Oh puh-leeeze

So I've just been web-surfing, because it's nine in the morning and no one is up but me, which means people appreciate a little quiet.

I made the mistake of actually reading a Yahoo article when I went to check my old email. My gawd what a laugh!

The article had to do with feeding one's family, eating healthy, and saving money. It was ridiculous. How to save money? eat less! How to be healthy? Eat healthy food!

Um... Duh?

Trouble is, the crap they suggested only works for people with, you guessed it, money to burn.

The thing is, most people do want to eat healthy and feed their families healthy meals. But they're road-blocked by the high cost of, well, everything.

So I sat here and thought about it.

Now, I'm not going to dis people's life choices the way the yahoo article and the comments on it, did. And I'm not going to assume that everyone is instantly born knowing what to do and how. But let's see if I can help a little bit.

It's all very well to say Buy stuff on sale! Buy in bulk! Process your own stuff and freeze it! Buy generic! Buy organic! Buy local! Go to farmers' markets! Grow a garden! Cook your own!

Buy stuff on sale? The problem is, most people who REALLY need advice are living sort of hand to mouth. The "extra" five bucks they saved this month? Yeah, they can't put that away towards next month's sale. Why? Becuase suddenly school supplies have to bought, the car breaks down, the electric bill goes up -- yeah. It never ends, does it?

What you can try to do is this: Get a jar, an unused teapot, hell, an old sock. Turn out your pockets/coinpurse into it every evening. Eventually, this "forgotten" money adds up and you can add it to your grocery budget, but that's a long term solution.

Buy in bulk? Sure, if you have a way to store the food so it doesn't go bad or get bugged or moused. Sure, if you find that it's ACTUALLY cheaper. Sometimes it isn't. I compared prices on chicken broth -- the 16 ounce size is 2.3 cents per ounce. The 32-ounce size is 5.2 cents per ounce. Erm, whuuuut? So I looked around a little more. Generic oatmeal? Same price as name brand. Generic "checks" cereal (for making a slightly healthier salty cruncy snack) was twice the price of the name brand. Again, wait, what?

Shop really smart. Check!

Process your own stuff? Yeah, see above. Have you got room, or are you about to turn your living room into a pantry? How big is your freezer really? How expensive are freezer bags, and wraps? Take those into consideration first. If it is worthwhile, great. But be very careful how you package anything to freeze, because freezer-burned stuff is nasty. (This is stuff where air's gotten in and frozen, or the edges of the product are dried because they were exposed, and so on.) When we process deer in the winter, I cut it myself (NOT everyone can or should hunt, and NOT everyone can process the meat, just sayin') and I wrap the meat in plastic wrap FIRST then bag it.

How is this cheaper? Well for one thing there's no cost for a land-owner deer tag here. I buy the plastic wrap in bulk, storebrand. (there is absolutely no difference, whatsoever, between wrap that costs .001 cent per foot, and wrap that costs 1.0 cent per foot.) Same with the bags, and, the bags are re-usable since the MEAT never touches them -- only the plastic wrap. The same applies for veggies grown in the garden or bought in bulk from the grocer or market. Keep veggies as "whole" as you can, wrap them, then bag them. Yes, indeed, wrap peas, beans, lengthwise quarters of squash, and so on. It does work -- if you have a freezer.

Home can? Um, yeah, you go right ahead with that. I'm scared. First of all, by the time you factor in the jars and sterilising them, the rings and sterilising them, and the flats -- which you CANNOT REUSE!!!!!!!, you may find you've spent more per jar of tomatoes than you would have if you'd bought the most expensive brand on the shelf. Add in your time, add in the cost of using the range, blah blah blah... Is it cheaper? is it safer? Only you can decide that. I'll stick to the freezer.

Buy generic! Sure, but beware of the same stuff I mentioned in the part about buying in bulk. Generic is not always cheaper, and it's not always the same quality. Some generic stuff ahs more additives in it than a chemical plant, and a lot of it has MSG in it, which is deadly for some people. Read. Read twice. Then decide.

Buy Organic! Buy Local! Go to a Farmers' Market! These, I'll lump together because they're all three ridiculous. Why? Well, first of all, "organic" is a label anyone can stick on anything. It's not regulated and it's not controlled. In other words, "it don't mean shit". You can stick organic on a blouse that's 20% cotton, 80% synthetic, and it's legal. Imagine what you can do with food.

