With this in mind, I tried to find a way to eat economically. So I asked myself: what things are absolutely dirt cheap, absolutely pennies at the supermarket?
The things I came up with were:
- Bulk flour. Can't really argue with 39 cents a pound. Even whole wheat flour, which is a bit more than white, is ridiculously cheap at 44 cents a pound. Even taking into account the cost of electricity from running the oven, homemade breads are cheap cheap cheap.
- Bulk steel cut oats. Cheap, delicious, about as wholesomely nutritious as you can get.
- Pasta. The cheapest kind is something like 70 cents a pound. Even the more expensive whole wheat ones are only about a dollar a pound. Our family typically eats no more than half a pound of pasta in one meal.
- Rice. I'm less happy about rice, because I prefer basmati and brown basmati, which are the most expensive (although they barely break the bank), but if I wished, I could get long grain white rice for practically nothing.
- Beans and lentils, any kind. The canned ones are bloody cheap; the dried ones absurdly so. I'm going to blog more in the future about making beans and lentils bearable if you're like me and have a rather limited ability to love them.
Obviously, we cannot live on carbs alone. So I'm also sourcing cheap protein, such as:
- Eggs. $1.67 for 12. So filling, so nutritious, so versatile. Gosh, I sound like a spokeswoman. I have misgivings about eggs (see Chicken, below). This is clearly something I need to work on, i.e. learn to love beans and lentils a great deal more.
- Chicken. Whole chicken, chicken breast, chicken thighs. I've blogged before about my misgivings about the morality of the whole poultry enterprise, but there it is.
- Sausage and other pork products. I have misgivings about pork too. This is why we're not eating meat every night.
And let's not forget vegetables. I guess we're lucky to live in a very fertile part of the United States, where seasonal vegetables are plentiful and cheap. We all have our favorite vegetables, but I tend to buy mostly what's in season, because that's cheapest. Right now, broccoli and carrots and celery are pleasingly cheap. We go through a lot of onions, carrots, and celery because we like to use a mirepoix for a lot of our recipes. Baby B loves broccoli, so I'm getting a lot of that right now. Zucchini seems to be pretty cheap all the time. But I'm increasingly feeling that it's silly to be a snob about frozen vegetables--they can taste really good if you get freshly frozen ones that aren't covered in freezer burn. Peas, in my opinion, actually taste better frozen (well, previously frozen). Green beans, edamame, and corn are also fine. I confess I don't care for frozen spinach. I really wanted to like it (after all, you can get one of those ten-ounce "bricks" of cut leaf spinach for practically nothing), but it always tastes gross to me. Luckily, fresh spinach is readily and cheaply available here.
- 1 roast chicken dinner OR other form of meat with the bone in, so I can use the bones for stock. Stock makes everything better.
- 1 soup and bread meal (using stock from chicken bones). The soups I make usually make enough for at least two meals for the three of us.
- 1 (at least) pasta meal (using stock from the chicken bones to improve the sauce, or leftover chicken).
- 1 beans/lentils meal, probably with rice. May or may not have bits of chicken stirred in. Will have masses of leftovers.
- 1 eggs meal, such as quiche, frittata, etc.
With this in mind, this is what I've planned for this week.
Breakfasts: steel cut oats, yogurt, frozen mixed berries OR eggs on toast.
Lunches: peanut butter sandwiches, apples, cheese, raw vegetables
Dinners:
- Almost-Foolproof Roast Chicken with a side of roast zucchini (I put the zucchini into the dish with the chicken half an hour before it's ready, seasoning it first with salt, pepper, and rosemary).
- Cream of broccoli soup with homemade whole wheat-yogurt baking powder bread.
- Whole wheat spaghetti, homemade tomato sauce with sauteed sausage mixed in, side of sauteed spinach.
- Homemade calzone using half a recipe of my basic bread dough, leftover tomato sauce and sausage, spinach, and mozzarella.
- An adaptation of this Skinnytaste.com recipe, but using spinach instead of escarole (no escaroles can be found at my local supermarket, alas), and leftover chicken instead of chicken sausage, a foodstuff I do not love.
- A Self-Crusting Quiche using whatever leftover vegetables I have, and/or whatever frozen vegetables I can find in my freezer (which I'm trying to clear out before the chaos of Christmas).
- Leftovers. I always have lots of those.
This week's groceries:
Fruits and vegetables:
2 lbs carrots 0.98
1.81 lbs broccoli crowns (3 large) 1.77
3.22 lbs Braeburn apples 2.83
1 head garlic 0.48
16 oz spinach 1.38
4 zucchini 1.52
5 lbs onions 1.98
Bulk:
10 oz penne 0.48
1.44 lbs whole wheat spaghetti 1.44
Dairy:
Cheese Heads light string cheese 2.98
Tillamook Italian blend cheese 2.73
Nancy's low-fat plain unsweetened yogurt 2.37
Organic Valley 2% milk, half a gallon 3.60
12 large eggs 1.67
Meats:
1 small chicken 5.56
1 lb mild Italian sausage 2.68
Frozen:
Mixed berries 1.88
Cans:
28 oz crushed tomatoes 1.13
Misc.
Stash Jasmine Blossom green tea bags 2.40
Sara Lee multigrain bread 1.98
Total: $41.84
So pretty good. Except not that good, because obviously I still had things at home like dried white beans, chicken broth in the freezer, flour and yeast and sugar and salt and oil for the bread dough, etc, so the true cost of this week's meals is much higher.
Plus, you know what's NOT cheap? Dairy. I haven't quite figured out why we consume so much dairy. Maybe it's because we don't eat vast quantities of meat each week, so we want something fatty and animal-derived to make food taste good. I think we could cut string cheese out of our diets and not really miss it that much, don't you? Maybe we'll do that next time. We like the little scoop of yogurt that we have on our steel-cut oats porridge in the mornings, and yogurt is useful for baking breads, etc.
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