Cooking from scratch, which can also be called homemade cooking, is making a comeback these days. People are realizing that scratch cooking provides multiple benefits. Food cooked using real ingredients is more digestable than prepackaged meals. Food cooked from scratch contains fewer of the chemicals foreign to our bodies. Scratch cooking lowers grocery bills. Lastly, and most importantly, food prepared from scratch just plain tastes better than those plastic- encapsulated, reconstituted, freezer-to-microwave meals. At least it tastes better in my house.

Just to be clear here --for easy daily cooking, I do believe in such things as premixed spice blends, frozen vegetables, and prepared sauces. I also believe that homemade cooking strategies are wide- open for adaptation.

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Not everything has to be produced on our own stove tops. Scratch cooking can be as easy as placing a nice little chuck roast into a slow cooker with some carrots, peas, and diced potatoes. Adding a tablespoon of Cajun seasoning to the blend will provide exceptional flavor. Leave the mixture on low heat all day and you'll come home to an aroma reminiscent of grandma's loving kitchen.

Cooking at home is one of the simplest ways to save money on food. Aside from the immediate savings of dinner, you can stretch your dollar even further by having the leftovers for lunch the next day. When it makes so much sense to be cooking at home it is a wonder that more people including me don't always do it!

I know other than not having enough time; our biggest excuse for eating out was that our current pots, pans and utensils made it a pain to cook most of the meals we like. I was always envious of how easy my mom and my mother in law could make cooking look with the right utensils and miscellaneous kitchen ware, but no more!

After dealing with cookware that our needs had outgrown and discouraged us from trying out new meals my wife and I decided to get a new set that would be better suited for the kind of cooking we gravitated to after getting married. Seeing as the whole point of purchasing new cookware was to save money we didn't want to spend a fortune getting what we needed. With this in mind we went looking for a good deal and found a 10 piece set of Calphalon non stick cookware for only $50 at a nearby outlet mall.

I know it seems like a bad idea to buy new cookware when the old pots and pans could get the job done but after spending the money on our new set of cookware and using it for lunch today I can definitely say it was money well spent. The new set of pots and pans made cooking even something simple like grilled cheese fun. I'm already excited about finding new recipes at allrecipes.com that will make use of our cool new cookware!

In time for the holidays, Taste of Home is offering its Celebrations Cookbook on CD. According to the company:






Just pop The Taste of Home Cookbook Celebration CD into your computer for instant access to 473 recipes for year-round celebrations. Main dishes to desserts...appetizers to beverages, every recipe is cross-referenced for your convenience.

It's only $2 and shipping is free with code T1062.

When you cook on a stovetop, you are not just using electricity to heat your food, you're also heating up the room, which causes your air conditioner to kick in and fight harder against the rising temperature. You might start to notice a jump on your utility bill every time you steam vegetables for dinner.

Solar energy is free, widely available, and effective at cooking many of the foods you currently prepare on your stovetop. Cooking may take a little bit longer than with a traditional stovetop, but not so much that it will add significant time to your meal plans.

Ready-to-use solar ovens are available for $50-$300 online. These devices collapse down for easy storage and transportation, and are great for camping as well as use in the home. If that seems like a steep price tag, it's not really very difficult to build your own solar cooker using cheap materials you already have in your home. This might also be a nice way to try it out before committing to a big purchase. Find building instructions for a variety of solar ovens here.

FirstInHealth.com is offering a free copy of The Eating Right with Ann Cox Cookbook to anyone who will fill out this form.

I can't seem to find any information on Ms. Cox on Google. But that pizza does look good so give it a shot. It's free!

If you can never get enough cookbooks, here are some other ones I've recently written about for Fantastic Freebies:

• Fantastic Freebies! Diabetic Cookbook
• Fantastic Freebies: Cookbooks from Ragu and Jiffy
• Fantastic Freebies: Gooseberry Patch Fall Favorites Cookbook
• Fantastic Freebies! Light & Easy Recipes cookbook from Merck

I grew up in a "traditional" family with the sort of mom who got up early to make us a big breakfast. I remember eggs, pancakes, biscuits, sausages, toast, and always a pitcher of freshly-mixed juice. We were also firmly on the underside of the poverty line (so it was margarine on our toast and generic brand 'pancake syrup' on our flapjacks).

