Food, Glorious Food

Here is a post I will dedicate to that wonderful, life-sustaining, family-building, perpetual mess-making part of being a human being. Food. It's one of the many aspects of motherhood that resembles stringing beads on a string without a knot at the end.. You can never eat, or clean the kitchen for that matter, "once and for all." But, while it is a fact of life that you have to deal with food everyday, it remains in the realm of personal freedom as to HOW you deal.

Meals are beneficial for health and energy and family relations if they are done well, but food can also take over your life if it isn't in balance. This can show up by eating too much, or not enough (eating disorders), or becoming obsessed with "the best" or "health" or "gourmet" or "savings" or "organic" or whatever(!) to the point where food isn't serving your needs, making you able to serve God and your family, but is taking you away from it.

My best efforts at getting food under control in our life have resulted in a pretty stable, low maintenance way of cooking and saving money (we're able to keep our food bill down below $300 per month for 6 eaters almost every month). I didn't realize that this was all that spectacular of a feat until reading The Tightwad Gazette a few years ago and discovering that we spend slightly more per month than the average family our size spends per week. So how do we do it?

Three things:

1: Beans.

Oh yes, and rice. These are fantastic staples to use, and if you buy a big old 15lb bag of basmati rice, a 25lb bag of dry pinto beans, bulk taco and cajun seasoning, AND 10lbs of onions, it will be months before you can truly say there is nothing to eat in the house. I soak 4lbs of beans at a time overnight, then rinse and cook on high for 30 minutes then low for 4 hours in the morning, OR in a crockpot (or two) for a good portion of the day, adding garlic and onion (and salt at the end to taste). Then I freeze meal-size portions in individual baggies (gallon size) for use whenever I feel like it.. I really like black beans, too.

Here are 2 bean recipes that are so stinkin' easy and good that it's almost embarrasing to post them:

Chalupas

pinto beans cooked as described above--add some cajun or taco seasoning to taste..
a little mozzarella (or whatever)
sour cream
tortillas
salsa or pico de gallo for grownups (I used a can of diced tomatos, 1/2 an onion, and 4 small sweet peppers (red, orange, yellow), food processed up and added some salt and cajun seasoning)

Assemble as desired. Eat.

Black Bean Yummyness

black beans cooked as described above--add some cajun or taco seasoning or garlic
1 cup of some mixture of sour cream and/or plain yogurt
can of diced tomatos or some salsa
shredded cheese
salt (essential)
blue corn organic tortilla chips (or tortillas or regular tortilla chips)

Variations:
make up 1 or 2 cups of basmati rice (1c dry rice, rinsed, 1.5 c water, microwave 10m on high, 5m on medium) and mix it in to eat BBY without chips or tortillas..

Add torn up tortillas to the mix, put in 9x13 pan, cover with shredded cheese (I like cheese) and bake until bubbly.

Add leftover spaghetti sauce and rice and mozzarella for a different taste. You can add corn, etc., too!

2: Leftovers

Creative and purposeful use of leftovers can save you tons and tons of $$ and time. Sometimes you don't NEED a whole bottle of spaghetti sauce for a recipe, or you have leftover pizza sauce (easy mix of tomato paste, tomato sauce, sugar, oregano, and garlic)... Now, remember you have these things and USE them. This goes for meat as well. I often brown meat and save back 1/2 pound to add to a casserole the next day. I especially do this with bulk sausage. I try to limit the amount of meat I add to things, and make up for it with veggies or rice or something. Regardless of $$ savings, I think it is better for us to load up on healthier stuff rather than just meat (I try to food process carrots or onions or peppers in just about everything--not much taste impact, but I add it at the end so that all the nutrients aren't cooked out).

3: Measure twice, Shop once.

Weekly shopping trips are expensive. The fewer trips you make, the cheaper it is. Living in a small town, I don't have a Hy-Vee around the corner, (and 4 kids at the store is, well, not appealing) so I HAVE to make the food I have in house work. I've found that if I make a concentrated effort to lengthen the amount of time between trips, I can get a lot more meals out of the pantry, more hair washes out of the shampoo (I might have to use the yucky-smelling-whoops-buy shampoo, but that's okay!), and pull out the cloth diapers that I don't use simply because I'm lazy, than if I just automatically make a full-boar shopping trip because I am out of something. If someone has to stop, I try to get my husband to do it, because he doesn't know a deal when he sees one and isn't tempted to impulse shop. I make one $200 grocery trip per month (roughly) and then use the remaining $50-$100 to make milk/eggs/toilet paper stops, and to stock up every 2 or 3 months on frozen meat (chicken, tilapia, ground turkey, and my favorite: $1 farmland sausage rolls).

Avoiding the shopping trips ALSO avoids the most perilous money sucking hole known to woman (and man): Iwantititis. Most everything we could possibly need most of us already have. While I can see the financial value in perusing ads for good deals and coupons, knowing what I am missing steals the peace that I find in simplicity and gets me longing for the complicated life of rebates and coupons, automatic-spraying air fresheners (man is it hard to go back!) and other consumables that bring me to the store time and again for a refill. I bought 4 gallons of vinegar 3 years ago, and for the most part I don't buy cleaning supplies--which is a billion dollar industry focused on getting you to buy refill wands, pads, cloths, sponges, et.al.! (I even use the yucky-smelling-whoops-buy shampoo to clean the toilet--credit to Flylady.net on that one).

So there is a quick window into the world of Mandie. Speaking of windows, if you do use vinegar to clean your windows, add a 1/2 tsp or so of regular hand soap to the mix of water and vinegar (3T vinegar to 2c water) to get your windows nice and shiny. ;)

May God Bless You All!!!