Ok, cereal, milk, sandwich stuff, and simple dinners for 4 days should not cost $120. I didn’t buy anything for snacks, no drinks like juice or lemonade, no hot tea, nothing frilly at all. AND this was at Wal-Mart.
So I’m done complaining about the cost of food and being mystified by the increase in food prices.
I’m going to do two things
A.) Think really really hard about writing my congressman. Probably tell some people I’m going to. Maybe even start a draft – won’t be sending it though because I suck on follow through.
B.) Change what I can about my way of buying food to make this less draining.
B is the only choice likely to yield any hope. I know some people are great at couponing but I feel like I need a stinking couponing tutor to get started. I also think it might be time to buy big on non-perishables. Hurray wholesale.
What do you do? Do you just suck it up and pay the higher prices or are you having to rethink what you’re doing too?
As I come up with a more concrete plan, I’ll share the details. All I can say right now is that I’m going to the Asian market to get the giant bag of brown rice – cuz it’s awesome for you and stores well.
The way we cut down isn't quite ideal for you. Lots of canned veggies and dollar rice sides. Bulk chicken. We don't buy name brand often (I don't think that's an issue for you, mostly the canned not fresh thing). With formula for the kids, we can get out of the store for under 100 bucks. Buying non-perishables for sides and such does help that. And buying in bulk then using the freezer.
ReplyDeleteNam Hai for the win... There are lots of interesting international food places around us that are spectacular and sell all kinds of interesting food.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, (Though it can cost more) I'm all for farmer's markets. My grandparents used to tell us about how they lived back in the old days. Not only did everyone have a huge garden, but because meat couldn't be kept for long friends and neighbors would sign up for a rolling meat club. This was a deal where each member took turns offering up cattle to have butchered and everyone in the club would get a take for that week. One week you might get roast, another you'd get ground meat, another sirloin and so on. I've been meaning to look into buying into something like that. A buy fresh, buy local approach. Buy a quarter of a cow or somesuch. As I understand it's all around a better deal for everyone involved.
We didn't get a good start on our garden this year but next year you can expect canned peaches, wine, rasberrys, peppers, and wild garlic to start. We should talk about getting a group of friends together to do a garden swap. Everyone take their extra produce and trade it for other things they might need.
Gardens are the tried and true method of weathering hard times btw. Much of the cost in farming is in labor, and large crops are labor intensive because 50 acres of food is mighty tempting for common pests. Small home gardens don't suffer as badly and often won't require quite as much upkeep to get a useful yield.
ReplyDeleteI make it a point to plant edible food as often as possible. In another turn on that though, wildcrafting!!! Check out the yahoo group okforageahead. There are LOTS of edible "weeds" that make incredible salads and so on. We've made a few attempts to get decent at wildcrafting but so far we just haven't had the motivation to keep up. Maybe with few wildcrafting buddies we can keep each other interested.