I make these:
Cinnamon sugar
Brown sugar
grated cheese
Italian seasoning mix
garlic salt
gravies
Rather than buy them.
I have made or make irregularly:
bread
yogurt
ice cream
some sauces (zhoug, chimichuree, pesto, etc.)
What do you make that I don’t? What’s worth it to you or not?
Some of what I make is due to having a garden. From this I make salsa verde, sometimes jam. And I dry chilis (aka pepper flakes) or roast them and purée (aka chili paste), or dice and freeze them. I also dry herbs when we grow them (basil, oregano, rosemary, tarragon, sage). Rosemary is very prolific, you can probably get a lifetime supply in one year. We have horseradish so I have made my own ground horseradish. I roast surplus tomatoes to make “tomato sauce”, which I freeze. I dice some excess tomatoes and freeze them. Excess zucchini is grated and frozen.
Otherwise I always make cookies from scratch. No purchased dough or dry mix.
I make my own taco seasoning mix, because the spices are in my cupboard already, and a taco seasoning packet may or may not be. It also means that I can cut the salt way way down - we found the packets were very salty
I make spice blends. Eg. chili powder, fajita seasoning, curry powder, etc.
I also garden, so jams, jellies and pickles.
This is apple country, so I buy anywhere from 20-40 pounds of “deer apples” in the fall (or just use what’s given to me) to make applesauce, apple slices (for the freezer), apple jelly, etc.
We love our tomato products here. Last year I went through half a bushel of Roma tomatoes and it wasn’t enough. This year I’m talking to a local farmer/supplier re: buying a full bushel. I make basil tomato sauce (a pasta sauce), diced tomatoes, antipasto, and salsa. We are almost out of it all. I just discovered a lone cup jar of salsa in my canning cupboard yesterday. That’s the end of it.
I make my own canned chickpeas and beans for chili, hummus, black bean burritos. I make a Mexican corn recipe to toss into chili.
This year I made my own Dijon mustard, but it’s hardly worth it cost wise. The store stuff goes on sale dirt cheap. I may not make it again.
I make my own granola. It’s cheaper than buying and I can adjust the recipe however I want.
I used to bake bread, but Hubby complained it was either “too heavy”, “too crusty”, or “didn’t fit in the toaster”. I’m thinking I might go back to making small loaves for me, and let him have his junk store bought bread.
I make my own muffins too. Usually I make confetti squares or Rice Krispee squares once a month for Hubby, instead of him tossing them in the cart when we grocery shop.
We have retired blueberry farmers in the family who supply us with wild blueberries every year through their connections. We use those on muffins, jams, cake, on cereal, with granola and hm yogurt.
My sister grows a boatload of basil, which I make pesto with, dry, freeze, etc.
She grows a lot of greens too. I’m struggling with what to do with 10-8 oz. bags of frozen Swiss chard. Hubby has decided he doesn’t like it. I’m thinking of ways to disguise it.
I’ve made grape juice and apple juice in the past. But we don’t drink those juices normally, so I haven’t continued.
Those are some things I do.
The store bought ones are revolting - they taste like chemicals to me.
When I have lots of apples, I prep them (peel, core) and cook them with spices for apple crisp / pie filling.
I make my own granola too, but we go through swaths of time where we don’t eat granola.
I make tons if soup, usually chicken or vegetable. Yummy. I love soup. Hubs is less enamored with soup.
Soup? I see it put in soup a lot - like wedding soup. Otherwise spanakopita or quiche / frittata?
I used to put it in quiche, but he’s rebelling. Soup is definitely doable. I could also dry it and grind it up for greens powder to throw indiscriminately into recipes. But that’s a lot of work and energy to use that many greens. I’m thinking soup is my best best.
Smoothies?
beans from dried, so much cheaper and yummier than canned
yogurt is something I used to make, but I haven’t done it since I replaced our oven. There have been a number of sales on yogurt, and not on the milk. When that flips, I’ll go back to making it myself (I have an instantpot now which I’m told will be useful)
I make my granola. I make stock, soups & stews. I make red sauce (btw, this is a great place for freezer greans @PinkTutu ), butter chicken sauce. I make pulled pork. I make picked red onions. I discovered a while back that it is possible to purchase cooked rice, so I’ll say that I make that from dried as well.
