Tip #22 - Buy a farm share

It's that time of year when you can juuuuuuust about smell spring in the air, but there's still snow on the ground. That time of year when the days are getting longer but still not long enough. That time of year when you start thinking about how nice it will be when fresh fruit and vegetables start growing again.

For those of us who aren't lucky enough to be able to "grow our own" for reasons of time, money, or simple lack of garden space, a great alternative is to buy a farm share or participate in a community farming association.  Community Supported Agriculture programmes are available in several countries and regions. Just google "CSA [your area]" to find one near you. By doing this, I've found CSA farms in many Canadian provinces and US states, as well as in England.

Here's the basic principle:
A farmer sells a certain number of "shares" to individuals in the community.
Individuals purchase these shares in late winter or early spring (aka NOW), providing farmers with starter income for the upcoming season.
The farmer then provides its shareholders with weekly or bi-weekly 'baskets' of produce from the farm throughout the production season. Shareholders usually have to pick up their shares at a pre-determined location.

However, if the farm has a good season, shareholders can make gains too, as the equivalent cost of the produce is higher than the initial cost of the share.

So you're supporting local farmers, and getting discounted produce at the same time. Oh, and did I mention that these farms often use organic methods, and many are actually certified organic? Sounds like win-win-win to me!

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a gamble. If there is a poor harvesting season, or if the farmer is unable to maintain the farm for whatever reason, you may not receive your food. Read the terms and conditions of the shares closely before you buy to make sure you understand the potential risks.

Look around to find a farm which suits your needs. There are certified organic farms, there are some which allow you to substitute fresh produce with preserves, there are some which provide smaller baskets, or more flexibility, or who offer home delivery. Some also provide meat or eggs. Also consider the growing period - some farms grow produce with a smaller harvesting window, so will provide you with fewer baskets through the summer, whereas others will continue into the fall.

This year, I'm splitting a farm share with a friend. Each share should be enough to satisfy both of us and then some. We're getting 23 weeks' worth of baskets, starting in May. You can be sure there will be photos in good time! I can't wait!

Tip #21 - Take advantage of your supermarket... legally

I went food shopping today! For most people, that's a pretty boring task. But for me, it's always an adventure, even more so since I started on my $35/week budget. Delicious-looking food seems to jump off the shelves, trying to force their way into my basket, and I have to fend off the onslaught.

I've found that the best way to spend as little money as possible in the supermarket is to know my supermarket's secrets - the ins and outs of their pricing and specials, to take full and legal advantage of what they have to offer.

Of course, the most famous example of taking large-scale legal advantage of supermarkets is from the TV show Extreme Couponing. This works very well in many US states, but not so well where I live. Coupons really don't exist to the same extent, and are only offered on brand name products, and the savings are often small.

Instead I use two tricks which have served me well in both the UK and back in Canada: reduced for sale items and multibuy offers.

Reduced for sale

These items are reaching their best-before or sell-by dates, and stores need to clear them out quickly. They may be placed in a separate section, or have identifying stickers stating the percentage reduction or the new price. In England, these stickers seemed to be universally yellow, but in the supermarket nearest to me now, they're giant and pink (often covering up the product name or description!)

When buying reduced for sale items, check the best before date. This could be a few days away, but the product will still be edible even after this date. If the product has a use-by date, make sure you will consume the entire product before that date.

Any item which is reduced for sale and which can be frozen (such as meat or bread) is an even better bargain! Put the meat into a freezer bag (in portions, if it's chicken breasts or thighs, or ground meat) and stick it in the freezer until you will use it. Then, fully defrost when desired and cook it immediately. Bread will last at least a few days after defrosting.

Sometimes these reductions take place at specific times during the day or week. A few hours before closing is often a good time - as the store tries to get everything sold as fast as possible. 

Today I got lucky and found some reduced for sale yoghurt (best before the 7th) and orange juice (best before the 6th), both reduced by 50%. In fact, since the orange juice's reduction didn't go through at the check-out, I got a 100% reduction from customer services!

Multibuy offers

These can be useful, but also dangerous. Investigate the available multibuys before you get to the supermarket, either online or through the store's weekly flyer. Multibuy offers can lure you into the exhilarating feeling of getting a bargain, even when you don't need the item, and planning ahead will help you avoid these temptations.

Multibuys on pantry essentials are especially good. Stock up when the items are cheap. If there are multibuys for fresh produce, use it as an excuse to eat more fruit and vegetables or try new things. But make sure you use them! A multibuy offer is no good if the food goes to waste.

