Everyman's Thoughts on Stretching the Grocery Budget

During my last two years of college, I lived off-campus. For the first time I was without a meal plan, and not living at home, meaning I would have to buy my own groceries. I worked hard during the summers to earn money for college, and held down a job in one of the university's cafeterias during the school year, but after paying for college essentials like tuition, rent, textbooks, and beer, there wasn't much left over for food.
My approach was to buy food by the price per pound, rather than per serving as most people do. As you would anticipate, I ate a lot of pasta, rice, and potatoes. I tried to inexpensively add protein, produce, and calories to my diet using things like peanut butter and beans. Despite all this, I lost about 40 pounds over those two years.

I had learned how to survive on very little money, but I hadn't yet formed my theory; that would happen years later. I am now married with a family and home of my own, and able to afford proper meals! This is evidenced by the return of the 40 pounds, along with some extras in case famine should strike again.

When I hit upon my realization, we were having dinner at our house with Heather's parents; we were serving popovers, which inspired her dad to recount a story he had read in a James Herriot novel.
Herriot was a British veterinarian in the early part of the last century, and described in one of his books a dinner he had with a farm hand. The young man started his meal by consuming an entire plate of Yorkshire pudding with gravy.
Yorkshire pudding is a "bread" of sorts; it's made with a batter of flour, milk, egg, and a pinch of salt, and then cooked quickly in a hot oven. Traditionally, it would be made in a roasting pan, absorbing the drippings from a roast cooked for the same meal. The Americanized version is made in custard cups or cupcake pans with ordinary oils, and are called "popovers" because they "pop over" the tops of the containers they're baked in. You can find out more about Yorkshire pudding here.

But back to our story: after the young man had devoured his Yorkshire pudding and gravy, he was served a second plate of the same. After finishing that, his ravenous hunger diminished but not gone, he was served the roasted meat and vegetables and so on to complete his meal. This practice was meant to fill him with inexpensive and energy-rich carbohydrates, so that he could slow down and appreciate (and eat less of) the more expensive vegetables and meat.

This led to:

Everyman's Theory on Stretching the Grocery Budget with Carbohydrates

Ever since there have been moms and families, moms have faced the same daily challenge: how to feed their family on a limited budget. Today, that "budget" is money spent at the grocery store; in the past, that may have meant wisely cultivating and preparing the food that was grown and harvested, or going back even further, food that was foraged or hunted.

Regardless of the time, or even where in the world any given mom is located, the question has always been: how to maximize the amount of food (and therefore, energy) that could be served to the family, in order to ensure the family's health and ability to continue to pursue work, school, or other endeavors necessary for the long-term success of the family.

The solution for moms around the world has always been the same:

More expensive foods (primarily meats) are cooked with vegetables and served with a sauce on a bed of carbohydrates: rice, wheat, corn, or potatoes. The carbohydrates form the bulk of the meal - not the meat.

That sounds simple, but in modern American society, that approach is no longer financially necessary. Sitting down to a slab of grilled steak with some potatoes or salad on the side to accessorize it on the plate is a luxury in many parts of the world. It's also enjoyed by some families in America on a regular basis.
The 4 most widely grown crops in the world are rice, wheat, corn, and potatoes, presumably because they form the basis of most meals around the globe...but that's not always the case here.
We often start our meal planning with the question "What will we have for the meat?" and then ask "What will we serve on the side?" which makes the meat the centerpiece of the meal. We describe our meals as "fried chicken with mashed potatoes" or " grilled pork chops with stuffing" or "blackened fish with rice" which puts the meat first.
We're all familiar with the Beef Association's slogan "Beef: it's what's for dinner" and it sounds perfectly reasonable, not odd at all.

In terms of proportions, the meat has been taking up more and more real-estate on our plates over time. To feed a family for less, make that proportion smaller.

Here's the larger lifehack: if you want to save significantly on grocery bills, start planning meals 2 weeks in advance and plan some meals where meat isn't the focus (or perhaps, even present at all). Some advantages:

• This eliminates the conversation: "What are we having tonight? Did you take anything out of the freezer? Me neither. Let's order out, or go out." This can quickly drain the household budget. According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, American households in 2003 spent $3,129 a year on food at home, and $2,211 on eating out! I'm not suggesting you not go out for meals, but make it because you wanted to, not because you didn't plan ahead
  
• It reduces the number of trips to the grocery store, and as a result, impulse purchases. It forces you to think through what you need, rather picking up what looks good when you walk by.
  
