Lemons are great for so many things!! The zest (yellow part on the outside) has a TON of flavor because the oil is there. You do have to be careful not to get the white part off with it because that is the bitter part. I have a lemon zester, a gadget that takes the zest off in little strips and cannot go low enough to get the white with-o really trying to get it. It is about the biggest waste of time and energy that I have - and I have a LOT of kitchen gadgets. I also have a box grater and a microplane grater and either of them is far better. I use the finest part of the box grater and just watch so I don't take off the white part.
Lemon zest can be tossed into cookie dough, cake batter, even pie crust. You can also store it in a bottle of vodka or light run and use that for drinks, for cooking, etc.... I LOVE lemon with chicken but I HATE HATE HATE the lemon pepper you buy. I use the lemon zest and/or lemon juice instead.
If you cook veggies and there is liquid left in the pot/microwave bowl/serving dish, DO NOT THROW IT AWAY!! Keep a container in your freezer and pour this liquid into it. Each time you have cooking liquid left, esp from veggies, add it to the container. When you want to make a big pot of soup, pull this out and use this liquid for the liquid in the soup. I would avoid liquid from things like brussel sprouts because it is so very strong in flavor/odor, but most other veggies are fine. This liquid that you have saved in the freezer has a LOT of the nutrients from your veggies. When you use it for soup you boost the nutrient content of the soup - for free!
Another huge $$ saver is to make your own chicken and beef broth. Anytime you serve chicken don't pitch the bones. Take them from the plates or serving dishes and put them in teh freezer until you have a pot full of them. Then put them in the pot (don't need to thaw them), cover with water, bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer. Simmer for at least an hour, or even a couple of hours. If you are not home a lot and don't have time to do this when you are home, try putting them in the crockpot, covering them with water and setting it on high for the day. It makes a great broth. Add carrots, onion, celery and garlic to help flavor the broth - at the beginning of the cooking time preferably but if you toss them in later make sure they have an hour or two to simmer to get the flavor out of them. Then pour the stock through a sieve into a container and freeze. I usually freeze in 2 or 3 cup containers.
If you have problems with headaches, muscle spasms or whatever and need heat therapy, you can fill a 2 liter bottle with hot water (NOT boiling - too hot and it will melt the bottle but also burn you) and use that. It is esp great for the back of the neck. My dad came up with this when we were on a trip to my Gma's in Cincy and both mom and I had migraines at the same time. My Gma didn't have a microwave so heating the hot packs we had was tough - they had to be put in boiling water. We only had one hot pack with us on the trip so my dad improvised iwth a 2 liter bottle. Since then I have used this on trips or when I had more places that needed hot packs than I had hot packs to put on them.
Some cheap cold therapy tips - I don't put cold on anything because it sends my muscles into spasms that take weeks to work out. For knee problems - freeze water in a paper dixie cup. Then peel the cup away a bit and use the ice to massage the knee. It works amazingly well. My aunt scoffed at me for this when she broke her kneecap. Swore that the ice packs the PT gave her were the best. Then her husband forgot to put them back in and the ice cups I had put in her freezer were there. She was shocked - and her PT was very impressed with the way it works. You are not just passively letting the cold work on the area - you are actually massaging with the cold and it does something in there that is very effective. I learned it from a really great ortho doctor - one who treated the Bengals and the Red's players in Cincy.
I do NOT buy the gel packs for cold therapy. I buy frozen peas, corn or lima beans. Yes, they thaw and get refrozen, so they are not good for eating. But they work much better and are far cheaper. They stay cold longer than the gel packs. I do keep them in a ziplock bag because they have to get broken up after they freeze if they have thawed too much. But bought on sale at under $1 each, and used for a couple of months, they are a far better deal than the $8 - $10 (on sale) gel packs that leak after about 15-20 uses. An alternative to frozen veggies is to put 1 cup of water and 1 cup of alcohol into a ziploc. Seal it and freeze it. It won't form ice because the alcohol won't freeze. It will be very cold, great for short term uses like scrapes, stay cold about 15-20 min, and is super cheap. I generally seal the ziploc seal, then put it inside a second ziploc and seal all four edges with duct tape. This keeps the kids from popping it or otherwise breaking the bag, and it makes it last longer. For one that will hold up even longer, use one of those vacuum seal thingies for food (s*ck and seal if the only name i can think of for it right now, sorry) and make a bag with the rolls of plastic for the machine. Put the alcohold mixture in the bag and seal it. It may take a bit of practice to do the final seal because it can be tricky.
Also, check ALL your rx medications. Some are combinations of two or more other medications. Look up prices and see if it is cheaper to get the medications individually or not. Treximet is a "new" migraine medication that is not in generic and is super expensive. It is just imitrex (sumatriptan) and naproxen sodium put together into a tablet. It is FAR cheaper to get generic imitrex and a bottle of naproxen. husband is on a blood pressure medication that is actually 2 medications. Both are on the $4 list but the combo is much more expensive. Our insurance actually won't cover the combo - prior insurance did but not what we now have. Taking two tablets may be a bit of a hassle, but the savings is well worth it. Do not be afraid to ask your doctor if there is a cheaper medicine that you can try first for whatever you need to have treated. I have often had docs who wanted to rx a newer medication that the drug co's are pushing but they gave me something else that was much much cheaper when I asked why this medication and not another. Topomax was the one I did this with several times. I took it for over a year and it was great but eventually it stopped owrking - for any of the problems it was treating. Mostly the docs wanted to give it for migraine prevention. I always wanted to know why they didn't want to start with a beta blocker or calcium channel blocker first. For a long time if my blood pressure top number went over 108 I had a migraine. I coudl tell them when it was close to or over that number. I was this way for at least ten years. The hysterectomy changed that but beta blockers still work to prevent my migraines. So the choice was a medication that was $20 or less (and some are about 10-25% of that amount) or a medication that was a couple of hundred dollars a month. I fired the three different docs who wanted to know why I even cared hwo much it cost - my health insurance would cover the cost, not me. That is just stupid thinking, in my opinion. You should feel comfortable asking the doctor why a certain medication is chosen and if a cheaper alternative exists. Sometimes there are good reasons for a more expensive medication, but often the docs are prescribing what they have heard about recently. Drug co reps know this and this is why they give all those pencils and notepads and hand lotions etc... with drug names on them.
