Food Prices Gonna Rise? More?

I keep following links from blogs about how the prices of food stuffs (like rice, wheat and cocoa) are gonna rise big-time and soon. I've been reading that for a while, and I myself posted something to that effect a while ago.

Yes, I see prices increasing. Yes, I see supplies decreasing. But here I am, tucked in my comfy temporary home, all snug and warm, with pantry bursting and closets filled to the brim, while a blizzard rages outside. Over a foot of snow in the last 20 hours or so, and still more expected over the next 24.

We keep a list of supplies we'd like more of, and when prices are low, we stock up. We have enough potatoes, rice, beans, peas, dried fruit/veggies, canned fruit and soups, cocoa, flours (regular and gluten-free), quinoa, amaranth, and much more for probably 9 months. NOT that we're gonna be home-bound that long! Please?!?

So keep a sharp eye out for the grocery circulars, and pop into Costco or Sam's Clubs when you get a chance. Personally... we're asking family and friends for gift card to Amazon.com for birthday and holiday gifts so we can get more cans of powdered rice milk (pic above) and more.

Potatoes on Sale at Safeway

Trashdigger posted that he found potatoes on sale at Safeway here in the Denver, CO area ... 10 pound bag of baking potatoes for .99 each! (http://ddfdb.blogspot.com/2009/10/potatoes-galore.html)

We're stocking up this weekend. Good and filling, and can be nutritious when served with the skin. Potato soup, fried potatoes, added to stews ... even dehydrate them to preserve them longer.

Can You Afford Organic and Local Produce?

I recently came across a blog where the blogger had a local/organic/sustainability challenge going. It looked like a family of 4 has (only!) $588 a month budgeted to buy all food, and most (all?) had to be locally grown, sustainable and/or organic. Reading all of the comments, it's easy to see how some of her readers are frustrated. Not that many people these days have $588 a month to spend on food.

We are a family of 3, plus I'm helping to feed my mother in law in exchange for letting Hubby live there during the week. VHTS (Tween) and I can't have wheat, Tween can't have corn, nuts or soybeans, and I am working on losing weight/getting healthy. We have at most $300 a month to do this. I try to come way way WAY under that (not always successfully). How?

• We're still eating winter squashes we grew last year. They've survived the winter down in the basement. I think we have 2 acorn, 1 butternut, 2 spaghetti, 4 mexican x-top cushaw, and 4 pumpkins left. We also have sunflowers; we still need to brush the seeds off and roast them. We also have black turtle beans left - I think enough for 2 family meals. We still have a string of very dry jalapeno peppers hanging in the kitchen.
• Also from our garden, and now resting comfortably in our freezer are: 12 packages of various types of tomatoes, 5 baggies of string beans, 4 baggies of soy beans, 20 clamshells of raspberries. We already finished off the corn, okra, strawberries, and peppers.
• In 2007, I had started to stockpile dried fruits and veggies, and last year (2008) stocked up on canned foods. We dig into these regularly.
• I try to get to King Soopers (Krogers/City Market) early on Tuesday mornings, where I can usually find "orange stickers" (prices reduced by at least half) on dairy, produce and meat items. Sometimes I can get a little 1-pound log of ground beef for $.99! Yogurt can sometimes be found for .26, and milk often for $1.00 a gallon. I've discovered I can freeze the yogurt. Right now, I have 5 little 1-pound logs of ground beef from the last time I found them on sale (I grab as many as I have money and room for).
• When I see a sale for gluten-free ketchup, beans, smart balance butter, or other items we used very regularly, I buy multiples.
• Every other week I go to Sam's and get big bags of apples and pears. It seems like the other fruit goes bad before we get to it all, so for a while, it's bananas, apples and pears. Not local, I'm sure, but necessary for our health.
• Wal-Mart usually has good prices for avocados, sometimes for $.50 each. I buy 10 at a time and refrigerate them to make them last longer. I'm working on a way to preserve them long-term, without causing brown spots or sacrificing taste. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
• We supplement/bulk-up meals with white and sweet potatoes bought on sale, and rice and beans bought in bulk. This summer we will eat mainly from our garden (carrots, onions, greens, strawberries, beans, tomatoes, etc.).

VHTS and I need to gluten-free bread, and it's really hard to make all nice and soft, so I spend about $15 a week for 3 loaves of bread. Tween eats most of it... growing kid, bottomless pit, hollow leg, etc.

I can't do local and organic, and still get within our budget. I'd like to, but can't. The organic section of the supermarkets are getting bigger, and the prices ARE coming down, but they are still a little too high for me. Unless it has an orange sale sticker on it or is notably on sale, we just can't do it.

Farmer's markets aren't open yet, and given the weird Winter we've had, who knows what the local produce will be like or when it will be ready.

