I often hear/read comments to those who are frugal in general areas, about how unrealistic and time consuming it must be.  I want to address that as it applies specifically to food planning.  After all, saving on your food bill generally means cooking from scratch, shopping carefully, and planning ahead, so obviously only a tiny percentage of the population could ever find time for that!  After all, the rest of us actually have a life!

 I think the amount of time that people estimate has to be spent in the kitchen is significantly over estimated. And in fact, cooking from scratch doesn’t need to take much longer than buying ready made food, particularly when you take into account the time savings of planning ahead (for example, it keeps you from running in and out of the stores several times a week).

I’m a busy mom with eight kids ranging from 1-15 years old, all of whom are home all day.  That means I need to homeschool everyone while taking care of a one and two year old, run my business, have time to spend with my husband and kids in a relaxed way, and have personal time as well as time for my friends, in addition to serving three meals a day! How in the world could I keep our budget to $600 a month for our family of ten (I’m not yet used to the sound of such a  high monthly amount, since I raised it by $100 recently :)) if it meant hours every day in the kitchen?!? 

No, cooking from scratch and shopping with an eye for bargains definitely doesn’t take nearly as much time as you might think.  I probably spend less time shopping than the majority of people – I take one day a month and buy everything, with another hour thrown in later in the month to restock the veggies.  The main factor involved in cooking from scratch is: planning ahead.

For example, dried beans have a reputation for being time consuming and unrealistic to make at home.  But dried beans actually take less than five minutes of hands on time.  That’s hardly longer than the time it would take to open a couple of cans of beans!  Here’s what you do: first you soak them overnight – fill a pot with water, and dump in the beans – less than one minute.  Once they’re soaked, put fresh water in the pot and put them on the fire – another minute. Cooking them takes a while, but once you’ve turned the fire on, there’s no other energy involved except being home and turning the fire off when they’re done.  That can be done when you get home from a long day of work, and they can be turned off before you go to bed – in other words, anyone could find time to do this.  It doesn’t take any more time to do a large amount than a small amount, and if you do a big potful, you can bag them into portion size amounts, and put them in your freezer. 

What about breakfast?  Hot cereals take just a few minutes to prepare.  And if you soak your oatmeal, for example, the night before, then you can further cut down cooking time, and in the morning all you need to do is heat it up and it’s ready to eat – five minutes, max.  And that means even a large amount for a big family – it could take almost that long to pour bowls of cold cereal and milk for everyone!  Mixing up a batch of muffins for breakfast or baked oatmeal takes more time, but even this takes only about fifteen minutes, can easily be doubled or quadrupled (so your time and energy are maximized, and you have future batches to pull out of the freezer for your own fast food), and can be mixed up the night before.  The next morning, just pop it into the oven when you get up, and by the time everyone is dressed and at the table, pull out a fresh batch of muffins or a breakfast loaf.  Scrambled eggs are another quick dish.  French toast, pancakes, and waffles can all be made ahead and frozen, though I like to make them fresh, usually on Sundays, when our schedules are less full. 

What about dinners?  There are lots of kinds of dishes to make, but I keep it simple.  I enjoy cooking, but I enjoy relaxing over a good picture book with my toddler or reading a chapter book to my middle kids more, so that’s where I’d rather spend my time.  Baked potatoes, pasta, and rice make for quick and easy side dishes, and you can quickly teach your kids how to make these.  There are so many possible dishes that I can’t really even start to list ideas here, but I already mentioned that we do a lot of stew-type meals in the winter – throw a bunch of compatible ingredients together and heat.  🙂  Tonight I defrosted some chili, mixed it with cooked beans in the fridge, and heated them together.  We had tacos with the chili mix and brown rice for our main dish, with some carrot kugel on the side – again, not much  hands on time spent, but a tasty and filling dinner. 

Now I know that some families expect something much more elaborate than that, but frugality isn’t only about saving money.  The time I have is limited and of value to me, and I spend it as such.  I won’t make three different meals to accomodate picky eaters – which is probably why none of our kids have ever been picky eaters, and I won’t make a three course meal every night.  My goal is tasty, nutritious food that nourishes everyone, eaten together in a relaxing environment where we can talk, share, and connect.  Life is all about making choices, and fancy foods aren’t going to enhance my goals, so that’s one decision made. 

Remember, most of the time it takes to prepare food is spent not in preparing it, but in actually baking or cooking it, but that’s a passive process that doesn’t involve any of your energy.  Once you organize your prep time, you’ll find you can get a lot done in much less time than you might have previously expected.

There are things that I do that take more time than this, like canning or dehydrating.  I’m not going to try to convince you that doing it will save you time.  I don’t do those things to save time, I do them to save money and for the convenience of having it there when I need it.  That includes situations as simple and common as when I’m out all day and didn’t think to pull something out of the freezer to defrost early enough, to the less likely scenario of losing power and the food in my freezer being spoiled.  But these aren’t necessary to keep your food bill low by any means – I didn’t start canning or dehydrating until this year, and my food budget has been very low for many, many years.  In some ways, I’ve probably added to my food costs by doing this, because I buy more than what I need for the month in order to preserve some for later on. 

Avivah