25 Lbs of Flour

In case you hadn't noticed, grocery prices are climbing through the roof. All dairy products have gone sky-high, eggs have gone sky-high, and now flour and wheat products are skyrocketing. And buckle up, kids, because the ride isn't over yet. Whether it's the fault of increasing demand for biofuels or global warming, we can all expect to continue paying record prices not just for our gasoline, but also for our food. When you're on a limited budget and trying to stretch your food dollars, it makes you consider how much milk your family consumes on a weekly basis and whether you could cut down a bit.

In an effort to assist our bottom line, I am breaking out some new frugal techniques to get the most bang for our food buck. I've already stockpiled a supply of frozen loaves of bread, good enough to last our family for at least four more months. I'm seriously considering buying powdered milk and using that in recipes instead of regular milk, but I've put the idea on pause for the time being because honestly I don't have that many recipes that call for milk instead of water or cream. We use a lot of cream and we drink a lot of milk. I am thinking about switching to mostly soy milk, but that's not any less expensive and would really be for my own health. It would do nothing to help our grocery budget.

I have also eliminated the mental 'necessity' of a weekly trip to the grocery store. We are pretty well stocked up on most things, so I've just been coasting along on what we have instead of gleaning bargains from the Grocery Game. At this stage of the game, unless I know we will consume it in the coming month or so, I am not buying it. This will force us to use what we already have, as opposed to switching to the new thing just because it's new in the pantry and we want a change. This should lead to less waste, in theory. I've also been re-purposing things like leftover Easter candy. I had a lot of chocolate eggs left over when our neighborhood Easter egg hunt was cancelled due to rain, so I packaged them all up in two gallon size Ziploc bags. Instead of using chocolate chips in cookies, I'm pounding up the mini Cadburys eggs and using those as sort of broken up M&M chunks. I will probably break down and unwrap all the Hersheys eggs to use in a similar manner.

And I finally yielded and bought a 25 lb bag of flour at Costco, along with a 10 lb bag of white sugar. I was tempted by the bag of organic sugar, but to paraphase the words of Marge Simpson, "We can't afford to shop with a philosophy." I'm not sure how I'm going to store the flour yet. I have a shelf open in the second freezer, so that will probably become the receptacle for at least 10 lbs of flour. I don't have designated Tupperware containers, which could prove problematic. I have a couple of large ones though that I can designate as the freezer flour containers, seeing as I hardly use them anyway. Or I can stick with my popular gallon size freezer bags and just scoop away until I've whittled down the in-house supply. Even with the 25 lb bag, I received a sticker shock with the price tag of $9.79. I remember contemplating the flour purchase a month ago and it was only $7.99! That's a 22% increase in a month--ridiculous!

I also bought an enormous quantity of yeast. I am going to go forth with yeast breads and such to see if we can avoid paying exorbitant costs for French bread and plain sandwich bread when we finish up our frozen supply. I have copied Tamarian's blog about her current favorite bread recipe, and I plan to play around with it once I get the hang of it, adding other grains to try to mimic our favorite (but pricey) 8 grain bread from Costco. If I can get the hang of making flour tortillas and naan bread, I will be golden!

I'm also going to be deadly serious about our vegetable garden this year. I am not keen to pay for things which I can grow myself, and fortunately DS is old enough this year to play outside for a bit while I do a bit of maintaining the garden. Hopefully DD will be helpful in keeping him entertained, if not actually helpful in maintaining the garden. I will have to wait a few years for our fruit trees to yield fruit, so I am just going to have to hope for some scores on fruit from eastern WA this summer and fall, or perhaps at our local farmers markets. There are always our neighbors' fruit trees, too. I am asking for the Ball Book of Canning, so I can learn how to safely put up some of these goodies. And I hope to get enough tomatoes from the garden to make some basic marinara sauce and can that, saving us on some pricey Trader Joe's pizza & marinara sauces.

It's all going to be part of the continuing education curve for the whole grocery budget, but there is nothing to be gained from just seeing a larger part of our budget eaten up by rising food costs. I can try my best to save us some money and get us a little more self-sufficient in the process, which I think is a good lesson in frugality in and of itself. The more flexibility in the budget, the faster we pay off debt and get really rolling with retirement and other savings vehicles. It's all part of contributing to our bottom line.

So, how are you coping with the food price pinch?