Buy Local? Please. Someone who lives, by necessity, in the middle of a city even as small as Kansas City or St. Louis, isn't able to buy local. They might be able to buy things produced in Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, or Arkansas, but how "local" is that, anyway? Yes, it's great to keep money in the vague general area of one's own community, but when "local products" are coal and tourism, then, what, precisely, are you going to buy for your table?

Farmers' Markets are the biggest joke I have ever seen. Our small rural agricultural community has two, one of which is even sponsored by the county government (in that, they get the space free and all that). Prices on tomatoes? Four times the price of the same vine ripened tomatoes from Arkansas. Prices on peaches? Six times the price of the same peaches from Nebraska. Sweetcorn? TEN times the price of the corn from Iowa. Why? Because it's labour-intensive to grow these things on a small basis. Now, when there are products available from the local Amish community -- YES, those are much cheaper and probably really ARE organically grown. But you know what? Our local Amish community sells in bulk to the small local supermarket (which out-sells Wal-Fart year after year) and therefore, here at least, supermarket prices are lower.

Farmers' Markets in other areas? Yeah good luck with that. You know, the getting up at 4am, getting the kids ready, driving (or worse for some -- riding multiple trans and/or buses) out to the market, only to find that you can't buy much at once because you have to cart it all home. Somehow. And keep track of your kids, too. Somehow. Total round trip cost for a friend of mine from Albany ? (Albany is the capital of New York State, btw)....

Transport (Mom, 2 kids) = $29 round trip. Transport Mom, 2 kids, to grocery store? $7. Wait, what? Farmers Market = more than 3x the price of the grocery store? Wow, better be some AWESOME bargains there. Oh. Hmm. Fresh green beans, $1 a pound, if you buy 5 or more pounds. Well, no freezer. No room in the small apartment FOR a freezer. No bargain. Cornfed beef, $4 a pound, if you buy a side or quarter. Oh, wow, okay so hang this in the shower and let it air-dry, and hope we eat it up before it rots? No bargain. You see where this is in fact going? I thought you would!

Grow a garden! Okay, yes. And if you can't grow a garden, try a tomato plant on your deck or front porch or apartment "balcony", if you have one. If you don't, then oh wait I know, buy a grow-light (full spectrum, usually flourescent bulb). You can't afford it? And can't afford the $5 a month to turn the grow-lamp on? Wow you suck! Yes, believe it or not, there are people out there who literally could not afford a $5 raise in their electric bill to grow a few tomatoes.

But if you CAN grow a garden, do so. You'll have to budget, starting in advance, for the pots and soil, or for the small amount of gas to run a tiller, or maybe even for the materials to build a raised bed. (Personally, I ditched the raised-bed crap. It cost too much to make, and wasn't economical, because we couldn't use "found" objects. Why spend money on blocks or boards or whatever? That's money you're taking out of the food budget.) If you have absolutely horrible soil, as we do, living where a brick factory was for decades, then you'll have to compost and enrich the soil. You can do that without too much work or cost, just by using your kitchen scraps, and by using dead leaves (but not grass clippings), and by using the stuff you shovel out of the chicken yard. (Yes, as a matter of fact, I do finally have my bantams!) You'll have to put this stuff in a pile somewhere near to the garden and rake or shovel it around every now and then, but it will, eventually, help.

But if you grow a garden, factor in a few things.
Will my family eat this veggie or am I growing it because I "should"?
How expensive is water, and can I "catch" or "save" water from rain? (You think this isn't a big deal? Go talk to some Aussie women.)
How much work is this going to be, and will I have time to plant, weed, pick, and process, or does the job I MUST have to at least pay the taxes and mortgage, leave me so damned tired that we're lucky my eyes are open?

Things like that also go into the "Cook for yourself!" That's great advice, and you don't have to be a cordon-bleu chef to feed your family. But if you're so worn out with the thigns that have to be done, let alone things you'd like to do, that you simply are too tired to cook, then you're going to end up shopping for the cheap, easy, pre-made food, slapping it in the micro, and tossing it on the table.

And then you're going to feel guilty as all hell because you did all that.

