Why I Garden, or, How We Try to Survive with High Food Prices

About a year ago, I lost my long-term disability benefit (due to shady practices, but I digress), and when my daughter turned 18 in the same month, our family income went down by a huge amount.  We still have two teen boys living at home (with the possibility of both of them on the high school swim team next year!), so our food budget couldn't take much of a hit compared to all the other areas of the budget we could cut or pare down.

Or so I thought.

I had been a careful shopper for years (being a single parent will do that to you), but we'd gotten into some bad habits, and there were other things I just hadn't thought of with my disability.  Now that I've finally qualified for my social security disability benefit, we will finally be able to pay some bills that we haven't been able to (praises be!), but things will still be tight.  Here are some things I've learned in the last year on how to survive with the high (and likely going higher) food prices.

1. Utilize that kitchen!
If you have a kitchen and, even better, a pantry area, the best way to start is to really evaluate it (I know, in all that magical spare time you have, but hear me out).  Stand in the middle and think about the tools you have, the ones you actually use, and if you can move things around to have even more food storage.  Do the same with the fridge (with kids, I have to do this every few months, to be honest).  Do the same with the freezer.  Can you get a deep freezer?  Is even a small one possible?  If you have a pantry area (even if it's just some shelves in the basement, like ours), take a good look there.

Then, once you've looked it all over and have a better plan in mind for use, take out everything you don't use, is expired, you don't like, doesn't bring you joy, and start a list of tools you need for cooking and prepping your own food.  Now, if you do use it but not often, can it go anywhere else to make room for a more needed item or food?  Don't throw out your grill tools in January is all I'm saying.  Keep in mind that the more specialized a tool, chances are, the less you will use it.  The more uses a tool has, the more likely you are to need it in an easy-to-get-to spot.

The idea here is that you (and other family members) are going to be cooking more.  You need an optimal space for both food storage and food prep.  You need good tools that will survive much use (if you can afford them at all, which is often not the case these days, but keep an eye out at estate sales, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, and more).  Anything you don't use (that omelet maker from college, say), sell it.

1a. Make your own!
The point of having a good working kitchen is to make as much of your own food as possible.  This means you have to actually cook.  Figure out how many fast food meals or restaurant meals you can actually afford, and keep that limit tight.  Cook the rest of the time (or, really, all the time).  Cook in large batches, and then freeze or can the rest.  Use that crockpot at least once a week.  If you have an Instant Pot, get that thing out and working at least a couple of days a week.  Get on Pinterest for really good recipes and meal ideas.  Sheet pan suppers, casseroles, grilling, they all can really help cut your food budget.

If time is the real problem in cooking, get the others in the family involved.  There is nothing wrong with a middle school or high school aged kid doing at least one dinner a week for the family.  It's a good survival skill.

For example, I bake my own sourdough bread.  I have the time to do it in the oven, but if I didn't, I'd use a bread machine.  I can get 2+ loaves out of a five pound bag of flour (often goes for $3.50 a bag here), and since I grow my own sourdough starter (just flour and water and wild yeasts picked up along the way) and have water and salt on hand, I can make bread for us a lot cheaper than a comparable loaf would cost even at Aldi.  We tend to go through 1-2 loaves a week, and those are my double-sized loaves, so we really do go through a lot of bread.  Flour also keeps really well in the freezer, so when it goes on sale, I make sure to stock up.  I mostly do it for health reasons, but it's definitely been a boost to the overall food budget, too.

There's a simple joy that comes from making it all yourself, and this way, you know exactly what your family is eating and how much everything costs.

2. Plan those meals!
For years, I felt that meal planning just wasn't realistic for us.  What if I was in a fibromyalgia flare, what if the kids had a thing they hadn't told me about, what if we all really wanted pizza...  I admit now that I was entirely and thoroughly wrong.  Meal planning is critical for keeping food costs down.

