This post is part of my series, “Kickin’ It Old Skool: Why and How We Are Old-Fashioned” or KIOS for short.  If you’re new to the series, please read my disclaimer before continuing on.  I’m keeping a table of contents to this series here so you can see what I’ve already written about and what more there is to come.

Enough about specific foods!  I’ve been thinking about a couple other issues related to eating so I’ll be writing about those this week and next.  This week, I have some thoughts about what we would do if we had to cut back on the amount of money we spend on food.

First, let me say that I’m probably not the best person to write on this topic because we don’t track our food spending all that carefully.  We do live on one teacher’s salary in a fairly high-cost of living area and so we try to be careful in the amount of money we spend.  We are fairly frugal in other areas though (such as no cable, inexpensive cell phone plans, fairly cheap insurance, very little entertainment expenses) and so that means we are able (and happy) to spend a higher percentage of our income on food than we might otherwise.  That being said, I don’t think we spend all that much on food compared to most people in a similar income bracket.

Currently, here’s what we do to try to save money on food:

1. We eat less meat.  Although the meat we buy is more expensive, we eat far less meat than we used to so the cost difference is minimal.
2. We try to grow our own food in the summer.  This summer’s garden was mostly a failure but usually we get a lot more food out of our garden, both for summer eating and frozen/canned for the winter.
3. We take free food whenever we can get it.  This year, we got TONS of free pears from our neighbor.  We canned them and are looking forward to lots of delicious sliced pears throughout the winter.
4. I make as much of our own food as I can.  For example, even though we buy more expensive ingredients, it’s way cheaper for me to make our own bread and yogurt than to buy even significantly lower-quality bread and yogurt at the store.  I also cook our own beans, which saves TONS of money over canned beans.
5. We [mostly] don’t eat junk food.  A bag of chips here or there but that’s about it.
6. We eat sensible portions and don’t waste food.  We have perfected the art of eating leftovers.  We might not enjoy eating that meal a second or third time but it’s better than throwing the food away.  Throwing food away is a waste of money and resources.

If, for whatever reason, I needed to cut back on the amount of money we spent on food, here are some thoughts on what I’d do.

1. Eat even less meat.  We would continue to buy the same kind of meat we buy now but we would just cut way back on how much of it we ate.  It would become a very occasional treat for us.  I would cut out meat entirely rather than resort to buying industrially-raised meat.
2. Eat lots more beans and rice (or lentils).  I’d search out more vegetarian recipes (ones that didn’t use soy).
3. Search even harder for more foraged [free] food.  Expand our garden.  Concentrate on growing or picking more of our food.
4. Cut out sugar.  We should probably do this anyway!  We don’t have to eat sweet things and sweeteners are expensive.  So I would cut way back on how much we used.
5. Drink less milk and eat less cheese.  If necessary, stop buying our local milk and buy organic milk instead.  If absolutely necessary, buy conventional milk but at least search out hormone-free milk and continue to buy whole milk.
6. Prioritize fruits and vegetables from the “clean” end of the EWG list and then buy conventional rather than organic F/V.  Rather than spending the money to get the organic items from the “Dirty Dozen” we probably just wouldn’t eat them.
7. Eat at home and never go out to eat.
8. Concentrate on eating “real food” rather than on local food (but continuing to buy locally when it was cheaper, as it can be).

All of this would be hard and I know it would take some getting used to.  Our meals would become perhaps less exciting than they are now (or at least we would have to change our definition of “exciting”).  Now that I’ve typed in those ideas, I think I should start working towards some of these things anyway, even though I don’t have to!

Granted, all of these ideas are predicated on the idea that I would still able to be a stay-at-home mom and spend the time on making/procuring food.  If I had to be working full-time, then I know life would get a lot harder and we would have to make different, far more difficult choices.

I am exceedingly grateful that so far we haven’t had to make any of these difficult decisions regarding how we eat.  I also want to be a wise and faithful caretaker of what we have been given.  In that vein, one of my goals for this coming year is to actually track how much we spend on food to quantify our attempts to eat frugally and responsibly.  I want to have a good idea of how much we spend on food and where we can make better choices.

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I haven’t read this e-book, Real Food on a Real Budget but I have read the author’s blog for several years and learned a ton from her.  If this is something you’re really interested in pursuing, it’s probably a great resource.

The same blog has a couple posts about feeding a family of five on a budget of $250/month (and part 2, with ideas to improve the budget).  Lots of great ideas!

Some really frank thoughts: Confessions of a Food Stamp Foodie (from a friend of ours)