Energy bars!! They are so expensive but so useful to me as someone who exercises 1-3 hours a day.
This is a recipe I use often but I also include protein powder sometimes .
I regularly make:
I sometimes make:
I almost never make:
I don’t use garlic salt/cinnamon sugar/juices.
Applesauce, jam, granola. I froze a lot more green beans last year than I thought - they just keep appearing in the freezer.
I buy spice blends in the big commercial sizes if it’s something we use a lot, like Italian seasoning and taco seasoning. I think that cheaper than blending them myself.
I’ve made cheese and tofu from scratch, just to see how, but I don’t do it often.
You make pasta!! I am so curious about this as it seems so time intensive compared to cost savings. What stuff do you need? Do you have to have a crank press etc?
Oh we also make and can our own hot sauce (we go through a lot) and batch cook and then freeze vegan protein waffles for breakfast on my super early work days.
Sammmme it’s such a faff relative to the payoff. But I would consider it if our local tofu maker went out of business
Oh I definitely use dry pasta for these noodle dishes - it’s the other stuff that I make from scratch.
I have made pasta from scratch, though. Some shapes all you need is a rolling pin and a knife. Others really benefit from a mold/extruder/real pasta roller.
Oh! I make seitan and paneer from scratch because they’re too fucking expensive at the store lol (or I can’t find them at all).
Ohhh yea we pre-prep vegan Mac and cheese dry mix which is so nice for when you need food but have no brain power
I am going to borrow dia’s format:
I regularly make:
yogurt - this is my #1 most frequent, easy, and reliable self-make. A half gallon of milk (even organic) is always cheaper than a quart of yogurt around here except very rarely. I used to use a small dedicated yogurt maker (basically a little incubator) that did 1 quart at a time, which was more trouble because I had to do it more frequently and also had to heat and monitor the milk on the stove. Now I have a small instapot and can do 1/2 gallon at a time with almost no oversite. It is a no-brainer for me.
bread - I used to do this a lot more and then it fell off, but with the prices lately I’ve started again. It’s especially efficient in winter when I have to have heat on anyway. I used to reliably do sourdough as well, but I let my starter die. I should get that going again.
certain sauces and dressings - for example, I grew up with Hidden Valley Ranch (the herb packets) and now I just make my own. Ditto for italian style. Some curry sauces. Sometimes pasta sauce/marinara.
rice - I know this sounds weird to a lot of people, but I grew up with Minute Rice. For a long time I just did stovetop which worked fine, but now I have a dedicated rice cooker (and have for quite a few years now) and I get perfect rice every single time and it has a keep warm function and it is the best single use appliance ever.
tortillas (both flour and corn) - I don’t have access to freshly made ones and the ones in the store are often more expensive than I want to pay. Mine are not as good as fresh (like, professionally made fresh) and not as soft as store bought, but they are good enough and I am ok with that. I do have a press for corn tortillas.
grated cheese - this is something I hadn’t thought about as being homemade but since others have mentioned it yeah, I do this too. Both things like monterey jack and also hard cheese like parmesan. Which reminds me of:
pizza - I nearly always make pizza from scratch, including the dough, because it is so easy and much cheaper than frozen storebought these days, let alone nice pizza joint pizza. I use regular mozzarella and just tear it into pieces. Sometimes I make homemade sauce and sometimes I use jarred (and freeze the excess). The recipe for dough I follow makes 2 crusts, so I usually make one fresh and freeze the other for later.
cookies - I don’t often make but I never buy the refrigerated dough and almost never buy pre-made (even bakery), I just make them myself. Cookies are pretty forgiving.
dry beans - I also almost exclusively make beans from dried. It’s less than an hour in the instant pot from start to finish. I don’t even really pre-cook and freeze, because my IP is small and really only can make 4c at a time, but that’s ok!
popcorn - I think this qualifies! I have the old vintage air popper I grew up with, and sometimes I do it on the stovetop with oil. I use olive oil spray + salt (just table salt ground in a spice grinder) and sometimes nutritional yeast for flavoring. Sometimes the knockoff doritos spice blend. Definitely cheaper than microwave popcorn (also my microwave is small and cannot fit regular sized microwave popcorn bags (lol) and the snack size ones are even more expensive!)
