Friday, March 16, 2007

What You Don't Know...

...can hurt you.

I was talking to a young friend awhile back who was getting WIC supplements for her children. She mentioned that they gave her a lot of canned evaporated milk.

"The only way I know how to use it is to make fudge!"

Oh, my. After enlightening her as to the real identity of canned milk (it's milk), I began to wonder how many other people don't know what to do with evaporated milk. Or clotheslines. Or dishpans. Or...

What you don't know can be painful to your money situation. There may be more important things than how to use evaporated milk, but the more you know, the more you can save.

Do you know what's the best deductible for your automobile insurance?
Do you know how much filler is in your laundry detergent?
Do you know that your printer ink cartridge is not empty when your computer tells you it is?

Not knowing those things costs us money. What we don't know can hurt us.

4 comments:

  1. Pat,
    I always make sure I have at least 2 cans of evaporated milk in my cupboard at any time. Living here in the hurricane zone, it's part of my emergency kit, yet I'm a milk lover, so I keep it on hand to put in my coffee when I run out of fresh milk.

    Also, my mother taught me how to make a luscious potato soup with canned milk and that certainly makes for a frugal meal, especially if the potatoes aren't "baked potato" fresh.

    I'd love to hear about other recipes featured canned milk, especially when it does have a bit of that boiled milk taste. Please give us some more tips.

    Thank you,
    Terre Parker

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  2. Good Post! It is so true! Unfortunately, most people do not wish to change their life habits. At least that has been my experience. Our church has a woman to woman publication that is distributed within the church approximately every other month. The woman who writes the column for saving money asked me for some ways in which I save money because I raised a large family. Although the smallest of the large families in the church, I did give some tips. One of the tips I mentioned was that I used cloth instead of paper towels. I was not prepared for the response. A few of ladies mentioned to me that they read my tip with no other comment. Two ladies came up to me and informed me that they liked their paper towels and were not switching! The article was not written in that manner. It just mentioned what "I" did to save money. I was definitely disappointed.

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  3. Terre, I don't have any recipes as such, but you can use reconstituted evaporated milk when you bake cookies or cakes. I use it all the time in casseroles that call for milk and it's great in scalloped potatoes. I do have some other uses... I'll put them in a new post.

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  4. Gigi, you're so right. Most people don't want to change, or don't see that the little things add up.

    There are those who do, though, and they're not always the most vocal ones. Don't worry, someone will try using cloth instead of paper towels and whether you ever know about it or not, you will have helped them.

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