Stop it. Learn to cook a few fast easy meals, so you can CUT DOWN on the prepackaged stuff which, in spite of what the nice little websites would fantasise about, is sometimes cheaper than any collection of fresh cooked stuff even if you don't factor in time and shopping. Eventually you'll have a repertoire of things your family will eat, that you can cook, and that are good for them.

A lot of these articles say to fill up on beans, lentils, rice -- sure, go for it. Hope there's no one in your family who's diabetic, cause all that carb overload is gonna cost you anyway -- in the form of their insulin or oral anti-diabetic medication. You can, however, fill up on green beans, fresh or frozen (not canned). Serve less meat and use more tofu! Okay, sure. But only if no one in your family has ever had any risk factor for breast cancer, estrogen-responsive or not. Wait, you say you're female and have a pulse? Oh, you're screwed right there -- you are 100% likely to have some form of breast issue, because you're female, with a pulse. Forget the tofu. All the people who like to point at the far-eastern nations and claim how low their incidence of heart disease is? Yay for them. They didn't mention the horrendously high incidences of breast and reproductive cancer.

No. Instead, use as much salad (cheapie lettuce, baby carrots, radishes, celery, UN-pre-cut) as you can, and as many green frozen or freshies as you can, and limit a serving of meat to 6 ounces at the main meal of the day, and not more than 2 ounces at mid-meal or breakfast. Then add rice, taters, or beans. Stay away from breads and muffins; even if you bake your own they may not be cheaper, and they are big carb loads, of the WRONG carbs. Have oatmeal for breakfast, for instance, with fresh or dried fruit.

And don't get trapped into thinking whole wheat bread, or a "wrap" (fancy talk for tortilla) is better for you. It's not; the stuff is the same across the board -- wheat in some form, fat in some form, other additives in some form. That's why it's called bread or tortilla and not treebranches or something.

Biggest way to save? Plan your meals. ALL the meals, Breakfast, Snack, Midmeal, Snack, Evening meal, Snack -- for every day. If that's scary, plan for a week, and shop for a week. Plan the meals and write down EVERYTHING you need to prepare them from salt to meat to whatever spices. Remember that leftovers, or Leff Tovers or Re Cookifieds, can be used for snacks, or to add to another meal.

Then go through your kitchen and pantry and check off what you already have. What's left is that week's grocery list. Add the must-have toiletries (think these through, generics in THIS area are just as good as name brands, be it shampoo or toilet paper) and add in any pet food.

Shop where you ENJOY shopping or at least don't hate it. This may mean Wal-Fart, which I personally loathe for food purchases. (I won't buy food at our local Wal-Fart, after finding milk sitting for hours on the loading dock, and after finding meat in a freezer to be thawed and runny. But not everyone's Wal-Fart sucks.) It may mean a small market like Country Mart, which is a "chain" of five family owned grocery stores in Missouri. But you get the idea.

Bring it home, carry it in, cut up or repagage large buys of meat and vegetables, and make the kids put away the toiletries.

Next week, try making the menus for TWO weeks. And so on. Over time, you will find this saves you time and money. It's NOT a quick fix to an "oh god, do I pay the mortgage or buy food" situations. I truly and sincerely wish I DID have a quick fix for that, but I don't. Learning to budget, shop, and cook does take time.

And, while I truly believe one parent should stay at home while there are kids under 12 in the family, I know that's not possible for everyone. You will also have to learn to budget your time, and make kids help. It won't hurt them to learn that the world isn't a free ride. It won't hurt them to learn to make a bed, carry in a bag, or weed a row of beans. They may bitch, and at first it may take ten times as long as it would have taken you, but in the long run, it IS worth it, in terms of contribution to the family, building character, and believe it or not, self-esteem. Your kids will know they can contribute, and that they're worthwhile in part because of that.

This has been a long rant even for me! So in closing, I'll just add -- Whatever you read, here or on any other site, don't take it as carved in stone. READ it, think about it, consider whether or not it actually would work for your family. And, above all else, don't let anyone "guilt" you over how you run your house. No one else is sitting in your car, or sweeping your floor, or standing in front of your micro or range. YOU are. You know your family. And you know yourself.

Do your best, for your family and yourself, and to hell with the hype!