Inflation Busting #7: Give Your Kitchen Scraps a Delicious Second Life
With grocery prices doing what they do, throwing away food feels like tossing cash right into the trash. But two of the most common kitchen "waste" items—fruit that’s starting to look a little tired on the counter, and those end slices of bread nobody wants to eat—happen to be the exact ingredients for two incredible, budget-saving treats.
Here is how you can stretch your food budget, eliminate waste, and dress up your daily meals without spending an extra dime.
1. Quick Warm Fruit Compote
Instead of tossing out apples, pears, or berries that have sat out a bit too long, turn them into a rich, sweet compote.
Why It Saves You Money
Forget buying expensive flavored syrups, dessert toppings, or specialty jams. Fruit compotes make amazing toppings for everyday staples you already have in the kitchen:
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Breakfast: Spoons perfectly over oatmeal, pancakes, waffles, yogurt, or buttered toast.
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Desserts & Snacks: Elevates plain ice cream, cheesecake, pudding, cake, or even a cheese & cracker board.
Great Fruits to Use
Strawberries, peaches, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, cherries, pears, apples, or cranberries.
Ingredients
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Fresh fruit, chopped into small pieces
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1 tbsp butter
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1/4 cup raisins
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1 tsp lemon juice & lemon zest (orange works great, too!)
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3 tbsp sugar or sugar substitute
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1/2 to 1 tsp vanilla extract
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1/8 tsp nutmeg
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1/8 tsp ground ginger
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1/8 tsp cloves or allspice
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Slurry: 1 tbsp water mixed with 1 tbsp cornstarch
Cooking Directions
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Melt the butter in a large sauté pan over medium heat.
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Add the fruit, raisins, lemon zest, lemon juice, and sugar. Stir together.
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Stir in the vanilla extract and spices.
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To thicken into a rich sauce, stir in the cornstarch slurry and simmer for a minute until clear and thickened.
Storing Your Compote: Freezing vs. Water-Bath Canning
If you have a bumper crop or a mountain of leftover fruit from a barbecue or party, save it for later!
Option A: Freezing (Short to Medium-Term)
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Best Method: Cook the compote without the cornstarch slurry. Freeze in small, individual portion containers for 8 to 12 months. When ready to use, thaw, reheat, and stir in your cornstarch slurry right on the stove.
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Want to freeze it pre-thickened? Swap cornstarch for ClearJel, Tapioca starch, or Arrowroot before freezing, as standard cornstarch can break down and get watery after thawing.
Option B: Water-Bath Canning (Long-Term Storage)
Want pantry-stable jars? You can safely water-bath can your compotes, but you must follow core home-canning safety rules:
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Prep Safely: Peel and core apples and pears (do not leave skins on). If using Asian pears, you must add commercial bottled lemon juice to ensure proper acid levels.
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NO Thickeners: Never add cornstarch, flour, or tapioca to jars before canning. It interferes with heat distribution and is unsafe. Thicken after opening the jar later.
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Hot Pack: Bring cooked fruit and liquid to a rolling boil. Ladle into warm jars, leaving 1/2-inch headspace.
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Process: Remove air bubbles, wipe rims, and process in a boiling water-bath canner (15 minutes for pints, 20 minutes for quarts at 0–1,000 ft elevation). Let cool 12–24 hours and test seals.
2. Freezer Bread Scrap Pudding
Never throw away bread heels, crusts, or stale slices again! Keep a zip-top bag in your freezer and toss in bread ends whenever you have them. Once you have enough to fill a baking dish, it's time for comfort food.
Ingredients
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6 slices day-old (or thawed freezer scrap) bread, torn into pieces
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2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
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1/2 cup raisins (optional)
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2 cups milk (or swap in evaporated/sweetened condensed milk for extra richness)
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3/4 cup sugar or sugar alternative
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4 large eggs, beaten
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1 tsp ground cinnamon
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1 tsp vanilla extract
Directions
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Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
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Place the torn bread pieces and raisins into a baking dish. Drizzle the melted butter over the top and allow it to soak into the bread.
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Make the Custard: In a bowl, whisk together the milk, sugar, eggs, cinnamon, and vanilla until thoroughly combined.
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Pour the custard mixture evenly over the bread and raisins.
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Let it sit and soak for about 20 minutes while your oven finishes heating up.
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Bake for 45 minutes until set and golden brown. Serve warm!
Once you begin to feel the ease and convenience of these methods, you may find yourselves taking advantage of the seasonal fruit sales, thinking ahead to these delicious compotes, healthy food additives, and bread puddings!
Have a peek behind a real novel.
Check out my novelette Writer's Block that I wrote and narrated! It's available on Audible but if you want to download for free, click below to get professional audiobook delivery from Bookfunnel
I wrote and narrated it. It's my first attempt at narration!
When you need something new, commit to making your budget net-zero.
One of the easiest ways to build your buying fund without spending a dime upfront is leveraging the "For Sale & Free" tab on Nextdoor.com. People frequently post perfectly good furniture, home decor, toys, and household items just to clear out space quickly. Pick up a solid free item locally, clean it up, take a few great pictures, and re-list it on Facebook Marketplace.
freebies, and neighborhood Junk Days into a game. Teaching them how to spot value, bargain, and sell is a fantastic hands-on lesson in practical finance that pays off for the whole family.
PLEASANT SURPRISE: One pleasant surprise I learned was that when you need to read every word without flubbing, you catch all the mistakes. Even when my books are edited by a wonderful editor, small typos and name swaps, etc. can get through. But when you need to narrate it and listen back as you edit, those errors are all caught.
When recording in Audacity, the audio will be saved as a 'project'. This will save it as a .aup3 file. This is the raw audio that is saved as a file that only Audacity recognizes. ACX requires .mp3 uploads. So the pathway is to save the project as an .aup3 file when you are working on it in audacity. When it is edited and finished, you will need to export it as an .mp3 file.
The secret to drafting suspense without losing your mind is to write out the bare bones of the crime or suspenseful event first. Don't worry about anything else yet. Forget the deep backstory, the descriptive settings, or the witty dialogue. Focus purely on the mystery or crime itself, and build a strict chronology of how the clues or revelations are dropped.
Leave notes to yourself. When you finish a writing session, make a quick note of where your mind is at and what needs to happen next. It makes finding your place the next day so much easier.
When you sit down to outline your story before you write a single scene, something shifts. You stop thinking like a writer and start thinking like a builder. That's the whole point.
The Brainstorming Hat — This is the first hat, and it's the loose one. You wear it when you're sketching out a few possible storylines, just to see which one has legs. This is quick work — short, messy ideas, not finished plots. The goal isn't to pick "the" story yet. The goal is to make sure whatever story you commit to actually has enough potential for twists, turns, and a full novel's worth of trouble. Don't skip this hat. Committing too early is how writers end up 40,000 words into a story that runs out of gas.
The Story Engineer Hat — Once you've picked your storyline, this hat goes on. This is where you lay out the bones of the story — what happens, in what order, and why. You can do this with short paragraphs, a bulleted list, index cards, whatever gets the structure out of your head and onto something you can look at. It won't be pretty. It's not supposed to be. This is the layer where you make sure the story actually holds together before you build anything on top of it.
The Location Scout Hat — This one comes after your story has taken shape in the engineering stage. Now you go looking for the places where all of this is going to happen. Where does the crime scene sit? What's down the street? What does the neighborhood look like? Putting in a little effort here pays off twice — it makes your story feel grounded and real, and if you've ever thought about your book being adapted for film or streaming, having real, scoutable locations gives you a head start.