QUESTION:
Who can afford to, realistically, buy only locally-grown, organic and sustainable produce for their family? How much do you spend? What do you get? Do you have enough variety in your diet?

Living Paycheck to Paycheck.... Or Not.

This economy has hit everyone hard. People losing jobs. Retirement funds going negative. Dow Jones hitting the biggest drop in many a year. Grocery prices soaring. Gas prices back on the rise. Foreclosures and walk-aways happening every day. Even so-called wealthy people are forced to make some changes to their lives.

One of the traps we fall into, when times get rough like now, is living paycheck to paycheck. We might have had to dip into savings. Our stored foods for emergencies are now like a grocery store jackpot. And we can't just switch jobs because there are very few open jobs to go around.

We have to... live paycheck to paycheck.

My hubby works. He works long and hard for a little pittance of a paycheck. He takes over when the manager is gone, but doesn't get any of the perks or a matching title. He does special projects when no one else knows how to code the system, without added benefits. If he were to look for a job now, well, we glanced around and there's nothing anywhere near comparable.

I collect a small amount of disability. Some days I can barely move or remember my name, but I (usually) make myself get out of bed. Son and Hubby need me. As do the puppy, the dog, our garden, and you, our wonderful readers. On days I feel better, I write a few days worth of postings on the probability that I might not want or be able to get online.

We live "paycheck to paycheck". Even though we had savings and stockpilings, hard times hit us like everyone else. We've dipped into everything. So I decided to do a little research, to help us but also for those of you who may be in a similar situation:

1. Consider moving into a cheaper living situation (if we can't afford to pay cash for our next homestead, we'll rent or move in with mom-in-law or do something else);
2. Take care of your stress (see our earlier posting: "Don't Stress"
3. Take responsibility for your situation - whether you got laid off by no fault of your own, it was an act of god or you blew your mind and laid into your boss - it doesn't matter. You need to move forward. Accept that it happened, it's in the past, and now you can look to the future as a bright new adventure.
4. Hold yourself responsible for your financial future. Even if you have a partner, each of you take 100% responsibility on your shoulders and leave it there. Consider it a nice little jacket you can wear, and you'll shed a thread here and there as you work to beyond the "paycheck to paycheck" syndrome.
5. Take control of the situation. I'm a list person. Here's what I came up with for us:

• More Income: Yard sale. E-Bay. Moving to a smaller place or renting or whatever. Writing more books. Adding to our Amazon store. Using more coupons when shopping.
• Less Spending: Our spending is already pretty limited. We don't have extras like cable. We both have old junky PAID-FOR cars so there's no trading for cheaper cars. I only drive once or twice a week. We combine our errands. Our newspaper subscription is about to run out but we're not renewing. We could use more of our stored foods (including the dehydrated produce from our last year's garden). We WILL reduce eating out to only once or twice a week, and set a limit to how much we can spend per meal (for the three of us, we can do ok on $25 - we need to get that lower). Hmm... still thinking of more.

So far so good? Okay - next few steps:

1. Make the decision that you deserve better. You are a wonderful person, with many gifts and talents, and a good spirit. You are on Earth as a human to enjoy the human experience, so doggone-it... enjoy it! You deserve a terrific life, and by-gum, you're gonna go for it! You have the education and experience and know-how to get that dream job, or to start a business of your own or to sell your favorite hobby/crafts. Remind yourself why you're so special and so wonderful. Then remind yourself that you are worth earning good money - better money! - because of your special gifts and talents.
2. Here's another opportunity for a list: write down (or journal) this process. Why haven't you earned as much money as you feel your deserve? List all of the excuses, er, reasons. These are just stumbling blocks, nothing more. Limiting beliefs. Are you really convinced that they actually true? Do people who earn more think these things about themselves?

Now... are you ready to change things? To earn what you are worth?

