Day: July 12, 2006

Frequently I’ll be talking with a friend or neighbor and they’ll have to leave because they have to run to the grocery store before dinner. They declare that unless they go to the store they won’t have anything to cook for dinner. This puzzles me greatly. Particularly when the person I’m talking to is a fellow mormon and theoretically has a year’s supply of food stashed away. I can only assume that what they actually lack is a few key ingredients for their planned menu. I’ve made that kind of run myself in the days when cash flowed more freely. These days I don’t run to the store on a whim. Each trip to the store costs me time, money, and the risk of being tempted to buy something impulsively. If I am lacking a key ingredient I either substitute or fix something else. This means we eat a fair number of experimental meals, but mostly they turn out pretty good. Practice has given me a basic sense of which substitutions will work and which will result in disposal fodder. Using what I have rather than running to the store is a basic tenet of my frugal budget.

Another thing that puzzles me is the assertion that I hear from many people that eating healthy is more expensive than other eating. One of the first things I did when trimming my food budget was to eliminate pre-processed foods. I started buying only ingredients and fixing the food myself. This completely eliminated most of the junk food that my family was consuming. Candy, chips, twinkies, fruit punch, and chicken nuggets all became things of the past. Instead we eat cheese macaroni, ramen, rice based dishes, potato based dishes, soups, and lots of canned fruits and vegetables. Howard eats lots more meats than the rest of us, especially when on an Atkins style diet. We are spending far less money than we used to do and we are eating far healthier. The biggest food budget expenses are for meats and fresh fruits/veggies. We have more of the latter in the summer when we can grow them ourselves. In the winter we stick to canned. Meat we buy on sale and freeze it until we’re ready to use it. I guess the difference is in how you define “healthy.” I believe it is possible to have a healthy diet without eating fish twice a week. I tend to watch fads in healthy eating come and go while I stick to basics. I also don’t believe that there is a magical balanced diet that will prevent all ills. Pretty good is good enough.