Imagination

Make no bones about it, food prices is  are going to go up.  Seems the climate if the week is to put tariffs on Mexico and China.   The China won’t hurt as much for food because a lot of us don’t willingly buy food from China anyway.  But, we get a lot of our fruits and vegetables from Mexico especially on the winter.   Putting some extra veggies and fruit in the freezer this summer that are locally  grown might not be a bad idea.   Our great grandmothers had victory gardens.  They also had ideas of how to s t r e t c h their food supply.

I am hoping that the tariffs will hurt his fan base too hard and he will back off on the tariffs.
It won’t be politically advantageous?

We went to sprouts this week.  A lot of vegetables and fruits were reasonably priced. Taking advantage of special prices and incorporating the bargains into your meal plans makes your food budget go farther.   Peppers were fifty cents.   Ham is fifty cents at QFC.  We are out of freezer room, so I didn’t buy ham. Strawberries were a dollar a pound.   Blackberries were inexpensive and full of good vitamins.   Potatoes are down in price again here, probably because of the fact that Washington and Idaho are good potato producers. Potatoes have a lot of good nutrition.

Beef prices will go down.  The government has broke up a price fixing ring headed by TYSON and three other producers.  They together would keep prices high, no matter how much they paid for the cattle.   Remember higher prices started with a drought.   The other odd of that coin, is that China had a problem with their hogs that resulted in a hog shortage.   Shortage =higher prices. Now add a 25 percent tariff and you have higher prices.  The only remedy is to go with the flow.  Make use of the food that is a reasonable price.   If you are in a fixed budget, paying higher prices is not an option.
There is no getting around some things, but you can adapt to a lot.

Back to the produce bargains: potatoes. Strawberries, apples, peppers.  
Brainstorm, look at magazines and cookbooks,  the library has cookbooks, the thrift stores have cheap magazines and cookbooks, the internet of full of ideas and the on line Betty Crocker (BC) cookbook has a feature that lets you put an ingredient in and they show recipes.   Remember almost every ready made ingredient has a homemade substitution.  Learning to make a white sauce or magic mix and enchilada sauce is a great money saver.

• Strawberry muffins 
• Strawberry waffles 
• Fruit salad 
• Strawberry shortcake 
• Strawberry pancakes
• Baked potato bar 
• Potato soup 
• Depression stew 
• Ham and scalloped potatoes 
• Ham, and pepper omelette 
• Chicken fajitas 
• Pizza with peppers and chicken (Buffalo chicken pizza) 
• Stuffed peppers 
• Sausage and pizza soup

Incorporating what you can find that is a good price and nutritious is a good way to s t r e t c h your food dollar.  Going to the two stores that have the best prices  on food is a simple way to save money. 

Using all of your food, making stock from vegetable scraps, and incorporating as much as possible of leftovers into something else is another way.  Our great grandmothers survived the great depression and WWII shortages by being resourceful and coming up with ideas to use what they had.

Red velvet cake was invented because people wanted chocolate cake during the war and there was no cocoa available.