Drastic Budgeting in the Kitchen

(UPdated to note: there seems to be some confusion about what I was saying here. I am not suggesting it's possible for a family to spend only 30 dollars a month on food. That would not be duplicating the 'experiment' below. I am saying it would be possible to do 30 dollars a person. In fact, in many ways, I think it would be easier, because for our family of nine that would be 270 dollars, so I could spend twenty dollars for a fifty pound bag of oats without breaking the back of my monthly budget. Also, please keep in mind these ideas are intended for those in an urgent situation. We do not live like this all the time. We can and have lived like this when necessity demands. There's nothing hyper-spiritual about eating on 30 dollars a month per person, but there is something very rewarding about living within your means and making your meals stretch to fit your circumstances. There is also, I believe, something righteous about living within your means. Please see the comments for more great ideas, or to leave some more ideas and tips of your own- links to your own blogposts on the topic are welcome).

While looking through this week's recipe carnival, I came across this interesting experiment embarked upon by a blogger:

I decided that I would embark on a 90-day social experiment. In which I only
spend $30/month on food. The only exception will be things that are freely
available to the average person (salt taken from restaurants, ketchup packets
from McDonald's, potluck dinners, etc). Buying in advance is fine, but at the
end of the month, it all has to add up to $30 or less.

It looks very useful- we could probably all get some good tips here, or at least a bit of a spur to do better.

This is an experiment I have had to live by necessity at times (PER PERSON, NOT PER FAMILY). I have at different times over our 24 years of marriage been obliged to feed our family on far less than the maximum allowance of food stamps for a family of our size (currently nine people, if you're new around here). We are not so obliged now, and I won't say we miss the good old days that much, although we do think of them fondly from time to time. We much prefer to look up them fondly as a thing of the past, however, than live them as a current reality. Here are some of the ways we've managed (some of this will be old information to longtime readers, some of it will be new).

Here are some links on eating well on a budget. They come from from an extension office:
Eating Well While Spending Less, Week One

Week Two

Week three

Week Four

Week Five

These links are useful tools, but looking them over, I would suggest that one could cut costs even further by taking these measures:

*Cook your own dried legumes instead of buying canned. This is such a big savings difference that I am surprised to see a site purporting to be about saving money recommending buying canned beans. You can buy one pound of dried beans for less than a can of cooked beans, but the pound of dried beans will make about as much as four cans. It's a significant savings. I cook up a big batch at once and then freeze the cooked legumes in bags containing four cups each. Beans do not store very well in the fridge and when they go bad they smell much worse than rotten meat.

*Don't buy canned soup. You can simply make a thick white sauce or roux, flavoring as desired. You can also boil five potatoes and two onions and cream them for the equivalent of about two undiluted cans of cream soup. There are other fancier recipes, but these two are our staples.

*Make your own bread. Yes, from scratch and not from a mix.

*Make muffins completely from scratch, rather than using the Raisin Bran cereal recipe (this is another one that really surprises me. Muffins are not difficult and they are quite inexpensive. Raisin Bran even on sale, is not 'from scratch.' ) See these previous posts for some muffin recipes:
Graham Gems (and split pea soup from scratch)
Mulberry Muffins (and other Mulberry receipts)
Amish sour cream muffins (I've also frosted these and used them as desserts or birthday treats. I made the frosting from scratch, my friends. It's half the price and twice the amount and ten times better tasting. Takes maybe ten minutes)
Basic muffin recipe from Calumet (from a vintage cookbook)
My great grandmother's recipe (I have it in her handwriting) for a small batch of muffins suitable for one or two people:
1 cup flour
1/4 cup sweetener
pinch salt
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1 /2 teaspoon baking powder
2 tablespoons shortening or other fat
1 egg, beaten lightly
1/2 cup of milk
she did not share directions, but most muffin recipes are the same- combine dry ingredients, make a well in the center. Combine wet ingredients and pour into well, stirring until just moistened (there should be lumps). Pour into greased muffin tins, about 3/4 of the way to the top. Bake at about 400 degrees for ten to fifteen minutes. Add fruit or spices to the batter as desired.

*Eat oatmeal (please, if you love me, do not buy instant oatmeal. If at all possible go to your healthfood store and buy it from the bulk section, or buy it from somebody in a co-op for about fifty cents a pound- and that's the organic stuff) or cornmeal mush for breakfast rather than prepared cereals. I don't like it and I would hate to eat it very often, but if I had a serious budget issue, I would grit my teeth and do what it takes, and if that's cornmeal mush, then that's what I'd do.

*Even scrambled eggs are cheaper than prepared cold cereals- but an omelet will take those eggs further and with more elegance (Use any leftover vegetables you have for the veggies in the recipe linked above).

*Make your own biscuit mix from scratch- this is easy and much cheaper than commercial mixes. You can use it for muffins, coffee cakes, pancakes, and waffles as well.

