Save money! Buy Cheetos!

This is a continuation of a long thought process that has been brewing for a couple of weeks.  Part 1 was all about how to have the right philosophy of spending when it comes to food.  Part 2 was all about how I save money by carefully choosing where I shop and Part 3 is all about how to save money by how you eat. 

We buy a lot of food in bulk in our house.  I simply cannot keep enough ingredients on hand in my pantry if I have 20 cans of black beans for a single family meal so I keep 1lb bags of black beans, soak them overnight and can feed 8 of us (with left overs!).  An organic 16oz package usually costs well under $2.

For dinner we usually have
- a starch/carbohydrate
- a protein
- a healthy fat (FYI healthy fat is good for you BTW)
- fruit / vegetable

We drink nothing but water - usually and at the rate we go through milk we use it ONLY for cereal and/or recipes - never for drinking.

Carbohydrate
By keeping 10lbs of brown rice on hand along with bulk quinoa (which is gross, don't eat it unless you must), GF pasta, cornmeal for corn bread and organic potatoes we try to cycle through several grains and starches for diversity.  By  buying organic grains in their ingredient state instead of a processed/prepared state they are still pretty cheap.  I also buy a variety of GF flours and mix them myself so I can do traditional baking when we have dinner pancakes and other things requiring flour.  (Commercial GF mixes are mega expensive and very sparse on nutrition.)  If I had a grain mill I would use it and save even more.

Protein:
A serving size of protein for an adult is equivalent to the palm of your hand for a female and two hands for a male.  We buy whole chicken, frozen chicken tenders, frozen chicken breast, ground turkey, and ground beef.  If a recipe calls for any other kind of meat I'm kind of lost though I can make a decent pot roast and pork ribs and the occasional brisket or ham.  I wish I was more diverse here.


Fat:
Fat is good for you.  You need it.  Read about it here if you don't believe me or do your own research.  We use oils in cooking, nuts, avocado, flax seed meal to fulfill this need.

Fruit / veggies:
We buy local organic from Rutiz Farms in A.G. and non-local bulk organic veggies from Costco.  For the most part I only buy organic if it means the difference of a couple of bucks per pound.  If it is on the dirty dozen list and I can't afford to buy the organic equivalent I don't buy it very often.

To make things fancy I keep a well stocked spice cabinet and to keep us out of a rut I try to get cookbooks and magazines from the library when I run out of ideas.  I'm too ADHD when I search online - I lose my train of thought or go out and buy all the ingredients but forget where I found the recipe.
But one thing that I just found that promises to help out a lot is Ziplist.  You can menu plan and build a shopping list from hundreds of different online recipe sources and use the smartphone app when you shop to make sure you get everything.

So what does cheetos have to do with anything?  Despite hours of online searching I can find nothing that is a practical shape and size for keeping our bulk dry goods in.  My kids love me for it.

o.k. here's how I save money on food (but read the other post first)

I know.  After that last post you just hate me.  Of course I had to share my philosophy before I shared what our eating climate looks like in real life.

I have 5 children and a teenage niece in my house which means that on most nights I need to plan on feeding 20 people or so.  That combined with other financial constraints means I try to make the most out of every food $ I have.

After we started eating gluten free 2 years ago we slowly gave up almost all processed foods.  This month we gave up on commercial peanut butter spread (check the label on your PB, if it says peanut spread it has too many additives to be considered peanut butter.) The only things left in my pantry are ingredients and pasta sauce in glass jars.  And some healthy GF crackers.  And some healthy cereal.  (and some cheetos) But that's it guys.  (and some pre-made indian sauces) O.k. we're still working on it.

So what do we eat?  Where do we shop? How do we save money?

Here are the ways I try to save money

1.) Don't ever let anything spoil.  Buy food on sale that you can't use before it spoils doesn't save you money.  You can't buy a weeks worth of food at a time if you want to eat fresh meat and veggies. (If you disagree with me PLEASE tell me how you do it!!)

2.) Menu plan.  Do it.  It doesn't work if you don't have all the ingredients you need for those stellar recipes you get off the internet.  Menu plan and shop on the same day or it all falls apart and you eat a lot of rice and beans and cheese for a coupla days until you have a chance to go to the store by yourself because you simply CANNOT shop with all 5 kids and remember to get everything on your list.

3.) Keep a list of staples on you pantry door.  Check them before making your shopping list.

4.) Shop the fronts and backs of the grocery store adds.  Shop the perimeter of the store.

5.) Costco = Buying in bulk from quality sources. 

6.) Amazon.com = Buying in bulk from questionable sources, do your homework and use that free shipping.  If I can't get it from Costco I get it delivered.

7.) Organic farm box for $15, yes please! we buy at Rutiz farm and this Friday we are getting our first taste of completely grass fed ground beef there as well.

8.) Don't feel guilty when you break all the rules.  I have a good-better-best mentality.  We try to eat good, we could do better but we're doing our best.  Veggies are good, organic is better, local organic is best.  Whatever you can manage on a daily/weekly/monthly basis to feed nourish your family is better than giving into the convenience of cracking open a can (in our case many many many cans) of chili.  That stuff looks like dog food to me.

  And just so you know, because I'm feeling super sanctimonious and guilty right now I have to say - I bought and fed my children Mac and Cheese on Monday in a moment of weakness.  Neon orange food from a box. It looked disgusting.

How to spend more money on food

With the economy being as it is I sat down the other day racking my brains to figure out how I could spend more money on food.  We live in a time and a place that has so much available to us at such incredible prices it's a shame we don't spend a bigger portion of our budget on the great food that is clamoring for out attention in the fields around us.

If locavore, organic, gluten-free, free range, tenderly massaged on a daily basis, sung to sleep at night animals and vegetables isn't on your priority list, well, perhaps it ought to be.

Did you know that :

• “Americans enjoy the cheapest food supply in the world, spending the smallest share of their income on groceries of any country.” (Source: Chicago Tribune Reporter)
• “No other nation on the planet spends as much as we do on medical care.” (Source: Robyn O’Brien)
• “People are fed by the Food Industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the Health Industry, which pays no attention to food.” (Source: Wendell Berry)

(For more statistics go here, which is where I lifted my info from because I'm lazy.)

Wonder if there might perhaps be some connection between a rise in obesity, a shrinking life expectancy and a multitude of health problems that are connected to our eating environment?

You are what you eat.  Your body doesn't make cells out of air and water, it makes cells out of food and the quality of that food has an effect on your quality of life both now and down the road.

I overheard a recently recovered heart attack patient explain that the reason he brought home KFC for dinner was because he was trying to eat healthier.  I couldn't help it.  My jaw dropped. REALLY?  Where the 'L are people getting their information from???!!!  I don't think learning bogus food pyramid in preschool really cuts it anymore.  We need to inform our children and our culture about the food we eat and the impact it will have on our lives.

You can tell how much a person values a thing by how much time and money they spend on it.  High priority = lots of time and money.  Low priority = little time and money.

30 min meals and $10 dollar dinner? Drive thru?  What are we saying to ourselves?  Why are we trying to run our bodies on pink slime and paper?


O.k. so we aren't super hard core at my house.  We have snacks.  We let the kids eat the candy they get at parties.  We sometimes go out for ice cream and sometimes for Chipotle.  Sue me for being a hypocrite.  All I'm asking as that we take another look at food and find some other place in the budget to save money.

So the next time your children ask what's for dinner, tell them, "I'm making FOOD for dinner tonight,  FOOD. and it's going to take awhile ...."