Cut Your Food Budget & Convenience Foods

There are small ways to save money that add up to quite a lot if you have several children, if you have a big credit card bill, or if you have trouble living within your budget. It's obvious that spending has to be cut back, but if you are already careful with your spending, sometimes the only thing left to cut back is your food budget. How?

First, as I've continually encouraged, buy as much as you can on sale. That's why I talk about the great deals in local grocery stores and encourage you to buy by the case when possible, or at least to buy as many cans/boxes as you can afford of non-perishables or perishables that store well. If you can save about half the price of an item, as butter was last week in two grocery stores, then you can afford to eat well on a budget all year.

Second, eating a lot of convenience foods is costly, both to our wallets and our health. Make as much as you can from scratch:  there are ways, though, to make your "from Scratch" foods be convenient and fast, which I will explain. Perhaps the biggest and easiest  saving for a big family would be to seldom buy cold cereal. Think how many boxes you use a week and how much it costs. What is the alternative if you are a busy family? Short-term planning. Here are some examples of  inexpensive breakfasts:

• Make a double or triple batch of pancakes, waffles, or french toast, feed your family and freeze the rest in freezer bags. We often just reheat a pancake or a waffle in the toaster, which takes just a minute on a busy morning.
• Cook oatmeal, cream of wheat, or another hot cereal. Oatmeal is great with chopped apples and cinnamon. Here, too, it can become a convenience food if you plan: one of the first issues of our blog has a recipe for instant oatmeal.  Cold cream of wheat is a solid mass, but if you put a little water in the pot and break up the cream of wheat as it heats (adding water when needed), you can use a wisk and end up with creamy cereal a second day.
• If you really want to save, buy the hot cereal in bulk. If you live where you can buy bulk grains, you've seen the larger sizes of oatmeal or steel-cut oats. Cream of wheat is also known as "farina", and you can buy a big bag of farina in most places that sell bulk grains -- I think I bought my last bag from Leland Mills in Spanish Fork. One bag lasts years in our house.
• Wheat and other whole grains can be cooked overnight in a crockpot and be ready to eat in the morning as a hot cereal. Cooked whole wheat is very chewy and filling. If you have a rice cooker that turns itself to warm when done, you can cook brown rice or basmati brown rice (which we prefer for flavor) and it will be warm when you get up in the morning (just add about a cup more water than the rice cooker shows to add for white rice). You can even toss in some dried raisins, craisins, or another dried fruit while cooking to sweeten the rice.
• More time consuming, but definitely a savings, is to make your own bread, but did you know homemade bread freezes very well? You can't beat french toast made with homemade bread, as it soaks up more of the egg mixture -- yum!  Because one of my children had a milk allergy as a child, we don't even use milk in french toast: just egg, water, a little vanilla, and cinnamon. You'd never miss the milk.

The best way to save money, ever, is to simply take a few minutes a day or so ahead and plan. Planning takes the stress out and helps us be less apt to spend a lot eating out or ordering a pizza. :)

Back to convenience foods in general. Most of them are really expensive for the quantity you get. Most of the convenience foods you really enjoy can be made from scratch, and the dry ingredients can be put in jars to use as a homemade convenience food. Take "Hamburger Helper", as one example. Just look for recipes in a Google search. 

• Here is a great blog that goes into detail about making your own Hamburger Helper. I'm posting the link, but I have not tried it. How to Make Homemade Hamburger Helper .  
• Cheeseburger Macaroni (with photos of every step)
  
• Cheeseburger Macaroni (a Hamburger Helper Make-over . She also has a super easy recipe for Creamy Mac and Cheese that she uses as a part of the first recipe.
• Lasagna Hamburger Helper Make-over -- this site makes over unhealthy recipes into tasty & healthy recipes -- not an instant make-over, but it looks good

Yes, I know that some of the things going into these online recipes are also convenience foods, but you get to decide if you want to make it all from scratch or not, as there will be recipes that do it both ways --  I, for one, don't use Hamburger Helper, but I will probably not be giving up canned cream of mushroom soup any time soon. There are whole websites and books devoted to making your own mixes, and you'll save a bundle that way over buying convenience foods.

