Provident Pantry-Homemade Mixes

One of the biggest tips when you are trying to save money is to make your own mixes from scratch instead of buying the prepackaged ones from the store.  Just the other night I needed a white sauce for a cream of broccoli soup I was making and I remembered a book that I have called "MixA-Meal" by Deanna Bean & Lorna Shute.  This book is full of mixes like the white sauce mix, a roll mix, banana bread, biscuits mixes, etc.  Having these on hand will save you time and money.  You can find the book at amazon.com, Honeyville (SLC store), and other retailers.  I think it is really worth the little extra time to buy flour, sugar, powdered milk, etc. in bulk and put a few mixes together. 

This is the white sauce mix that I made the other night.

This is all you need to make a white sauce mix.

White Sauce Mix
4 C powdered milk (non-instant from the cannery, if you use the instant from the grocery store you need double the amount of non-instant so 8 C in this recipe)
4 C flour
4 C dehydrated butter or margarine powder
2 t salt

Mix all and store in an airtight container.  To use:  1/2 C of white sauce mix and 1 C hot water and whisk over medium heat until thick.  Stir constantly to prevent scorching.  

Use this mix for soups, chowders, scalloped potatoes, white gravy, creamed veggies, chicken a la king, etc.  

I found a great blog that has many recipes for making mixes.  Everything from seasonings and soup mixes to pancake mixes.  Click HERE to see it! Find which ones work for you and try one out.  I recommend you try a half batch first in case you don't care for it.  I made a tortilla mix once and it didn't turn out so well and I had made a whole #10 can of it!  What a waste of money!  So definitely try it out in a small batch first.