Rethinking Your Food Budget Yet?

**sounderella** · 05-01-2008, 06:10 AM

This is great! It's great for me because I'm just now discovering I can cook..which is great now due to increasing prices.

This may show my age, but when it calls for lard in something like muffins, is that shortening?

**LuxLiving** · 05-01-2008, 06:33 AM

What is lard?

Lard

http://www.bigoven.com/whatis.aspx?id=Lard

Lard was once used instead of butter due to its low cost and long sh

then click at the bottom for Shortening

If I don't have lard (which you can still buy at the grocery) I'll use shortening instead.

**Aleta** · 05-01-2008, 07:19 AM

I'm making sure that I don't throw out any food that is in my refrigerator. If I have any vegetabes left over, I throw them into a gallon bag along with all of the rest of vegetables and freeze them. The pre-seasoned vegetables help to make the soup taste even better. I'm also looking more closely ad the store ads to see if it's worth buying certain things in order to reach a total bill that will give you X amount of dollars off on the total grocery bill I figured out a couple of weeks ago, that I was better off not even shopping in that store that week. I just paid myself whatever the coupon offer was and put it to the side in savings. Don't know if that makes sense, but there are just some weeks that the grocery ads aren't don't contain enough there to even go shopping.

I'm also making more bean dishes and trying to stock up each week on extra vegetables and rice.

**LuxLiving** · 05-01-2008, 07:45 AM

Aleta, I am making refrigerator stew today for lunch.

Of course part of the reason is that I'm experiencing trouble w/my frig. The repairman is coming, he thinks it just needs freon. Prayers up & Fingers crossed!

**cashqueen** · 05-01-2008, 09:54 AM

I don't cook. I'm very lucky that DH (despite all his other faults) does all the cooking. He teaches 2 nights a week and those nights I make VERY simple meals. Last night DS1 (3.5yo) had mac and cheese and pineapple chunks. Sometimes I make scrambled eggs, grilled cheese or even just PBJ. In my defense, DH is a food snob and wouldn't eat any of those things for dinner. If there isn't a meat, startch and veggie he doesn't think it qualifies as dinner. It's very frustrating. However, I'd love to learn to cook but when would I find the time?

**FrugalFish** · 05-01-2008, 11:59 AM

We've most always cooked with very basic ingredients from scratch. It's only been the last year or so that we've started to keep a few frozen convenience foods on hand, and that is coming to an end now that our grocery prices are climbing so rapidly. I use to buy a big bag of taquitos every month or two for $8, and now they are $18 for the same bag- forget it!

I've been fortunate enough to be given a number of older cookbooks, as well as some of those group cookbooks that often contain old family recipes that are tried and true- it's times like these that I look through those again.

I was just thinking the other day about growing up in a remote area of CA during the 1970s. Mom was very frugal with food- everything was made from scratch and budgeted in money and quantity. Though I've kept up with those frugal ways, I am also looking back and seeing it being a tougher time inflation-wise, and there's a lot to be gleaned from those days.

After hearing about all the hoarding lately, I'm a little worried about getting my sale items at the super-sale I'm going to this afternoon. What a waste of time and gas that will be if they don't have the items on hand!

I hope your fridge fix ends up being simple.

**PrincessPerky** · 05-01-2008, 12:36 PM

Originally posted by cashqueen View Post

I don't cook. I'm very lucky that DH (despite all his other faults) does all the cooking. He teaches 2 nights a week and those nights I make VERY simple meals. Last night DS1 (3.5yo) had mac and cheese and pineapple chunks. Sometimes I make scrambled eggs, grilled cheese or even just PBJ. In my defense, DH is a food snob and wouldn't eat any of those things for dinner. If there isn't a meat, starch and veggie he doesn't think it qualifies as dinner. It's very frustrating. However, I'd love to learn to cook but when would I find the time?

While he still might claim 'not enough' you can add ham slices to the grilled cheese and a veggie on the side to make it a meal (I recommend the fruit or veggie regardless of your husband...just for health)

Throw a hot dog, or can of tuna, or some cooked ground meat into the mac (plus a veggie in it or fruit on the side) and you have that one 'up to speed'.

Keep the PB for a meal the kids can cook on their own

(with fruit or veggie ont he side of course!)

Toss in diced mushrooms or peppers to the scrambled eggs and it gets to be 'balanced'.

Pancakes topped with fresh or frozen berries and a side of bacon is a meal too...

Baked potato (nuked if in a hurry) topped with nuked veggies and cheese (or bacon) is another quickie. (and 'loaded potato', sounds like real food...)

Of course no amount of nutrition facts will convince a true snob that breakfast at 5pm is acceptable

Or that a grilled ham and cheese with a side of carrots is a dinner (that is lunch food!) but hey you could run it by him. (my husband never complained but it did take him time to get used to my way of 'cooking')

Rethinking Your Food Budget Yet?