How To Save Money On Food

Concerned about food expenses? Not sure how you're gonna make ends meet? Try this game:

Don't buy any food.


I've done this before on at least two occassions, and found out I had enough food for MONTHS. I would just eat what was in the cupboards. Okay, its a slight exaggeration to say I didn't buy "any" food--I'd still buy milk or an occassional ingredient to finish out a recipe.

It was fun to be creative. Just when I thought I had exhausted all possibilities, an idea came that brought a week's worth of cooking. No matter how bare you think your cupboards are, there is most likely a stash that could keep you eating well for a long time.

Its actually a good exercise even if you're not driven out of necessity, for its good to rotate your stock and keep the items fresh.

Organic Chicken Soup on the Cheap

Here is one of my favorite recipes: All of the ingredients are organic and it yields a week's worth of lunches for a hungry, hungry man (or a small family) for the jaw-dropping price below:

$8.00 3 lb chicken, bought at the local farmers market. It comes frozen, with gizzards and all.
$1.19 1 lb carrots
$1.69 1 package celery (about 10 stalks, probably a little over a pound)
$0.65 1/2 lb dry beans
$0.50 1 large onion
$0.20 bay leaf, clove of garlic, salt, pepper and other spices
$1.69 10 oz frozen package of peas or corn
$1.29 1 lb dry, whole grain rice
--------
$15.20


Folks, this is at least 8 quarts. In fact, Its overflowing. I'd recommend cooking the rice separately (in some of the chicken broth), and probably having a second pan for excess. In fact, it could be 12 quarts easy depending on the liquidity you're comfortable with (mine is pretty thick). The chicken itself takes up much of the 8 quart pan. I find myself having to de-bone it just to add the vegetables (I continue cooking the bones separately in another pan, and at the end pour the liquid back into the main pot).

Assuming that an average bowl = 1 pint: There are 2 pints/quart, so this is 16 bowls not counting the rice. That translates into about 8 meals for me, since I eat a hearty lunch.

This soup covers a lot of ground nutritionally:

• Naturally raised, free range chicken--that includes meat, some organs, bones for the broth
• Whole grain
• Legume (beans)
• At least 1 green and 1 non-green vegetable (at least 4 vegetables total)
• Spices, herbs, garlic

This is virtually complete nutrition. I would normally cook it with a large parsley root and tops, but I couldn't find prices on my investigative shopping trip tonight (we grow it in the garden), so I excluded it. You could easily substitute bread in place of the rice (bread machine!) or other vegetables, potatoes, without affecting the price much.

No MSG, no corn syrup derivatives, no fake sugar, no artificial nitrites, no aluminum-based baking powder. Its full of meat, hearty & satisfying in all ways, 100% ORGANIC and ridiculously cheap.

Its a myth that organic equals expensive. The same amount of meals at Chipotle or Subway would run you $45-65, and mine is $15.20.

A way to reduce the size of this recipe: Boil the chicken in some water to develop the broth, like normal. Then when you de-bone the chicken, put a lot of the meat away to use for other recipies and only return some of it back to the soup.

Going Native

My Thanksgiving Day exploits with the turkey made me feel connected to the earth and a respectable part of ecology (see previous posts for details):

My family stuffed a turkey and baked it.
With the bones, I later made a soup broth.
I took the bones and composted them back into the garden.

I remembered stories of the Sioux, who used every part of the Buffalo in one way or another. Or the Inuit with a seal. I felt like I was in harmony with nature in a similar way--taking as little as possible from nature and utilizing it to the fullest. Respecting the natural processes.

Even things we dispose will--in theory--one day decompose back into nature. The problem is that in the meantime we are consuming a lot more than we need to and throwing out a lot. Why buy soup broth or garden fertilizer when I get all that from the "waste" portions of my meals?

If you're keeping track, I ended up: Saving money, consuming less resources, generating less trash. And I also got better nutrition by cooking out the marrow, calcium and other nutrients from the bones.

Landfills may one day be better managed. Right now, the trash we send pretty much stagnates in a compact, zero oxygen environment where decomposition is minimal. Researchers have dug into landfills that are many years old and pulled out intact banana peels and such. The trash is not breaking down, even the items that usually decompose quickly. Advances in waste management will hopefully help us deal with that better. In the meantime, our trash is just sitting in piles. The less we send to landfills, the better.

Now That You've Made Your Turkey Bone Soup . . .

Right now, you're probably enjoying the soup broth you made out of turkey bones. There is yet another step you can do to fully utilize your Thanksgiving Day meal: Compost the bones. This is a little trickier , since composting animal remains can be problematic for pests and disease. However, bone meal is a common ingredient in soil enhancers and potting soil. These folks have some interesting (and scary) methods of doing just that! Their ideas range from cooking the bones into ash or just burying them, among other things.

I prefer to do something that is not as energy intensive as cooking the bones (unless I was already using a fire to heat or cook with, which I'm not). However, on my first time that's what I did: I baked the bones after using them to make the soup broth. The baking dried them, which should help with pests. It also made them quite brittle. I then put them in a pot and crushed them. Pieces shot around all over, so I decided to wait until I was at the composting site to do that. It was night, so I will do it today.

They probably don't need to be crushed into dust, I just want to break them up to speed up the composting process.

Its Not Expensive To Eat Oganic

I'm a big believer that people can eat an extremely healthy, predominately organic diet without drastically impacting their budgets. It just takes some awareness of spending phenomena and a little cultural readjustment. The good news is that most Americans have plenty of opportunities for savings in their current habits!

