25 pounds of flour

Most families find that buying in bulk becomes a necessity. You don't want to go to the store every day, so you inevitably start buying some things in bulk. Well, I buy flour in bulk. The little 5lbs bags at the grocery store just don't last more than a little while, and when you add it all up, it gets expensive. So off to Costco we go.

     I buy my flour in 25lbs bags. Yes, my family thinks I'm crazy. When the extended family came for Thanksgiving back in 2012, they looked at me cross-eyed when I pulled out the giant bag. And true, it did take us a couple of months to go through it all, but it beat having it permanently on the grocery list. And now, we're going through it even faster!

     What do I make with all this flour? Sadly, I'm a homemade kinda gal. I never actually think of myself as a purist, but I did grow up with parents who liked to cook, and a father who taught me that store-bought pie crust was the ultimate cheat and never ever ever to be done. So I make my own pie crust. And I've started making my own cupcakes and cakes (instead of out of a box) since it really isn't as hard as I thought it would be. And we make homemade pizza all the time. 

     Really that's probably where most of the flour consumption lies. Each time we have pizza (which is probably once every 2 weeks or so) it takes about 5 cups of flour. But it's so much cheaper than getting delivery, and a lot easier to make than having to remember to buy a pizza crust at the store. And no, I don't make my own because of trying to eat better or healthier. If that happens, it's a happy accident. I do it out of convenience in a weird backwards sort of way.

     Very recently I've started making sourdough bread. I absolutely love sourdough bread, and it's just not a thing around here. Sure you can find it, but there'll be maybe one loaf in the bakery and it's pushing $4 a loaf. So now that I've figured out how to make my own, I'm saving money and eating a lot more delicious toast. Yum. And there goes more flour.

     Not to mention that last week I made chicken pot pie. And yes, the crust was from scratch - more flour! and the pie turned out really yummy and not too tough to make. So I think it'll become another "semi-regular" dish. 

And one more thing - for Christmas I got a pasta machine, so I'm going to try my hand at homemade pasta. Yum... let's hope it's as easy as everyone says it is.

And that is how a family of 3 eaters and a baby go through 25lbs of flour in not all that much time. Crazy, I know.