I've tried a few ways to do it, and what I've found works best for our family is the monthly meal plan.  Each day of the week has a theme.  I'm thinking of changing those, but for now they are: Meat Monday, Taco Tuesday, Fish/Veggie Wednesday, Leftovers Thursday, Italian Friday, Leftovers Saturday, Big Cook Sunday.  So, at the end of the month, I go through the pantry, the kitchen, the fridge, and the freezer to see what I still have that needs using up.  Then, I get out my cookbooks and my iPad for Pinterest and saved recipes, and I plan them by the themes right on down the line.  I also make sure to check the calendar for nights when I'll need to use the crockpot or whatever.  Then, once that's done, I add all the ingredients that we need to buy to our shared grocery lists on Trello.  Since we get most of our money at the beginning of the month, that makes it easier to get to the three main places we shop for food and house stuff.

**Side note: Trello is a wonderful app for a busy family!  My husband and I use it, first and foremost for managing grocery lists, but it's also helpful for sharing to-do lists for around the house and more.  If you haven't looked at it, give it a try.  Best app I've found for managing all the grocery and market shopping.**

Lastly, make sure to put in the plan the occasional pizza night or special treat.  Put it in the budget, and keep that money aside.  There are times when you just need a cheap Costco pizza or two because all the best laid plans have come crashing down or whatever.

3. Know your prices!
It is really important to know where to get your food for the best prices.  It's also important to not spend every waking minute tracking down a sale and wasting gas to do so.  We have pared down the vast majority of our shopping to three stores, and what we get there is pretty consistent, so we know the prices.  We primarily shop at Aldi (if you haven't tried Aldi yet, you really should!), Costco, and a local market that has the best meat at the best prices (Kalamazoo Meat Depot!).  We also have a few local orchards, markets, and stores we hit, but they aren't the top priority like the other three are.

Before shopping, check fliers to see what the loss leaders are.  If chicken is on sale for a good price at one store, don't buy it anywhere else, just there, and adjust any meal plan accordingly.  That said, don't waste money on something just because it's on sale.  If your family doesn't like it, then it isn't worth the money at any cost.  For example, today, Aldi had frozen turkey breasts on sale, and I almost got one.  That's a lot of meat for a decent price.  Then I remembered that, the last time I made one, the boys didn't really like it, and I ended up having meat left over.  Same with certain veggies.  I don't need leftovers I have to figure out magic with because no one likes what I bought.  So, know your family, too, and be honest about what they will and won't eat.

4. Grow your own!
My husband and I have made it a priority this year to grow enough food to feed our family to the absolute best of our ability.  We have reclaimed landscaped garden beds and are in the process of getting them ready for planting (which will be Memorial Day weekend for most of the plants, earlier for some, later for others).  This means moving plants, adding to the soil, getting the hay for mulch ready, growing seedlings, and all the rest, and to be honest, I really can't do as much of that as I'd like due to my pain levels, but my husband is able to do a lot of it.  Once planting starts seriously happening, that means getting help, following the garden plans, and making sure not to waste all the time, money, and effort by not taking care of the plants once they're in the ground.  It also means planning what to do with all we harvest so there's no waste.

I will admit, I do like gardening, though I realize not everyone does.  Many people have done the math, though, and in the end, it's still cheaper to grow your own when compared to buying a comparable product.  Growing your own fruits and veggies in a sustainable, organic manner is almost always cheaper, though there are some up-front costs.

If you don't have much space, even just growing your own herbs in a windowsill makes a big difference to the taste and quality of your food.  Growing in containers in small spaces can really cut down on the food bill.  If you can't grow your own, then figure out the cheapest places to buy produce, and don't be scared to hit up farmers and people with big gardens.  See if you can exchange labor for food, join a CSA, or help out in any way.

5. Cut down on food waste!
This is a big one for our family.  Kids leave food out, no one eats up the leftovers, we forget about the zucchini in the fridge until it rots, you name it.  I have found a few things help with this, though, and we've been cutting down on our food waste quite a bit as the year has progressed.

