Scraping By...Literally

What do these pictures have in common?

Any guesses?  Hint: the bottom picture kind of gives it away.

If you guessed that they all have to do with the rubber spatula, you are not only right, but also quite perceptive. Congrats.

Are you a compulsive spatula scraper like me?  I can't help it. I have to eke out every drop of batter out of a bowl and every bit of sauce out of a jar.  Each picture above is the amount I saved by using a spatula before washing the bowl or throwing the container away. The spatula gave me a couple extra waffles, one last sandwich's worth of peanut butter, an extra sour cream pancake (totally worth scraping for -- these pancakes are ridiculously delicious), the last of the honey I buy in bulk (in the picture, I was transfering it from the plastic container at the store to a reused spaghetti sauce jar), and enough homemade pluot jam for a piece of toast.  Scraping extra batter can mean an extra cupacke or muffin; a swipe of the tomato sauce jar can mean a few more tablespoons. Sure, it's not much, but as the old adage goes, "Waste not, want not."

My favorite kind of spatulas are the silicone spatulas -- they work at any temperature, so you can use them while you're cooking and working with hot foods. If you haven't harnessed the frugal power of the rubber spatula, I think you should. Pretty soon, nothing in your kitchen will be left unscraped. Frugality is about stretching things just a little further -- and we all know that the little things eventually add up.