Thinking about food

I watched some of the TV coverage over the past few weeks about rising food prices. One segment on either Campbell Live or Close Up showed a number of women at a supermarket. What was in their trollies was worth noting. I saw lots of bags of chippies and bottles of soft drinks. One had stacks of meat. All were complaining about high food prices.

Chippies must be the world's most expensive way to buy corn or potatoes. The price per kg must be close to $12 or more when bought in bags of 250gms or 300gms for $3-$4. You can get 5kgs of potatoes for half that or less. Leaving aside the obvious health issues inherent in eating deep-dried, salted foods, you can easily and cheaply make your own chippies with a cooker and a bottle of oil and a sharp knife and a flat tray in the oven to finish off. Re-use the oil. It has to be a lot cheaper than buying the packaged stuff and you or the family can have fun making it.

I didn't see any rice in any of the trolleys. Last week I bought a 10kg bag of rice for $20.79. It's gone up a lot. But it's still cheap food. One and a half cups of rice (225gms) will provide enough rice as the core of a meal for our family of four. That 10kg bag will provide enough rice for just over 40 meals (160 servings) at a cost of 50 cents each meal (12.5 cents / serving).

Add some fresh greens: silver beet ($3 / bag) or spinach or beans or peas - perhaps a little of each and maybe some of it from your own garden. Silver beet grows like a weed almost anywhere. Two modest chicken breasts ($6) diced and cooked to your taste can be put on top or served on the side. That's supper for four people for less than $10, even including a small amount of oil and some spices. Silver beet is especially tasty cooked in a small amount of water, a tiny bit of butter and with a bit of pepper over it and the juice of half a lemon.

Breakfast? I buy a 1.5kg bag of oatmeal ($4-$5) and make porridge. Oatmeal is another awesome food. Good for your heart and providing energy for hours...and cheap. 1 cup will make two servings. That's 20 servings in a single bag....or about 20-25 cents each.

"But it's boring!" Doesn't have to be. Add whatever you like. Fresh fruit, perhaps. Cut up an apple and cook it with the oatmeal and maybe add a spoonful of brown sugar and a dash of your favourite spice (cinnamon?)...and it's no longer boring porridge. They charge $20 for a bowl of this via room service in a top hotel. You get it for barely a dollar for two servings....including the apple.

Compare that to buying a 500gm box of commercial cereal for $4-$6 and then the kids have 1 or 3 bowls each for breakfast and afternoon tea and it's gone by the next day. Not cheap.

Lunch? A sardine or salmon sandwich (a spoonful of fish, spread on bread) with your favourite green(s) and some homemade hummus instead of butter or marg. I make 1 *litre* of hummus every week for about $4. In the stores they charge you the same for 150gms and I find it much more watery than my home made stuff. Or the cheaper ones use loads of canola oil...and I can't digest that. I don't think anyone can. It passes through, untouched, (Good for your heart! Not food at all!) and I *hate* having an oily bottom all day. Seriously yuck! The chickpeas are $2.79 for 500 grams and that will make two batches. Tahini and (rice bran or sunflower or olive) oil and a couple of cloves of chopped garlic and a few lemons make up the rest of the cost of the hummus. You do need a powerful food processor. Blenders can't do this. Add an apple and / or banana to your lunchtime sandwich...and you've nailed it for barely $2 per person. .

Try to avoid anything ready to eat in a package. You pay through the nose for it. Obvious exceptions are canned fish, bags of bulk goods and liquids like milk. Juice is far too sweet for me and I much prefer to eat the fruit. I have diabetes in the family tree and tend to avoid sweet things.

You can have meat with every meal. But do what Asians do and treat it like a condiment or spice adding flavour to the cheaper stuff rather than being the main event and costing you an arm and a leg...and clogging your heart with it.

Horror story: I recently bought 1.1 KGs of lamb shoulder chops at about $6.50 / kg. After I had cut out the bones and the fat (850gms), I had 250gms of lean meat left. So I really paid roughly $26 / kg for the "cheap meat". Wow! Next time, I'll get the lamb leg steaks for $16 / kg - with no bones or fat - and save myself some money. Two small steaks for $5-$6 dollars (maybe less) all diced and spiced and cooked real nice, will be enough for the 4 of us.

Cookies! My daughter makes most of ours and it takes her maybe 20 minutes to make a nice, hot batch of steaming fresh choccy chip biscuits the size of your palm and a fraction of what you pay for the (mostly crud) versions in the shops.

Even better, eating this way is healthier for you.

Bottom line? If food is too expensive, you're probably buying too much of the wrong stuff. Potatoes are also very cheap and you can do lots of interesting things with them. Eggs are relatively cheap, too and good for you in moderation.

It's worth thinking about changing what you've been doing if you've been paying through the nose for 'almost-food'. The food I've described above is no less tasty and a LOT cheaper than chippies and soda drinks.

All we have to do is think......and the problems fall over like dominos.

Good food is still cheap.