*Make your own pizza sauce rather than using canned.

*Make your own yogurt (this one may not be for everyone)

Do NOT buy fries. People, that's not even a food. In 24 years of marriage I think I've cooked with tater tots or frozen fries maybe ten times- and half of those had to have been because somebody gave them to us.

Boxed macaroni and cheese really isn't as cheap as you think it is, and the nutritional value is minimal. Likewise, applesauce, jams, and most canned fruits and vegetables. Spend the money on real food. Read your labels. If there is no nutritional value listed, no vitamins or minerals, it goes in the same category as candy bars- a luxury item.

*Make your own sprouts for some extra fresh vegetables in your diet. This link will take you to directions for lentil sprouts. The process is essentially the same for mung bean sprouts, wheatberry sprouts, alfalfa sprouts, and others. I've grown or eaten sprouts from fenugreek (good, but spicy), clover (so-so), Broccoli (good, but I don't have much luck with growing them), sunflower (delicious, my favorite, but much harder to sprout and I mostly botch it).

If your onions or garlic start to sprout, plant them in a pot in the kitchen window. Snip the tops for garnish and an extra taste of flavor for salads and sandwhiches.

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*Add lots of beans, made from scratch- not canned- to your menu
*Add baked potatoes- very filling and inexpensive
*Barley is cheap
*Make lots of soups and homemade bread - make the soups from any bits of leftovers you have, including drained liquids from cooked or canned (if you didn't listen to me) veggies.
*Substitute cottage cheese for Ricotta in many recipes. You can also mix half tofu and half cottage cheese and get the same texture, it’s filling and nutritious and I’ve never had anybody be able to tell a taste difference. check your local prices- some places we've lived tofu has been very inexpensive, other places, not so much.
*Liver is a cheap meat- The More with Less Cookbook has a very good recipe called “My Children Love Liver” I even had a notorious liver hater eat half a plate before he realized he was eating liver!
*Use your grocery sales fliers and shop the sales, building menus around that, instead of sitting down and thinking, "What do I feel like eating?".
*You can get spices cheaper through co-ops and at Mexican grocery stores.
*Drink water, not juice, with every meal
*Buy bags of brown rice instead of bottles, boxes, or jars of white rice.

Of course, one of the difficulties of cooking from scratch when you are poor is that if poverty hit you before you got to the grocery store, you don't have the scratch ingredients on hand and you probably cannot get them. It may be cheaper to bake a batch of bread from scratch in the long term, but if you don't already have flour, yeast, eggs, and sweetener on hand in the short run, that knowledge is of little use to you. Sometimes you just cannot spend five dollars now even when you know it will save you twenty five dollars in a month. And for bread baking to be cost effective, you need to be buying yeast in jars and bags, not little tiny individual packets. You might consider going to muffins and other quick breads for your bread needs for a while.

For that kind of really tight emergency budget I'd choose the cheapest bottom line and the minimal ingredients for the first pay period regardless of what I wanted to eat. If your budget is in that much trouble, you need to be really sacrificing. So that would be cornmeal mush for breakfast, lentil sprouts, beans and rice, and one or two of whatever the cheapest veggies were on sale that week (be sure to find where your grocer puts the mark-downs). That might be potatoes if you are not diabetic. You might be able to spring for one, maybe cheap cut of meat. Perhaps a couple fifty cent sixty-five cent cans of tuna, or maybe one whole chicken (which you will roast, pull the meat from, and then boil the carcass for broth), liver, OR ground beef, even ask the butcher for a bag of 'dog bones' and boil them for soup.

Save the skins from garlic and onions, scrub your carrots well and use the scrapings, use the leaves from celery, buy turnips and beets, cut off the tops and put them in a pie pan of water to grow more greens- all these things, along with every spoonful of leftover food, the liquid from your cooked veggies, the water squeezed from a package of frozen spinach- these all make a nourishing soup together. It could be a little thin, so call it consumme. Bring it to a boil and add a whisked egg for protein.

By the next pay-period you should have saved enough to buy a couple more ingredients-look over your sales fliers and see what will get you the most food for the least money. Sacrifice again, and by the next pay period you should have saved enough to add another ingredient to your kitchen stock. Slowly add in more foods to vary the menu, always checking the sales fliers and marked down items at your grocery store.

Little by little you can improve your diet frugally. Be patient and diligent, carefully looking ahead to the better times. I am not suggesting you live and eat this way permanently. Cornmeal mush every day for a pay-period will not kill you, however, if you are in normal health. Set aside all bitterness and resentment over having to live this way. Such feelings are not productive, and in many cases are an indication of the sense of entitlement behind many budget shortfalls.

And do bookmark The HIllbilly Housewife. She's has put together a remarkable resource for those who need to do some belt tightening in the kitchen, and what I know about budgeting could fit on one page of her site.