Feeding Your Family on a Budget

 Feeding Your Family without Going Broke

2 parents + 14 kids x 3 meals a day each x 365 days a year = Yikes!

 We won’t kid you. Feeding up to sixteen mouths at a time can get expensive. It’s also time-consuming: We spend about half of our day preparing, eating, cleaning up after, or planning a meal. And so, when our kids come home with leftovers after a youth group meeting, work lunch, or other event, we are thankful both for the extra food and that they have taken our “no waste” rule to heart. Dang, our kids can eat. Once they hit twelve years of age, they start eating like every meal is their last. They can chow down on three cheeseburgers and a pile of fries and five minutes later ask where the dessert is. So what’s a parent to do? One of the biggest ways we save money is by eating at home 99.99% of the time. People think we must do a huge meal prep and recipe planning sessions. But we don’t. Our only secret to frugal meals and keeping up with feeding our family is to buy what is on sale and to eat simply. When we say a dish is simple, we mean easy to prepare and using as few ingredients as possible. We have found some go-to meals—or as Kendra Adachi, podcaster and author of The Lazy Genius Way calls them, brainless crowd-pleasers—that our family likes, and we suggest you do the same. (We’ve posted some of our go-to recipes on our website, FatzFam.com.) It helps to have between ten and thirty go-to meals. Once you get your go-to list, start to stock supplies in your pantry by looking for those ingredients on sale. On Sunday nights, we make a list of the meals we are going to prepare that week. In the early years of feeding our brood, we would serve a meat (chicken, ham, or roast if it was on sale) plus a starch (potatoes, rice, or pasta) and a veggie (salad, carrots, canned veggie, or whatever fresh veggie was on sale that week). Nowadays, we are on low-carb diets, so the less starch and sugar the better. We roast lots of veggies. We are big on leftovers (we call it restaurant night), and we have breakfast for dinner about once a week. Here are some other tips and tricks we use to keep the family food budget manageable. Shop discount stores. Around the time we had our eighth child, our monthly food expenditure surpassed our mortgage payment. We currently spend $1,400 a month on groceries. Before Aldi and Lidl moved into our town, we spent at least $400 more than that. For the uninitiated, Aldi and Lidl are no-frills discount food stores. We do 80 percent of our shopping at Aldi, 10 percent at Lidl, and 10 percent at Giant when the supermarket has discount meat sales. Since these discount grocery stores moved to town, we have used our savings on food bills to contribute an extra $400 a month to our retirement accounts. Make friends with the butcher. At all the stores where we shop, we try to get to know the employees, especially the butcher. Sam’s mom taught her this tip. She would befriend the butcher and find out when he marked down the meat, usually 33–50 percent off, and what items would go on sale the following week. No point in paying $4.99 a pound for chicken breasts if they are going on sale next week for $1.99 a pound. We’ve found chicken at Aldi for as low as $1.49 per pound, and that’s when we stock our freezer. Beware big-box stores. For years we were members at a big-box club store. While we got some good deals on food and household items, we also tossed items in the cart that we didn’t need. Who can resist an emergency pallet of food, a heated toilet seat with a night-light, or a 72 lb wheel of cheese 4 Feeding Your Family without Going Broke (all actual items at Costco)? Eventually, we canceled the membership to avoid buying such items. Aldi and Lidl save us as much or more on food. Stock your pantry with staples. We have two refrigerators, two ovens, two dishwashers, two microwaves (the Noah’s ark kitchen), and a huge pantry. Now, if you don’t have a family of sixteen, you may not need two of every kitchen appliance, but a good-size pantry is essential. Sam plans the weekly menu based on three things: what’s in the freezer, what’s in the pantry, and what’s on sale at the grocery stores. The better the sale, the more we get. If there is a limit on the sale items, that’s no problem; we just bring along some of the kids and put them in the checkout line with a fistful of cash! What’s in the pantry? Things that have a long shelf life: boxes of pasta, jars of pasta sauce and tomato sauce, popcorn, peanut butter (lots of peanut butter), canned soups, canned beans, canned veggies (we love artichokes and mushrooms), rice, canned chicken and tuna, chicken and beef bouillon, cereal and oatmeal, almonds, and crackers. We also stock a variety