Food is probably one of the first things people think of when they are trying to save money and when they are trying to save the planet. It is probably the largest of our easily controlled expenses and with food prices rapidly rising a lot of people are looking for ways to eat a healthy, more sustainable diet for less. You can have some serious impact on your wallet, your waistline, and the planet, but you need to be flexible. Eating like royalty on a budget really does call for some compromise.

The Early Years

When I moved out on my own in my late teens I was pretty much completely broke. I had grown up in a family of foodies and for the first month or so I felt pretty sorry for myself.  I ate a lot of plain rice and Amy’s microwave burritos and quickly realized that I was going to have to figure out a better plan.

I already knew how to cook, but I didn’t really know how to budget. I recalled something my dad had said to me years before while he was cooking some gourmet dish. “The funny thing is, Stella, that a lot of the most delicious food really originated as peasant food. People took whatever they had available at the moment, vegetables, meats, eggs, some leftover wine and made it into something wonderful.” This made sense to me as it always seemed like the best recipes in the world belonged to someone’s grandma.

That was a big mental shift for me. Before that I had always decided on what I wanted to eat based on what I was hungry for at the moment. I had grown up in a world where you could get anything at anytime and I had only ever briefly considered that this had not always been so. I had some exposure to the idea of eating seasonally through my parents and my good friend Geneva’s mom who had a bountiful vegetable garden, but I didn’t have any hands-on experience. My usual method of menu planning had been rolling out of bed hungry, realizing there was nothing in my fridge but ketchup, hitting the store hungry and hoping that the check I wrote for the food wasn’t going to bounce.

I started researching ethnic foods and peasant foods. I’m a list-maker, so I made a list of all the kinds of food I enjoyed: French, Italian, Spanish, German, Chinese, Thai, Indian, Eastern European, Middle Eastern, Greek, Mexican, Scandinavian, British, etc. and started checking out cookbooks from the library. I also checked into some local cookbooks, some vegetarian cookbooks like The Moosewood Cookbook and some historical cookbooks. I’d bug everyone’s grandma for their best recipes, which they were usually happy to share.

I learned what kinds of foods were staples in which cultures and what kinds of foods had a sort of universality to them. Many cultures, for example, have something resembling a pancake. Familiarizing myself with the similarities and differences of various kinds of foods has really helped me learn to be a flexible cook. I find that flexibility is really key to eating a varied, interesting diet even under restrictions such as budget constraints and in-season produce. I can make eggs, for example, once a week and never feel like I had a repeat. Mexican egg scramble, potato frittata, Dutch pancakes and cheese soufflé have similar ingredients but taste nothing alike.

From there I made a list of basic herbs, spices and condiments that I’d need for basic cooking as well as pantry staples like flour, pasta, rice and beans. I’m not going to lie. I had some help purchasing these. I told my parents my plan to try to eat better and save money and they were sufficiently impressed and took me to the grocery store. I’m not ashamed to admit I had some help. I think I’d do that for my kids too if they took the time and effort to research all of that.

Another big lesson from those cookbooks and grandmas was the value of simplicity. A good recipe doesn’t necessarily contain 20 different items. A simple carrot soup or tomato salad with buttermilk dressing can be really satisfying.

At that time I wasn’t really big on organics yet. I wanted to be, but I really didn’t see how I could afford it. I was just trying to eat a healthier diet for less money. I started going to the farmers market in the summer. I’d ask questions about how to prepare various things and tried to use things that were in season. I gained a lot of knowledge there and learned about a lot of fruits and vegetables I had never seen on grocery store shelves. The Hmong farmers in particular used all sorts of unusual vegetables and parts of vegetables I didn’t know were edible. The old-time Minnesota farmers had all kinds of recipes and ideas that would never have occurred to me: a fruit salad with purple curly leaf basil, or a potato leaf stir-fry.

In the winter I hit the ethnic markets. These often have the most inexpensive prices around on things like produce, rice, beans, spices, condiments and even meat. They don’t spend a lot of money on advertising and they usually reside in humble buildings on humble streets, so the prices are much lower than the grocery store, and frequently the quality is better.

The other bonus at small, ethnic grocery stores is that they sometimes sell scratch-and-dent grocery items at a discount. I once got an entire box of overripe bananas at the Italian grocery store for $3. I was swimming in banana bread, banana cake and smoothies for quite some time. Smaller markets aren’t usually as bureaucratic as larger ones and aren’t compelled by corporate policy to let perfectly good food go to waste. Sometimes you can even score a free loaf of bread at the end of the day.

Also, I have to say that I have had some of the best customer service of my life at ethnic grocery store. That Italian grocery store, for example, had the cutest little old men on the face of the earth. They could sell ice to Eskimos. They’d offer me ice cream or a cannoli and when I’d decline because I was watching my weight they’d wax poetic, tell me how beautiful I was and eventually I’d buy the ice cream in spite of myself. Not so frugal, I know, but then I guess it was a pretty cheap ego boost. Considering I remember it a decade later, I think it was probably a bargain.

Another money saving thing I did at that stage of my life was potlucks. I know, it’s terribly quaint, but these potlucks weren’t of the Lutheran church basement variety. No “hot dish” (that’s Minnesota for casserole) allowed. Mostly I’d hold tea parties or dinner parties and have my friends all bring something to share. For the cost of a batch of rice pudding, some hot wings or some hummus and pita we’d have all the fun of eating out. When I lived by myself one of the biggest challenges of cooking was the difficulty of cooking for one. I’ve often thought to myself that if I ever live alone again I’m going to start a meal co-op with some other single people and just rotate meal preparation between all of us. The potlucks we had served the same purpose.

The Gypsy Years

My post college years were my gypsy years. I moved a lot and lived in strange and inconvenient places like a semi-communal artist’s warehouse and a tiny, tiny, tiny apartment in old town Pasadena.

I think the lesson of those years was all about flexibility. A lot of articles on frugality or sustainable food really assume that you have ample food storage space and a full working kitchen. Yes, it would be fabulous to have a grain mill to grind all your own homegrown organic wheat and corn, but it’s not practical for a lot of people. There’s nothing like cooking on a hot plate in a studio with a dorm fridge to drive that home. Still, small spaces and small fridges or no fridges are common in many parts of the world, so it is still workable. You do what you can with what you have.

Simplicity is king in these situations. If you try to cook 7 course dinners on a hot plate you will give up cooking in short order (pun not intended) and end up at White Castle, and that isn’t good for anyone. In these situations it’s best to take a cue from the Europeans. Shop daily or at least every other day. Buy things that can be prepared simply and stored without refrigeration. That’s much easier in the summer than the winter. In this context, pre-prepared food from an ethnic market or co-op is a perfectly reasonable compromise. A container of tabouli from the Middle Eastern deli or some pirogis from the local Polish church ladies is definitely the lesser evil when compared to Burger King and Pizza Hut.

Banishing Guilt and Perfectionism

I spent many of the gyspy years feeling bad that I wasn’t able to do more. I urge you not to follow suit. Dispense with the guilt. If you live in a space the size of my grandmother’s bathroom, you are allowed the odd container of take-out.

In fact, even years later, now that I have good, workable, frugal methods of shopping for, preparing, and storing wholesome, largely local and organic foods (which I will share with you over the coming weeks), I still think that letting go of guilt and its cousin perfectionism is the first step in making positive changes in our lives. Whether we are trying to save money, save the planet, save our health, or all of the above, nothing good can come out of beating ourselves up—it works much better to move forward with no shame and no blame. We can’t change the past, but we can change the present and the future, so that’s where it makes the most sense to focus our attention and efforts.

(image by kamaru via flickr)