Thrift? Food Slumming? How to Eat in Lean Times, or Not?

Over at The Common Room there's been an interesting conversation about what does and does not constitute a "frugal" food purchase. Seems that newspapers around the country are running stories on the theme of eating cheaply in difficult times, which is all well and good, except that -- depending on which paper you're reading -- journalists' concepts of what "eating cheaply" means don't necessarily comport with reality. Set aside your shock, right now, at the very notion of a journalistic concept's not comporting with reality, and consider what's being floated in the name of frugality: on the one end of the spectrum, "budget" recipes involving ingredients like asiago cheese and sea bass, and on the other, Velveeta, canned soup, and Spam.

Now, if for you sea bass constitutes a budget food, you probably don't need to be reading this in the first place. Long before the stock market began to wobble on the edge of the sinkhole, chefs had been making money out of reimagining classic comfort foods, the kind of foods your mother made in 1975: tuna casserole, meatloaf, and so on, all that stuff which you, the enlightened post-millennial eater, now regard with contempt. Recipes that begin, "Open a can?" Please. But say you substitute a glistening slab of ahi tuna for the Chicken of the Sea; say you crank some hand-crafted whole-grain noodles through the pasta machine; say you whip up a delicate little cream sauce with some asiago cheese grated in -- say you expend hours your mother didn't have, and cash she might not have had, either, in creating an artisanal rethinking of the tuna casserole. Okay, say you did. What you end up with is, I'm sure, delicious. And it resonates with nostalgia for -- well, for what? For things you thought you'd gotten past, but which in uncertain times you now recognize, albeit through the wrong prescription lenses, as simplicity itself.

Ditto, actually, your impulse suddenly to lay in things like Velveeta and Spam which, if you cost them against real cheese, real meat, and any number of other foods which you might buy in greater quantity for the same price -- beans, rice, potatoes -- don't turn out to be such thrifty buys at all. My theory about this, as about the ahi tuna casserole trend, is that it's very easy to confuse food slumming for actual thrift. If you're a foodie kind of person, used to chevre and imported balsamic vinegar, and you find yourself in reduced circumstances, your understandable impulse might well be not to sit down and cost out various food options, but to reach blindly into the past, and dredge up all that stuff you swore you'd never eat again, and to feel virtuous doing it. It feels like sacrifice; therefore it must be thrift. This is good news for Kraft, Campbell's Soup, and the purveyors of sea bass, but it's not necessarily good news for your budget.

I was interested to receive, by way of an email loop I belong to, two items regarding food and frugality. The first was an article by Dave Ramsey, of Financial Peace fame. It was reproduced in full in this email, so I'm going to reproduce it here, though I'm not sure quite where it originated:

Everyone is looking for ways to save money. Consumable items are one
of the most obvious areas of savings. I am often asked how we manage
to keep our grocery budget low, and the tips below will help you find
ways to slice your grocery bill by at least 20 percent.

Plan a Menu
Write the menu on the family calendar that has everything else on it.
The activities listed on this calendar will trigger your thoughts on
who will be available for each day's meals. It will also highlight
crunch days so you can plan accordingly. Days where you are running
kids around after school or work may require a slow cooker meal. The
family calendar helps you recognize these days and plan accordingly.
One key element for saving the 20% is to use your favorite store's
sales flier when planning the menu which leads me to the next item.

Shop the Sales
If you do not get the weekly sales flier delivered, look online. I
review our store's flier on the web each week. Plan your menu around
the meats and produce that are on sale that week. If there is a
particularly good sale item that you use often make a note to stock up
on it. Over time, you get a general feel for how much of one item you
might need before the next sale. Many areas repeat sales every twelve
weeks. I find that certain items go on sale much more frequently. I am
fairly aware of how often the sales come around for my most commonly
used ingredients. In my house, this week's menu will have sale items
from both last week's and this week's ads. If ground beef family packs
are at a super low price, you can stock up and use it for several
weeks. I generally bring the sales flier to the dinner table one night
and mention the meats and produce on sale. I ask family members what
sounds good to them and get other requests for the grocery list. Make
your menu from the sales flier and then make your grocery list using
both the menu and the sales flier.

Buy Only What You Need
I make my grocery list on business reply envelopes from junk mail
inserts. It provides a place for the coupons and cash. We all know
that you are supposed to make a list and stick to it. That is
impossible for me but not impossible for my husband. I am the family
cook so when I go through the store, I end up spending more. Sure, I
might pick up an item or two that should have been on the list but
reality is that I pick up a lot of things that we really do not need.
So, my husband takes the list, shops only the list and comes home with
whatever is on the list. I chuckle as I write this because it is
important to note that he calls me at least twice during every grocery
excursion. If everyone is agreeable, give this chore to the one who is
most likely to spend the least.