Just keep in mind that convenience foods (as produced by manufacturers) are not necessarily good for our health. Here are two very similar quotes from LDS President Ezra Taft Benson, who was also the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under both terms of the Eisenhower administration:

"In general, the more food we eat in its natural state and the less it is refined without additives, the healthier it will be for us. Food can affect the mind, and deficiencies in certain elements in the body can promote mental depression."  [Ezra Taft Benson, Ensign Nov 1974, Do Not Despair]

"To a great extent we are physically what we eat. Most of us are acquainted with some of the prohibitions, such as no tea, coffee, tobacco, or alcohol. What need additional emphasis are the positive aspects--the need for vegetables, fruits, and grains, particularly wheat. In most cases, the closer these can be, when eaten, to their natural state-- without overrefinement and processing--the healthier we will be. To a significant degree, we are an overfed and undernourished nation digging an early grave with our teeth, and lacking the energy that could be ours because we overindulge in junk foods."[Ezra Taft Benson, Fireside Address at BYU March 1979, In His Steps]

Back in 1990, when I mentioned these quotes in a meeting as a way to encourage whole grains, I got a lot of negative feedback, and that was in the days when families were not eating much convenience food. Why? People didn't catch Pres. Benson's vision then and they felt stressed to think of making changes.  It is interesting that over the last 20 plus years, in addition to some of the public turning almost exclusively to convenience foods, we also have seen huge popular movements that head in exactly the opposite direction. People use other words to describe it than President Benson did, including "Real Foods", "Whole Foods", "Clean Foods", "Organic Foods", and so on.  The goals, though, (and most of the food choices) are exactly the same -- a healthy mind and body and loads of energy.

If changing your cooking habits or dietary habits is your goal, then take a look at where you are and where you want to be and then take baby steps toward it -- that's the way to be successful in any such changes. I appreciate those sites, like some of the links above, that support us in making changes in ways that we can still eat what tastes good to us while making healthier choices.

Oh, Beans!

Do creativity and beans go together?  Of course! I'm talking food, too, not gluing beans on a turkey, a popular Thanksgiving craft in elementary school.  Have you ever tried grinding dry beans in the wheat grinder?  You can add this highly nutritious "bean flour" to your recipes — even deserts and breads— usually without changing the flavor of the food. Beans tend to take on the flavor of the ingredients used with them.  Rita Bingham, a food storage expert, uses this bean flour to make delicious sauces and gravies and instant refried beans, among other things. (Natural Meals in Minutes, Book Four, Rita's Beans", Rita Bingham, Natural Meals in Minutes, Provo, UT.)  If  you’ve ever forgotten to add the onions and ham hock or other seasonings to your beans, you know how bland beans can be sans seasoning.

Mostly, we need to change our attitude about where and how we use beans and get more creative.  We can put some white bean flour in our bread and get a complete protein--plus the extra calcium found in white beans.  (See "Do You Know Beans about Beans?", Ensign, June 1991, p.66)  We can even bottle beans in our own jars (following USDA guidelines and using a pressure canner, please!) to have them on hand for quick, economical meals.  We can make our own tofu with soybeans.  We can crack beans as we would wheat,  and we can sprout beans, both which considerably lessen cooking time.  Our imagination is our only limit.
   
Another reason many of us limit our legume consumption is that we have flatulence (gas) when we eat legumes.  Our bodies have lost the necessary enzymes that aid in digesting legumes because we eat so many highly refined foods.  Here are several options to help, if not conquer, this problem: 

1. Sprouting beans ahead of time considerably reduces gas. "Dry Beans & Peas", Georgia Lauritzen, Cooperative Extension Service, Logan, UT. [This method requires several rinses of the beans each day so that they do not sour. Just put the beans in a colander and run water over them. I put a dishtowel over the top to keep them moist.)
2. Discarding the soak water, even with a quick soak, and then rinsing the beans thoroughly is helpful to reduce gas. 
3. Start soaking your dry beans the night before you plan to eat them. Long soaks reduce gas. Then rinse well and use new water to cook the beans.
4. Best and simplest is to regularly include in your diet small amounts of beans (at least 2-3 times a week).  Gradually increasing your intake from very small amounts allows your body to get used to the legumes and grow the friendly bacteria needed to digest them.   