I sometimes make:
pancakes (and waffles to a lesser extent) - I grew up on Bisquik. It’s cheaper to make them from scratch and only takes a few minutes to assemble the ingredients. (Sometimes I do use Kodiak Cakes mix though.) When I was making a lot of sourdough I used the discard for pancakes and that was super efficient! Waffles are more of a faff since my waffle iron only does one at a time and does not have removable plates (so it’s a pain to clean), and since waffles traditionally have more butter than pancakes I usually just make pancakes if I want something like that. But if I do make them I make a bunch and freeze them.
pasta! I have a manual roller and can do spaghetti, capellini, and sheets for lasagna or ravioli (I also have one ravioli mold). Homemade pasta has never been cost competitive to dried, because IMO the best pasta is egg-forward. And now with the price of eggs (also ricotta is pretty pricy as well)… However, homemade pasta is so much better it is worth it occasionally. It might be comparable in price to fresh refrigerated pasta sold in supermarkets?
granola - a lot of commercial granola has nuts, which I am allergic to, so I either have a small selection of flavors I don’t really like that much, or none at all, at the supermarket. I went through a phase of eating a lot of granola with yogurt, but I don’t so much anymore, so I don’t make it very often. It is very easy though.
ice cream - I don’t find it that time consuming, and the recipe I use for mocha ice cream is better than any commercial, IMO, so I sometimes make it in the summer.
popsicles! I have a popsicle mold that I’ve used for fruit-based popsicles and fudgesicle-type popsicles, which are nice for the summer and you can customize the flavors, which is nice.
gyoza/pot stickers - I am pescatarian and usually can’t find veggie ones in my local stores, only chicken and pork, and I love gyoza, so I make them from scratch. Sometimes I use pre-made wrappers and sometimes I make the wrappers from scratch also. It’s not a small effort, so I make a big batch and freeze, and/or try to do it with friends, which is a lot more efficient with friends (one person each for rolling the wrapper, filling, and sealing).
seitan - I don’t make it that often but like others have said it’s too expensive at the store (if I can even find it) and it is quite easy.
pickles - in particular refrigerator half-sours
Things I rarely make:
pierogi - I mostly can only find Mrs T’s here, and I swear they are made with potato flakes and I don’t like the taste. But I love pierogi. So I make them. (Occasionally. It’s more of a faff I want to do very often.)
samosas (also a faff, also better fresh, also rarely if ever seen in my local stores)
tofu - it is quite a faff but I do rarely make fresh because I don’t have access to fresh locally. Packaged usually is fine for me though.
soy milk - also a faff and I also only make when I make fresh tofu because I don’t drink soy milk, lol. For a while I was gung-ho on making tofu, though, so it was worth it. Maybe I’ll start again.
cheese - I’ve done feta, farmer cheese/paneer, mozzarella, which are pretty easy! I’d say paneer is the best bang for my buck and I do make it not-infrequently, because I cannot get it locally. I’ve never had the brain space to try anything more complicated that needs curing, but I’d like to one day.
naturally carbonated sodas - I used to do this a lot (and I still have bottles) but I haven’t in a long time. It isn’t hard but I just haven’t had the inclination.
jam/jelly etc - I have in the past, but I am just not a very big jam and jelly eater.
This was a bigger list than I thought it would be!
Oh I almost forgot: MAPLE SYRUP! I have made my own for a few years. It is very time intensive but is worth it (for me). But I didn’t manage to get the taps in this year, too much other stuff going on. 
Wah wah. I can get locally made though, which is second best, if pricy! I pay it because I do not like imitation syrup, only the real deal.
Oh also also, I do dehydrate some herbs pretty reliably: parsley, oregano, dill, and mint are most frequent.
ALSO also, I do usually make my own tzatziki and hummus, both because it is cheaper and because I think it tastes better.
