Back in the mid eighties, I wrote A booklet Feed a family of four for fifty dollars a week. I updated it in the 1990's to Feed a family of four for sixty dollars a week.
Now, in 2012, I am up to feed a family of four for 75.00 a week. Seventy five dollars a week feeds your family, and grows a stock. I have done it for years. Now, I could skip a week and we might not have fresh perishables, but we could still eat.
Rich people don't spend their money on consumables, they spend their money on appreciables.( investments that go up in value). Obviously, I wrote that before the economy went in the toilet!
Another concept that I haven't talked a out is that there are four styles of cooking dinner. only you know what mealtime is like aroumd your house and can choose what works for you. What works this week, might not work next week. LOL
1) FAST. Includes steaks, chops, pressure cooker meals, and stir frys.
2) MAKE AHEAD. Includes marathon cooking and batch cooking.
3) SET IT AND FORGET IT. Slow cookers and quick fix and forget meals are included here.
Things that you can assemble in the crockpot or oven, and walk away to get something
Else done.
4) STAIR-STEP METHOD. Cook double of something too get a head start on the next night.
Sundays roast becomes roast beef a jus sandwiches on Tuesday. Some of the rice you cooked for stir fry becomes Spanish rice the next day. Rice and beans have a short refer life.
QUICK TAKES
1) reference cookbook
2) meal plans combat the "Blank stare at the fridge, what's for dinner syndrome"
3) keep a price log for your staples
4) be brave enough to make substitutions if you like a recipe that calls for an expensive ingredient. a good reference book is The Kitchen Companion by Polly Clingerman.
5) stock your staples, never get stuck paying full price. If you dont have storage, find it. Under your bed? When I was living in a small apartment I had an ottoman that
Had a lid. My parents always had a storage room in the basement.
6) don't buy snack foods out of your food budget. Growing up, we never had pop, potato chips or Kool aid in the house. we all survived! LOL
7) decide on a dollar amount for protein for a meal. In the 70's when there were three of us, it was 2.00. By the 90's with two teenagers, I had to imcrease it to 3.00.
I still average about three dollars, but it is getting harder and harder. The operative word is average.
8) avoid impulse buying at the grocery store. Make a list, get in and get out.
Don't frequent the fancy stores --somebody has to pay for those live lobsters and water fountains! And don't go to the store multiple times during the week. If you run out of something, you're not doing your shopping right.
9) in the 90's an average family spent 120 a week on food. That was twenty years ago.
Inflation has hit hard in twenty years. Green beans were always 3 cans for a dollar, for example. Now they are 1.29 a can.
10) cook from scratch. The first letter in convenience foods is $. There are a few ready made items that are cheaper, and a few that are too labor intensive unless you have all day to cook.
11) almost free pizza! We will go into that on a future blog.
12) making your own breadcrumbs and croutons saves a bundle. As does taco seasoning. I recently saw taco seasoning on "sale" for 1.25
That's all for today.
Thanks for stopping by
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Jane
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