Cook from scratch
There are those who are clueless on how to cook from scratch and know
it, there are those who think they are scratch cooks, and finally,
there are those who really are scratch cooks. I ask people to check
their pantries and refrigerators to determine which kind of cook they
are. True scratch cooks usually don't have a lot of the following:

. Boxed mixes such as pancake mix, brownie mix, cake mix, seasoned
noodle mixes, seasoned rice mixes, and muffin mixes.
. Jarred items such as meat marinades, pasta sauces, cheese sauces/
dips, and salad dressings.
. Packet mixes such as taco seasoning, gravy packets, and soup packets.
. Bottles of iced tea, sports drinks, chocolate milk, and sweet drinks.
. Cans of soup, enchilada sauces, chili, ready-made pasta dishes, and
spaghetti sauce.

If you routinely buy a lot of the items above, that isn't scratch
cooking. Scratch cooking is making nacho cheese sauce using a basic
white sauce and cheese. Scratch cooking is making pancakes and muffins
using flour, sugar, milk, oil and eggs. Scratch cooking means making
gravy from pan drippings, taco seasoning from spices kept on hand, and
iced tea by boiling tea bags in water. Scratch cooks make their own
chili and a lot of their own soups. Scratch cooks use basic brown or
white rice and season it accordingly. I do not wish to imply that
scratch cooking is necessarily the best way to cook, but it certainly
is the cheapest way to cook. Most scratch cooks have their favorite
packets, boxes and jars, but for the most part, you won't find their
pantry full of them.

If you realize that maybe you are not a scratch cook, there are all
sorts of websites and cookbooks that can help you become one. It is
very rewarding because it allows you to have more control over the
quality of food you serve your family in addition to saving money. If
you choose not to be a scratch cook, make note of the prepared items
you buy regularly and know what the rock bottom prices are for them
and try to buy them at those prices.

Clean Like Grandma Did
Cleaning supplies has gotten very fancy and very disposable. It is
also very expensive. Think about how your grandmother cleaned windows.
She probably used basic ingredients like ammonia, vinegar and water.
She probably used old newspapers to wash her windows. Take a hard look
at your cleaning supplies and see how it compares to Grandma's. Is
your glass cleaner now a pack of wipes rather than an off brand bottle
that requires a rag? Is your furniture cleaner now a wipe? Does your
duster and toilet brush now require disposable replacements? These
things are very convenient but add greatly to the grocery bill. My
cleaning supplies consist of some very basic items such as ammonia,
bleach, soap, and lots of rags made from old t-shirts, towels and
sheets. When you wish to save money in any area, consider how grandma
handled it.

Prepare for Tomorrow's Meal Tonight
This suggestion came from a frugality book I read several years ago.
This alone, saves our family about $100 a month. I know from personal
experience that one of the hardest things to do at the end of a busy
workday is to come home and cook dinner. Regardless of our vocations,
we family cooks are busy all day. Thinking ahead by one day can save
your family hundreds of dollars a year by avoiding fast food and
restaurant meals. When I think ahead by one day, it almost guarantees
we will eat at home the next day instead of heading to a restaurant.
How many times have you eaten out because you forgot to thaw the meat?
When cooking and cleaning up dinner tonight, take some steps to
prepare tomorrow night's meal. Check the menu, verify you have the
ingredients, gather the ingredients and place them front and center on
the counter or on a shelf, and pull out the meat to thaw. If you are
going to use the slow cooker, put all the ingredients in the crock and
place it in the fridge. If you need another family member to start the
process before you get home tomorrow night, put up the reminder sticky
note tonight. If you need to marinate meat, whip up the marinade
tonight and put a note on the garage door or fridge to remind yourself
to pour the marinade over the meat in the morning. Also take the time
to pack tomorrow's lunches for those who need one. My husband and
teens clean up so I am free to work on these other things while they
are busy. A nice benefit is that we are all in the kitchen after
dinner still spending family time together. This simple change in
habit of starting the process the night before saves us a minimum of
$40 a week because it stops us from eating out.

Put Smorgasbord Night on the Menu
This represents one of those things I thought everyone did and was
surprised to learn otherwise. Smorgasbord night is our term for using
leftovers. It is best understood if I describe a typical night. The
night before grocery shopping day, I will do smorgasbord night. What I
do is inventory everything we have not eaten during the week. I make a
special effort to use anything that has a short life span. I generally
display all the smorgasbord items on a big white platter or large
cutting board for appeal. Here is how it works. One or two leftover
pieces of pizza get cut into bite-sized pieces, heated, and placed on
the platter. Remaining fruit gets cut into wedges or bite sized pieces
and added to the platter. Enough deli turkey for one sandwich will get
made into a sandwich, cut into wedges, and added to the platter. Raw
vegetables are added. Sometimes I have some ingredients I can pull
together from leftovers to make a wrap or a quesadilla. I will pull
those together, cut them into smaller portions and add them to the
platter. I use party toothpicks on some items like wraps to keep them
together or on chunks of pineapple or other fruit for easy handling.
Even an extra piece of lasagna or an extra burrito will get warmed and
cut into smaller portions. Each family member gets a variety of food
and walks away from the table feeling satisfied. I get the
satisfaction of a cleaned out fridge and the good feeling of making
sure we use up the food before bringing in more food.

