6 things I make instead of buy from the Supermarket

Hello and welcome to my first-ever homemaker blog post!!! I am so excited to start diving into a new blog topic and I am so excited to have you come along with me.

I am on a journey to embrace being a stay-at-home Mum and a homemaker. I don’t want to look back when all my kids are grown and feel like I wasted years hating the fact that all I got to do was housework and school drop off and school pick up and washing and cooking.

I have this thing about complaining. I do my best not to complain about things if I am not prepared to do the work to change them. And my husband and I have actively chosen to have me stay home with the kids so we don’t need to be paying for child care and before and after school care. So because my being home is not something I am willing to change, I do not want to find myself complaining about it. Instead, I am working to find the joy in it.

If you would like to follow along with my journey to find joy in the homemaking years then feel free to sign up to my newsletter with the form below and I will keep you updated on the things I am trying and exploring each week.

This week I am kicking off my new blogging experience by sharing a list of 6 things I have started making from scratch and stopped buying at the supermarket since our groceries are costing us more and more each time we go to the shop. I have noticed so many things increasing in price and I know I am not the only one feeling the pinch.

1. Yoghurt - greek style yoghurt & coconut yoghurt

First up, Yoghurt! My foray into yoghurt making began when a friend had an abundance of fresh milk thanks to her husband driving the milk truck. She shared milk with me 8 litres at a time and to make the most of this, I began learning how to make yoghurt. I found the recipe from Kylie and Claire at The Natural Life Academy, bought myself a digital thermometer and with my handy slow cooker, I got started experimenting. And I tell you what it is so easy to do!!

I have only ruined one batch of milk, by turning the slow cooker on and getting sucked into the school drop-off and errands routine and forgetting about it and boiling the milk way too hot. But, no need to cry over burnt milk… right?

This project has saved my family $10 each week since we started. The 2kg tub of yoghurt that we were buying, used to be $10 and is now $14. We would buy one every week, and some weeks we were buying 2 per week. That increase was the motivation I needed to learn this skill and spend $4.80 on 3 litres of milk rather than $14. According to my Instagram stories, I have been making yoghurt every week for 35 weeks now. In less than a year that is a saving of around $350. Just on yoghurt.

EDIT - I have just made a fresh batch of yoghurt using unhomogonised fresh local milk rather than long life milk and the difference is incredible. The fresh local milk is so much creamier and delicious. I will not be making yoghurt with long life milk anymore!

As a side note to the yoghurt, recently I decided that I wanted to learn to make coconut yoghurt. Dairy based yoghurt doesn’t sit well with my stomach, so I figured if I can make regular yoghurt, then surely I can make coconut yoghurt. For this I found a recipe on this blog here….. I have only made this twice, but it turned out lovely and thick and creamy!
But I also just found a coconut yoghurt recipe that doesn’t require the heating and cooling of the coconut milk, which seems much more my speed!!! I will report back on the new recipe once I have tried it!

2. Fancy bread for soup nights

Over this last year I have been learning to bake bread and I tell you what, the smell of fresh bread is heaven. I don’t tend to eat a lot of bread, but when I do, homemade is best! The recipes I have used are all from The Natural Life Academy. I have made the fancy bread loaf, the foccacia, the sandwich bread, the rolls, and the pizza dough as you will see in the next point!

I fully intend to work my way up to baking more of our bread and wrap requirements.

And my next challenge here is sourdough! (If you follow along on my Instagram you will know I’ve made two loaves of sourdough and they were delicious! I will share my sourdough journey in an upcoming blog!)

3. Pizza bases

I have also recently mastered the pizza dough. I made homemade pizza bases and every single person in my house ate them! That is virtually unheard of. There is normally at least one kid who decides that he or she doesn’t like what I’ve made, but these got 8 thumbs up from everyone in the house.

The pizza dough recipe is from The Natural Life Academy again. I purchased a bunch of their recipe cards and I use the recipes quite regularly.