I've been able to manage my food expenses very well by adhering to the following principles:

1. Waste--I take care not to throw food away, buy what I'm actually going to eat, and make sure it gets frozen before it goes bad. I've read that 25% to 50% of all edible food in America goes to waste, with the weight leaning toward the higher end of that spectrum. Imagine your budget with a 25-50% savings!
Not to sound like your mother, but food really is money. Why would you buy something only to throw it away? Please consider not only your budget, but also the huge drain on the environment and other resources through agriculture.

2. Eating rarely in restaurants:

• That $8 at Subway would have bought you a home-cooked steak dinner.
• That $4 beer at a bar could have bought you a 1/2 gallon of organic orange juice.
• The going rate for a tiny vending machine bag of chips is 70 cents--Its only $0.69-1.29 at the local co-op for a full pound of bulk, organic grains (which could feed you for a week!)

I'm still in favor of restaurants (although the more healthy I eat the less I am able to stand the food)--they are good places to socialize. Going to a restaurant should be more of a social sitation, not just a way to fill your tank.

3. Being prepared when I'm on the road so that I don't have to blow $5 at a convenience store for a few snacks. That's the cost of 2 full organic dinners at home! A package of nuts or seeds you keep in the car could be just the right amount of preparation in case you are out longer than expected.

4. Buying in bulk. I bought a 1/2 cow, organic and grass-fed. Top of the line quality, and locally raised. College students, neighbors or families could share the expense and the freezer space. A great community builder. Organic meat at conventional prices.
It can be daunting to make such a purchase--how much meat can a person eat? Frozen meat should not be kept any longer than a year, and a 1/2 cow can feed 2-5 hungry adults or a small family for a year (assuming that you eat other meats besides beef, as well). But don't fear, you can also buy smaller quantities in bulk, such as a 1/4 cow, 1/2 pig, or whole turkeys, etc.

5. Gardening--gonna try to do better next year when it comes to preserving. But my family, friends and I enjoyed a bounty of fresh veggies and herbs all season from our gardens. I won't need to buy fertilizer because I'm composting. I should soon learn how to preserve seeds, as well.

It also doesn't take much preparation to cook at home, which the Omnivore mentions in the linked article. Its a myth that restaurants save you any time or energy. I agree with this point, among many others: I can cook a nutritious meal in the same time it takes you to pack up the family, drive to a so called "fast food" restaurant, order, and drive back. Its also cheaper than the price of a so-called "extra-value meal" at McDonald's. So tell me what is the advantage of "fast food"? Not matter how busy you are, you still need to eat.

The trick is just to make sure you are well-stocked. Keep your freezer full of things you regularly use. Dry beans and grains keep for a long time. I only keep a small amount of fresh items--some bread, fruit and milk. The rest is frozen so few things go bad.

Bread machines and slow cookers should really put the nail in the coffin to the idea that "homemade" means "labor intensive". But most of my quick dinners bypass these time-saving devices entirely.

There are certainly other ways to save money--eating low-cost items like rice & beans and learning how to scavenge at free food events. All valid approaches. But I'm saying you can eat a bountiful, diverse diet of healthy, organic foods, and still eat on the cheap. AND by following these guidelines you'll most likely eat healthier and be a better environmental steward, too.

There is a misconception that organic food is only for yuppies. You can go to the grocery store and see organic foods sometimes double the cost of conventional. People are often outraged at the thought of spending so much on organic. But think of what you could have bought the next time you blow $3 on chips, or when you eat at a restaurant for the 5th time this week, or scrape whole plateloads of food into the garbage, or make your daily pilgrimmage to the vending machine for pop and a snack. Organics do not deserve the elitist image they have. They are a logical, sensible and even economical food choice in a comprehensive budget that uses food wisely.

Stop! Before You Throw Out Thanksgiving Leftovers . . .

Trim your cooked turkey of most of its meat, and throw the bones and any other "disposable" parts of the turkey into a pot of water and boil for a few hours. This will make a delicious starting point for a soup broth. Even better if you still have the liver, gizzard, neck and any other parts like that. After it cooks, you can then remove the bones and start your soup. Scott says his grandmother encloses them in a net, so that the sharp little bones won't get out into the broth (I've done it before without a net and didn't have any problem, just had to do more fishing). The bones enhance the flavor and provide nutrients that are hard for us to get otherwise.

Cooking with bones was once a common part of our ancestors' diets. Bones were cooked for hours, even days at a time. I imagine a big cauldron in the center of a house or cave, with fires stoked each day before meals are ladeled out. Ingredients may be added, but the same bones would be stewing for days. Bone soup is almost unheard of anymore, but it disappeared only within the last couple of generations. The Weston Price folks would consider it a pillar of traditional, healthy diets--almost like a food group unto itself. It may be the best way for us to get numerous minerals, like calcium.

They say that the best bone broths come from animals that were raised on natural diets (cows eat grass, not grain!) and roamed free range. According to them, the bones of factory-raised animals are not as conducive to a soup base, since the extracts don't gelatinize very well.

"Sucking out the marrow" was once considered so fabulous that it has served to symbolize the most savory and rewarding of experiences. But when is the last time you had marrow?

My dad says that our long-time family friends the Glovas are more excited about Thanksgiving leftovers than about the traditional stuffed bird dinner itself. They use the bones and other leftovers to make soup. That got me thinking. I've made bone soups before, but it never occurred to me to recycle the bones of an already-cooked item. I have since collected all the bones from our meal today and will be cooking soup tomorrow!

Goals

A dream without a plan is a joke

An empty promise to yourself

The Divine without the Incarnation