If it was not obvious, money is tight. With three growing children, most of my income goes on food. These three could eat me out of house and home if I let them run wild. Unfortunately, I have to create rules on when and how much snacking they can do. I also have had to really pull in my food shopping to bring it down to a manageable level.

I’ve always been good about grocery shopping, but my budget is considerably less now. This mean I have had to learn a few new tricks to help me keep it maintained. Right now, for one mom and three kids, we are averaging around $100 per week. That includes my weekly grocery run as well as a few extras that get thrown in. I don’t want food to become a struggle for them, so I try to budget in for the occasional fast food and little treats.

The occasional treats help me feel like I am not teaching them that food is something to be afraid of, something that could run out. I don’t want them becoming food hoarders, or over eating from a fear that there will not be enough to eat tomorrow. It is a tight balance, but it is worth the effort for me.

I have 5 main tricks for keeping healthy, well-rounded food on the table with a tight budget. Little things that I have picked up here and there that work in my kitchen and my life. It could be easier if we had a larger fridge or a deep-freeze to store food in. Right now we are working with a tiny RV fridge that holds about 75% of what a typical fridge will hold. Still, there is always a way to get enough food stuffed in where I need it.

• I start with a meal plan. It is really a life saver, and something I have been doing for a while now. Before, I would go through my cookbooks and plan out my own meals that way. Now however, I need that time to work on more writing and earn a little extra income. As a trade off, I purchase pre-made meal plans from E-mealz*. It is $15 for three months of dinners, and comes with the recipes plus the shopping list. Plus I can customize it based on which grocery store I want to use so I am getting food that is on sale or normally cheaper at my local shop for that week.
• We’ve cut out the meat. Most of you know that I’ve been playing with vegetarianism for a while. I waffle back and forth, mostly because I see good arguments on both sides of the food debate. (No, this is not the time to convince me your way of eating is right.) The kids and I are following a mostly lacto-ovo vegetarian diet right now. I toss in the occasional meat product about twice a month, but eggs, milk and cheese make up the bulk of our animal products. With a tight budget, cutting out meat is one of the easiest ways to cut the bill down.
• Keep it simple. There are thousands of food options out there, and any good foodie can tell you ways to cook a single meal with half of them. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work for us. We have to keep meals as simple as possible to keep the bill down. Peanut butter and honey sandwiches, bean and cheese burritos, and lots of casseroles involving a can of beans, a can of tomatoes, noodles and seasoning. Limited space often means I have room for canned goods, but little room to soak a pot of beans or store fresh tomatoes. Still, keeping meals down to just a few quick and cheap ingredients makes preparation quick and costs us less.
• Leftovers are my friends.I have become the master of reusing left over food. A bowl of chili from a couple days ago, some diced and baked potatoes from last night, a sprinkle of cheese and we’ve got a whole new lunch. Meals that are super cheap to make I tend to make extra of just so we can use the left overs for lunch later in the week. Today I tossed the rest of the green beans in with some cooked spaghetti, added Parmesan, and served. The kids dived in and I didn’t need to use up anything from my cabinets.
• I stockpile when I can. Though there is not much room, I find a place to put those dried extras when they go on sale. My pantry is full of rice, dried beans, pasta, and other assorted simple foods that I can use in almost anything. They can be cheaper to buy in bulk, and when you add a sale or a good coupon on top of that I cannot resist. There is a trade off to go over my budget a few dollars this week in order to not buy rice for the next two months. And because it is a simple staple, I can get my money’s worth by turning everything into an “and rice” meal.

These are just my tricks to keeping us well-fed and under budget. There are so many more things I can do, and plan to do when I can. Like getting some buckets and doing some container gardening this spring. Having a supply of fresh food outside my door will help us so much. If I had more room I’d try canning again to build back up the stockpile. May have to borrow Christine‘s kitchen from time to time, and pay her in jars of soup and sauces.

