Making Do without Missing a Thing--How to eat like a king on a Shoestring budget

   Well I am finally up and at 'em after having some serious surgery about a week and half ago. I wanted to first thank you all for your prayers and for your daily encouragement as we walked through this time. It has been challenging, and sometimes stressful, but I have been daily reminded how loved we are by so many people, and that sure helps a lot!
   I am starting the second week of our six-week period together and titling it:
                                       "Eating Like a King on a Shoestring Budget.".
   While last week was fun and many of you had some great results using your master mixes, I wanted to take you one step further into being able to feed a family of five or more on less than $200 a month in groceries. That is our monthly grocery budget and that amount has actually gone up $50 a month since we started implementing a lot of the strategies I am going to teach you. That extra $50 a month is going back into stocking our pantry so we keep building what I call "food security".

   ("Food security" is also known in other circles as "food storage", or even something as simple as a "pantry".)

 

(An old general store and what an entire town used to need to get through.)

 (a single aisle of a single grocery out of 3 stores in a "small" town)

   We live in a very minute-to-minute culture that applauds extravagance and impulse. Just look at the average grocery store. Or the way the average American uses the grocery store.All you have to do is scroll through the recent news about huge snowstorms hitting the NE part of our country, stores emptying of anything portable, people being without power or water for more than a few hours, and you will immediately see how vulnerable the average person is in being prepared for the natural disaster.
   But let's take it a step further than that. Right now, the REAL numbers on unemployment or under-employment (people who have had to take PT jobs as that is all that is available) sit somewhere around 16-19% of the workforce of American citizens. Since the government only counts the numbers of people who have been unemployed less than 18 months, and we are now going on three years since the recession hit our country, there are an awful lot of folks who have fallen off the radar for being "counted".
   Add into that how grocery prices have risen 30% in the year 2011, and are slated to raise up to another 15-40% (depending on how successful crops are this coming year), and you have the perfect storm for the average American family who is feeding kids, working jobs, holding down a mortgage and struggling to pay bills in full every month.
   Now I am not trying to be a doom and gloom type of person, AT ALL. I am just a firm believer in stating the facts and not sugar-coating things around us. Dont believe my statistics? Do some research on your own. Dont believe parents are struggling to feed their families? Go visit your local food shelf. Or talk to folks down at the Social Services department about how many people are so desperate that they are looking to the government for assistance in the basic things in life, such as food and gas for their cars, or keeping a roof over their kids heads. Talk to the local school district about their numbers of how many families are relying on free breakfast or lunch (or both) through the school so that they can feed their kids each month. I have done all those things, and that is what really gave me a kick in the pants to write this six-week series. I know I can help some moms and dads out there, or even single people or married couples who are facing the same circumstances.
   So now that I have given you more than a few good reasons to consider this next week as an important topic, we are going to begin with a few simple strategies for building a basic, usable pantry that you can begin pulling meals from.
   Growing up my mother ran a daycare, and I can remember her getting on the federal food program for daycares where you can get large amounts of things at discount prices. That was before places like Sam's Club, or Costco, or even really Walmart became a household name. I grew up in a very small town, deep in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, with one grocery store, and a winter that lasted for a good six months out of the year. We had one of the shortest growing seasons in the United States, and due to the elevation, there were very few things that you could grow and grow well. :) So having a pantry that could keep our family fed and happy for more than a week was a pretty big necessity. It wasn't until I was older that I knew this was not necessarily a standard thing in every household, but quite a few of our neighbors were Mormon as well, and as you know,  most LDS families keep at least one year of food on hand as part of their spiritual beliefs.
   So a lot of what I have learned over the years started at home, and I am planning on teaching all of my children the same things. I believe that it is important and intrinsically American to be as self-reliant as possible. As a Christian, I believe that doing a lot of this also gives me the freedom to help others who are in need because I have been blessed by the Lord with abundance through diligence.
   One of the first things you need to consider when building a pantry is what your family eats. Too many people that I know go out and buy in a fear-shaped frame of mind, purchasing a case of green beans and corn and whatever else is available at the grocery store, thinking they will learn to use it, or their family will adapt to the taste of something and so they should purchase it. And that is why most of them still have random cans of items sitting on their shelf 2 years later when it has expired.
   I want you to consider that every penny that is being spent on groceries from now on is purposeful and planned out. I am not talking about the random grocery list that you make up, only buy half the stuff on it and while going through the store grab a few of this and a few of that because your family likes it.
    Let me explain.
    I have a six week rotation of meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner planned out for our family that I keep in a binder. I have a list of alternative meals that are ready, on the shelf, waiting for the occasional day that we are running too late, or I am sick (or had surgery--*ahem*), that anyone in the family can throw together and we have a meal on the table in less than 10 minutes. I started by simply deciding that we would do something different one night a week. I would encourage you to start by doing the same thing, and rather than overwhelming yourself with a six week plan, start with one week.
   My husband is off on Monday and Sundays. I teach piano lessons Tuesday through Friday until 6 pm. Saturdays are my baking day, and Sunday is the day I try to have a down day for the family and rest. So my family's planned meal schedule is as follows: Mondays are what I call "Meat and Potatoes" meals (in other words, things that my husband really likes that I would rather not eat). Tuesdays are our "Ethnic meal" night.
Wednesdays are really busy and I am not normally home for most of the day, so that is our "Crockpot" night. Thursdays are "Casserole or One Meal Dish" night. Fridays are "Parent's Choice or Kids' Choice" Night. Saturdays are always our "Pizza" night, and Sundays are "leftovers or Waffle" night. This makes it easy for me to categorize meals that our family likes and my family loves knowing what kind of meals to expect. A simple breakdown example for this week would be as follows: Monday: Kielbasa and Sauerkraut with mashed potatoes, Tuesday: Black Bean Enchiladas  Wednesday: Cracker barrel Cheese soup and Salad, Thursday: Creamy Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole, Friday: Veggie Quesadillas with chips and salsa, Saturday: Homemade Pizza, and Sunday: Waffles.
   I found it easiest to just brainstorm and write as many meals as I could think of that my family liked under the three meals a day. Since my kids are homeschooled, and I teach piano in my home, I plan for three meals a day, every day. Perhaps you only need to plan for dinners with your family schedule. This isn't something that requires a lot of brain power, just a little time, and really thinking about what your family likes and would eat. The other part of the meal planning is to pick three meals out that require shelf-stable ingredients for around 70% of the meal. The easiest one to start with is your crockpot or casserole meal, or even the pizza meal.
Here is the basic hand-drawn planner that I use:

   Once you have that one week plan written, I want you to write down every single ingredient each meal requires on the back of this. You will soon see a pattern, and have a basic grocery list when you are done. My first challenge for you is to make this one week plan, take it to the grocery store, purchase only the groceries listed, and eat only the meals, snacks, etc, that you have listed on this paper.  The second challenge I have for you is to take those three meals you listed that include 2/3 of shelf stable ingredients, and purchase double the amount you will need. In other words, does the meal need one can of spaghetti sauce? Purchase two. One box of pasta? Purchase two. One can of cream of mushroom soup? Purchase two (or look at my master mix for making your own and skip the MSG). Tomorrow I am going to blog about taking this to the next step and reproducing this out to two to four weeks, how to shop for the list, and how to begin building your pantry to be able to pull any of those meals off of your shelf at any time.
As always, if you have a comment or a question, please ask. I am happy to answer.