Tightwad Tip | Lids Instead Of Foil

 

Lids for baking. Save foil. No waste!
In this post I am sharing some of my ideas for how to save aluminum foil and use lids instead of foil.

For a conservative on the political scale I sure live a "green" life. Haha! From cloth pads, to cloth diapers, to cloth wipes, to flannel "Kleenex," to fabric napkins, to using rags instead of paper towels I am pretty waste free. I recycle and upcycle at every opportunity. 

Frugal people hate to spend money on stuff that is going to be thrown away after one use. This applies to aluminum foil, too. I have reused sheets of aluminum foil several times over by wiping them clean and folding them up neatly after each use.

Having a few nice, oven safe, lidded, casserole type, cookware pieces are a valuable addition to your kitchen. By keeping your eye out at thrift stores and garage sales for pieces like this you can find some nice lidded casserole dishes. 

I recently found two smaller corning wear dishes that are good size for leftovers. By storing leftovers in containers like this you can save yourself dishes later by being able heat the leftover's in the same container that they were stored. I also have a few larger lidded casseroles. One large size and one medium size. I use them when I am baking potatoes, heating up leftovers, bringing dishes to fellowship meals. Dishes like mashed potatoes, baked beans, stuffing, or macaroni and cheese are good candidates.

Having lidded casserole dishes helps cut down on the need to use aluminum foil, but sometimes I have to get a little more creative to avoid aluminum foil.

I can use sheet pans to cover 9×13 pans and even my really large roaster.

Using sheet pans as covers can be very handy when I am short of space. The rigidity of the sheet pans allows me to stack the different pans of food on top of one another. This is helpful in the refrigerator where space is limited, as well as counter tops in a small kitchen.

Covering pans with rimmed sheet pans can be really useful when transporting food to fellowship meals. The sheet pans don't slide off during the drive and they can survive being stepped on, which may happen by accident in our van.

When it comes to rising dough, I have used a bowl turned upside down to give the dough plenty of room to rise while blocking any drafts, and keeping the dough from drying out. These bowls are oven proof and I have used them in this configuration to cook a ham. Hams come in such awkward shapes. It is really difficult to cover them without using foil. 

For smaller batches of dough I just use a plate over my kitchen aid mixer bowl.

Iron skillets are a versatile solution for cooking on a grill. Sometimes the cleanliness of grill grates can be questionable and lead one to cover the grates with aluminum foil. We recently faced this situation. Mr. In The Mid-west wanted some aluminum foil for the grill, but  we were out of aluminium foil. I brought him an iron skillet. Problem solved! Iron skillets can handle open flames. It takes a little scrubbing afterwards to get the smoke and soot off the the outside of the skillet, but I love to use my skillets to cook over a campfire. 

These are my ideas. Do you use any of these strategies? Please share your ideas in the comments!