There are three things that I need often enough to buy in their awkwardly sized packaging but don’t need often enough to use the whole thing before it spoils. You can pat yourself on the back for finding tomato paste for $0.99, but if you only use one teaspoon of it and have to throw the rest of it away, just to spend $0.99 on it again when you need the next teaspoon, you are doing yourself and the environment a disservice that is EASY TO RECTIFY!

Shall we begin? (Before we do, stop reading this and go buy some ice cube trays if you don’t have some already. They are hard to find now, but your grocery store should still have them.)

1. Tomato paste - buy in a handy, resealable tube, as pictured. Tomato paste can be stored indefinitely in the fridge in said tube, and you can buy a bunch at a time on Amazon (for less than $2 a tube) since one tube at a time is a little pricier (between $3 and $4). Alternatively, you can buy tomato paste in cans on the cheap, stick teaspoon-sized dollops on a sheet of wax paper, freeze it, stick in a plastic bag, store in the freezer, and thaw when you need them, but that seems like a lot of work to me.

2. Chicken/vegetable/beef stock - I hardly ever need the four cups that come in the nice cardboard box of organic stock, and since it’s pretty pricey to buy that box, I like to make sure I’m not buying it every five seconds. Use five days after opening??? Please! Freeze that stuff in 1/4 cup increments in an ice cube tray, pop them out when frozen, stick in a bag, store in the freezer.

3. The ice cube tray method is also my favorite way of getting rid of basil, since I’m sorry, I don’t grow my own. I live in a tiny apartment with two cats who will immediately eat anything green, and my Kroger for some reason only sells giant packs of basil at once. Also lucky people with gardens tend to foist a ton on me during basil season. Make pesto according to your favorite recipe (use walnuts instead of pine nuts for a cheaper, more stable version), spoon into the ice cube tray. Then when you are especially broke, you pry one out, sit it in a bowl while you boil some pasta, toss with the pesto and a spoonful of the pasta water, and you have a meal. Single serving cheap goodness.

4. Buttermilk - I bake a lot - biscuits and pancakes and that kind of thing are super cheap, easy breakfasts to make. A lot of the time they require buttermilk, but buttermilk is always sold in huge things that expire in like a week. Also, that means it’s never around when you spontaneously need it, and who PLANS to get up on a Sunday morning and make biscuits. My mom gets around this by adding a tablespoon of acid (i.e. lemon juice or white vinegar) to a cup of milk and letting it sit for a few minutes. I’m not convinced this actually works as well as actual buttermilk (it certainly doesn’t smell as tangy), and the whole point of buttermilk is some sort of chemical reaction. Therefore, I believe Cook’s Illustrated when they tell me that powdered buttermilk works just as well if not better than store-bought buttermilk, keeps indefinitely, and will be around when you randomly decide to make Irish soda bread (below). You can get it in bulk at Amazon, and you might have to since it’s kind of difficult to find (although my friend Kelly just emailed me to say she got it at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart!! Who knew!), but it keeps forever and will save you money. Don’t confuse it with buttermilk blends - those are mixes for pancake making, etc.

I am obsessed with tips like these. I collect them like they are Hummels. Cook’s Illustrated magazine is chock full of them, if you are interested in that kind of thing. They told me to let my bread rise in a crock pot insert. And now I do. I feel like an idiot admitting that that excites me.