Feeding Your Family in a Fried Economy
by Denise Hansen, MS, CD
Copyright 2011 Denise Hansen
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Introduction
Chapter 2 - Eat at Home
Chapter 3 - Reduce Food Waste
Chapter 4 - Maximize and Minimize
Chapter 5 - Quit Being So Picky
Chapter 6 - Change your Buying Habits
Chapter 7 - Cook with the Kids
Chapter 8 - Organize your Kitchen
Chapter 9 - Cook from Scratch
Chapter 10 - Buy Local
Chapter 11 - Grow your Own
Chapter 12 - Preserve your Harvest
Chapter 13 - Conclusion
Chapter 14 - References
Chapter 1 - Introduction
In the years since writing Eating Off the Grid - storing and cooking foods without electricity, I have realized that, for many people, there was a big gap between where they were and where Eating Off the Grid began. It was difficult for them to make the great leap it would take to actually eat off the grid.
Our world has also changed drastically since then, and there are new reasons to look at changing the way we eat. Food safety, from both chemicals and pathogens, has become more of a concern. The economic downturn has decreased our incomes, while the price of food continues to increase dramatically. People are more environmentally aware of where their food comes from, how it is packaged, and the amount of fossil fuel it takes to grow it and get it here. Perhaps the most important change of all has been the increasing isolation of family members from each other, as electronics of all types connect us to people or fantasy in far away places.
What You Can Expect
Feeding Your Family in a Fried Economy addresses those issues and bridges the gap, to bring more families closer to the place where they can really eat off the grid - the food supply grid, in this case. In this work, I am not addressing whether you use electricity to store and cook your food. Rather, I am trying to gradually release you from the chains of the supermarket in order to obtain your food more locally. Your final goal is to eat basic foods, grown as locally as possible and processed as little as possible. In doing so, you will save money, improve the safety of your food, save the environment, save fuel, and, most important of all, save your family.
Perhaps another name for this book could be “Nurturing Your Family in a Fried Society.” Taking the steps in this book will take time, effort, and teamwork. It cannot be accomplished by edict, but rather by family members discussing, compromising, sharing, and working together. The results will pay off in so many ways. Mentoring your children in adult living skills and working together as partners to accomplish real goals will forge relationships that will last a lifetime.
On the other hand, depending on your personal goals, you may use only certain parts of this book. If your main goal right now is only to lower your grocery bill, then the first few chapters will do the trick. If you have environmental concerns, you may continue a little farther. If, however, you want to improve the safety of your food supply and the strength of your family, you will eventually want to make it all the way through the final chapter. The choice is yours, and you can change your mind along the way.
This Book as a Springboard
This book includes many topics that, in themselves, could make an entire book. My intent is not to give you all the information you will need to accomplish all you plan, but to provide you with a framework, and to point you towards where you may go to find that information. Each family’s situation is unique, so it would be impossible for me to address everyone’s needs. My intent, instead, is to empower you to begin seeking for yourselves to find your own unique answers. In the end, you will be more successful and your solutions more personalized.
This Book as a Workbook
There are record-keeping charts for each chapter that can help you assess your current habits and track your progress. You may download these from Google documents. Go to the Google home page. Note the options bar across the top. Click on “more.” Then click on “documents” from the drop-down menu. If you do not already have one, you will need to establish a Google account. In the opening documents screen, use the search for the template you want, for example, FFFE2. You will be directed to the correct chart for Eating at Home, which you may use on your device or download as a paper copy.
How to Use this Book
Follow the steps in order, as they are arranged with those that require the least change but have the most impact first. Plan on spending at least a month working on each step, for it will take that long to begin to establish a new habit. You will find, as you go on, that the chapters are somewhat interdependent, and you may want to refer back to a previous chapter while working on a later one. For example, while working on the “Cook from Scratch” chapter, you may find that you need to refer back to the chapter on “Change your Buying Habits.” You may also make further progress on an earlier step as you accomplish the tasks in a later step.
Feel free to stop and take a break anywhere you like along this journey. Perhaps, after successfully progressing through the first three steps, your family decides to practice those steps for a time before proceeding further. Or, perhaps you have progressed all the way to buying local, but are not in a position to be able to grow your own at this time. Wherever you stop, remember to keep up on the accomplishments you have already made so that you do not revert to old habits.