Legumes do get harder as time passes and thus take longer to cook after several years' storage.  However, I have found that even 20-year-old legumes, when stored properly in a cool and dark place, do well if sprouted or cooked in a pressure cooker.

We so often think of beans as a lowly alternative to meat, but then most of our experience in the west is with pinto or kidney beans in bean dip and burritos, plus navy beans in white bean soup. There truly is a whole world out there of beans to experience, with different flavors. Do a Google search to find out more about beans like Adzuki (from East Asia and the Himalayas), Flageolet (from France), Jacob’s Cattle (a spotted heirloom bean), Scarlet runner, Apaloosa, and Cannellini (from Italy).  One of my favorite easy things with dry beans is to buy a bag with a variety of beans of different colors (a bean stew mix from the store) and follow the recipe on the bag. The stew is so pretty and tasty.

If you are a true beginner with dried beans, a great set of instructions is linked here.

The biggest secret to having success with dry beans? Simply plan in advance and try a few recipes from trusted sources like the Idaho Bean Commission, which has recipes for dry beans as well as canned beans. In fact, my first forays into dry beans, when I was first married, were with a recipe in hand from the Idaho Bean Council. Now, all their recipes are online and linked  here.  Enjoy!

Gobble in a Bowl

Some years, I buy two or three turkeys while there are killer deals at the grocery store before Thanksgiving. Generally, the bigger the bird, the better deal you get. Why? The bones are close to the same size in the smaller birds as they are in the larger birds. That means there is more meat per pound of turkey on those larger birds. Therefore, if you have room in your freezer, don't hesitate to get a 21 lb. or larger turkey, even if there are only a few people in your family. 

What would you do with a huge turkey?

• Toss the left-over meat in the freezer in freezer bags -- breast meat, being drier, should be used before the darker meat. Our family has a lot of meals (turkey crepes, included), that we traditionally have after Thanksgiving, and the freezer extends the time between those meals. So, I buy some turkeys even if I am eating at the in-laws. A turkey is easy to cook, and it makes for a least a week's meals. Yes, turkey is ultra cheap, but ONLY if you buy it around this time of year or have an "in" with the Norbest people.
• Freeze the legs separately and make soup.
• Make soup with the turkey carcass
  

My family likes the bones as much as the dinner that creates the bones. From those bones, we make one of our most delicious soups -- any soup would taste good from the turkey carcass. We're talking old-time soups like our grandmothers made. With a large turkey carcass, we get a huge pot of soup that lasts us several days. Add that to all the meat, and you can see why a turkey is so economical.

How to boil down a turkey carcass:
After dinner and after you've taken most of the meat off the turkey carcass (hey don't pick it clean, but do get most of it), cover the carcass and put it in the refrigerator to handle the next day. (Yes, you could do it the day you cook the turkey, but won't you be tired?) When ready to cook:

• Put the carcass in the largest pot you own and fill the pot with water to a few inches over the top of most of the bones. (Unless you have a huge pot, some bones will stick up at first. It's O.K. to break apart the carcass if you can.)
• Cover the pot and bring to a boil. Once boiling, turn to low and simmer several hours. As the carcass cooks, you'll be able to break it apart a little so it will better fit your pot. You should turn the carcass over several times (check every half hour or so) until it does break down and fit the pan better. Add more water as necessary to keep the turkey covered but not so much it boils over the top of the pan.
• The carcass is done when the remaining meat fragments easily slip off the bones and when most of the bones have separated from each other. At this point, if you take a large bone out of the pot, it dries a whitish color.