4. Kombucha

Kombucha seems to be a love it or hate it thing. Not everyone likes it, but we love it! We have been brewing our own Kombucha for around 2-3 years now. For those who haven’t come across it, Kombucha is a fermented sweet tea. It is so good for your gut, with all sorts of good bacteria.

My sister gave me our first scoby, some basic instructions to get started, and we a couple years later, we still brew a new batch every week. The kids all like it too and they each have their favourite flavours they like asking us to make. And considering it is a much better option than sweetened soft drinks, I am happy to cater to their requests!

A fresh batch of Kombucha in our recycled bottles.

5. Packaged lunchbox snacks

This can be a section of the grocery shop that can add lots of dollarbucks (Bluey fan anyone?). Not only that but it can add so much unnecessary sugar and preservatives and junk for the kids. Now this is not me saying that 100% of what goes into my kids lunchboxes is homemade. And I am certainly not on here shaming Mums or Dads who are putting packaged food into their kids lunchboxes. You do what you have to do. If you don’t have the time or desire to make snacks from scratch, it’s better the kids eat something right!? No Mum shame here.

But our daily school lunchboxes tend to include rice crackers, fruit, sometimes carrot or cucumber, and generally every day they get a mini muffin or chocolate crackle or muesli bar or some kind of homemade snack. I have about a 50/50 strike rate with the kids actually eating the snacks I make. There is always one kid who decides the texture isn’t quite right or they wanted chocolate chips in it but I had run out, or the wind was just blowing a different way that day and they decided they didn’t like it. Sound familiar?

But I will persist. For me, it’s worth spending the time to save that money. Packaged lunchbox snacks are just so expensive.

6. Air fresheners - especially car air fresheners

I stopped buying scented candles and air fresheners a long time ago, but recently my husband had this disgusting cherry scented air freshener in a work ute recently and it was so strong, the kids didn’t even want to ride in his car. He asked me to see if I can make a ‘natural greeney’ air freshener for his car and this is what I came up with. A little cloth bag, (that I have a heap of because I package my enamel pins in them for my Etsy shop), some rice and some drops of an essential oil (I did around 10 drops). He chose Peppermint but you could use any scent you prefer. Personally, I love lavender and I have made a lavender one for my car so that it is a nice reminder to myself to take a few deep breaths and calm down every time I get into my car.

These are nice and easy to refill too, just open the bag and drop in some more essential oils.

These scents last around a week, and you can top them up whenever you feel the smell has faded.

Other things I am working on making from scratch to save money

Sourdough Starter and Bread

I am attempting to make my own Sourdough Starter, though I am having a bit of trouble in the cold Victorian winter. So if you would like to follow along and see if I can ever get this starter active, head over to my Instagram and keep an eye on my stories highlight.

Homemade cough syrup

Cough syrups - as it is Winter 2023 right now, and our family have had our seasonal colds and coughs, I am experimenting with different types of homemade cough syrup. We have tried a few different types and they have helped to ease the cough and sooth a rough throat.

Herbal teas

I have been growing my own herbs for a little while now, I have rosemary, thyme, oregano, sage, chamomile, calendula, lavender, a bay tree, basil and coriander. I have been experimenting with drying these herbs, using them in cooking and steeping them in teas. We found that making a honey and lemon tea and adding some oregano helped to ease our cough when we were sick. There is so much more I want to learn and grow when it comes to herbs, so no doubt there will be more blog posts about them too!

Gummies for the kids

I have tried to make gummies for the kids once before but the gelatine went all grainy and I didn’t get the right mix of juice and honey so no-one ate them! That is on the list to try again later!

There are no doubt a lot of other things I’d like to learn to make from scratch. Really I could keep going on for ages, but these are the top of my list at the moment. Mainly because of the season we are in at the moment. As we move into Summer that list might change to icecream and icypoles!

I hope you’ve gotten some ideas of places you could save some money with your grocery shop as the prices continue to push up and up.

Comment below and let me know what if you’ve tried making any of these things from scratch!

Happy Homemaking Friends!