Wasted food is a wasted opportunity, or at least that's the thought process that Tina and I go through whenever we have to throw away food. Typically, we throw away very little food- usually, it's spoiled dairy products. We have tried over the years very hard to cook all our own meals and remix the leftovers- last night's rice makes great fried rice with Tuesday's pork chop remains, and so on.
But one food that almost never provides us leftovers is homemade pizza. We in fact have pre-cut bell peppers in the freezer for our pizza, and rarely a week goes by that we don't eat a pizza.
So why am I talking about food on a blog about Orthodoxy? Why not?
But actually it's about stewardship. Official Wife Tina and I have a massive food budget of $62.50 per week for groceries. At present, we've saved about $40 over the past three months of groceries, which means that the current food price spike is basically not a problem. This is great for us.
Food economics are home economics. And the way we do it is time consuming, but it's a useful practice- we spend about five minutes per week perusing the sale papers, and about 2 hours every Saturday shopping. And that's it. We don't go to the store otherwise, and that is how we do it. A purposeful approach to food purchasing has led us to engage in purposeful purchasing of all kinds. We make a list, we price it out, and we go in prepared.
Of course, no plan of battle survives contact with the enemy. The enemy, of course, is the consumption-driven world we live in, for we are in the world, but not of it. To that end, we do have one thing we don't do with our grocery budget: the farmer's market. The farmer's market, when it's in season, gets up to $20 per week, and no more. And we do not bank it. Each week, $20. Most weeks, we don't even come close to spending it.
But one food that almost never provides us leftovers is homemade pizza. We in fact have pre-cut bell peppers in the freezer for our pizza, and rarely a week goes by that we don't eat a pizza.
So why am I talking about food on a blog about Orthodoxy? Why not?
But actually it's about stewardship. Official Wife Tina and I have a massive food budget of $62.50 per week for groceries. At present, we've saved about $40 over the past three months of groceries, which means that the current food price spike is basically not a problem. This is great for us.
Food economics are home economics. And the way we do it is time consuming, but it's a useful practice- we spend about five minutes per week perusing the sale papers, and about 2 hours every Saturday shopping. And that's it. We don't go to the store otherwise, and that is how we do it. A purposeful approach to food purchasing has led us to engage in purposeful purchasing of all kinds. We make a list, we price it out, and we go in prepared.
Of course, no plan of battle survives contact with the enemy. The enemy, of course, is the consumption-driven world we live in, for we are in the world, but not of it. To that end, we do have one thing we don't do with our grocery budget: the farmer's market. The farmer's market, when it's in season, gets up to $20 per week, and no more. And we do not bank it. Each week, $20. Most weeks, we don't even come close to spending it.
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