What other tips and tricks are there to shopping when your budget is frighteningly tight? I know there are more ideas out there, so lay them on me!
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As long as we’ve been here, I haven’t tried out the actual stove in this RV. Usually, I use the electric hotplate or my crockpot. I’ve been a little nervous trying out the oven here, for fear that I would blow something up. Propane tanks are dangerous, yo.

I’ve gotten a little braver though, and today tried the oven. Turn on the gas, light the pilot, and heat it up. Not too different than a house oven, just smaller. It seems to heat faster than a regular oven, and cook faster too. But with a careful eye on it, I was able to make my first real oven food. And of course, it was cake.

OK, so it was originally banana blueberry bread. I made a few changes and put it in a bunt pan instead of a loaf pan. But it was good, very good. The kids ate it up as fast as they could and begged for more. Even the dog we were watching today gave the sad eyes as I dished up slices.

The recipe was incredibly easy to make, too.

• 2 cups flour
• 2 mashed bananas
• handful fresh blueberries
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• dash of cinnamon
• 1/4 cup sliced almonds

Mix it all together, pour into the bunt pan, bake at 350*F for 20 minutes

It was a great first try in my oven. Next I am going to try to make a loaf of bread and see how well it turns out. I’ve been looking at how to bake bread on a stovetop, but I have limited cookware right now to do it. I’m hoping that after Christmas I can find a couple extra big pans at a thrift store, maybe a new cast iron dutch oven if I’m lucky.

So, now that I’m getting braver, what are some simple recipes that you like for RV cooking? It was to be small, use as few pots and pans as possible, and be easy to clean up. Oh, and it has to pass the kids’ taste tests.

photo credit: poolie

There has been a lot of talk lately about people who receive food stamps and the types of food they eat. One “journalist” frauded the government for food stamps, then spent if all on candy and over-priced food as some sort of “proof” that food stamps are bad. His entire case was that because he blew all the money on crap that wouldn’t last a month, then poor people must do the same thing. Or something.

But that’s not the only issue revolving around food stamps. In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg is having convulsions over people on food stamps buying soda. How dare the poor enjoy a soda now and then! Are there no workhouses left? Yet, Scrooge is hardly the only one complaining. Almost any where you turn to the right, there are complaints about those damn poor people, needing food, and expecting more than just bread and water and public floggings for daring to be poor.

Certainly, buying soda is a concern. It’s practically nothing but corn syrup and water, with a little flavorings and dye tossed in for good measure. The highly subsidized corn growing industry makes growing corn so easy, that almost every thing you eat has some sort of corn product in it. Usually, in the form of high fructose corn syrup. No matter what you are eating, it all comes back to corn.

Which is where the problem really lies. When you are poor, your food has to last the entire month. You aren’t privileged enough to blow it all on crap then write an article about it and rake in a few hundred dollars more. And those empty calories, fueled by corn, are the cheapest things to buy. You can buy 1 apple, or a handful of over-processed crap. When it’s 3 AM, the over-processed crap will be keeping your kids’ stomachs full so they can continue sleeping.

While that corporate spin is as transparent as 7-Up, critics do have a valid point when they argue that the poor turn to junk and fast food not out of ignorance, but because they are generally easier to obtain than fresh produce and other healthier items — and they deliver far cheaper calories. But part of the economic draw derives from farm policies that — through subsidies that create cheap corn-based foods, including soda and meat — inherently disadvantage more healthful items. – AlterNet

We try to eat fruits and vegetables as much as possible, then grains, and at the bottom of the list – meat. And it’s hard. It is difficult to afford real food, when the crap is so much cheaper and readily available. But that’s hardly the fault of the poor, trying to buy what they can with what they have.

If we want to talk about cutting welfare, how about we start with the major producers of high fructose corn syrup saturated foods? How about we stop giving handouts to the companies that mass market cheap, empty calories? How about we give some funding to the farmers that grow real food, instead of the companies making food flavored corn syrup? Maybe, if these foods were cheaper, the poor could afford to buy them?