• Finally, it also allows you to focus meal planning on dishes that use principally rice, pasta, potatoes, or grains, which are far less expensive, and typically more healthful. Again, I'm not suggesting eliminating a traditional roast for Sunday dinner, just not making that the approach to meal planning 7 days a week.
  

Moms around the world implement "the extending your grocery budget with carbs" principle every day:

• Most of the east, south, and southeast of Asia, rice is a staple. According to Wikipedia, rice provides more than one fifth of the total calories consumed by humans worldwide, and is the most consumed cereal grain. China and India are the top producers of rice.

• We're all familiar with "Americanized" Chinese cuisine, with most dishes being meat and vegetables served over rice, whether stir-fried or in a sauce. And fried rice - a tasty dish we pay good money for in the states - is actually just day-old rice with bits of meat and vegetable, an egg or two, and some seasoning. It's just a way to use up leftovers! (Note to self: come up with unique but equally clever way to sell the leftovers in my fridge)
  

• Of course, there's wonderful Indian curries - spicy sauced meat served over rice. As an alternative to (or in conjunction with) the rice, Indian meals may be taken with roti (bread). In the north, chapati is a staple; it's a simple whole grain durum wheat flour bread made with water and salt, rolled into flat discs, and cooked on a skillet. It's very similar to the familiar tortilla seen here in the states - more on tortillas at the end of this article

• The Italian food we're familiar with here in the states is primarily meats, cheeses, and vegetables cooked in sauce and served on pasta. Pasta is made from flour, water, and eggs, and then boiled; how's that for inexpensive? In northern Italy and nations bordering her to the north, polenta (cooked cornmeal) is the staple, similar to the ubiquitous grits of the American South. Polenta is so popular that southern Italians refer to northerners as "polentoni" (polenta-eaters). It can be interpreted as hinting at an insult, as polenta is associated with poorer families, which means it's a good food to serve to save on groceries here, too!

• The Irish are often associated with potatoes (think shepherd's pie: meat and sauce cooked underneath the potatoes), as well as Russians (no, not just for making vodka). Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, China and India are now the largest producers of potatoes.

• It was the Americas that gave the world corn and potatoes. Corn and beans formed the basis of meals of native peoples in what would become the United States
  

In modern America, suburban moms have followed this same pattern for generations; we grew up up on things like tuna-noodle casserole, macaroni and cheese, spaghetti and meatballs served with - you guessed it - garlic bread, and even the classic peanut-butter and jelly sandwich. Why? Our moms knew we would eat it without too much complaining, it's relatively nutritious, and very cheap to make - all are expensive meats and cheeses served with sauce on or with forms of carbohydrates. Think back to your childhood favorites, dishes your own mom made for you...see the same pattern?

The principle applies to all meals, even breakfast. Let's say it's a weekend morning, you've got 4 hungry mouths to feed, and only a half-pound of sausage in the fridge to do it with. If you're in the South, you're probably going to make biscuits and sausage gravy (bits of sausage in a cream sauce served over fresh biscuits). In the Northeast where I live, you might form the sausage into small patties, and serve as a side dish to pancakes with real maple syrup (the fake stuff turns an otherwise perfectly good pancake into something not worth the effort of chewing and swallowing).

Before I get any "Atkins" or "South Beach" comments - I realize the low-carb technique works for losing weight, and that weight loss is good for your health. Whether or not that's a healthful practice for a lifetime I'll leave to a different debate. At the least, we know that if we ate "normal" meals and exerted even a portion of the physical labor as the farm hand at the beginning of this article, it wouldn't be an issue (or so writes Everyman, sitting at his desk)

The Tortilla Tangent, From Which We Will Not Return

I've said all I have to say about increasing the number of carb-dominant meals to save money. We are now going on a tangent to one of my favorite carb-based meal extenders: tortillas. Corn flour tortillas are the most common, and sometimes considered the most "authentic", though wheat flour tortillas are native to regions of Mexico where corn did not grow as well. I will cover making homemade wheat tortillas in a separate post

Homemade tortillas are fun to make, cheap, more healthy than store-bought ones, and a great way to extend more expensive ingredients. The next time you find yourself staring at one lonely steak in the freezer, think fajitas! The next time you find leftover chicken in the fridge, make soft chicken tacos! And the next time you get just a little too much produce at the farmer's market, why not make a salad wrap? Wrapping small amounts of meat and vegetables in a soft, warm, fresh tortilla you made yourself suddenly makes the contents a lot more exciting, and go a lot farther than if eaten on their own.