Food By The Pound

This past weekend I cooked some dried chickpeas and got to wondering how much they were per pound. It's difficult to compare prices when most everything is priced differently. The chick peas were $1.75 a bag. I cooked them and then drained the water and weighed them. They were $.65 per pound. It drives me crazy that many food items seem to be priced differently just to make it difficult for shoppers to compare and get the best deal. Those bags of frozen chicken breast are a good example. Locally they always seem to be on sale "buy one for $12.95 get one free". The price per pound is nowhere to be found. I am going to start carrying a calculator to the store. The bag is something like 46 oz, so two bags are 92 oz divided by 16 oz or 5.75 lbs, so the chicken is $2.25 per lb. Well, fresh chicken breasts were on sale for $1.99 per lb. The fresh was a better deal and you didn't have to spend $13.00. I am going to start figuring out what everything costs per lb and post it on here. Stuff like ice cream and tortilla chips. I saw a guy on TV who has a simple policy...he won't buy anything if it's more than $1.00 per lb.



So after 14 weeks we are spending $128.00 per week for my family of five. I saw a new figure figure that said that a family of four spends $211.00 per week on food. So I think I'm doing pretty well but my goal is still to get down to an average of $100.00.

Food Prices

Wow....food prices are going through the roof! Makes shopping wisely more important than ever. Bread, vegetables, milk, fruit, everything seems to be 30% more than it was last year. I went to Sam's Club yesterday and 20 lb bags of flour are now $8.19. Last year they were in the $5.00 range. Last week I made some Chibatta bread and some bagels. I always wondered how bakers got those big bubbles in their breads. The secret is a very wet, sticky dough that is allowed to rise many times and that isn't over kneeded (which destroys all the bubbles). The loaves also should be baked on a baking stone of some sort, that way you get a nice crisp bottom. I was also shocked by the price of walnuts....almost $15 a bag! Have you noticed that when a product is labeled as heart healthy or rich in anti-oxidents the price suddenly rises. A few years ago the same thing happened with grape juice. It's more important than ever to buy seasonal foods. Citrus fruits, avacados and apples seem to be a good value now. If you plan to have a vegetable garden now is the time to start planning. I figured out last year that one tomato plants can produce well over 30 pounds of fruit!

Speed Cooking

One of my wife's many talents is that she is able to play music by ear. This amazes me. I, on the other hand, took piano lessons for six years and can't play a note. However, I can cook a complete whole foods meal in 30 minutes. I suppose this is the same thing Racheal Ray does on 30 Minute meals but she has a staff of people helping her. Last night for instance we had Pork tenderloin tortillas. The tenderloin was $3.59. I sliced thin slices and quickly grilled them on a stove top grill pan. This

took about 10 minutes. I heated some whole wheat tortillas in the microwave (on a plate with a damp paper towel (plain white) covering them) to keep them from drying out. I heated up some refried beans I had made a few weekends ago from dried pinto beans. I made some white rice, chopped lettuce, tomatoes, onions, grated chedder cheese. Everything was placed on the table so that each person could make their own burrito wrap. This is great meal not just because it's fast and healthy but because you can put pretty much anything in them.

Cooking methods

In order to cook using whole foods you have to understand the basic cooking methods. Unless you will be eating everything raw (which is an option I suppose...except for chicken and other poultry)....I don't think there will ever be chicken sushi. You will be doing one of the following things to your food: boiling, steaming, poaching, sauteing, frying, stir frying, roasting, broiling, braising, stewing, souping (souping?), microwaving. These are the main ones that matter for most people most of the time. There are certainly many others including the most ancient of all, cooking over an open fire. The closest most of us get to that is grilling, which is like a religion to some people. Most us us will, on any given day;

• Pan saute or pan fry....... a hamburger, a chicken breast, for example. fast
• Boil......pasta, potatoes. fast
• Steam......vegetables, shrimp. fast
• Poaching.....eggs, chicken, fish. fast
• Frying (deep frying)....chicken, fish. Not really recommended for the average cook on an average day. It's messy, dangerous and unhealthy. It will make you hate cooking unless you know what your doing and have the proper tools. But it tastes really good!
• Stir frying....vegetables, small pieces of tender meat. good and very fast
• Broiling.....usually used for tender meats. fast
• Roasting......roasts, turkeys. Think Thanksgiving. slow
• Braising......stews, roasts. Slow but delicious
• Stewing.....braising is better for stews, stewing is better for soups. Now your really confused! slow
• Microwaving...potatoes, vegetables, leftovers. fast

The techniques highlighted in red are the ones you will be depending on for most quick, cheap meals.

Spent $106.56 last week. That's not including the $50 gift card I spent at The Fresh Market. I bought a small bag of coffee, a jar of anchovies, a bunch of arugula, a small block of Parmesano Regiano cheese, some real buttermilk, lump crab meat, an avocado, a red pepper and some frozen artichoke hearts. Yes, I guess I'm a food snob but I can't afford that stuff so thanks for the gift card Mavis!

Last Week

Last week we spent $117.27 on groceries (I splurged and bought some shrimp). The week before we spent $98.16. This includes everything for five people (breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks). My focus is going to be on dinners. Breakfast and lunch is usually dried cereal, oatmeal during the week and pancakes, waffles, biscuits, bagals. eggs on the weekend. Lunch is pasta salads, tuna sandwiches, fruit, etc.

