat one with large holes and a flat one with small holes. And I use that not for just cheese, but I great a lot of different vegetables on that too, So I

great carrots, a lot for different like surfries or pull offs. Um, great potatoes on it. Other vegetables like zucchini are really good to great sometimes, so those get a lot of use in my kitchen. Things like don't forget about your measuring cups and measuring spoons. I like to have a set of at least three cutting boards so I don't have to cross contaminate with like raw meat or fish,

and then my vegetables. And then a rolling pin is kind of surprisingly useful not only for baking goods, but I use it to like pound meat if I need, you know, my chicken breast to be and even thickness or something like that, or to crush, you know, graham crackers. If you're making a dessert stuff like that, ye smash out some nuts or something. Yeah, so you mentioned the box grater. I feel like I always have a hard

time with cheese graders, right like box graders. It can always feel so awkward, like you sometimes you've got this big block of cheese or whatever it is. Is there a way to make that easier because I feel like a lot of times it just feels so awkward and it always feels like I'm not doing it right. I don't know if this is if you're going to have a good answer for me, but I want to I want to see if you do. It sounds like a

personal problem. I remember, I don't know. It's not like maybe I just need to spend more time in the kitchen and then it wouldn't feel award. This isn't a noop chef therapy, Matt, Come on, I mean, you do need to be careful of your fingers. I have like grated my knuckles. But you know, other than that, it's well, like what about so there's there's some like some great tools to have, Like, what about some of those fancier appliances that are popular these days, like instant pots, air fryers,

things like that. Are those worth having on hand? I am a big proponent of just keeping things simple. Um, I don't like specialty gadgets. I did buy an instant pot a few years ago because I had always wanted a pressure cooker to begin with, and then that came on the scene and I'm like, oh, that sounds like it could actually be really useful for multiple things. But then after I got it, I realized not that great.

I mean, I think an instant pot is good, like a slow cooker, for a few things that it does really well, But the rest of the time, I think it's so much easier to just cook in a regular pot on the stovetop. You're not one of those people

that are making like cheesecake. I feel like that's one of the things that are like and you can make cheesecake with it at home all the time, right the staple in my yeah, Like I mean, I have maybe like it's a year tops and it's great when I have it, but like I'm not you don't necessarily buy

something just to make cheesecake. Right now. I think the things that it's valuable for are the pressure cooking options, because um, it's so fast, but you can do all those same things in a slow cooker with more time, And a slow cooker is going to be like twenty five dollars versus a hundred dollar plus instant pots. So I would rather just spend less and you know, have it take a longer time. We're all about the cheaper

device that does the exact same thing. If you needed to write and Beth, what other important skills or techniques are? Are things that you encourage people to learn? Are there like nice skills that we need to master? Is there anything else? I mean, Matt obviously needs to master the cheese greater, that's something I need to improve on right bone up on that, But are there any other techniques that are really useful, like basic things as we kind

of attempt to do more work in the kitchen. Yeah, so I think, like you mentioned, knife skills are probably one of the most important things, and that's really just gonna come with practice. So even if it's uncomfortable or you feel like you don't do it good now, just keep doing it and you will get better at it. Watch those YouTube videos if you need to. I think another really important skill to have is knowing how to

roast things in the oven. Um, like vegetables. It's a really simple technique, but if you don't know like a couple of the hints, it can all go very wrong. Um, and you'll have with soupy vegetables. But having that one technique is going to allow you to make a lot of really really delicious meals. Nice. Yeah, well, can you

dive into that You're you're talking about roasting veggies. You know, it sounds like a great way to get some of that nice roasted flavor on those old vegetables that you mentioned earlier that you know that we don't want to go bad in the fridge, Like, how do you make sure that you have these roasted vegetables that are actually

flavorful and not just soggy. Yeah, So roasting vegetables like roasting vegetables makes just about any vegetable taste better because you got like a concentration of the flavors as the evaporation happens, and then you get the caramelized edges, which add another layer of flavor. Um. But in order for