I'm having particular fun with multibuy offers in Canada, because the laws here seem to require multibuy pricing to extend to the individual items. So, for example, a 2 for $5 deal means that each item must be individually priced at $2.50 each. So my box of cereal, normally $5.58, currently on offer at 2 for $6, cost me only $3, even though I only bought one! Fantastic!


These are just two examples of ways to get the most out of your supermarket, which are well used in both Canada and the UK. Are there any tricks that you use?

Recipe: Gigantor pot of pasta sauce

Mmmm pasta. Food of the gods and the budget-conscious.

But what to put on those wiggly or fun-shaped noodles? Store-bought pasta sauces can be really expensive, and the cheap-o alternatives can be questionably tasteless or full of salt. Blegh.

And you definitely don't want to make fresh sauce each time you want pasta. Even for a big family, that can be a huge headache.

So here's the solution, which is also a family recipe. I'm naming it the Gigantor pot of pasta sauce. It's pretty darn big.

Ingredients

olive oil
2 medium onions, diced
4-6 cloves of garlic, minced (or more if you like extra garlicky sauce!)
2-ish pounds of lean ground beef (or other meat; get whatever's on sale, special, or reduced for quick sale)
2 large jars of plane jane spaghetti sauce (I used ones that are 700mL)
1 tin (540mL) of Lentils
1tsp Marmite*
1 sachet or cube Beef bouillon
3 bay leaves
Ground pepper/sea salt to taste

Instructions

1. Sauté the onions and garlic in a large dollop of oil until soft and translucent
2. Add beef. Attack the beef with a wooden spoon while it cooks, continuously breaking it up and turning it over until there's no pink left.
3. Add the spaghetti sauce, lentils, Marmite, bouillon, and bay leaves. Swirl a little water inside the sauce jars to make sure all the delicious saucy goodness is in your pot.
4. Bring to a boil, then lower the temperature and simmer for 45 minutes. Stir every so often to make sure everything's combining.
5. Add salt and pepper to taste - you may want to add a bit of sugar as well if the tomato taste is too strong. Remove bay leaves.
6. Enjoy!
7. Realize you have REDICULOUS amounts of leftovers, excavate all your freezer containers. Portion out and freeze.


Let's put it this way. When I cooked this two weeks go, I ended up with 6 Tupperware sack pots, and 2 soup containers, in addition to what I was eating. That's roughly 10 individaul servings. For less than $10, since I bought the beef when it was reduced for quick sale. I still have two pots left.

That's a whole lot of pasta sauce!

Side note: if you don't feel up to boiling water and making some pasta, this sauce also tastes great on a microwaved baked potato. Cover it with cheddar cheese for some added inexpensive deliciousness.

Side note 2 (18/2/13): I made more sauce today, and added in some bacon and a spare red pepper I had leftover in the fridge. Thrown in whatever you have on hand to bulk it out - don't waste good food!

*Marmite is, in my opinion, disgusting on it's own. It's like salted tar. But it's like magic beef sauce when used with mince.

Tip #20 - Cook in bulk, freeze in portions

I started a crazy budget plan last week. When I first planned it out I was positive the hardest category would be the food. I mean, $35/week for food? That's not a whole lot, right? Boy was I wrong.

Though I have gone over my weekly food limit for both weeks, that was mainly due to my stocking my cupboards with staples, spices, etc. In fact, I'll probably only spend about $15 next week, and that's partly because butter is on sale and I plan to stock up.

The way I've managed this is by first buying and cooking in bulk. I'm not talking about bulk in the normal sense - there are no 5kg bags of pasta or rice in my cupboards. But for my only mouth to feed, I certainly don't need 3kg of ground beef. But it was on sale, so I bought it. And then froze it in two 1.5kg batches. I also bought a whole chicken (also on sale - see how this works?) and froze it.

The next step is to cook in bulk. I'll make portions big enough for an entire family, even though it's just me eating. I take what I want for my meal, then separate the rest into freezer containers. This way, my food stays fresh, and future preparation takes all of three minutes.

In the past two weeks I've made:

- A giant pot of pasta sauce (9 servings)
- A shepherd's pie (4 servings)
- Squash soup (5 servings)
- Carrot soup (5 servings)
- Whole chicken (1 serving + 2 pots of leftovers)
- Chicken and vegetable soup (5 servings, from various leftovers)
- 2 loaves of bread (1 frozen)
- 2L of granola (this is about what I'll eat in a week and a half; no freezing required, but is possible)

I'll also admit to the fact that I also have frozen perogies as a lazy-day meal.

