A Memory About Food Budgets

46°f/7.8°C, clear and sunny. A great day to work outside!

Following up on my last post, I was reminded of a time early in my first marriage when my husband changed jobs and his new job really made us tight financially. We had just bought a house, our third baby was on the way, and we needed to replace our VW bug with something bigger. 

Back in the day! I was 22 in this photo, my first husband was 23. The baby,  Aaron, was 2 months, Derek in the chair beside me was 19 months, Jon on the left front was just over 3, and our oldest George was 4 1/2. We were still in Virginia then, in our first house, but moved to West Virginia less than a year later. I still have that chair, as well as the old crock jug and the coffee grinder on the mantle. 

My husband was bringing home about $100 a week. Our house payment was $150 a month, LP gas was $50, electric thankfully was cheap, usually $15, and the payment on our (brand new) van was $77. He had a company car but had to pay for the gas and be reimbursed at the end of the month, and as a copier repairman he did a lot of driving so that gas bill was hard on us. I had a food budget of $10 a week.

I had to come up with creative ways to feed us all. We found a place selling pullet eggs for $1.00 for 3 dozen. We got milk from a local dairy farmer for $1.00 a gallon, and I made butter from the cream. Then we had earlier met an organic orchardist who had made a large amount of cider that didn’t come out as he wanted it, so he sold it to us for 75 cents a gallon (we thought it was delicious). We made a monthly trip to the orchard and to a beekeeper in that area to pick up cider and honey for our local natural food store, so we picked up our honey too, and got paid a bit as well. Another orchard sold their culled apples for $2 a bushel, so we bought those too.

All of those things, plus tuna and fish, made up the bulk of our diet. We didn't eat beef, chicken, or pork at the time because of the additives being used back then, but we did eat dairy and fish. It was a challenge, but I think we managed well, and my boys grew up strong and healthy. After a year, my husband was making a much better salary, and was using our van as a work car and getting reimbursed for mileage, so our situation was much easier.

I was curious about the comparison of my $10 in 1972 to today, and found that it was equal to about $78. And now I wonder, what would $78 buy today? I think that it might actually be easier. For some families,  $312 a month would seem like riches. Some foods are actually cheaper now than they were back then, although meat is outrageously high.

Memories, memories. Despite the lack of money, we were happy, and those were good days.

Anyway, getting back to today: we worked outside all day, spreading 20 bags of mulch, cleaning up the patio, etc. I tilled a bit of the garden while Larry continued cleaning the garage. I didn't plant anything because we are expecting more rain and very low temps and I don't want my seeds to rot like they did last year. We ended the day with firepit time, a reward for our hard work.

 

And to end this rather eclectic post: a friend sent me this link of a Japanese storyteller who credited me with inspiring her to write a beautiful ballad! Here's the YouTube link, if you're interested. 

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

$5.00 Menus?

30°f/-1°C, clear all day but only warmed to 54°.

Another night of troublesome sleep so here I am in the wee hours writing my blog. I might as well make use of being awake! 

Today was a town day for us. Larry had a load of junk metal to take to the scrap yard (and got a whopping $9.25 for it!), and I wanted to get our first load of mulch, so we took the truck. I was surprised to see a long, deep scratch down its side, and a new dent in the front bumper. Larry says he has no idea how either happened, but I cannot imagine he didn't hear that scratch being made. Poor old truck.

Anyway, I straightened up our Ripley booth while he got rid of his load of junk. Last weekend was the Spring open house at this mall, so I knew it would be untidy. Then it was lunch with friends, Walmart for mulch, feed store, and grocery store. 

At the grocery store I got to thinking about a question someone asked in a cooking group on Facebook: if you had only $5 to spend for all your food for a day, what would you buy? Five dollars doesn't buy much these days, does it? Here's what I came up with, if I shopped at Kroger :

• A box of 8 packets of instant, sweetened and flavored oatmeal: $1.67
• A half dozen eggs: $1.15
• A bag of frozen chopped broccoli: $1.29
• One Roma tomato: $.25
• 2 bananas: .60
• Total: $4.94

So, oats for breakfast and snacks, mix a packet with a couple eggs and a mashed banana to make pancakes for lunch (no syrup but the sweetened oats would add enough sugar), and omelet with the rest of the eggs, tomatoes and broccoli for dinner.

My goal was a fairly healthy menu, so could I do the same at Dollar Tree?

If I shopped at Dollar Tree, I could buy:

• A bag of brown rice: $1.25
• A bag of black beans $1.25
• A bag of frozen veggies $1.25
• A box of instant oatmeal packets $1.25
• Total: $5.00 (there is no tax on food in WV)

This would allow oats for breakfast and snacks, and beans and rice with the veggies for lunch and dinner. Nothing fresh but not too bad.

Public domain photo

Both of my options assumed that the only other food items I had on hand were water, salt and pepper. The Dollar Tree menu would provide more food, since the beans and rice would make quite a lot. 

Of course, most of us have lots of flexibility when cooking, using food, spices, etc that we already had on hand. There are many days that I doubt what I cook actually costs even $5, because I may use only a part of something.

If you had to do this, what would you buy? The exercise made me feel grateful that I do not have to buy all my food, and that if I did, I could afford more choices. 

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Just Another Sunday

58°f14 4° C, mostly clear. Warmed up to 88°f! Ridiculous.

Talk about a heat wave! Almost 90° today, way too hot for this early in the year. Thankfully, it did not feel as hot as the same temperature in summer. Maybe it's the angle of the sun? Or maybe that steady, often pretty strong breeze/wind. Anyway, people were certainly out and about. As we drove to our Ravenswood booth to restock we saw kids playing, men tinkering with mowers, women mowing, people out on their porches. And at the mall, there were plenty of shoppers, a surprise because Sundays are typically pretty quiet.

We rarely do our booths on Sunday, but neither of us wanted to go Friday with the gravel coming, and yesterday after Sarah left we rested until late afternoon. But since it was going to be so warm, today felt like a good time to get this job out of the way.

Then we stopped at Shari's for a snack and iced coffee, and visited with a couple friends who were there, always a pleasure. It was still 88° when we got home, but we had things to do. Larry worked on cleaning out his garage while I spray-painted porch furniture. I didn't finish but I made a good start. Note to self: do NOT spray paint in sandals. Very unwise. My toes look very odd now, a faint ring of black around my toenails. I scrubbed hard and got most of it off my toes and foot but the nails...oh well.

If you must know, the reason I did not change into shoes was simple: I was tired, and I knew that if I stopped to put on socks and shoes I just wouldn't tackle the job! Silly but true. Sometimes little things seem like the biggest obstacles. But then, I got a second wind and did put on the socks and shoes to go out do some stringtrimming, and piddled around in the vegetable garden, raking back mulch in a little spot so the soil will dry enough to dig and plant my lettuce. Of course, rain is on the way tonight. Of course it is.

I also cleaned the remaining dried up vines from the arches and was surprised to find that we had missed some lima beans when we picked the last of them in the Fall. 

I wonder why the one pod spoiled, while the others just dried? 

I was very appreciative of our awesome shower when I came in. Grass clippings all over me, bits of dried vines in my hair, paint on my feet...I was a right mess. There is nothing like a good shower, is there?

Tomorrow we won't get much above 50°, and will drop to around 30 tomorrow night. Such a fickle friend is Spring!

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.