When I got to be a parent, I stuck to my grown-up spendthrift ways for quite a while, buying cold cereal, scones, bagels and the like, rarely making a big delicious breakfast of biscuits or pancakes or muffins but far more often just picking it up from the coffee shop.

And then one day -- maybe it was the fact that I stopped eating processed foods and cut out white sugar, or maybe it was just that our grocery budget was through the roof -- I made a commitment to start making breakfast, just like my mama before me.

Every day, WalletPop will be bringing you information about a fantastic freebie. Like what you see? Check back tomorrow for more!

Most avid home chefs -- at least the ones I know -- would never pass up a free cookbook. If you fill out this form, Gooseberry Patch will send free copies of its Fall Favorites with Sun-Maid® Raisins & Dried Fruit and Gooseberry Patch Family Favorite Recipes with Sun-Maid® Raisins & Dried Fruit.

A suggestion: uncheck the boxes to receive free tips and special offers unless you feel like you don't receive enough promotional email already.

Every day, WalletPop will be bringing you information about a fantastic freebie. Like what you see? Check back tomorrow for more!

The prospect of a cookbook from Merck might not sound too appetizing -- Zocor brownies anyone?

But apparently the Go Red Light & Easy Recipes cookbook is filled with heart-healthy recipes. If you fill out this form, they'll send you a free copy.

Every day, WalletPop will be bringing you information about a fantastic freebie. Like what you see? Check back tomorrow for more!

OK, so you probably wouldn't rush to your Netflix account to add a DVD about "the world of rice" to your queue. Still, a DVD about the many different kinds of American rice -- featuring 11 recipes! -- is a pretty solid Fantastic Freebie. It's offered by the USA rice Federation. From the site:

'Exploring the World of U.S. Rice' is an informative view of all things rice from paddy to plate. You'll learn about the types of rice grown in the U.S., how to prepare and use each variety and follow top chefs as they create some of today's hottest rice dishes.

If cooking is your thing, order a copy by filling out the very brief form here.

The history of cuisine is pretty fascinating stuff. It's amazing to realize that, with a slightly different climate here, a different trade route there, and a different economy over there, many great foods might never have developed. I can even see this process over the course of my lifetime; for example, America's economic recession in the 1970's sparked a home cooking revolution that was absolutely revolutionary, changing almost every aspect of the culinary landscape. Even now, decades later, it is still playing out.

When I was a little kid, my parents worked and studied in Georgetown, a ritzy district of Washington, DC. The fact that we spent so much time there, combined with my parents' healthy incomes, meant that we ate at upscale restaurants three or four times a week. As inflation increased, however, I noticed that my family spent more and more time sitting around the dinner table. My mother, who had learned a few dishes while living with my father in Korea, started out by cooking either the bulgoki that we loved or a pasta recipe that she had picked up from her Italian godmother. As time went on, though, she got subscriptions to Bon Appetit and Gourmet, picked up a copy of Julia Childs' Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and began stretching her skills in the kitchen. I don't think that her original goal was to replicate the fine dining that she and my father were used to, but that is what she ended up doing. Although they couldn't afford to eat at their favorite Georgetown restaurants, my parents discovered that they could easily afford to make top-notch gourmet food at home.

In an article in the New York Times this week, a chef chronicles his attempts to prepare a week's worth of gourmet meals from groceries bought exclusively at a 99-cent store. The recipes, including baked salmon in coconut sauce and an impressive tuna casserole, looked appetizing. I just can't imagine being able to turn a can of tuna into a gourmet meal, but I have trouble whipping up an edible meal from fresh food too. But that's another story.

Anyway, I was at a huge dollar store last weekend in Florida and I have to say I did notice aisle after aisle of food, household cleaners, toiletries, books, toys and other practical stuff-all for a dollar. Since I don't have a dollar store near my home, I was amazed at the array of useful products, although there were also plenty of tchatchkes. I ended up spending about 45 minutes, mostly browsing. I couldn't get back on the plane home with groceries for the week, but I bought a few of my kids' favorite snacks, a carton of lemonade, Easter candy and batteries for my dad's camera.