Make Do with What You Have
I initiated a $25 a week grocery challenge to some members last year.
The goal for each family who took the challenge was to commit to
cutting their grocery bill to $25 a week to buy bread, milk and
perishables so we could use up what we had. The challenge forced us to
make our own chicken broth, it forced us to use up some unusual grains
we bought for special recipes, it forced us to get very creative with
our cooking and to try new things. About a dozen took the challenge
and the reality was that several of us felt like our food was
multiplying. I found a mystery grain in my cupboard and after figuring
out what it was (bulgur), cooked it like rice and now we know my
family likes it better than rice. I started making chicken broth from
scratch again by throwing the bones into a crock full of water with
celery ends, onion ends, a clove of garlic and some pepper. I let it
cook all night, turn it off in the morning and allow it to cool.
Strain it and place the broth in container to freeze. Several of us
made it 7 weeks spending 75% less than what we would normally spend.

Save Bits and Pieces
I keep two containers in my freezer, one for beef based items and one
for chicken based items. A small portion of beef roast left, it gets
cut into soup or stew sized pieces and goes into the container. Six
green beans left, they go into a container. A little dab of onion goes
into the container. A small bit of gravy goes into the container. When
the container is a little over half full, I make soup with it. Did you
know that leftover mashed potatoes make terrific potatoes soup the
next night?

Take a Trash Inventory
Analyze your trash and see if what you are throwing away tells you
something. Are you throwing away Ziploc bags instead of rewashing and
reusing? Are you throwing out beef or chicken bones before using them
to make broth? Are there a lot of paper towels going into the trash
instead of using dishrags and cloth towels? When you throw away an old
t-shirt, do you cut it up into rags and only throw away the unusable
parts. Are you throwing away the heels of bread instead of saving them
up and making homemade croutons, using them for French onion soup, or
your own Italian bread crumb mix? I dust my house with old gym socks.
I put them on both hands and go through with my spray and do double
handed dusting. There is a lot of money in that trash can if you look
at it with the right thought process.

The Art of Leftovers
I don't know if everyone's family is like mine but no one in my house
(except me) will actually open the lid of a plastic container to see
what is inside it. That is where most of my food waste use to occur.
These days, if I have enough roast beef and mashed potatoes left over
for someone to have for lunch, I arrange it on a plate. I will put the
gravy in a small glass bowl on the same plate. Then I will wrap the
plate up with plastic wrap and set it on a shelf in the fridge. If I
do this, DH will actually grab the plate and heat it up for lunch. I
will often make a platter of fruits and veggies and do the same thing.
I find that if I make the food look appealing and set it where it can
be seen, it will actually get eaten and I have less waste. When the
kids were younger, I would pull the platter of fruits and veggies out
of the fridge right after school. I would add crackers and pb or
cheese and maybe a couple of cookies. Since they were always starving
after school, it was a great time to get them to eat some fruits and
veggies. After school, I think they would have eaten cardboard if I
arranged it artfully enough.

Learn to Pull a Meal Out of Thin Air
You look in the fridge and there doesn't seem to be much there. This
is where creativity kicks in. I can usually pull together a fried rice
dish or a quesadilla with just about anything. A little chicken or
beef can easily turn into chicken or beef fried rice. Chopped carrots,
chopped onion, chopped celery, a florret to broccoli chopped, one egg
and the little bit of meat, an egg and some soy sauce can easily
become an entree. Some tomato paste, dried herbs, chopped garlic and
onion can become pizza sauce. Flour, water, sugar and yeast can become
pizza crust. Greens such as fresh basil or some spinach and some
cheese can become the toppings. Cheese, spinach, peppers, and onions
and a little leftover chicken often become quesadillas for us. Cream
cheese mixed with herbs and garlic can be spread on bagels or crackers
served along with the remaining fruits or veggies to become a lighter
meal. Think about some of the appetizers you see on restaurant menus
and try to duplicate them as a lighter meal.

