you don’t absolutely need a teaball or strainer; the tea you buy loose is more likely to be whole leaves, not broken ones, and you can strain it through your front teeth. However, when I did this, my mother called me `Storm-Drain Clew’, so you’d probably rather get a doo-dah.

Tea is said to taste better when the leaves have room to expand, which is one argument for infusers (tiny colanders shaped like the inside of a cup) over balls. Also, infusers usually have lids that keep the cup warm while steeping, and you can put the drippy infuser on the lid while drinking. Trickier with a teaball.

The thriftiest way has got to be the traditional Asian one described above; you have a thermos of boiling water, and a very small teacup with a loose lid, and whole tea leaves in the cup. You steep cup after cup out of the same leaves, drinking promptly, straining them with the lid rather than your teeth. The aesthetic benefit is that tea changes scent and flavor with each steeping, and you can really appreciate that with this method. You may find yourself writing poetry to frogs and the west wind, but that’s very low-carbon too.

The fourth (?) way is the English one, with a teapot and cups and a strainer (which is like a colander that sits on the cup); you make a whole pot of tea and pour it out all at once — if you pour it out a cup at a time, the last cups are horribly bitter. This is very sociable, and you can keep rebrewing the leaves in the pot, if your timing is good.

We eat entirely gluten-free at home, so potatoes, rice and cornmeal are our staples. I do buy specialty flours to make bread or pizza dough occasionally, or to add flour to sauces, but not often. I do buy rice pasta frequently. It is easy to let the food budget get out of control when you are on a special diet, however, eating rice and beans never made anybody poor. We’re a family of six and our current budget is $600 a month, including diapers and toiletries. We don’t have any animals, except a cat, and currently our garden is under a foot of snow, but we are looking forward to expanding that again.

Our biggest food expenses are dairy and meat. We currently go through a gallon of milk a day (but we hardly drink any juice or soda) and I’m thinking that might be one place to cut back some. Also, to save money, when I cook meat, I now use it in sauces or as a topping rather than a whole hunk of meat as the main item. I also drink 1-3 mugs of tea a day and have been thinking it’s time to learn how to do loose-leaf tea. I need a tea ball, right? or no? a tea strainer?

Typically we shop at Costco twice a month and make Safeway runs for milk in between. One thing I am intrigued by is the Economides’ method of once-a-month shopping. They feed their family of six (all teens and grown ups) on less than $300 a month. They are certainly not invested in local, organic or fair-trade but only look for the best deals. The eat their fresh produce first and then switch to frozen or storage-friendly veg as the month goes on. They freeze their milk. They do menu plan for the entire month. (I think it might take me an entire month to plan that many menus!)

Hillbilly Housewife is a great resource. I have referred to her menus frequently, although some of her recipes are not to my taste. The original Hillbilly Housewife (Miss Maggie) sold the website and now has a new one, Frugal Abundance, which she began partly because she needed to begin cooking gluten-free, casein-free. She has some good ideas for a basic, inexpensive two-week gfcf menu.

There’s a three or four part youtube series called Depression Cooking with Clara or something like that. Good tutorial on how to make a hot, one-pot meal inexpensively. More potatoes!

We also buy the big bag of potatoes and onions at Costco, the giant block of cheese and use them all. I have tracked my expenses occasionally, but in a very disorganized way. I’m not sure what to do with the data when I have it or where to store it. I look forward to more of this series.

You can run up big bills buying organic produce. This you grow yourself or find locally. Our local farmer (more of an extreme gardener really) sold us 50lbs (a bushel) of organic tomatoes for $20 during harvest season.

As for meat, we hardly eat meat anymore. It isn’t necessary. You might look into fishing and hunting. A deer has about 120 lbs. of meat. Plus, hunting can be fun. You might even make friends with a hunter who bags more than he can eat. Often they will give meat away for free. Of course, wild game is the best of all meats. (Note recent CWD problems in deer however.)

With a combination of organic grains/beans/oils etc., bought in bulk, local/homegrown produce and wild meat, you can have best-quality food for very little.

Our house is two adults, in an apartment with little/poor food storage and very low income.

Even when we were on $10/week for groceries last year we still tried to spend what we could in an ethical manner. We accomplish this by first taking our list and money to the farmer’s market – we know the vendors and which are resellers, which are farmers, who sprays etc.

Then we go to a local, independent asian grocery store, and an independent bulk food store before going to the budget grocery store. We aren’t against buying our groceries at the chain store, but we make sure they are the last to get our dollars, and only go there for items we can’t get or can’t buy at the other stores.

Plus we asked for a manual grain mill and food dehydrator for Christmas…so we’ll see.

Personally I can’t see myself keeping a cost account per month but I notice how many bags I get for whatever I’ve spent in a store. This has proven to me time and again how lucky I am to have a fantastic area produce market that carries loads of organic produce (Monterey Market in Berkeley Ca). It’s made me give up many of my old habits of gardening (the cost labor ratio couldn’t compete when I had a full time job) but it’s time to readjust that.

I’m rethinking my garden, adding more edibles especially fruit trees. More cooking from scratch. Putting together the emergency stash. It takes a lot more time so there’s still some areas where I cut corners (while I still have that luxury) like frozen pie crusts from Trader Joes. A friend once told me while pasting together a collage “anything can be a spaceship” and the same applies to pies.

If you were lucky (?) enough to have a depression era mom there’s lots of attitudes you can revive from that. Washing tinfoil, saving string, removing zippers and buttons from clothing that’s worn out before it’s discarded (I know this is off track) but point being that thrift is a state of mind. Apply it in the kitchen or anywhere. Food wise, I always look at the quick sale areas. You can get big bags of things that might be unaffordable otherwise. A bag of roasted red bell pepper, small hot pepper of choice and a little garlic makes an incredible sauce (bake in oven – toss in blender). This is often where I get my ideas of what to cook – what’s there? Fancier stores often put things on sale as soon as they loose that “perfect” look.

