Let’s say you’ve just walked into the grocery store and on the way to pick up some onions you notice a healthy sized mound of eggplant, with glossy, deep purple skin shining under the florescent lights.
Columns
Sally Schreiner 5-01-1994
I recently attended a retreat focusing on "Journeying With Jesus in Our Singleness." The 14 women in attendance ranged in age from 26 to 73.
Ed Spivey Jr. 5-01-1994
Our top story this month has the theological world "all in a tizzy," which in the original Greek means "something much too nuanced for you to understand since you’re just a lay person."
James W. Douglass 5-01-1994
Jim Douglass traveled to Bosnia to continue his work of building support for a peace pilgrimage of world religious leaders to Sarajevo.
Jim Wallis 4-01-1994
Not in polite company. That’s where you were not supposed to talk about either politics or religion. Remember?
Rose Marie Berger 4-01-1994
We got off the 11th Street bus in downtown Washington and headed toward the people gathering on the 10th Street overpass. A man in his early 40s fell into step with us.
Marybeth Shea 4-01-1994
If I keep a green bough in my heart, the singing bird will come. —Chinese Proverb
Jim Wallis 2-01-1994
Over Thanksgiving weekend in 1973, a group of evangelical Christians met together in the dilapidated Chicago YMCA on Wabash Street.
Carey Burkett 2-01-1994
FEASTING IS JUST half the story. To have "Sunday dinner" implies plainer weekday meals. Holiday banquets include foods not seen the rest of the year.
Ed Spivey Jr. 2-01-1994
The enormous challenge of revamping our nation's health care system has congressional leaders promising to work harder than ever. Some are even considering returning to work after lunches.
Joyce Hollyday 2-01-1994
As we prepare once more to commemorate the birth of Martin Luther King Jr., and to celebrate Black History Month, I am grateful to have encountered the Delany sisters.
Jim Wallis 1-01-1994
The widespread popular discontent that so defined the 1992 election campaign continued unabated into the first year of the new president's term. It would not have mattered who won.
Carey Burkett 1-01-1994
MY 1994 NEW YEAR'S resolution - to break loose from serious menu ruts by planning further ahead - has already led to more time at a favorite activity: paging through cookbooks.
Joyce Hollyday 1-01-1994
A full moon. A plunge in temperature. Transylvania County, North Carolina. Conditions were just right for Halloween...
Ed Spivey Jr. 1-01-1994
Well, that's some magazine so far, eh? Malevolent global corporations, the bleakness of Nicaragua, and the Holocaust. What is this, National Public Radio? I've seen more laughs in a jar of mustard.
Carey Burkett 6-01-1992
PEOPLE OFTEN WONDER how they can afford high-quality food, such as locally made tortillas or organically grown vegetables. My feeling that anyone can afford such food was bolstered significantly by news of a booklet called The $30-A-Week Grocery Budget, by Donna McKenna ($5, RR1 Box 189, Casco, ME 04015). McKenna is a mother of four documenting many of the shortcuts I have found by accident. Her motivation is to keep food expenditures as low as possible while her husband finishes school. Mine is to save enough grocery money to buy previously unaffordable foods such as virgin olive oil, stone-ground flour, and fresh herbs. A person could do a little of each, using some grocery savings for non-food purposes and the rest for special foods.
The main trade-off is time, because you have to be willing to make more things from scratch. But before you quit reading here, be assured that it will take less time than you think. Besides, it's time you can spend listening to music or news on the radio, or talking to friends and family while you work.
Rule number one in gaining grocery dollars is to keep anything even remotely resembling convenience food out of your cart. No frozen waffles, box cereal, snack foods, juice in boxes, package cookies, sauces, salad dressings, etc. You can make all these yourself for pennies. A rich red spaghetti sauce takes 20-30 minutes to prepare--you'd have to spend 10 minutes of that anyway waiting for the pasta to cook. Refried beans take longer, but most of the soaking and boiling time can be spent doing something else.
To replace box cereal, make pancakes or waffles more often (try buckwheat, cornmeal, and whole wheat variations). Eat them with applesauce or homemade berry syrup, or make your own maple syrup from sugar, water, and flavoring (available in most spice sections). Make your own granola. Experiment with soups, cookies, and muffins. Substitute popcorn for potato chips.