Learn to Say NO to Overconsumption
My brother was complaining a couple weeks ago that his family goes
through 4 gallons of milk a week. I just looked at him and said, "So
stop it and don't buy 4 gallons. Only buy 2 and see if they still
survive. I guarantee they will." He said he never says NO to milk. I
disagree wholeheartedly. Just because they will consume it doesn't
mean you are obligated to provide it to the saturation point. The
nutritional needs AND the family budget need to be balanced. In our
house, if we are out of milk, that means we are out of milk until
shopping day. It taught our kids to ration things out a bit and to not
be gluttonous about consuming all they wanted. If your kids can
holler, "Mom, we are out of milk," and you replace it within 24 hours,
you might consider evaluating consumption habits. Allowing family
members to think they can consume from a limitless well is both
expensive and leads to bad eating habits.

The point of this post is to think a few years back and consider how
your grandmother would manage her household. As you get ready to pull
an item off the shelf, ask yourself if your grandmother would have
bought that item. If not, what would she have used instead? Bets are
it is a lot cheaper than what you are about to buy.

I was especially interested in the "cooking from scratch" spectrum. It's been so long since I've routinely used a mix, a prepared sauce, or a box meal of any kind that I don't even think about it any more, which I suppose makes me a "scratch cook." My first thought, on reading these categories, was that I was probably a "thinks she's a scratch cook," because my cooking can be hit-or-miss. Then I realized that we weren't talking about quality, but about basic habits of shopping for and assembling meals. Now that I think of it, my own grocery-shopping philosophy corresponds almost exactly to my philosophy regarding toys: if it's made to do one thing only and nothing else, it's not worth buying. I like open-ended toys (like sticks, for instance), and I buy open-ended groceries, like flour and oil and milk and rice, out of which, with a revolving selection of other ingredients, I can make anything we need to eat.

With this in mind, I was interested in the second item on the email loop, regarding Angel Food Ministries. This is, I think, a nationwide feeding ministry, offering a monthly supply of groceries to all comers at a greatly reduced cost: roughly $30 for a box of groceries worth more than twice that amount. It's not really a month's supply of groceries, though for a small family the box might last a month; generally it's more like a supplement to your regular grocery shopping. I've seen Angel Food Ministries mentioned on a number of homeschooling and frugal-living email lists and websites and certainly, for families trying to make ends meet, this ministry offers a way to put more food in the larder at a decent price.

Still, I was interested to read a list of what I guess are the typical contents of an Angel Food box:

6 frozen hamburger patties
> 2 pounds frozen sliced turkey with gravy entrée
> 4 6-ounce pork chops
> 3 pounds breaded chicken legs
> 1 pound chicken nuggets
> 15 ounce can pork and beans
> 1 box macaroni and cheese
> 24 ounces frozen French fries
> 3 pounds frozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts
> 7 ounces Armour Brown and Serve Sausage
> 1 cheeseburger dinner (a box dinner; just add hamburger)
> 16 ounces frozen sliced green beans
> 15 ounce can crushed pineapple
> 8 ounce package biscuit mix
> 10 ounce jar peanut butter
> 1 frozen apple pie
> 8 ounce package pancake mix

How many of these items are actually good and useful buys for a family, for the outlay of money? Virtually all of them are one-time meal options: a can of pork-and-beans, two box dinners, a frozen "sliced turkey" entree, a frozen ready-made dessert, one-meal packages of pancake and biscuit mix. A number of them aren't especially healthy options. I don't buy chicken nuggets or French fries, because I don't really want to eat chicken nuggets or French fries, and if I did, I'd make them myself from real chicken or a bag of potatoes. $30 seems like a great price for a cart of groceries, but not for a cart of groceries I either wouldn't use or would use up so quickly that I'd just have to go right back to the store for more. Literally the only items on this list which I would find useful would be the chicken breasts (though on my own I buy thighs and drumsticks, which are cheaper so that I can buy more of them, because my family love chicken and are always hungry), and the pork chops, though I'd have to think of something to put them in, because four pork chops won't feed my family of six. The frozen green beans are okay; I do buy frozen vegetables, so that I always have some kind of vegetable on hand to cook with or serve, without worrying about using them up before they go bad. I could find a use for a can of pineapple. The sausage could be useful, especially if it's patty-type sausage which could be crumbled up and put in a casserole.

Otherwise, for our family, what's in this box is a waste of money. My dream discount grocery box, $30 for a roughly $80 value, would include a big bag of rice, a big bag of some kind of beans, flour, oil, butter, and cheese. In other words, not one-time convenience-meal options, but pantry essentials, out of which one could create a number of meals.

Actually, I think the single greatest thrifty food purchase a person could make, the one which would save the most money in the long run, is a decent cookbook. Nothing gourmet, just plain, from-scratch food, using basic, inexpensive, easy-to-find ingredients. That's it. Want to save money? Learn to cook.