Lemons from our friend's tree that he sent us from San Diego

Hello again! It has been a while, I know. This is a post I have been hesitant to share, because I don't want to step on the toes of folks who are truly struggling. I hope I can explain my view without causing offense.

That said, this set of thoughts was brought on by various frugality groups online, and the posts I see there regarding what to cook when you run out of paycheck. My answer is honestly that it shouldn't be that different than what you cook at the beginning of that paycheck. You should have a budget. And your groceries should be part of it. You should not be buying groceries because you have cash, but rather the cash you have should be allocated for the groceries you need. We all have moments of going over that budget, or not being able to afford something, that isn't what I mean, but that you should be stocking your refrigerator, freezer, and pantry for more than the mere immediate need or impulse desire. Unless you find yourself suddenly homeless, or in dire straits because of a catastrophe, even a lost job should not mean that your family is scrounging for food to eat. (And if you are in a terrible situation like these, there are church pantries, food banks, summer meal programs for children, all sorts of resources that you should feel zero shame in utilizing to feed your family - as much as it might embarrass you, too, family and friends, neighbors, are probably more than willing to help you, even a little, even if it is just a weekly dinner at their home, or a one time delivery of groceries).

If you have been reading my blog, or even just these frugality posts, you should already know about how to manage your budget with regards to your kitchen and family needs. So, unless you have been out of work for six months or a year or more, you should have a home stocked with foods your family will eat happily. It's true that you might be low on produce by that point, but you should still have frozen vegetables and storage vegetables like potatoes, onions, carrots, squash, cabbages, and so on, to help add variety to your meals.

So, rather than try to figure out how to make a packet of ramen and a leftover Halloween bag of gummi bears into dinner for your family, check your inventory. See what meats you have, what produce you have, what rice/potato/pasta/bread products you have, and plan your meals around those, using whatever seasonings and fats you have.

How can you do this, though, if you don't have the money for it right now? It will take a shift in mindset and a change in how you plan; it will take knowing what foods you have in your home already. Besides that, my approach is to plan our budget based on the previous check, rather than the current one. So, for instance, we are coming up on our mid-month check and the bills I have earmarked for that check are the ones that are actually due between the first and the middle of next month. This automatically gives us about a two week leeway, should some glitch happen with direct deposit, or should the paycheck have a mistake in it. We can work on getting that corrected or have the check actually deposited, without any bills being directly dependent on it at that point. I also plan a certain amount of money, based on what we have and how we eat, and I set it apart on each check for groceries. That's basic, right? I shop based on that budget, and as I've shared before, I shop first, keeping the budget, and then plan our meals afterward, so I can best use what is on sale and in season and plentiful at excellent quality. Most of my weekly (bi-weekly, really) budget is for foods and products that we can stock up on, rather than on immediate meal needs. I spend probably about 50% on produce and meat that is a good price and can be used over those two weeks and stored in our pantries or freezers longer than that, about 20% on dairy and other food products, about 20% to replace things that we use all the time (like flours, oils, seasonings, etc), as we get down to two or three packages (in our house that means two 50 pound bags of bread flour, two gallons of safflower oil, etc, this will depend on how much your family uses and how), and about 10% on paper/cleaning/sanitary/vitamin products, etc. that we need.

What this means is that, like our budget paying the next check's bills on this one, we rarely actually run out of anything we need. We also keep emergency feminine products, pads and tampons, toilet paper, and we used to keep extra packages of diapers and wipes, in the cars, so if we are out and about we aren't without them, but also if it really comes down to it, we can grab one from there, and use it if we are in dire need. This came in handy during the great toilet paper shortage of 2020. In fact, Rich told me to cover up the TP in our mini-van and maxi-van trunks so that nobody would see them and break into our cars just to get it. I digress, however. Since I have a good inventory of our pantry foods and what is in our freezers, I can plan meals from that, even if we have no fresh produce at all. I do prefer to eat with fresh produce and dairy, and so on, but if we are seriously in an emergency situation, or are just stuck because people have been sick, or extraordinarily busy, and haven't shopped at the grocery store, we still have enough food in our house to feed everyone. In fact, because of how we store food in our pantries and freezers, we really could feed the whole family for possibly a year. At the end of the year, our meals might be a bit boring, but we would be fed and well nourished. And until we hit the six month point, we would still be eating quite well and varied.

One thing I didn't mention was planning for emergencies. We do also keep bottled water, which is not quite enough honestly, so we can drink and cook if some terrible natural disaster or the supply chain breaks down entirely, or our well dries out completely. We do have one local emergency source of water on our property, and for the spring and summer, and into October, we have access to the irrigation ditch, for water for our animals and/or boiling to use to clean and cook. The main point of this isn't that kind of emergency, though. It isn't even really the financial emergency I want to address, but the basic, how to manage our money and our food, so we aren't stuck with bizarre combinations of food just because there are a couple days until our next paycheck arrives.

Previous Posts:
Make it at Home
Grocery Shopping
Waste Not, Want Not
Soup
The Celery Stalks at Midnight
Use What You Have
Combining Trips
Storing Bulk Purchases
Turn It Off
Grow Your Own
Buying in Bulk
Gleaning
Entertainment on the Down Low
Finding Fun Locally
Holiday Shopping
Reconsidering Convenience
More Bang for Your Grocery Buck
Preserving the Harvest
Revisiting Kitchen Strategies
Extreme Frugality
Bargain Getaways
Cultivating or Curating Abundance
Making Your Own Snacks and Treats
How Weird Is Too Weird? Things We Don't Think of Eating
Fuel Costs
Quick Hint on Eggs
What's in Your Refrigerator (Revisited)
Taking Stock
Garbage Management

Labels: Family, Frugality, Homemaking, Tales from the Kitchen

// posted by Ranee @ Arabian Knits @ 2:15 PM