1. Ok... imagine yourself earning the money you decided you wanted. Does that allow you more time on your homestead? With your loved ones? Do you see your storage space filling up with ammo and dried foods and toilet paper?
2. Start hanging out with people who see you as the valuable person you are. Your new self-image can definitely match other people's image of themselves. If you have a "friend" who tells you you're stupid for even thinking about looking for a new job in this market, or that you should just shut up and stay put, or that you could never make money selling your cinnamon apple trats, drop them like a bad habit. Along the same vein, do you have "friends" who would say horrible things if you suddenly began earning a good hefty amount of money? Would they be so jealous that they would find any little thing to pick on you about? You need positive people around you. The more positive and encouraging, the better.
3. Time to get started.... do you have a list yet of what you can do? Carve wooden toys? Grow veggies for sale? Bake homemade bread for a local organic restaurant? Baby-proof a home? Train dogs? Babysit in your home?
4. Once you've made your list, affix your pricing structure. Whatever numbers you calculate, add on a bit more (because believing you are valuable might be a little too new to you).
5. Start a personal blog, talking about your personal life but DON'T give out too much personal information. You want prospective employers to see the blog and your resume and examples of your work, and KNOW that you're the perfect person for their company. Strong, steady, personable, committed to doing a great job, etc. And you want potential clients (for self-employment) to see you are not a fly-by-night situation, and that you'll deliver as promised. Stay away from facebook, etc. because while those are social networking sites, they are starting to get the wrong subtext going. Be upstanding.
6. Are you going to look for a better job? Get help with your resume to update it for today's economy. When you see a want-ad, you need to modify your resume to THAT job, because the person on the receiving end of your resume will be looking for the same key words in your resume that was in their advertisement. Make sure your resume is spell-checked, error-free, and on crisp white resume paper. The cover letter should be well-thought out, again using those same key words that were in the job advertisement, and clean/error-free. The envelope should be the same paper quality as the resume and cover letter, and typed neatly (yes, get out that typewriter if you need to).
7. Network: use your blog, your friends, your associates, former colleagues, etc. Build up your network of contacts, and your distribution. Tell everyone your situation (looking for a job as a [fill-in-the-blank] or starting to sell your homemade [fill-in-the-blank]. If you make baskets or candles, you HAVE to market them online! Do you do any kind of training? Make a video and sell it as an immediate (auto-response) download. Word of mouth will help you.

To summarize... we're not saying to quit the job you have because that better one is coming. Please don't. Not in this economy.

We're saying with a little hard work and following the steps above, you will be able to change your life without too much disruption. And it's better than sitting and looking at the computer screen, watching your stocks tank and the corporate giants like AIG get even more bailouts! (sorry, had to get that barb in)

YOU are the only person who can change your life. YOU are the only one who truly knows what you are capable of. YOU are the best person in the world to do what YOU can do. Step it up. Do it.

Besides, NOW is the best time to change your income style because if the S*** ever (!) hits the fan, you will need to have an alternate source of income. Right?

Copyright (c) 2009 VPLW

p.s. Word of mouth would help us too! Please link our website (http://www.survival-cooking.com/) from yours! Thanks.

This DTV Changeover

Ok, so we've been required to modify all of our TVs, whether we want to or not, in order to watch any TV at all. Even free TV. Now the date's been changed to sometime in June.

Question:
I noticed that the TV Guides (online and in paper) haven't started listing the shows for the additional TV channels (like PBS is not only Channel 6, but is now 6-1, 6-3, 6-5), and Channel 9 is now 9-1 with 9-2 now being a 24-hour weather channel.

Did someone forget about this?

Another Question:
More like a comment... this changeover is ridiculous. We don't have cable TV, sattelite, or anything else except for what our unmodified TV picks up. Now, if we still want our "free" entertainment, we have to pay money for either cable TV or a converter box. In this economy?


What's next... radio UNfree america?

Our Thrift Store Haul

We love shopping at local thrift stores. We usually go on the 3rd of 4th of each month. Here's our haul on one visit:

- masonry
- creative bottle cutting
- 4-bks on medical
- space and storage
- backpackers cookbook
- weatherproofing
- home security
- plumbing
- gardening with wildlife
and much more.

We will definitely add these 20+ books to our reference collection. We can barely wait until we get into our next home - our permanent home - where we can spread out our books, organize and catalog them.

We also brought home several items we can use for makeshift cook-stoves, an index card holder (for these recipes we create and post here), and a few other things.

We LOVE thrift stores!

Stock Up Costs Vs. Living Costs in This Economy

A shy reader e-mailed this question: "Thanks for breaking down the list to manageable pieces but with this economy I still can't afford to get much. What do I do? J. "

Our answer...

Dear J and other interested readers...
Thanks for writing! It's good to know that we're helping people. We are a family of 3 on a very limited budget - only one of us has a job and the other is partially disabled. We have minimum bills: mortgage, car insurance, utilities, phone, student loans. The bills are paid first. (We don't have cable or other fancy entertainment things.) What is left over goes first to essentials like gas, car maintenance, health care and prescriptions, food, toiletries, etc. Family, in the here and now, comes FIRST.

There are months when we don't have even a penny left over. When we do... we attack the stock-up list, stopping first at the dollar store, yard sales and the on-line recycle yahoo group. When we have a windfall of more than $50 or so, we stock up on dried foods from Emergency Essentials or Sam's Club. Then, even though we disagree with Wal-Mart's employee policies, we shop there for the rest because they do have the lowest prices. Usually. Gotta shop around and compare prices. And garden.

We are working to cut out our eating out, so that will free up additional funds for us. But for now, we can get a couple of rolls of aluminum foil and a box of baby wipes this week, plus one superglue, and about 9 cans of no-sugar-added fruit (pears, fruit cocktail and pineapple). Every little bit will help.