My normal shopping day is Saturday (only 2 days away), yet my freezer is full, and so is my fridge. So I will likely not need to buy anything aside from my butter this week. And maybe treat myself to some pickles. I know, I'm pretty intense.

This trend may change eventually. I may find that, one day, $35 is just not enough to feed me for the week. But for now, I'm buying in bulk, cooking in bulk, and freezing in portions.


Extra added bonus time: home-cooked food has made me feel incredibly full. I'm eating less by volume than I normally would. If I had a set of scales, I'd guess I'm probably losing weight too. So I'm saving money and taking care of my body too!

Tip #12 - DIY Frozen Berries

My Dad and I went to the supermarket yesterday, and joy of joys, there was a sale on blackberries! Four tubs for $5. Clearly, they were trying to get rid of their stock before they all went furry.

So we bought four. And took them home. And then I spent the whole night thinking what the heck we're going to do with four tubs of blackberries which are about to go furry in a house which doesn't have any baking ingredients (because the obvious answer would be blackberry apple pie or crisp, but my Dad doesn't have flour... don't ask).

So I thought I'd try freezing them.

Anyone who has tried freezing fruit before knows that throwing them into a tupperware container or a freezer bag as-is turns the berries into a giant messy mess which is essentially inedible. My awesome Menonite cookbook, however, suggested freezing them on a baking tray, not touching, before tipping them into a container. And... it works! Three of the four tubs successfully frozen and no mushy berries.

The best part is, you can now stock up on fruit (or vegetables) which are at the end of their life-cycle and being sold cheaply, and preserve them for a significantly longer period of time, AND save the premium that store-bought frozen berries and vegetables have on them. Win-win!

Tutorial: DIY Frozen Berries

1 - Arrange your berries neatly on a baking tray. My Dad doesn't have a baking tray, so I used some oven bakeware.

2 - Put into freezer for about an hour until hard (the time will depend on the type of fruit). This can be tested by throwing at people's heads, but it's inadvisable.

3 - When hard, pour into a freezer bag or tupperware and put back into freezer until ready to eat!

This can also be used to freeze par-boiled vegetables, but I haven't tried it yet, though it's on my to-do list.

Turkey day dress(ing) rehearsal

It’s Thanksgiving in Canada!  The time of year where we say thank you for everything we have by wasting money and food.  The post-Thanksgiving food-related financial depression is only beaten by the post-Christmas one.  So here’s an idea: treat Thanksgiving as a rehearsal for Christmas.

This isn't really a tip, it's more of a suggestion because I haven't actually done this myself.  But I think it just might work and might save you a load of money.

 

Traditional Thanksgiving and traditional Christmas meals in Canada are very similar: giant turkeys, sweet potatoes, roast potatoes, roast veg, cranberry jelly, stuffing, gravy, Brussels sprouts, pumpkin pie, the list of “requirements” just goes on and on.  I put “requirements” in parentheses, because it’s important to question whether they are indeed requirements.  Is it important to have a giant turkey for just five people?  Is it important to have a whole bowl full Brussels sprouts on the table if only one person eats them?

With Thanksgiving so soon, it’s probably too late to change the preparations now.  But you have a great chance to learn from any mistakes made this time around and apply the learning to Christmas.  I’ve made an equation for you.  I call it the Turkey equation.  

 

L = (T - Te) / n , where  Te = T - Tl

L = leftovers (in kg or whichever unit is most appropriate)

T = Turkey (in kg - can be replaced by any other food item, in whichever unit is most appropriate)

Te = Turkey eaten (can equally be replaced by any other food item)

Tl = Turkey left (can still be replaced by any other food item)

n = number of people eating.

The idea is to bring L as close to 0 as possible.  Unless you’re absolutely madly in love with Turkey leftovers sandwiches, and can eat them for the rest of your life, in which case your goal is probably to maximise L for those items but minimize it for others. 

Example 1.  Say you have 24 Brussels sprouts (T = 24), and only your great aunt Agnes likes to eat them (n = 1).  But great aunt Agnes is 94 and has the stomach the size of a quarter, so can only manage 2 of them (Te = 2).  You’re left with L = 22.  Problem!  We want to minimize this!   

Solution: make fewer Brussels sprouts.  Perhaps present them on an individual plate for great aunt Agnes, all pretty and garnished, so she feels special and included.  Maybe include an extra one for each child under 18, so you can threaten to make them eat them. 