Now, remove all the bones.
The easiest way to do remove the bones is to first remove the largest bones with tongs. To remove the small bones:

• Put a large colander in the top of a second large container. Carefully pour a little of the hot cooked liquid at a time into the colander, catching any solid pieces.
  
• Put the solid pieces on a plate, a cutting board, or in a large bowl to cool a bit, while you repeat the pouring process. 
• When the first solids have cooled enough, use clean fingers to separate meat from bones and gristle, feeling for very small bones and put the cleaned meat into a separate bowl. (No matter you carefully I look, there is always a small bone, but to date, I am the one who has always found that bone in my soup)

Return the meat and the broth to the large cooking pot, toss out the bones and gristle, and add the ingredients you want for soup. Some ideas: turkey and dumplings with veggies, turkey taco soup, turkey gumbo, or whatever sounds good with a brothy soup. If you like, you can add some bouillon or soup base to enhance the flavor.
 
Utah Turkey Gumbo Soup ( not New Orleans, but delicious, nevertheless):
The broth and meat from above
2 sticks celery, chopped
2 large onions, chopped
1 16 oz. bag frozen okra
1 or 2 (32 oz.) jars tomatoes (home-canned are the very best, of course)
1/2 cup dry rice or throw in 1 cup cooked rice.

Cook until veggies are tender and okra is starting to fall apart (the okra thickens the soup). Add rice and cook until done. Add a little soup base or bouillion to taste.

Supremacy over Squash Bugs!

I never thought I'd be able to say this, but I have conquered squash bugs in my garden. I have tried handpicking squash bugs and their egg clusters with little success before. This year, though,  I stuck with it and found stick-to-it-ness works with squash bugs. For photos of squash bugs in every stage of development, the University of Maryland has a photo montage here. They go into ways to manage the bugs, including insecticide, but I have an organic garden.

Photos by Marvin

For two weeks, I went out to the garden nearly every day, looked under every squash leaf and on the ground near the main stem. I grabbed every bug I found and squished it. By the way, those bugs are harder to squish, being flat, so you have to kind of grind it into the ground and make sure it is dead. If you are squeamish, pop them in soapy water to kill.  I used to be squeamish, but seeing all those dead plants over the years has changed things.

You won't generally see squash bugs unless you look under every leaf, or unless you have a bad infestation. As you look under the leaves, look for egg clusters like in the photo to the left. They say to scrape off the eggs or crush them and it seems to kill that part of the leaf anyway. So, I just rip out that tiny portion of the leaf, eggs and all, and take them to the garbage or crush them.

The first two days of going through that procedure, I found 15 squash bugs and six egg clusters, both days. Each day after that, I found nine, then 8, then 6 bugs and egg clusters. I didn't go out as often when it got so I only found one squash bug and one egg cluster. Now, I only check twice a week and find one bug and one egg cluster each time. My squash is thriving, and I think I'm in control. Yeah! You'll never get in control if you don't make sure you get those egg clusters, though, so carefully check under each leaf.

Squash bugs are easier to find during and after watering, as they crawl up on the stems.

I have to admit that this procedure would be time consuming if you have more than a couple of plants or a pumpkin or other large viney squash, but for my home garden, it worked. I give much credit to my rubber-coated garden gloves in keeping down the "gross" factor. I don't feel the bugs, so I don't get the shudders.

Three-month Emergency Food Supply: How Do I Begin?

The hardest thing is to make yourself start. After that, it comes together quickly. Your kids and spouse can make this job easier for you. You might be surprised at the great menu ideas they'll have.