And we're eating what we store. It definitely helps to prepare for eating our basic ingredients.

Here's a list of suggestions:

• When people ask what you want for birthdays or Christmas, tell them a gift card for your favorite grocery store, or to an online supplier of dried foods.
• Lay off the purchased coffee drinks (using your stored coffee instead), and after a month, you'll have a nice little chunk of change to do some shopping.
• When the kids present their holiday or birthday gift wish list to you, explain to them that money is tight. Look at your list of supplies to store and ask them to pick one to get for the family in lieu of one present.
• Check out the dented-can section of the grocery. You still have to be careful but if a can is dented and not bulging it will be fine. Eat that one pretty quickly and put one of the un-dented in your storage. In that section, they'll also have other discounted products like smashed boxes of tea, or off-season candles (Halloween in December). Check out this section every time you go to the store. King Soopers in the Denver area also has almost-expired bakery items in their section, and they put special orange stickers on dairy and meat products that are about to expire (but they leave them in the dairy and meat section, respectively); great way to provide these products at more affordable prices.
• Especially check the day after holidays. Valentine's Day is in 2 days, Saturday. Early on Sunday, check out the dollar and grocery stores for their 50% marked down goodies. Get candy that will last a long time, like hard candy. M&M's last a while too.
• Don't spend money on special storage buckets. Every bakery that you pass, go in and ask what they do with the empty icing buckets. When you find a place that will give them to you for free, go in every chance you get and pick some up. Thoroughly clean, dry, pack (adding a couple of bay leaves for any bugs already in there - they hate that scent), label for contents, and seal. If you don't store your food properly (like flour and beans), you are inviting mice, roaches and other critters to invade your stores. Don't waste your money by having to throw away good food.
• Jackie Clay at Backwoods Home Magazines suggests another good way to store items is in metal trash cans with lids.
• Eat what you store. Another way to say it is: "rotate your stock". The most recent cans of soup or bags of flour (etc.) get labeled with purchase date and go to the end of the line. Use your oldest. And if you're storing corn meal and have never cooked with it, now's the time to do so. If you store corn meal and later on have no way to get anything else, you better like foods made with corn meal!

Hope this answers the question. Please ask if you have more! Thanks.

Earning Money At Home

An important part of being self-reliant is not being part of someone else's bankroll. If you depend on a business that you don't really have any say in, you not only won't give it your all, but you could be let go at any time. Especially in this economy.

I love reading survival-type blogs, especially http://www.survivalblog.com/. Very often, these different websites address this quandry. Do you continue to live in a city, near a job that takes much of your time for little money, or do you save up to buy a place away from civilization, doing something that you love for (usually) little money? In this economy, it's an important decision.

You need to discuss the situation with your entire family. Everyone you live with. Look at things realistically. If you stayed where you are, and stayed with your job(s), are you happy? Do you make enough not only to live on but also to store up? To see you through worse times, like a blizzard or total dessimation of the economy?

But to be truly self-reliant, you will probably choose to NOT work for someone else.

Take a look at the things you and everyone in your family love to do. Your hobbies. Specialties. Skills. Dreams. Loves. Strengths and weaknesses. What about things you would do if you had land? Make a list of all of these. Do you do them well enough to sell? See if any of them can make you money. Is there are market for what you do? Research other families or small businesses that do what you're considering; how much money do they make a month/quarter/year?

How much do you need to buy some land and live somewhere else? Can you do it while you're working at your job? Do you have any experience running a business? If not, take a business course. Talk to business owners. Surf the web. School yourself.

Take some time to really think about this.

Taking Advantage of Sales

Around the holidays -- well, any holiday -- there are some great sales at grocery stores. If you get the sale circular in the mail or newspaper, examine it. Take advantage of it! Remember your coupons too. SuperBowl Sales should be starting any day now ... take advantage of them!

Sale: Last November and December, Wal-Mart had a sale on sweet potatoes at 38 cents a pound! That's a great deal, so bought quite a few, and stored in our basement. We also regularly check out the meat section in King Soopers (Krogers/City Market) and when we find stew meat for .50 cents a pound, we snatch it up, cook it, and either freeze it or can it. They also recently sold gallons of milk for .75 cents each so, if we'd had room, we would have frozen them (letting a little out first to prevent splitting).

Neighbor: A neighbor didn't feel like harvesting his apples this year so when we asked, he gladly exchanged all we could carry for a bag of our homegrown tomatoes. We processed the apples into applesauce and dried cinnamon-apple rings.

Farmer's Market/Flea Market: When you can find a farmer's market, take advantage of it! We live near a huge weekend year-round flea market that has fresh fruit and vegetable stands throughout. We love to buy local produce to slice and dehydrate.

Absolutely take advantage of sales, and when you can, harvests and farmer's markets. See what you can do. Do you have any other suggestions?