Yesterday I made a wonderful potato bread. Upside was the bread, downside was that it took so much water to clean up the mess. Being in California with water rationing this really struck me and made me think it’s going to be hard to predict what’s the best way to do any given thing. Would it be better to currently support the local bread company? No black and white answers. Lately every little thing seems to be requiring an enormous amount of thought and attention.

We buy all our meat by the whole animal from local farmers. I find that we save a great deal on meat this way while still getting a variety of cuts of high-quality meat. Our meat costs this year: The grass-fed steer we split with three other families cost $423 at ($5.50/lb cut and wrapped), the pastured hog we shared with one other family cost $372 ($3.80/lb cut and wrapped). I bought 10lbs of frozen Alaskan salmon for $80 and 10lbs of frozen Alaskan halibut for $160. I’ve purchased 8 whole pastured chickens since August, all for $2.10/lb. This fall, a friend sold us a whole lamb for $100, which my husband slaughtered and butchered (I wrapped). We sold three-quarters of the cut & wrapped meat for $100 and kept the rest. Ten pounds of lamb for about six total hours labor isn’t a great return on the investment of our time, but we learned some things, practiced important skills, and gave our friends a sweet deal. So, we have enough meat in our freezer to last us through next August or September, except for chickens, which I expect start buying again in April. Basically, I cook a chicken or some beef, pork, or lamb once a week, use the leftovers in all sorts of creative ways, make stock with carcasses and trimmings, and cook fish on Fridays…which also get stretched and made into fish cakes or chowder. I’ve become downright obsessive about about making the most of leftovers.

We get raw milk from a relatively local source at $10/gallon. While it costs significantly more than conventional milk, I make cream cheese and yogurt with that and add a lot of value back with my little bit of labor: with $30 of milk plus a couple dollars for cultures and rennet, I make the equivalent of $36 of commercial organic cream cheese and yogurt, except mine’s made with local milk from grassfed cows. We also buy local pasteurized milk (also from grassfed cows), as the kids are drinking more lately. We get eggs from our backyard chickens, friends, or local farms for $4/dozen or less.

All of our fresh vegetables and almost all of our fresh fruit comes from Oregon or Washington. Most of it is organic, but I make exceptions and buy local, conventional vegetables, especially during the winter months when it’s harder to get to a farmers market (like this week when Portland has been virtually shut down by a lengthy severe winter storm). Luckily, we do have a small produce market nearby that offers primarily local produce, even if most of it is not organic. My fruit exceptions are pomegranates in the fall, occasional bananas (about 12 bananas/year), citrus and mango. During the winter, I buy mangoes, oranges, tangerines, and grapefruit from California. I crave oranges this time of year and they are at least in season now and less expensive, so I enjoy the taste and vitamin C boost. I buy lemons and limes year-round, though less so this year than in the past. I find keeping a couple bottles of organic lemon and lime juice more convenient much of the time.

I don’t have a grain mill I like, so I buy organic flour once a month from Bob’s Red Mill, which I have heard sources much of its wheat from the Northwest, though I haven’t confirmed that. We get our rice from Lundberg of California. Most of our dried legumes come from Azure Farm here in Oregon. Once a month, we get a delivery from Azure Standard for bulk groceries which are mostly organic and/or mostly from Oregon or Washington.

I recently figured out that for the year, we are averaging $530/month on food, including what we buy for “storage.” As we get our stores built up, our garden in better production, and buy more bulk fresh food for preserving, I foresee that going down another $50-100. We don’t eat meat with every meal, or even everyday. We snack on fresh fruit, carrot sticks, or cheese. I don’t buy lunch meat–even organic, it’s a highly processed food. Instead, I cook a rump roast and we have sandwiches (and soup or salad) with the leftovers. This week I roasted a pork loin and then made pulled pork in the slow cooker with the leftovers. I don’t buy cut up chicken–roast chicken is so easy and useful in so many ways. I bake almost all our bread, bagels, cookies, rolls, the other sweets we eat…occasionally life gets too busy and I buy a loaf of bread (about six times since I started baking at home regularly 18 months ago). I make an organic hot cocoa mix for gift-giving and drinking at home all winter…I’ve never figured out the cost per serving, but the most expensive ingredient involved (milk powder) costs $4.78/lb, while organic cocoa mix costs $10.72/lb at a nearby natural food store.

Admittedly, it’s easy to source good, real food here in Portland, Oregon. We live in a region with some of the best farm, grazing, and orchard lands in the US *and* a population that appreciates and supports local growers/producers. I understand many places aren’t as blessed, either the climate and soils aren’t suitable for growing much food, have been paved over, are in biofuel/animal feed production or local support is weak, making access challenging and prices high. I like hearing from people around the North America (like middle of nowhere Nevada and up in Toronto with gluten intolerance!) who are figuring out ways around their challenges.

Great topic, Sharon.

We always ballpark high when estimating future costs. Like hay, since we need to supplement feed 1/2 the year.

We went with Dexter cattle, because of the size and background of the breed, but found that having a good bull brought out can be a hassle. We might pick up a mutt heifer next spring that has a mix of breeds we like, but can be serviced by more common bulls, possibly sharing expense with a neighbor.

Those factors make raising another milk cow a better prospect, and you can’t put a price on dairy products from your own cow. Plus we like having the steer born here, not bought at auction.

Even with all the vet fees, bull rental, hay expense, etc. our steer next year will cost us about $2 lb. finished weight in the freezer. And it will be beef you can’t buy in the stores.

But getting back to your point about escalating costs, it’s always smart to assume the worst, and either budget that in, or make backup plans.