that to happen. You have to make sure that um, the vegetables are not too crowded on your sheet pan or whatever you're roasting them in, because when they get crowded, all of the moisture that's evaporating how the vegetables gets trapped, and then you basically just end up stewing them in their own juices, and that does not create a desirable flavor or texture. So make sure that everything is kind of spaced out evenly, and then making sure that they're

coated in enough oil. If you try to cut back on the oil too much when you're roasting vegetables, they just kind of dry out and end up like a hydrated vegetable instead of getting those really nice caramelized edges. Very nice. Yeah, Beth, I'm going to go home make some stir fry some veggies. Appropriately sounds like you've converted Joel to being a vegetarian. A vegetarian friend of ours is gonna be like High five and his wife because they all the time. Joel makes fun of them because

they don't eat as much bacon as he does. I do like bacon, But but this has been such a great conversation. I feel like I learned a lot, and I hope and I know that this is going to be just a lot of great infot for our listeners as well. So where can they go find out more about you and what you're up to? Um? So you can visit my website, which is budget bites dot com and it's b y t E s or Instagram is probably the next best place to find me, and that's

just at budget Bites. You're like, you're huge on Instagram. How many followers do you have at this point? Well? Maybe two? Oh yeah, just a cool You're you're almost Kim Kardashian level. Bit. She's like, I'm not a numbers person, but Instagram really late, so I didn't have very much of that pre algorithm time, so you know, only two seventy five. Well, I mean that's the thing. Beautiful, delicious

looking food certainly lends itself to a visual medium. And when you're making simple, amazing recipes like you are, that that folks can make at home, but they see how beautiful it looks, they think, man, that's a beautiful piece of broccoli that was roasted, and I want to eat that universal language. Everyone loves food. It brings people together. Um, so I think it has a very wide appeal. Very cool. Well, we appreciate this conversation. Will definitely link to to you

in our show notes. Will we'll tag you in our Instagram post for this episode. Thank you so much for for talking with us about food and just again, like, we can save so much money if we're able to rein in our grocery budget every single month, because it's one of those recurring expenses. And we really appreciate all the tips that you've given us today. So thanks so much, Thank you guys, so much fun. Thanks again, Beth, Matt.

That was a great conversation. Much needed. I think to get a food expert in on the show because you know, we've talked about saving money. We like all the we we like saving money on groceries. Some of us like Costco, not Beth. But I mean I don't know how to cook of the stuff that she has on her website, but I think it's stuff that I can learn now after having that conversation. Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah. So what's your your big takeaway from this episode? My big takeaway was

stir fry. Dude, two words, stir fry, because I think it's something that I can easily put to use. I can take vegetables that are a couple of days old, tossum, you know, on the stove, and create myself a decent meal that I can actually like. And I think that's the problem sometimes with leftovers. People don't want to eat leftover is because they're worthy, they're not gonna taste very good. And especially when it comes to like vegetables that are

a couple of days old. So anyway that we can spice those up, make them taste good and actually enjoy them, I think he's gonna help our budget and it's gonna be good for us to write. And so that was my big takeaway. I'm gonna start doing stir fries more frequently, and I think Evilly is gonna be happy that I do. Yeah, you and me goes like you're all about the stuffry. Well,

