Lately I’ve been thinking about stretching money, which is one of my least favorite things to think about EVER. I have been poor on and off for a long time, due to either carelessness or circumstance (mostly that, I swear) and it gets old.

Some of the best advice SeaFed’s grandma gave me before she died was, “Work hard in your twenties, it’s okay to be poor then. But being poor in your thirties sucks.” I didn’t know what she meant then, exactly. Would it just be that years of grinding poverty would have taken its toll by then? Would I look and feel ancient like those pictures of dustbowl farmers during the Depression? Maybe. I think what she meant was that a person would likely have children by the time they were in their thirties, and secondly that I am having this feeling of wanting to be settled and have a nice adult life. To be able to take little trips like the one we did to Portland recently, to see family, or to have people over for dinner and to be able to serve them any old weird thing you want.

So I started thinking about how to save money on food. Was this possible? I had fooled myself into thinking I was doing really well, but the total kept creeping up. As I was thinking about how to save money on food, I was also thinking we were kind of screwed, since we like to buy organic, and I decided to cut out as much corn syrup as possible. If there is a corn syrup-free alternative, I will buy it. If not, I will decide how badly I want it. So this has bumped us up to the four dollar-plus loaves of bread range. Delicious and local to be sure, but the way my little termites nom through it, was it worth it? I know one of the biggest ways to save money at the grocery store is to cut out junk food, usually defined as processed food. I thought, we don’t do that much; it’s usually “whole” or fresh foods that we assemble.

But I was fooling myself again. I may not be buying Cheetos, but I was sometimes buying expensive cheese. This is fun sometimes, but I can’t make it a habit. Also wine, which I love, but it’s another extra. I am trying now to think in terms of money and “do I really need these calories, or can I just wait til dinner?” God I love cheese. But junk food has to be anything that is just making my ass bigger.

Fortuitously, this article on how to save money at the grocery store fell into my lap a couple of days later. It’s a good read, full of some stuff I knew, but needed reminding of. Some stuff I wasn’t even thinking about, like the extra cost of canned beans (“expensive water”) versus dried. I followed links and started reading about making your own staples, which will help with my termite problem.

A couple of days after that, Dietgirl got into the act with an entry about budgeting. I feel like the universe is trying to tell me something here.

I buy bulk now and have for quite a while, and fresh veggies, and chickens to part out, that sort of thing, but now am going further. I have resurrected my neglected bread machine. I haven’t mathed it out yet, but I am guessing that loaves of mostly organic, preservative-free bread are now costing me around a dollar with very little labor. I have stopping buying string cheese and am now sending them out the door with a slice of cheese in their hand if they are hungry. I am going to try my hand at making yogurt, which I hear is delicious and a savings even with organic milk as a base. My neighbor does it all the time…I figure it can’t be too hard.

Lucky for me, and you know me, I like to cook anyway. I’ll let you know how it’s going.