Saving Money on Groceries

The news is full of high grocery prices these days.  

Of course, Americans are still paying only half their per capita expenditure on groceries as 50 years ago, as a percentage of earnings.  

In other words, 50 years ago we spent 18 percent, on average, of our income on food; today it's 9 percent. 

Think about what we DIDN'T spend money on 50 years ago.  No computers, Netflix subscriptions, streaming services, smart phones, digital wearables, flat screen TVs, and conveniences like eating out, DoorDash, UberEATS, and Lunchables. 

Did you know Lunchables are $14 a pound at our local grocery store?  

That’s more than a pound of Polyface unvaccinated, unmedicated, compost-fertilized beyond organic grass finished ground beef for that price, with probably 10 times the nutrient density.  And without the toxins? All you have to do is cook it. 

Isn't it interesting what we've done with all that money we've saved on food?  We've bought convenience and luxuries unheard of just 50 years ago.  

When I was a kid, you couldn't go to the store and buy chicken breasts.  You had to buy a whole chicken, take it home, get a knife and cutting board, and cut out the breast.  Imagine that. 

Right now, you can buy a whole Polyface broiler for the same price per pound as the cheapest Tyson boneless skinless breast at Wal-Mart.  How much of the alleged high cost of food is for convenience? 

The interesting thing about this topic is that it's never been easier to cook from scratch, with single-ingredient items.  

By single-ingredient, I mean "potato."  "Squash."  "Eggs."  As soon as you start multi-ingredient buying, the cost goes through the roof because a roomful of people and machines somewhere manipulated, reconstituted, and mixed together, to do what folks not too long ago did in their kitchens. 

Our techno-gadgetized sophisticated kitchens would make Great Grandma swoon.

We don't have to go fetch water from the spring, light a fire in the wood stove at 4 a.m. so it'll be hot enough to cook flapjacks when Pa comes in from milking the cow.  

No, we have hot and cold running water, timed bake, refrigerators to reduce spoilage. We have bread makers, ice cream makers, InstantPots, crockpots, blenders, and every other appliance you can imagine.  

This ain't grandma's kitchen.  Never in human history has it been easier to cook from scratch, but never in history has a civilization been more nonchalant about it.

With our modern hurried, harried, frantic, frenetic lives, eating on the run creates unique logistical problems.  Goodness, more than 30 percent of all food consumed in America is now eaten in cars.  Can you imagine?  But scratch cooking doesn't mean you have to eliminate convenience.  

You can make your own convenience. 

For example, we put several stewing hens (old hens no longer laying eggs) in a large roaster pan and cook at 350 for 4 hours.  You can do this while you're at work on timed bake; I suggest having them finish at 2 p.m. so they can cool off before you get home.  In short order, you can pick off all that wonderful meat, cut it into chunks with scissors, and put it in bags or quart freezer containers;  precooked, read-to-go for casseroles, meat salad, or whatever. 

Did you know you can home can meat?  Yes, buy in bulk, chunk it, stick it in a canning jar, and can it just like you would green beans or tomatoes.  Now you have gleaming quarts of precooked beef, pork, chicken that will keep for years without freezing or refrigeration.  How about that for a prepper larder?  You can eat it cold or add it to a stew or casserole in minutes. 

We're hearing a lot about ultra-processed food these days.  

Some 75 percent of what Americans eat is ultra-processed.  It's not cheap, which my $14 a pound Lunchables figure illustrates. Take any ultra-processed food and make it in your kitchen with single ingredients and you'll save half the price.  That's how expensive subcontracting out all your domestic culinary responsibilities costs.   

From day one, we've eaten homemade granola. Teresa goes to an Amish bulk foods store and buys all the ingredients--single ingredients.  Sunflower seeds, rolled oats, etc. She mixes them together and bakes them in the oven.  Her recipe makes about a gallon and a half of granola that we keep in a Tupperware cannister in a kitchen cabinet. 

And then there's soft drinks.  Oh my.  You can get juice and add carbonated water to make your own bubbly beverages. 

Perhaps my favorite home-made anything is applesauce.  Each fall we buy several bushels of unsprayed apples and make applesauce.  Everybody can join in to cut the apples, cook them, crank the food mill, and fill jars.  We usually make about 80 quarts for the year.  Once you've had the real thing, all the store bought--and expensive--stuff is tasteless and inedible.   

The old saying "there's no free lunch" really applies here. We'd like to think our lives are richer by letting others prepare our food.  The fact is our lives are poorer, not only financially but nutritionally.  

I'm reminded of one of the most memorable meals I ever enjoyed at Chez Panisse with food guru Alice Waters.  Dessert was a clementine.  Yes, not cake or ice cream, but a simple clementine at this world-renowned restaurant. 

How could she top off a Michelin meal with a simple clementine?  

Well, they were from Michael Ableman's nearby farm.  He put compost around his trees and the clementines were divine.  Indeed, they were good enough to be served as dessert at one of the world's most renowned restaurants.  That's real value. Alice invested in the best provenance and, in the end, it probably saved money because it didn't require expensive adorning. 

In a time of burgeoning complexity, real connection requires returning to some simple things.  

Marrying our kitchen gadgetry with unadorned, single-ingredient food inputs offers royalty-quality at commoners' costs.  

Putting money in the best provenance and then investing with personal culinary finesse helps our bank account and our microbiome.  That's a winning synergy, don't you think?   

Joel