I'll kind of dovetail into that one a little bit too. Um, not stir fries specifically, but just her approach, which is that cooking like it doesn't have to be this super organized, orderly thing where you have to have the perfect recipe and all the right ingredients, and sometimes these ingredients are

gonna be exotic. It literally can be just things you have already in your fridge, and you can just start adding stuff until it tastes good, right, Like you mentioned, like throwing that soy sauce on there, getting some of that fresh ginger. I think that's one of the cool things about cooking on a stovetop like that is that it doesn't require an exact science. Right, We're not baking a cake. It's something that you can be a little

more improvisational on, right. Uh. It doesn't require exact temperatures, it doesn't require you making sure you know the veggies are cookedly, thoroughly through to avoid making sure you're not going to get sick. Like that's that's perfect for me. I need to those error proof resives. Yeah, exactly. And so hearing her talk about that gave me confidence for the next time I've got all four kids and I'm at home and trying to figure out, you know what

meal I'm going to cook. Gave me, Yeah, gave me confidence. And I think this pair as well with how we talk about money. I think a lot of times folks when they think about money, it's just this massive, overwhelming thing and they feel like they have to get everything perfectly lined up. When it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. You can start with something as simple as tracking or spending to get you on a budget, just like she was talking about when it comes to kind

of dialing in your food budget. It doesn't have to be this perfect thing when it comes to food or our money. You can just start off easy and small, and if you can think about it in a way that's approachable, you're gonna be much more likely to continue to do that action, and you're gonna be much more

likely to succeed because you keep up with it. Yeah. Yeah, And I think going back to the food thing for a second, to that one of the things we didn't talk about with Beth, but it's so true is that the more you can use those leftovers, the more you could utilize food that you've already cooked to actually make it tasty and eat it, we're gonna minimize food waste, and food wastes is a huge problem in the developed the world that we just we just throw away a

lot of stuff that's very edible, and it also affects our budget to this extreme right where we're actually throwing away edible food, We're throwing away meals, and then we have to go either buy more stuff or we go out to eat to to have something to eat that night or that day. And when we can actually make things last a little bit longer, we can reuse and some of the things that we've already cooked, and we're gonna have more money left at the end of the

month because we did that. That's huge. So, yeah, food waste major problem, and I think you know, if we take Beth route, we're on our way of solving it absolutely. Man. Well, something that we never waste is beer. So this episode we had a Whimsical Nature, which is a beer by Phase three Brewing Company out of Illinois. This one was sent to us by Doug. So, Doug, thanks so much for for sending us this beer. Joel, what were your thoughts on this? I'm gonna go ahead and spoil it

a little bit, delicious beer because this one was so good. Yeah, I mean, I don't think we've talked trash about a beer yet, although we've had some that were definitely not as good as others. We've gotten creative and how we talked about some of those beers. But this is top to your range, man. This is so good. This is so good. So to me, this beer tasted like ripe hops. My palate was assaulted with a lot of hops in

this one. Like normally hops are I mean hops like you get the dust and the oils off of hops, right, But like the way you're describing it almost as if the hop was juicy. Yes, it was, and it totally totally was. It felt like I was biting into something almost and it was had some floral notes, had some kind of orange flavors present, but overall just a delicious I PA that I thoroughly enjoyed. Yeah. Man uh and this was a double I p A by the way. To me, it had this bright, almost like fizzy orange

juice like character. I've described other beers this way as well, where it kind of almost reminds me of sunny d and the best way possible, But it kind of had that going on for me. It sort of reminds me of a like a refreshing orange drink, which certainly lends us off to some of these warmer us that we're starting to experience now, at least what we are in the South. Sure, yeah, I mean we drink I p s all year round, but man, getting a really juicy

what I would describe as almost kind of effervescent. Phzzy. I p like this as it's warming up. Yeah, it really gets me a pump for the summer. Yeah man, all right, now we gotta in this episode because I'm hungry after that conversation with Beth. But for folks who want the show notes for this episode, they want to find out more about Beth, well, they can find that on our website at how to money dot com. Yeah, Joel. Along with those show notes, you can find other helpful

articles up there as well. In particular, one article we have up there is about choosing the right credit card based on how you spend your money. And so if you are looking for a new credit card, we would recommend you check that one out. You can go do how to money dot com forward slash credit cards, and if you were to sign up via any of those links, that helps out the show. So, Joel, that's gonna be it for this episode, Buddy. Until next time, Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out.