I make an ever-evolving salad dressing out of the last dribs of mustard, honey, and ketchup bottles by tossing in some vinegar and oil, plus salt, sugar, and maybe some soy sauce or ginger depending on the current balance of the mix. When yet another bottle of something gets emptied, I transfer the current dressing to it, top off with vinegar/oil, and shake!

my dad used to make 'milkshakes' for us from the last jam bits. just add a little milk and shake like crazy. my little brother and i used to fight over who got it.

i still make 'milkshakes' when i'm done with jam (tho no more sharing).

thanks, dad, for turning frugality into something fun!

When I make a cake, I take the last bit of frosting and make little sandwiches with graham crackers and freeze them. It's what my mother always did, and freezing really seems to be the trick here. Frozen treats are just more fun.

When making potato salad recently I finished up the mayonnaise. No matter how assiduously I scraped with the spatula, some mayo remained.
I added a very small amount of the milk to the jar and shook it. Not to make a mayonnaise milkshake (eewww), but to add to the dressing for the potato salad. It made it a little easier to toss with the potatoes and eggs.
Amy Dacyczyn of "Tightwad Gazette" fame used to shake the milk in the jam jar and freeze the results in popsicle molds. That actually sounds tasty; next time I finish up a jar of my homemade blackberry jam, I'll make something like the sorbet bars that sell for $4 or $5 a box.

I use the "add liquid to jar and shake" technique with tomato sauce and vodka. The vodka gives spaghetti sauce an extra kick. Yum!

I've found that if I take a solid ingredient from the recipe I'm making and put it in the can or jar and then shake or stir, the solid acts as sort of a magnet to the liquid. When using canned spaghetti sauce, I'll take some of the noodles and put them in the can and then stir it around and then pour out. The sauce sticks to the noodles and really cleans the can out. Or if I'm making potato salad I add some of the potato chunks to the almost empty jar of mayo and do the same. It's amazing how much product you can squeeze out of an almost empty container. And sometimes you just don't want to add any extra liquid to your recipe.

tks for all the tips that was great reading and i will use some of these ideas. They are great! You cannot have to many ideas when it comes to being frugal

These are great ideas- I especially love the spaghetti sauce and peanut butter ideas- every little "bit" helps!