• Put together a list of foods/meals that you eat regularly and figure out how much you need for three months. One way to do this is to decide on a week or more of menus and then multiply these menus to get 90 days of menus. [See “Sample Family Plans” below for three complete family plans. Please note the URLs of two wonderful preparedness blogs from which I pulled menu and shopping plans for two of these plans:  http://safelygatheredin.blogspot.com  and   http://preparedldsfamily.blogspot.com/ and thanks to Lesa for contributing the other plan.]
• Use the Sample Family Plans to get ideas to make your own family plan. Choose the recipes you want, and list the ingredients. (If you need more ideas, do a Google search.) Then, multiply that ingredient list by the number of times you plan to eat that meal during three months.  How many different recipes you use is your choice  – are you after subsistence food or do you want to eat close to how you eat now if you had to use that food in an emergency situation? I recommend that you go as close to how you eat as possible. Don’t rely entirely on frozen foods, as power can fail.
• Create a shopping list with all of the food items totaled from above.
• Make a Family Goal Statement.  Decide how much food you will purchase each month and how long it will take your family to buy all the items for the 3-months’ supply.  
• Paying attention to grocery sales, purchase a few extra items to add to your storage each week. Gradually build it to a one-week supply, then expand it to a one-month supply, then a three-month supply                
• Rotate the food. Make an extra copy of your shopping list to use as  your tracking list and mark off items as you use them. As you use these  items from your 3-months’ supply, replace them on a weekly basis.

Sample: 3-Month Plan for a Family of Six  
(2 pages)

Sample: 3-Month Plan for a Family of Four  
(2 pages)











Sample: Lesa's 3-Month Plan for a Family of Four  
(2 pages)

 

Plants Just Sitting There? Tree Leaves Look Yellow and Burnt? Sorry, Dorothy, You're not in Kansas

Alkaline soils and western desert soils need help in order for your garden to grow well.  You can't pop your plants and seeds into the ground and expect them to do much if you don't render assistance. So, if your veggies and/or flowers have been up and going for a few weeks and are not showing much sign of growth, or worse still, they are becoming lighter green or even yellowish, they are likely crying for nitrogen. Sprinkle a little nitrogen fertilizer (or blood meal or cotton seed meal if you're into organic) around the base of each plant -- as Gordon Wells puts it, "Like you were salting a steak." Then scratch it gently into the soil and water it in. (I have both a hand tool that looks like a claw and a long tool with a claw for specifically that purpose. )  I use blood meal on my veggies, and it provides both iron and nitrogen.

You should see a tremendous difference in your plants within a few days.  Most plants will need this periodic nitrogen treatment -- EXCEPT tomatoes -- at least once. (Only put nitrogen on tomatoes once, at the beginning of the growing season, otherwise you will get loads of lush green and few tomatoes.)  I do this if the plants seem to need it, even if I have added all those Gordon Wells recommended fertilizer items at the beginning of the season.  Make sure to go light on the nitrogen, though, as you could burn your plant, and rinse off the leaves of the plants afterward.   Just keep an eye on the progress of the plant and look for lack of growth and light-colored leaves and you'll know it's time to fertilize. 

What else do the veggies need?
In my garden, I use fish emulsion fertilizer about three times during the summer, especially when a plant begins to bloom. I buy it at garden centers (like Olson's or Carpenter Seed) in quart or gallon jugs and mix it with water in a 5-gallon bucket.  The stuff stinks to high heaven, after all it is a by-product of fish processing plants, but my veggies love it!  If veggies can look happy, they do, as their leaves look lush and perky. I put on long sleeves and rubber gloves and plan on a bath right afterwards. (It's a good time to also spray that stinky Liquid Fence stuff that keeps the deer away from your flowers and shrubs.)

My method of application is to, first, apply when the soil is dry so the plants will soak up the maximum fertilizer. Mix the fertilizer well with the water (a sprayer on the end of the hose does this well or, alternatively, a long stick.) Get a pitcher or cut off milk jug (cut off some of the top, but keep the handle) full of the fertilizer/ water mixture and go from plant to plant, pouring a little pool of solution at the base of each plant -- it won't burn plants if you get some on the leaves. By the time you've gone five or six plants, the first liquid will have soaked into the soil. So, go back and water all those plants again with the solution, starting with the first plant. I usually water each plant  3-4 times with the solution, systematically working my garden in rows. It's not a fun process, I admit it, but even complaining kids can help with this process and make it a lot quicker -- just ask my daughters how much they like helping with this. :) The key is really to cover yourself well, as the smell will soak into your skin a bit if you go out there with uncovered arms and hands.

