Last time, I wrote about living on $25 a week if you are homeless, nearly homeless, or living without certain essential amenities like refrigeration or a working stove.
This time, we'll look at a common diet on a $100 a month food budget if you do happen to have a place to live that has refrigeration and a working stove, where you have electricity.
You still live in an Oklahoma food desert, though, and have access to convenience stores, Walgreens, and Braum's (an ice cream store that has added meat and produce).
With the luxury of a refrigerator and stove, you apportion your food budget a bit differently, spending most of it at the front of the month, and only buying perishables weekly. This diary presupposes you don't know any of the tricks and tips I know for eating well on less. You never learned these things, and you're doing the best you can with what you have and know.
We're going to assume you have a saucepan and a skillet, a mixing bowl, a cookie sheet and possibly a cake pan and the assorted utensils and dishes to go with.
So, let's parse it out.
Because you have a refrigerator and a stove and can pay the electric bill to keep both functioning, you plot out what meals you will eat for the month: on average 30 breakfasts, 30 lunches, 30 dinners, and possibly 30 snacks. You want the healthiest you can manage.
You can buy most of the following at Braum's, some can be purchased at a 7-11, and the dairy can be purchased at a Walgreen's. The dairy is cheaper at Walgreen's, but better at Braum's. Some Walgreen's and some 7-11s now carry bags of flour and sugar, and cooking oil.
10 pounds of potatoes should last a month, and they often go on sale at the first of the month for $3.00.
Carrots are another keeper vegetable, and you can often find them on sale 2 pounds for $1. A pound should get you through a week. The pre-peeled "baby carrots" are expensive, but the regular full sized carrots are 8 - 10 carrots a pound, and 1 carrot is sufficient for a meal. That means you spend $2.00 on carrots for the month.
Cabbage is more expensive than it used to be, but a single cabbage can be made up into 5 or 6 meals, and it keeps well, so $5 worth of cabbage lasts a month.
You can buy flour, salt, pepper, sugar, cooking oil. Those will cost you: 5 pounds flour ($2), 1 box salt (69¢), 1 shaker pepper ($1), 4 pounds sugar ($3), 1 quart cooking oil ($3) = $9.69
You're up to $19.69
You can splurge on meat - a bit - because your refrigerator has a freezer compartment. Bypass the hot dogs and lunch meats and go for the "remaindered" roasts and whole chickens. These are often at their sell-by date, and will be good for a couple of days if not frozen. You can buy them at a steep discount, take them home, cut them up into single sized portions and freeze them - foil and a marking pen are much cheaper than freezer bags. You get a bit spendy here: a $5 roast and $3 chicken can provide you enough meat to last the month, portioned out properly.
Foil is pricey, but one roll might last you several months, ditto for a Sharpie Pen - these aren't exactly food items, but they are a part of the food budget because they are essential A Sharpie is about $1, and usually they come in packs of 2 for less than $2 (we'll round it up to $2), and a 75' box of foil is $5. You have to buy the foil and Sharpie at 7-11 or Walgreen's. If you have money from some other source to pay for the foil and Sharpie, then you can use the $7 to buy a 2 pound bag of rice and 3 pounds of dried beans (pinto, kidney, black eyed peas)
Now you're up to $34.69, and you have enough food to eat lunches and dinners for a month.
Eggs keep well, and a carton of 18 large eggs cost $3, for $6, you can have an egg a day, with 6 eggs left over for making bread or cookies (yes! you can bake cookies!).
For another $6, you can buy 2 pounds of butter, and that's enough for baking, cooking, and making spreads.
A 1 pound brick of cheese is nearly $4, but a 3 pound brick of cheese is $7, so you can buy that 3 pound brick of cheese and it will last you all month.
You can add in a few extras now, like onions (49¢ a pound), celery ($1.69 a stalk), garlic (30¢ for a head), and maybe even a can of solid vegetable shortening ($3).
You've now spent $65 (includes tax), but you've got the foundations of every meal for the month. All you need now are the weekly perishables, and you have $8.75 a week for that.
Milk ($3 per quart) Apples ($1.50 for a 3 pound bag) Bananas (59¢ a pound - usually 4 bananas in a pound) Orange juice concentrate (2 for $1 on sale, makes 1 quart each, can buy 6 - enough for the month the first week) then large box of old fashioned rolled oats ($3) or 2 pound bag of cornmeal ($2) the second week (enough to last 2 weeks) 3rd week, you could buy sour cream or cream cheese ($1.50 a carton/brick) 4th week, buy another box of oatmeal or cornmenal
You can also skip the rolled oats to buy leaf lettuce.
And you're done. No money left.
Now, with this in your refrigerator and pantry, you can have a boiled, scrambled, or fried egg every day for breakfast. If you bought orange juice, you can have a small glass of orange juice. You can make tortillas or fry bread with the flour, salt, and shortening, and if you wait long enough, you can grow a Yeast Beastie and have sourdough starter for baking bread later to eat with that egg and orange juice. You can even have half an apple for your breakfast. If you got oatmeal, you can have oatmeal or make granola bars or oatmeal cookies.
Once you've got a sourdough starter going (you can often find someone who will give you a starter, but you can also capture one wild), you can have bread every week with just starter, flour, a pinch of salt and sugar, and water: bread for sandwiches, bread for bread pudding, bread for bread crumbs, bread for toasting, bread for snacking.
A roast can be sliced into single serving portions. One portion can be used to cube and fry in a bit of butter, then add a bit of flour to make a roux, and some water to make it a gravy, then this can be eaten over bread, or add half a carrot, half a potato, a bit of celery and onion, salt and pepper, and you've got an individual serving of beef stew (or the filling for a pot pie). A 1 pound roast can be sliced into 4 portions (some of it will be gristle and fat - don't toss those, you can use them!), and if you managed a 2 pound roast, you can have 8 portions of meat that can be used to flavor rice, make small servings of soup or stew or beef gravy, and if you do the gravy and add some sour cream, you've got poor man's goulash. You can stir fry a bit of the roast for flavoring. You can make a sandwich with a portion, or pot pies, or chili.
That chicken? Roast it, then debone the meat from it. The bones and meat left on the bones can be used to cook a stock, which can be made into a soup - enough for 8 servings of soup. The leftovers of the soup can be made into a thickened stew or used as a filling for pot pie (the flour, shortening, salt,and water make a pie crust). The meat you removed can be portioned out (I usually get 12 portions of chopped chicken) and used in stir fries, as a topper to salads, in soups, and mixed up with cream cheese and vegetables as a sandwich filling. You can make pot pie with it, too.
A 1 pound roast and a 4 pound chicken will give you all the meat you need for a month - approximately 28 meat meals.
The beans can be cooked all at once, then portioned and frozen to use later to add to soups or chili, puree for sandwich fillings, or add to salads.
The milk can be used to make gravy, bread, oatmeal, bread pudding, wheat pudding (cook flour in milk with a little butter and salt until it thickens like polenta - can be cooled, sliced, and fried like polenta, too), or to make cream soups.
The cornmeal can make cornbread, corn pudding, hot corn cereal, or polenta, and can be used in yeast breads.
The flour can make a hot wheat cereal, tortillas, frybread, biscuits, cakes, cookies, and gravies, and thicken creamed soups.
The cheese can be shredded onto sandwiches, salads, soups, or melted onto bread or toast.
With this amount of food, you can prepare enough breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, and have enough for a few snacks. You'd still be short a few calories, and still short quite a bit on vegetables and fruits, but it's much, much better than living on the same amount of money for food than living homeless or lacking refrigeration and a stove.
Compare this diary with the Living on $25 a Week diary.
What a difference a home can make.