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.
As many have discovered, significant savings and quality can be gained by buying in bulk from a co-op or whole foods store. Learn to eat fresh, local fruits and vegetables in season, buying them from a U-pick farm, whole foods store, or Saturday market. Freeze or can some (jam is especially easy, tasty, and much cheaper from scratch), then do without until the local season rolls around again. My American sense of year-round availability was offended by this notion at first, but the beauty of living by the natural cycles and the anticipation of feast after famine have won me over.
I suppose I'm asking you to go to one less meeting a week, or to turn the television off in the evening for a bit, but I'm promising a monetary gain and a different kind of nourishment in place of those activities.
Here is a recipe deceptive in its simplicity, but one that will have you eating seconds and thirds of tossed salad. The secret is to make it with real olive oil and a high-quality wine vinegar.
Provencale Dressing
· 1/2 cup olive oil
· 1/4 cup plus 2 T wine vinegar
· 1 T salt
· 6 cloves fresh garlic, peeled and sliced in cross sections
Make 1-2 hours before serving, or the day before. In a small bowl, dissolve salt in vinegar. In a separate bowl soak garlic slices in olive oil. Mix the two liquids together just before serving, and remove garlic pieces. Serve with a spoon or ladle so it can be stirred before each use. This is especially good on fresh spinach leaves with chunks of tomato and cucumber.
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