DIY -- before you buy

I don't remember saying this before but getting rid of stuff before Passover brought it to mind.
Don't buy something for your DIY projects unless you can either use it up in one batch,
or you can do multiple things with it.
Examples.
I always buy ground nuts for charoset.  I don't need much.
But experiments over the last year have shown that if the nuts are ground fine enough, you can use them to replace equal amounts of flour.
Worked in muffins.
Worked in chocolate filling and glaze for babka.
Worked in brownies.

I bought cream cheese to use with some of my home-salted lox.
I only used half of it for that.
I used the other half for the filling in a cheese babka.

This is really important with cooking utensils.  Maybe it looks cute.  Maybe all your friends are talking about it. 
That doesn't mean you need to buy it.
If you buy expensive non-stick cookware and you have roommates who use your stuff,
you may want to lock that cookware up once you wash it if you can't trust your roommates not to use metal utensils with it.
With the right tricks, you can make stainless steel cookware non-stick,
and you won't have to worry about your lazy careless inconsiderate roommates.

DIY has two purposes.
One is building survival skills.
The other is saving money.
When you look at something with desire in your eyes, don't buy it until you sit down and find more than one use for it, or a recipe that will use all of it in one batch.
You may wind up freezing some of that batch, so find out if it freezes well.
Only if you get two or more "yes" answers to these questions should you buy it or make it.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved