Buy It or Make It from Scratch?
May 2nd, 2009 | By Edson | Category: Food, Food Costs |Slate has an interesting article about whether you’re better off buying certain items at the store or making them yourself. Their primary focus is cost, though the author does address quality to some extent. They leave out plenty of other factors that might come into play – supporting local growers, sustainable farming practices, or various other ethical considerations. But let’s face it: money is on a lot of people’s minds right now.
The article runs into some accounting problems, like apparently including the cost of canning jars in the cost of making preserves. If you’re doing that, what about the canning kettle? Or the stove for that matter? Canning lids I could see, but canning jars are a buy once, use forever item. The author also talks about buying organic strawberries. Were they in season? Were they shipped in from another time zone? Strawberries can vary a lot in cost and quality based on these factors.
Still, the article’s definitely worth a read. It also ties into our current lead article pretty well, and we thought it could make for an interesting discussion topic in The Barnyard. What do you make from scratch? What did you think would be hard but turned out to be easy? What did you try and give up on? What are you thinking about trying? Let us know!
Let me be devil’s advocate for a moment on the price issue. Its absolutely true that the jars and other “one time” expenses pay for themselves. But then again the same argument is used for solar panels, or buying a hybrid vs. a conventional car. I guess its all a matter of how much you can afford to wait to get paid back on. The turn around on canning jars is of course much quicker and the initial cost much lower. Heck our kit paid for itself the first time we made strawberry jam….if you consider the number of jars bought in total. I guess a better way to look at it would be on a per jar basis.
1st homemade jar $ is waaaay more expensive than that 1st store-bought jar But each additional jar gets cheaper and cheaper, whereas the storebought maintains a relatively fixed price. Businesses refer to this as economies of scale and usually have the advantage of either ample cash on hand or available credit to finance the initial investment. Individuals need to start thinking of their home like a business (home economics anyone?) so that they can more readily accommodate these upfront costs into their “business plan”
I’ll just counter that canning jars can usually be picked up for next-to-nothing at yard sales, thrift stores, flea markets, Freecycle, and other such avenues.
ed4, that may be true in your area, but I have a heck of a time finding used canning jars locally. Our thrift stores want 99 cents a piece, I have only been able to get 1 batch of about a dozen from freecycle. Still, I can find them at Big Lots for $7-9/case, and that is a good enough price for me.
I also include in my mental calculations:
The price of not having corn syrup in my food.
The cost of heating up the kitchen when it’s already so flipping hot out.
As a raw foodist, I’m definitely going for “making it from scratch”. The big thing about raw food is getting it organic. I’ve been growing my own tomatoes with an AeroGrow machine, but the cost of electricity and keeping it warm in the winter has really put a dent in the feasibility of the project.
If you find an information product on how to use an AeroGrow without breaking the bank that would be a great article to post.