This past week I've been working on a quilt for my newest Great-Grand due in March. Seems like when I am sitting in front of a sewing machine with nothing but fabric pieces to look at, my mind tends to wander. Lately, what with grocery prices still headed skyward, I try to think of ways to still eat three meals a day without wrecking the budget.
Thinking back to my childhood, some of the ways my mother cooked meals are beginning to make sense. After all, my family wasn't exactly living high on the hog, so to speak. Due to Mother's ever worsening arthritis, there were doctor bills and hospital bills in addition to the normal family expenditures.
My family had one meat and potato meal per week, and that was on Sunday. Dad was lucky enough to be able to rent out the ten-acre field that was part of our property to a neighbor who paid in beef instead of dollars. That's where the roast beef for dinner came from.
I wondered for years why Mother always made a pot of rice to go with the chili. It finally dawned on me that the rice stretched the meal to feed all five of us.
Bread was always homemade. Bread made at home cost a lot less than a loaf of bread from the store.
Casseroles were a common meal. Or, if you live in Minnesota, they are hot dishes. Goulash, tuna noodle hot dish, chicken and rice hot dish. You get the idea.
We canned and froze all the food we could lay our hands on.
I find myself looking at recipes for the kinds of meals Mother made and at the home canned and dehydrated food on my shelves for meals. Thankfully, I have stockpiled pasta, rice and lots of flour and sugar. I live on a fixed income. My cost-of-living increase for Social Security this year was a whopping $44. Frugality is necessary.
Until inflation is under control, if it ever is, seems to me that a frugal approach is the smart way to go. Those of us who have been stacking it high over the years find ourselves in a much better place than do those who haven't yet figured out that prices aren't apt to go down any time soon. It took several years to put us in this mess. Going to take time to fix it.
Check Grandma's cookbooks for cheap meals. Continue stacking it high when you find a decent sale. And pray. A lot. We need all the help we can get.
My mother would say: "If that doesn't fill you up, we have plenty of bread and butter." We never went hungry, but ate a lot of beans. My mother could stretch a ham to almost a week of eating. Her meatloaf (best I ever ate) was stretched with oatmeal.
ReplyDeleteFunny; my mom's meatloaf was stretched with RICE. We still do that with meatballs. Rice actually improves the texture of them!
DeleteJess...I had forgotten about the oatmeal in the meatloaf! Mother would also crush soda crackers as a filler for meatloaf. We never went hungry either. But it wasn't until I had children of my own that I understood how much work my parents had done to keep us fed.
ReplyDeleteYea for an increase in SS such as it was. But the increase in the Medicare deductible for the year was more than the SS increase. What a game!!
ReplyDeleteMy mom used to serve 'meat in gravy' over biscuits for dinner. Almost always Thursday night dinner which I now realize was probably the night before pay day.
Yes, I'm making my own bread again. Right there with you Vicki about stretching the grocery budget.
Cheers, SJ now in California
SJ...You had 'meat in gravy.' We had creamed peas on toast. Whatever it took to stretch a dollar!
DeleteI am on the last loaf of store bread from my freezer. Bread machine is ready to go. I think the time for relying on convenience foods has passed. At least for me. That's OK. Homemade bread tastes so much better anyway. :)
I didn't grow up in a household that canned, Vicki. Not much room for gardening in a suburban lot in the center of Long Island! That being said, I didn't grow up surrounded by all that "privilege" Some say I had. It was ALL ABOUT stretching a dollar in my house. We ate very little "prepared" foods. Meals were made from scratch, and leftovers were engineered in. Almost everything that broke was fixed by Dad, using whatever we had around the house. MANY tin cans were either re-used to hold something else, or used to patch holes in the exhaust systems of the cars! Indeed, bailing wire was a STAPLE in the workshop!
ReplyDeleteI've often said that "poverty" is a great teacher. You use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without! My wife is the QUEEN of the leftover. I CONTINUE to mend what needs mending. If it can't be mended I'm STILL the one who replaces it.
The youngsters lament over not being able to afford Starbucks... while we sit there chuckling as the percolator finishes its job...
God bless you and yours, Vicki!
Pete...Your Dad and my Dad probably were from the same time in history where people knew how to fix stuff. I think my Dad's ability to fix things came from growing up the youngest of nine kids on a small farm in northern Minnesota, known for lots of pine trees and sandy soil. There was no calling someone else to fix stuff. They took care of that themselves.
ReplyDeleteI once had a car that developed a little quirk. When I stepped on the brake, the engine would roar. Three mechanics didn't fix the problem. Took the car to Dad, who tinkered with the engine for maybe 10 minutes. The car ran perfectly after that. :)
Bless your wife for knowing how to use up the leftovers. So did my Mother. If a hot dish wasn't finished at supper, we knew what was on the menu for lunch!
I worry about the younger generations who, as you say, can't seem to function without Starbucks. We know that your percolator and my old drip coffee pot work just fine. And we aren't paying through the nose for a cup of coffee!
God bless you and yours, my friend.
Interesting you don’t understand economics and continue to spread misinformation
ReplyDelete*If* that statement is true, why do you bother to read this blog? Just curious.
DeleteI have followed this blog for years and find it relevant to my life and to the times we are living through. YMMV.
SJ now in California
To the Anonymous troll...If you don't like what we discuss here, go elsewhere. The only reason your remark was not deleted is because my internet was out. Future stupidity from you will be deleted.
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