My kitchen owes much to my mother.....

I think that most of my money saving ideas that I use in my kitchen are, very much, in the opposite directions that my mother did in her kitchen. She would need to follow recipes exactly and that meant buying certain items that she never really used after that. She also would throw out the liquid left from cooking vegetables and most times even threw out the liquid from cooking chicken. If she was making chicken stock it was a different matter. I use whatever I have on hand for most of my cooking. I do buy special items to use, but these can also be used in other recipes as well. I don't buy items that have a limited range of use. I never throw any liquid left from cooking and that's even the frying of steaks. To that liquid I usually make a sour cream sauce to put on the steak or use it to form the base for a sauce to add to my leftover fried steak with vegetables on pasta. I even use my leftover fast food chicken to make a pasta topping that is much better than any restaurant. The spices from the chicken are all that it needs to be combined with sour cream, vegetables and a little salt. I think my mother cooked just to feed us and really didn't like to cook in the first place. I also think that if it wasn't for her I wouldn't have the ability to do what I now do in my kitchen to save money and create tasteful creations to feed to my family of, me.