What's in your fridge?
Posted
Jan 09 2008, 12:22 PM
by
Donna Freedman
Americans spend almost half their food dollars on meals and snacks away from home, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Division. Sociologists have many theories about why this is so: single parents, two-career couples, after-school activities, the demise of cooking in America.
My own theory? When you get home at 6:45 p.m. with a cranky toddler, the last thing you want to do is start peeling potatoes.
Be proactive, the frugal types say. Buy a slow cooker, or prepare and freeze meals on weekends. You might even do these things, at least some of the time. But sometimes you don't. Sometimes life throws a monkey wrench (or a flat tire, or a sick kid) into your plans. And yeah, sometimes you forget to plug in the slow cooker on your way out the door.
Stephanie, a mom of four who writes the Stop the Ride! personal-finance blog, has an ultra-simple solution.
Her approach, which she calls "basics in the fridge," is fairly straightforward: Always, always keep certain staples on hand. Doing so lets you "put (meals) together faster than you can get the kids loaded up to go to a restaurant."
Put some bacon in the beans
Maybe that sounds like common sense to you. It does to me. But some folks didn't grow up watching parents cook (see "demise of cooking in America," above). Or maybe you grew up with a meat-starch-vegetable outlook and so it would never occur to you to serve "breakfast for dinner," a favorite in Stephanie's household. What kid would turn down the chance to have French toast for supper?
The usual milk and eggs are in her fridge, along with things like ranch dressing (it entices even picky eaters to try raw veggies), pepperoni, and mozzarella and cheddar cheeses. Tortillas are a must, both for bean-and-cheese quesadillas and as a substitute for sandwich bread. (PB&J roll-ups, anyone?)
Bacon is another requirement, as a basis for that breakfast-supper and also as a flavor enhancer for green beans and bean soups. Real butter and margarine are both on hand; in another blog post, Stephanie explained that oleo is fine for cooking, but toast needs the flavor of real butter.
Keep it simple
A couple of my own favorite "convenience" foods are hard-boiled eggs and grated Monterey jack cheese. The eggs make easy snacks (I dip them in kosher salt bought at the dollar store) or lunch sandwiches; with a slice of toast, they're a quick breakfast. Pre-shredded cheese costs more, so buy a block instead and grate it as soon as you get home from the supermarket. Just a sprinkle enhances salads or chili, and melts nicely on a grilled sandwich.
What else is in my fridge? Undegermed cornmeal, for cornbread or polenta. Tortillas from the bread outlet, 59 cents for a 20-ounce package. My homemade jams originated from plums donated by a neighbor and from free blackberries; they're surprisingly easy to make (especially the freezer jams), and they do wonderful things for peanut butter or a bagel and cream cheese.
Since cream cheese has a long shelf life, I buy four or five packages when it's on sale for 99 cents or less. Flavored mustards, also on sale regularly, add zing to sandwiches or leftover meats. And I try to keep at least one kind of canned fruit or applesauce chilled, for days when I run out of fresh fruit or when fresh fruit is particularly expensive.
To drink, there's always iced tea (when made with on-sale teabags, it costs as little as 1.1 cents per glass), a pitcher of Wyler's or Crystal Light lemonade (much cheaper than adding fresh lemons to the tea) and a couple of bottles of water. That's tap water, incidentally; buying commercially bottled water is both expensive and environmentally unsound. If your city water stinks, buy a filtering pitcher.
Small effort, big savings
What's not in my fridge, or in Stephanie's? Lots of takeout boxes. Remember that statistic about Americans spending almost half their food budget on sustenance that someone else cooked? That translates to $415 billion per year.
Let's assume you nix even one takeout meal a week -- say, $20 to $50 worth, depending on the size of your household. You'll be saving anywhere from to $1,040 to $2,600 a year. And that's just one meal.
Making sure that your fridge has fresh foods for fast meals is just common sense. Some folks, however, get so mired in the minutiae of daily life that they forget to shop. Stephanie keeps a grocery list on the fridge, and writes down staples as they dwindle. (Imagine how much she's saving each time she doesn't take her six-person family out to eat.)
So stock those fridges, all you drive-through denizens. This plan will save you money. Guaranteed. It also should cut down on the number of little plastic toys on the floor of your car.
