Because my fingers were too fat....I posted meal plans early. So I thought I would go back to the beginning and talk about why this blog got started on the first place and why I am the person to write it. Actually, it was a suggestion from my children.
Growing up, my mother was always careful with money, She survived the Great Depression and watched her mother make meals from barely anything with great grace. I'm guessing that had a part in her manta to avoid the Nasty F word -----full price.
I continued to be thrifty when I moved out on my own: mostly because I was living on minimum wage. When I was first married, my husband would love to go to my mothers house for Sunday dinner because we always had roast beef and I was cooking a lot of tuna noodle casserole because we were saving for a down payment on a house.
Then the big /$:): storm happened, It was the early seventies. Nixon was in office. There was a gas shortage, we had double digit inflation and I found myself suddenly a single mother. I had 5.12 in the savings account and 2 months of daycare and rent, car repair payment, and utilities to pay for.
-- far more bills than I had money. I called welfare and was told that it didn't matter how much daycare cost, I earned too much money. That would be 200 dollars twice a month. I cried. Then I put my big girl pants on and got creative. It was lucky for me that I had stocked some food. I had remembered how much crap I had got for buying a case of tuna fish because Safeway had put it on sale for .28. It and liver was our lifesaver: besides the fact that we were enjoying my mothers Sunday dinners.
Thrifting our groceries as well as my clothes became a way of life. I set out to read ( no Internet those days ) everything I could read. I tried everything I could. We made bean sprouts. I tried to cook soy beans. How many ways can me spell rocks. Lol. I used tvp. And I read every book the library on economy cooking.
Seven years after I became a single mother, I remarried. By now, feeding us on a budget was a habit. I continued to read and now I could go to cooking school. I went to every one I could find that we could afford.
I was published in Taste of Home and Woman's Day for my efforts. At the time, I was feeding four of us including two teenagers, for fifty dollars a week.
To five years ago, my daughter has taught low income children for years. Some parents were lamenting that they couldn't make their SNAP stretch for the whole month. My daughter said, oh, my mom m knows how to stretch food dollars. I began to try to think of how I could help and knew other people that wanted to stretch their food budget too. My children helped me set up a blog almost five years ago.
Since then I have found more ways to cut corners. I have grown . I'm a firm believer that you should never stop learning and growing. I hope I have helped others grow too. I would love to find a way to reach more people.
We spend 40-55 dollars a week for three of us and maintain a small stock. The USDA statices for my husband and I are about twice that. We eat well.
We have had the best of times, and the worst of times, all anyone can do is put your big girl pants on and go forward. One time I said " life's a bitch and then you die. ". My young son told me " no, mom it's life's a beach. " I have a very smart son.
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