I give much credit to the fish emultion fertilizer for my good yields each year, as I didn't get anything near the harvest I do now before I started using the fish fertilizer. It gives the plants a lot of trace minerals and other needed nutrition.  After all, didn't the pilgrims get a good harvest when the Native Americans buried a fish with kernals of corn?

Yellowing can also be a lack of iron or even copper, but usually nitrogen is the culprit with vegetables in the semi-arid desert regions.

What about trees and shrubs?
If you live with alkaline soils  and the leaves of your trees and shrubs are yellow and show signs of burning (brown) on the edges, despite regular watering,  it means your plants likely have iron chlorosis. This will not kill your trees and it can be fixed.

When faced with my tree leaves looking yellow and burnt, I followed the advice of Larry Sagers, of the KSL Greenhouse Show on KSL radio. In late winter, say February or March, but definitely before the leaves on the trees and shrubs bud out, fertilize them with an iron chelate, pouring it around the soil beneath the trees and shrubs. He mentioned several brands, and I use one, Millers FeriPlus Iron, which is a powder you mix with water.   I mix it up in milk jugs and pour it on the soil while there is still snow on the ground -- this will stain, so wear old clothing. The remaining snows and rain will carry the iron into the soil. I do this every winter, and my tree and shrub leaves look great now. Unfortunately, you can do nothing about this problem right now if your leaves show the signs this summer. Mark your calendar for late next winter so you'll remember and do it every year.  This year, I applied considerably less than the label asked for, and the leaves still turned out great.

Seeds on the Cheap & Organizing Your Garden Seeds.

With my miniature daffodils nodding their perky little heads, I think I'm finally mentally ready for spring gardening. I even bought some fun new seeds yesterday: artichoke seeds because a friend had such success with them, bright red Italian bell pepper seeds, because it's fun to try a foreign variety, and a crenshaw melon, because crenshaws are pure delicious. Yum!

I bought those seeds despite all the dozens of packages of seed I already have, organized with dividers in clear plastic shoe boxes, and despite the fact the packets were about $2 each. My looking at seeds is kind of like kids going through the Christmas toy catalogs, where they want simply everything they see.

By the way, organizing my seed packets has made both planning and planting so much easier! I used to throw all the seed packets in one huge plastic container and have to shuffle through the whole thing every time I planted. I got smart last year. Within a few seconds, I now have what I want. I have headings for the vegetables I plant a lot, and I throw everything that doesn’t fit under miscellaneous. I have two shoe boxes for vegetable seeds and one shoe box for flower seed.

The seed packets I bought yesterday were a little more expensive than what I usually buy, being special, but you don't need to spend big money on expensive seed if you’re buying more common seed varieties and if you only need a few seeds. Last year, I bought some seeds from the local dollar store at 20 cents per packet, and the seeds grew and produced very well. The dollar store packets have only 8 grams of seed, probably 1/4 less than average packets bought elsewhere for between $1.49-$3.00.

Generally, those smaller packets are not cost effective for larger and heavier seeds, such as beans, where you’d have to purchase several packets to get a good crop. Yet, those packets are a wonderful buy for small seeds like lettuce, tomatoes, and peppers, where one packet is still enough for several years. Moreover, the dollar store (where we live, it’s Dollar Tree) has tried and true varieties you’ll see everywhere else seed is sold. It’s also a great buy if you’re wanting to experiment and try just a little bit of a different variety. My experience has been that the seed quality is the same as the expensive brands.

Be watching in the late summer and early fall for stores to clearance remaining seeds, and you can often pick up seeds for the next year at bargain prices. They don’t save seed packets to sell the next year.