Example 2.  You have a 60 lb turkey.  You have 50 guests over, which you would think would mean the 60 lb bird would be perfect for.  But 25 of them have become vegetarian over the past year, and suddenly your n is cut in half, leaving you with masses and masses of leftover turkey. 

Solution: Rethink your Christmas needs.  You’ll need to get a smaller turkey and provide a vegetarian alternative.  It’s too late for Thanksgiving – but don’t throw away that turkey!  Make turkey pasta sauces, turkey casserole, turkey soup, turkey stir fry, and freeze them for consumption over the next month.  But save some for sandwiches.

Example 3. You are super-thrifty and only bought one can of cranberry jelly because traditionally your family doesn’t use much of it.  But this year your two kids taste cranberry jelly and suddenly decide they like it and could pretty much eat it with a spoon.  That leaves you with L = -1; in other words, you’re missing a can.

Solution: Canned cranberry jelly doesn’t go off, so make sure you have an extra one available.  Only open one at first, but keep the others close by, just in case jelly lovers come over for dinner.  If they don’t, you can save them for next year.  It’s a better solution than opening two and dumping one and a half at the end.

So, by calculating your equations carefully, you can reduce your leftover nightmares and your financial loss and still have a great turkey dinner with all the real requirements. 

Alternatively, do what my family is doing: have a meal that everyone loves, and to hell with tradition.  In our case, it’s ham, scalloped potatoes, and apple pie for dessert.  Yum!!!

Happy Turkey (ham?) day!

Tip #6 – Eat what you pay for

This article on CBC.ca today was a real eye-opener.  Over half of the food waste in Canada comes from households throwing out small amounts of leftovers, slightly-over the sell-by date food, and sketchy vegetables.

I’m not innocent of throwing out food – but I always feel terrible when I do it, and it’s usually become a mini-ecosystem before I get to that stage.

There is an environmental side to this issue, but again, this is a blog about saving money.  If you’re throwing half your food away before eating it, that’s half your food budge squandered!

So here are my tips to make sure you waste as little money on uneaten food as possible.

1 – Write a meal plan.  Plan out your week’s meals in advance, thinking about what ingredients you will need, what ingredients you already have, and fill in the gaps with a shopping list.  It’s also a good way to avoid eating out too often as a snap decision, as you already have your plan ahead of time.  It’s often useful to include a “leftovers” day in your week’s meal plan, to help you think about saving food for a future date.

2 – Separate the items on your shopping list (also, use a shopping list…).  I use four categories: meat, fruit/veg, other food, and other (toilet paper, washing up liquid, etc).  This nicely separates out my perishable from non-perishable foods, so I can think about what should be bought when.  It also helps with planning out what I need for my meals so I don’t miss anything.

3 – Shop in batches.  If you’re a Saturday shopper, continue as normal, but only buy your ‘meat,’ ‘other food,’ and ‘other’ sections.  Reserve the fruit/veg section to purchase in two or three batches throughout the week, according to what your meal plan is.  For instance, if you need four peppers on Tuesday, and another four on Thursday, there’s no point buying all eight during the Saturday shop.  Instead, visit your local farmer’s market, small supermarket, or local store multiple times per week, picking up only what you need.  The pain of slightly higher vegetable prices will be more than made up by the fact that you’re not throwing things out every week.

4 – Invest in good freezer-ware.  Freeze any leftovers which you think may be left uneaten during the week.  This will drastically increase the life of the leftovers – and may save you from an expensive desperate take-out in the future! 

5 – Understand sell-by and use-by dates.  Sell-by dates are the date before which stores must sell the item.  YOUR FOOD IS STILL FINE!  DON’T THROW IT OUT!  Use-by is the date before which the manufacturer guarantees the product is safe to eat, given normal conditions (ex. refrigeration).  Your milk will not suddenly go off on the use-by date, but a sniff test is advised.  I’m usually happy to eat items up to two days after the use-by date, using sniff and squeeze tests, depending on the item.

6 – Cut off the bad bits if possible.  A little mould on a corner of a loaf of bread hasn’t penetrated the whole loaf – yet.  Same with cheese.  Equally, a small bruise on a piece of fruit can be removed and the rest of the fruit is just fine.  Promise J

7 – Think about the starving children in China/Africa/next door.  You are incredibly lucky to be able to afford to throw out food.  Many aren’t.  By not spending money on wasted food, you can save your pennies to make sure you stay lucky for longer.  I put this one last because I don’t believe in guilt-tripping.  But if it helps you to keep seemingly small things in perspective, then it’s worth it.

Happy October!