• Enforce leftover nights.  Leftovers are a fact of life when cooking, and they can't just get thrown out (that's money you're throwing out!).  We have two leftover times built into our food plan each week for this very reason, and it's been helping.
• Enforce the meal plan.  Just because the kids are hungry now while you're out and about doesn't mean you guys stop for fast food.  Enforce the meal plan, and you're more likely to use up what you've already bought.
• The adults need to pack at-work lunches starting with the leftovers first.  Kids often don't have good ways to heat up food at school, but if you have a fridge and a microwave at work, then you can heat up leftovers.
• Have a bin in your fridge where all leftovers go, and put it front and center.  That way, it's harder to say you didn't see them at all.
• Lastly, try to keep meat and/or dairy-based leftovers separate from everything else.  This way, if those go bad, they go in the trash but the veggie-based leftovers can go in the compost bin.
• Compost!  We started getting serious this last winter about composting everything we can, even paper products and floor sweepings, and it's amazing how much less trash we produce and how much good soil we're creating for the garden.  Seriously, it doesn't hurt as much to throw out that nasty zucchini if I know that it's going to save me money in compost and fertilizer later.

6. Put it up!

Canning, freezing, and dehydrating are all important tools for keeping food costs down.  When tomatoes come in, putting them up (canning, freezing, and/or dehydrating) when they are ripe and at their best will keep you from buying tomatoes later in the year when they cost more and don't taste as good.  Doing freezer dump meals when you're able to buy in bulk, freezing up leftover sauces, or freezing the produce from your own garden all save money, too.  Growing your own herbs and drying them or using them to make flavored oils is vastly cheaper than buying those, even on sale.

If you are able to, getting fresh produce or meats in bulk really is the cheapest option.  You can get a much better price overall buying a whole chicken than the cut up pieces, and that is true for pork and beef as well.  

When it comes to canning, be sure to follow safe recipes (I love the Blue Ball Canning Book, but there are many, many good, safe resources) and the right canning system.  For acidic foods, water bath canning is fine, but for everything else, you'll need a pressure canner.  Not to mention good canning jars, which are useful for so many things that I find myself constantly thinking that we need more.  While Ball jars are the most common, there are other, cheaper ones out there that are just as good.  I personally prefer the kind sold at Big Lots.

7. Evaluate what you eat!

In the end, all of these guidelines don't mean much if you don't at some point sit down and really evaluate what you eat.  If you're buying a lot of boxed, prepared things, they seem cheap (Jiffy cornbread, 3 boxes for a dollar!), but in the end, they are almost always more expensive.  Sure, frozen pizzas are handy for when you don't feel like cooking or when the kids come home from school starving and all the leftovers got eaten up the night before, but they really are a hit to the bottom line.  If you price it out, vegetables are cheaper when fresh, frozen, or canned (check the salt and preservatives on those cans), much cheaper than when they are added in with other stuff to make a prepared freezer dinner or you pay someone else to take those same veggies to make you something in a restaurant.

One of the things my husband and I have found is that, due to budget, we are buying far less from the middle aisles of the grocery stores than we were before and instead are buying more fresh foods and food ingredients to make our own dinners.  It's added up to weight loss for him and better GI health for me.  It's another reason why I don't see us going back to the old habits or eating out more.

Also, small point: as a general rule, the fewer paid hands that touch your food, the cheaper it is.  The more meat is cut up, the more it costs.  The more food is processed, the higher the cost.  If you switch to real foods and cook and bake as a family, it's not just cheaper but also healthier.

As an aside, these are rules that work for us because we have a house with storage, a working kitchen, running water, etc.  When we had more money, we got things like a deep freezer, a FoodSaver sealer and the stuff needed for it, a stand mixer (really helps with bread since kneading is hard on me much of the time these days), and kitchen tools for cooking and baking.  While I see good deals at estate sales and on FB Marketplace, those don't help if you don't have the money for them or the place to use them.  If you are in that situation, please reach out for help.  It would be a blessing to people to help you with food, a place to live.  If you have reached out and are tired of hearing no and getting smacked in the face, please know that you aren't alone and you shouldn't lose hope.  The tide is turning in this country as more of us fight just to survive and are tired of the system being against us.  One more call might be all it takes.