Cooking from scratch saves money

I'm continually being surprised at how cooking from scratch saves money. Don't worry. There's no danger of me  becoming Betty Crocker or Paula Deen. I'm not that into kitchen DIY. My goal is is to save a few bucks here an there.

For dinner tonight we had turkey and dumplings. It didn't take but a minute to toss the frozen Christmas turkey into a pan, add water and turn up the heat. Just as the seasonings were being added I realized that we forgot to hit the grocery store for canned biscuits. No problem, I'd just grab the box of Bisquick and go from there. Oops. We are out of that too.

Thank goodness for online recipes. A few keystrokes brought up tons of recipes for homemade dumplings. The dumpling recipe I choose was almost identical to the Bisquick recipe and didn't take any longer to make. It's amazing what a little flour, water and shortening will do.

The dumplings turned out great! But, it got me to thinking about the cost. Even without the BOGO, a bag of flour is about one-third of the cost of the mix. Even with the price of shortening, the homemade version is still less expensive than the boxed mix or the biscuit dough.

I've always heard that you learn something new everyday. I learned how to make homemade dumplings and found out that it's more cost effective. Getting a BOGO lesson seems kind of fitting for someone trying to save money. I wonder what tomorrow will bring.