Dinners were baked potatoes, meatloaf, spaghetti, pizza, roasted chicken, chili. Side dishes were mashed potatoes, steamed carrots, mixed asian vegetables, spinich salad, peas and other normal stuff.

I try to create meals around a starch. In America we usually create meals around meat (protein). If you want to save money start thinking starch. The working people of every culture structure their meals around a starchy grain of some kind. These are primarily rice, pasta, tortillas, bread, potatoes and beans. All of these groups are filling and inexpensive. These are all whole food products that can be purchased in bulk at much less money per pound than any meat. When meat is cheap there is usually a lot of waste . If you buy a whole chicken at $.69
a lb you will probably throw away 25 percent of it (skin, bones, fat). Starches are usually 100% edible.

A good example is homemade pizza dough. At your local warehouse club you can buy 25 pound bags of flour for $6-$7. That equals around 76 cups of flour at $.09 cents per cup or $.25 per pound! You can make two medium pizzas from 3 cups of flour a little yeast and some tap water. That's around $.30! The expense comes with the toppings you choose. A bag of shredded mozerella cheese is around $2 on sale. You can buy a can of crushed tomatos for $1.20. You only need a few tablespoons per pizza. The rest can be frozen in ice cube trays (one ice cube per pizza). Pepperoni, ham, sausage are around $2 each but you only need a few ounces per pizza. A $2 package of diced ham will last us a month (6-8 pizzas). Veggie pizzas are less expensive and better for you. I figure that our cost for a medium pizza is around a $1.50. Pancakes, waffles, bagels and biscuits are all easy to make and really inexpensive. Twelve waffles cost about $1.25 and twelve bagels cost around $.65 cents!

The Grocery Bill

The average American family spends somewhere in the neighborhood of $250 a week on groceries! That's $13,000 a year! This figure comes from various internet sources ranging from $165 to $346. This works out to be about $50 per week per person. In a way, that's not too bad because it's only $7.14 a day per person. But for a family of four earning $45,000 a year that 's over 30% of take home pay. Add to that sky rocketing energy prices, medical costs and housing and it's not a pretty sight. For the last 20 years most of us have turned to credit of one kind or another to pay for all the other stuff we want and need. But now that avenue has come to a screeching halt with the subprime mortgage mess. Many of us have to face the reality that we must attempt to live within our means. Meaning that we cannot spend money we don't actually have. That is a tough pill to swallow when we feel that it's in some way a basic human right to have the latest, greatest stuff. We are addicted to things and it's going to be painful to walk out of Target or Costco with only what we absolutely need.

We are a family of five (two adult and there children aged 16, 13 and 11). I was downsized seven years ago from a good paying corporate position after 18 years. I started a small business (a photography studio) but have never been able to pay myself what I was earning at my job in 1999. So every year I've taken a cut in pay and now earn less than 50% of what I was earning then! Add to that the alarming cost of individual health insurance over $650 a month plus over $200 a month in prescription drugs (don't get me started) and you can see that making ends meet has become a serious part of every waking hour.

About 15 years ago I picked up a book about whole foods. It was "American Wholefoods Cuisine" by David and Nicky Goldbeck and it changed the way I look at eating. The basic philosophy was that you should always choose foods that are closest to what they looked like when they were in their natural state. This is the least expensive and the healthiest way to buy food. The trade off is that it is more time consuming to prepare and it takes more cooking skill. The other basic principle was that grocery stores generallly put most of the whole foods around the store periphery. Think about your grocery store. The fresh fruits and vegetables, meats, fish, dairy products and store produced baked goods are almost always along the edges of the building. Most of the products in the middle of the store are in some sort of more elaborate packaging. These products usually are more expensive and contain saturated fats, coloring, salt and additives that you don't need. Choose your canned and packaged foods carefully. Read the label. If it has colorful cartoon characters or scantilly clad women on it you don't need to buy it. The things you do need are the following: plain oatmeal (in the big round container), pasta, rice, spices (but really expensive to get in grocery stores, so best to find elsewhere), oils (mostly olive and canola), flour, tea, nuts (raw walnuts and almonds) dried and canned beans (pinto, black, northern, navy, garbonzo, etc. ). The things you don't need are any meat in stick form, any food that is flourscent orange, any beverage that claims that it will cure disease, help you lose 50 lbs or give you more energy (coffee doesn't count), any cereal that has a fairy or kitten as a spokeman and any cheese that you spray.

Next post will be about Starches.

By the way, my goal is to feed my family for approximatly $100 per week. That does not include toilet paper and dog food.

The whole food thing......

For some reason most of us seem to get hungry (except for models). Everyday we look around our world for things to eat. Wanna get some lunch? Wanna grab a bite? How about a burger or a burrito or sushi. We search our glove compartments and desk drawers for little crunchy, salty, chocolate things. We eat old, hard slices of pizza and tasteless microwaved pseudo food. But the truth is that you don't have to eat like this. You and your loved ones can eat real, healthy, delicious food! I believe that the old is going to be new again. I want us all to look to our grandparents for the answers. Every week on this blog I will post how much our family spends on groceries and what kinds of meals we eat. The focus is going to be more on the general concepts behind the decisions rather than the recipes themselves. I've never written a blog before so it might take a few weeks to figure out what I'm doing.....but that applies to pretty much everything doesn't it?