Begin by deciding on a time and place to regularly (preferably once a week) spend about an hour together to plan your work on this project. Make it as pleasant and fun as you can, including perhaps a snack to share. Start your meeting by reading and discussing the chapter together. Then make plans for how you will implement the step, based on your family’s particular situation. It is essential that you complete any written work for the chapter in order to make and keep track of your progress.
P-A-R-E
A good way of making progress is the PARE method: plan, act, report, evaluate. If this method is followed during your meetings, you are sure to make the changes you hope for.
Plan
The first step is to plan specifically what you want to do in the next week or weeks. Be sure your plan can be measured in some way to determine its success. Write down your plan and post it where all the family can keep it in mind.
Act
The next step is to act on the plan that you proposed during the week. You may have different tasks for different family members.
Report
Some reporting may be the charts included in this book, but the most significant reporting will be by individual family members sharing the results of their plans and actions in your meetings.
Evaluate
The final step is to evaluate your results. Did our plan bring the desired changes? What went well this past week? What could have gone better? Should we go on with our next plan, or should we rewrite our previous plan to get better results next week? In reality, evaluation is not the final step; it circles around and takes you back to the first step of planning.
Chapter 2 - Eat at Home
The first habit to change is eating out. This single decision of eating at home could make the most difference in your food budget. We may not notice how our habits have changed over the years, but restaurants have. Restaurant business was up 67% in the ten-year period from 1997 to 2007(1).
Financial Benefits
The average grocery bill is $3778 per year, and an additional $2736 is spent eating out (2). Since foods eaten out cost at least 2 to 3 times the actual food cost, $1350 to $1800 could be shaved off your annual food budget by eating at home. That savings works out to $120 to $150 per month. But saving money is only the beginning of the benefits to you and your family when you eat at home more often. And the other benefits may pay off for the entire lifetime of your children and grandchildren.
Health Benefits
According to Washington State University (WSU) Extension, health benefits of eating together include more dietary fiber, less fat, and more fruits and vegetables (3). A similar study by the University of Minnesota (UM) found that frequent family meals led to improved overall nutrition and less risk of unhealthy weight control practices (4).
Social Benefits
WSU also found improved adjustment, communication skills, and school performance, with less incidence of depression, in children whose families ate together more frequently. Both WSU and UM saw in these children less incidence of substance abuse, including drugs, alcohol and smoking. Such benefits will make a difference in the education, employment, health, and lifelong happiness of your children. What is that worth to you?
Time - The Obstacle to Change
The most common reported obstacle to family meals is time. People say they just do not have the time to shop and cook. But Ellyn Satter, a child nutrition expert, responds, “…eating well is one of life's important issues, and parents need to be willing to devote time and energy to it” (5).
Eating has always, until recent times, been one of life’s important issues, as evidenced by the amount of time spent taking care of it. According to the Wellness Council of America, before the 1900s the average American spent most hours of the day preparing meals and gathering, growing, harvesting, and preserving food (6). Today, USDA estimates of meal preparation time for women range from 38-70 minutes per day, inversely proportional to how many hours the woman spends employed outside the home (7).
Change Priorities
So the first hurdle to overcome is rearranging your life priorities and time commitments to allow more time for meal preparation. What are your life goals and priorities? Does the time you spend in certain activities each day reflect those priorities, or do you spend much of your time in the thick of thin things? For many of us, driving, television and the computer are the big time wasters. Depending on how far you go in the process you are now following in this book, you will need a minimum of one hour per day for meal preparation. But you will also be learning many skills in this book to help you be more efficient in shopping for and preparing food. This will help make the time you spend more productive.
Change Viewpoint
Carving out the time is one issue, but changing your viewpoint about that time is another. When you consider the benefits to yourself and your children, can you see the time spent preparing meals together as a treasured memory and learning experience rather than a chore? As for your children, you may need to also adjust their schedules to allow for relaxed mealtime. Many are overscheduled and could benefit from the change.
First Steps
The change to eating at home will take place gradually, as you implement other changes in your purchasing and preparation habits over time. But here are a few suggestions of immediate steps you can take. As you analyze your family’s habits, you will find what will have the most impact for you.
Keep a Record
For this and all succeeding steps in this book, it will be helpful for you to keep track of what your family is actually doing before you can accurately know what needs to be changed and how. Bring up the FFFE2 document from Google docs, so you can track, either on paper or digitally, your family’s eating out expenses and locations for one month. The spreadsheet will tally the figures for you, and the total may surprise you!
The Drive Thru
The Drive Thru is an automatic money waster. Whether it is a fast food establishment or an espresso stand, there is an easy fix: think ahead and take whatever you need from home. This includes beverages, snacks, and take-along meals. It might help to keep a little stash of “emergency” food supplies in the car for unexpected needs.
