Pondering the 'Convenience' Items

One of the main things I've been thinking about in the last few days is that a lot of the things I've been doing to save us money, especially with the groceries, is that it's NOT hard. I guess it's easy to think that the convenience things are so much easier, which they are easy-er, but not because making them is hard, it just takes time. I guess the bottom line is that with a little effort and time you can make your own convenience items to have on hand for the rushed meal moments.

One of the main things I think of is the roasted peppers. I was expecting it to be complicated or even thinking of taking the peppers to have them roasted at a local shop that does them (which if you need a time saver it's worth finding one in your area and it's not very expensive, here they would do a bushel for $3), but then realized it's just grilling them. 'Really? That's it!' Was basically my response. I was irritated that I'd spent so much money on a jar when all I had to do was char some peppers to get the same thing for much cheaper!

With all the prep work that I did with the farm vegetables I was realizing the same thing. It's really not HARD to do these things. It's time consuming up front, but then it's just as easy as grabbing things out of the freezer later. What it comes down to is that at the grocery store we are paying someone to put their time into making it easy for us. Not bad at all, don't get me wrong, there are times when it's SO worth the money to get something easy, as long as we realize that we essentially paid someone to help us out! :)

I'm thinking after all of this I might not be as quick to get the convenience items at the store. I know now that I am capable of doing a lot of this myself and I'll hopefully try that option first.