The only real necessity I purchased was Colgate's sugary sweet watermelon-flavored toothpaste, the only brand my son will use. But this week, I coincidentally read an article cautioning against buying toothpaste from dollar stores. (Okay, I admit I was reading Self magazine while getting a haircut). Apparently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a warning because some Chinese manufacturers reproduce American toothpastes using chemicals that can be dangerous if ingested for any length of time. Needless to say, I got rid of it. At least it was only a dollar.

When I was four years old, my family moved from a small house in Fairfax, Virginia to a huge place a few miles outside of town. Although the geographical distance was minor, it led to some major changes in our lives. One of the biggies was farming.

We lived down the street from a formerly active farm. My parents made friends with the owner, Mr. Winfield, and he used to "loan" us a plot of farmland in which we would plant our own vegetable garden. For my parents, who had grown up in New York and Boston, it was perfect: they could get the family out in the sun, pretend that they were farmers, and provide us with fresh food. For the kids, it meant long hours weeding row after row of peas and gaining a much greater understanding of the wonders of the modern supermarket.

A few years later, I grew my own vegetable garden and gained a deeper understanding of my parents' excitement. Unlike the dull, flavorless produce in the supermarket, my peas, cucumbers, corn, and tomatoes were bright, fresh, and delicious. I realized that the vegetables that I was used to eating were only a pale reflection of the produce that I could grow. It was amazing.

As I've been working on these Peasant food posts, I've gotten a lot of good ideas from readers. Carol, a truly impressive home economist, pointed out that having a "soup night" once a week was a great way to save on groceries, use up leftovers, and provide your family with a delicious, nourishing, and easy-to-prepare meal.

She makes a fair point. After all, what can be better than a warm bowl of soup on a cold, miserable day? What's more, because soups, stews, and chowders tend to use inexpensive ingredients, they can save you a great deal of money. Below are a few basic tips for maximizing the ease and nutritional value of your soup night.

Stocks and Broths

I love to cook and I love to talk, which means that I love to entertain. Few things bring me more pleasure than having some friends over, whipping up something obscure and vaguely pretentious, and sitting around, enjoying their company. Most people pretend that entertaining is something that they do for friends and family. I have no such delusions: while I do everything in my power to ensure that my guests are having fun, I definitely entertain for my own enjoyment.

Entertaining in my house also tends to be an informal thing, and I like to put guests in the kitchen, stick an apron on them, and put them to work. Some of my best conversations have been around the kitchen table as my friends and I prepare food. Also, having friends in the kitchen tends to make them somewhat proprietary about the meal--they get to tell war stories about making it, while delighting in the other guests' enjoyment.

When I was in college, one of my teachers assigned us Fernand Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism, a three-volume history of the world between the 15th and 18th centuries. It was incredibly dense, fairly boring and weighed about twenty pounds. I read the whole thing, a feat that still amazes me.

I drank a lot of coffee back then.

While I've managed to forget most of Braudel's opus, I remember that he squeezed out forty pages on the historical influence of the potato. Apparently, potatoes are native to Peru and Bolivia, but Spanish explorers brought them across the Atlantic in 1700. Up to this time, most of Europe's carbohydrates and starch came from wheat, which is work-intensive and produces very little food for every acre planted. Think about it: to make bread from wheat, you need to grow a lot of wheat. You then have to harvest it, thresh it, grind it, mix it with a whole bunch of other ingredients, and bake it. To get a comparable amount of food from a potato, you have to grow a potato, dig it up, clean it off, and pop it in the oven. That's it. Of course, it tastes even better with sour cream and chives.

In 1700, potatoes enabled farmers to grow far more food, with much less work, than any other crop. Across Europe, many farmers switched to potatoes. Because potatoes were so easy to grow, the farmers were able to lay off large numbers of workers. Many of these people ended up moving to the cities, where they provided a huge work force for factories, making cheap manufacturing possible. The upshot is that potatoes are indirectly responsible for the rise of the city and the industrial revolution. Not bad for a lowly tuber.