Doing Lunch
If you are accustomed to eating out for lunch while at work, this is another place where money can be saved. Again, the solution is an obvious “pack your lunch.” School lunches may be an exception, however, because government subsidies keep the prices low enough that the savings of a brown bag lunch may be negligible.
Doing Dinner
To resolve those times when the whole family comes home late and hungry and doesn’t want to take time to fix dinner, keep a few fast dinners on hand in the freezer, either homemade or store bought. Just remember to take it out to thaw that morning, if needed, or have something from a can that only needs heating.
Dining In
The romance of dining out includes the special care taken in meal presentation, the special table setting, the candlelight, maybe flowers, the relaxed atmosphere and the conversation. None of this needs to be lost forever if we dine out less frequently, we can develop the art of dining in! Everyone in the family can help make a dinner extra special and memorable.
It doesn’t matter what you eat, just how you eat it. For example, consider the iconic “bread and water” given to condemned prisoners - not much of a meal. But dress up that bread and water by heating the bread, heating and flavoring the water, dressing up the table and the dishes, and you have the “toast and tea” of English noblemen and women. It’s all in the attitude.
Chapter 3 - Reduce Food Waste
It is estimated that each year, Americans discard more than 96 billion pounds of good food (8). And note, that is only the good food! As reported in Food Production Daily, Timothy Jones has managed a government-financed study of food waste for eight years. He has documented that more than 40 percent of food grown in the United States is lost or thrown away - at a cost of at least $100 billion annually to the economy, and over-taxing the soil and environment (9).
Looking at individual families, Jones estimates an average family of four currently tosses out $590 per year. Other estimates put the figure higher, at $750, or $62 per month. He said Americans - from the farm to the kitchen - aren't aware of the huge amounts of food losses, and cooks often don't think about the food they waste. Jones said even the experts were wrong in estimating how much food is lost through the food chain, and he said at least half of the food discarded isn't really bad and could have been safely consumed.
It is not necessary to complete a chart to determine your family’s current level of food waste. All it takes is a strong stomach and a 5-gallon bucket with a lid. Instead of using the trash or drain disposal, put all of your food waste directly into the bucket for a week or a month and have the whole family see what you have collected, in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Actually, you can periodically track your food waste improvement using the bucket again and comparing the weight to previous measurements. A chart that does the math for you is provided, FFFE3, in Google documents.
Divide and Conquer
Food waste can be divided into several types, depending on where in the meal production process the waste occurs. In all cases, your goal should be to reduce waste to near zero. To solve the food waste problem, it is best to look separately at purchase, storage, preparation and consumption. As you become more aware of your own family’s habits, you will make changes that fit your unique needs.
Reduce food storage waste.
1. Don’t buy it if you almost never eat it, even
if it is on sale.
2. Rotate storage and use before the date on the
label.
3. Check online for storage timelines for refrigerator,
freezer or shelf items.
4. Buy in amounts you can use before it
goes to waste.
Reduce refrigerator food waste.
1. Freeze large amounts of leftovers for an extra
meal.
2. Plan uses for leftovers.
3. Clean out refrigerator at
least weekly, preferable before shopping.
Reduce food preparation waste.
1. After dicing an onion or pepper, for example,
save the remainder in a baggy for another meal.
2. Freeze or
dehydrate small amounts of leftover fruits or vegetables. Remember to
label and date.
3. Bananas that are turning brown can be frozen
right in their peel if you are in a hurry. A few minutes on the
counter or seconds in the microwave, and you can open the end to
squirt out a banana ready for a smoothie or banana bread.
Reduce plate waste.
1. Serve smaller portions, especially to children;
then allow second helpings when done with the first.
2. Start with
small tastes of unfamiliar foods.
3. Make a game of eating bread
crusts and other frequently wasted foods.
4. Remember we are not
encouraging overeating, just less waste. If someone is really full,
they can certainly save their plate for later when they are hungry.
Compost any food waste.
Turn it into good soil! Your county extension is a great place to learn about composting in detail. Most of the gardening books listed in the Grow Your Own chapter explain composting as well. Basically, you alternate thin, 1-2 inch layers, of brown material (dry leaves or loose straw) and green material (grass clippings and food waste). Keep it moist like a damp sponge, and put ¼ - ½ inch of soil on top of each green layer to keep down odors and provide bacteria for decomposition.