of baking supplies, such as baking soda and powder, cornstarch, white and brown sugar, shortening, chocolate chips, flour, tubs of icing and cake mixes for last-minute celebrations, pancake mix and syrup, boxes of Jell-O and pudding, and marshmallows and chocolate bars for s’mores. Common herbs, spices, and oils we stock include vanilla, cinnamon, taco seasoning, sea salt, paprika, oregano, basil, cumin, garlic powder, dried onion, pepper, Old Bay Seasoning (it’s a Maryland thing), and olive, coconut, and vegetable oils. Condiments include mustard and mayonnaise, ketchup, and soy sauce. We tried growing some of our own food, but it didn’t really pan out. Besides critters eating all of our stuff, Sam can barely keep our basil plant alive. Having a well-stocked pantry saves you both money (since you are stocking it when items are on sale) and time, since you won’t be running back and forth to the grocery store to make small purchases. Our neighborhood has a fun text group that asks questions such as who has an extra can of roasted tomatoes or a pack of frozen broccoli when we have those inevitable moments when we realize we are missing an ingredient for dinner. We would be lost without our community of support. Make one, find one, beg God for one! Home Is Where the Food Is As we mention in A Catholic Guide to Spending Less and Living More, our entire family goes out to a restaurant about once a year, and Rob takes the kids out for lunch on their birthday. We go on a date night about twice a month, using restaurant gift cards we receive as birthday and holiday presents. There are many reasons to eat at home apart from staying on budget. Taking sixteen people out on the town can be a logistical nightmare, not to mention the noise and general craziness involved. Rob’s mom thought she would treat us to McDonald’s one time at the beach when we just had ten little mouths to feed; it cost more than fifty dollars, and she laughed, thinking it would be around twenty. Our kids fix their own breakfast and lunch, and their menu choices are posted on the side of the refrigerator: some combination of oatmeal or cereal, toast, eggs, and yogurt for breakfast; leftovers, nachos, sandwiches, or veggies and fruit for lunch. We make sure to keep snacks and water bottles in the car. That way we are prepared for those times when fast food may seem like a tempting option. 5 Feeding Your Family without Going Broke Busy moms need to keep things simple to avoid falling back on pizza and takeout. Anyone can learn to stick a whole chicken in the oven for two hours, make some butter noodles, and throw some baby carrots on plates. Some moms choose to cook on weekends and freeze meals in advance. We have a basic weekly dinner rotation that we vary so the meals don’t become boring: leftovers on Monday, tacos on Tuesday, Italian on Wednesday, slow-cooker meals on Thursday, homemade or frozen pizza on Friday, burgers or other grilled meat on Saturday, and roast beef or chicken on Sunday. Family traditions don’t have to be expensive or fancy. We believe mealtime is an important part of keeping families close. Home is where memories are made (even some not so great ones), where kids see real people act like real sinners, and where we celebrate milestones and create traditions. Above all, it’s a place where we pray and work together to care for each other’s needs. Our kids grow up knowing that it is hard to be a Christian, to pick up your cross, to not spend money, and to keep your mouth shut. They know what it’s like when someone makes the wrong financial decision, disagrees with their spouse, or is disappointed with their teenagers. That is the blessing of a big family. Our children see the truth in many different circumstance's and personalities. Making It Together Teaching your kids to cook is an important rite of passage—even if you’re not the world’s greatest cook! As they get older and prepare to leave home, take the time to create a simple file of family recipes for them, especially those recipes that are an important part of your family tradition: Grandma’s Christmas cookies, Aunt Netty’s mac and cheese, and Grandpa Mike’s baby back ribs. Include some recipes for low-cost crowd-pleasers such as chili and chicken on the grill. Encourage your kids to go to Goodwill to find some basic kitchen equipment for their new digs or, better yet, to ask around. When our son and his wife left everything behind in Arizona to move cross-country to work near us, we asked around among friends and on Facebook for extra household things. Our son and daughter-in-law ended up with way more than they needed, so they shared with the two brothers who were moving out on their own also. We are so encouraged that our older kids offer the gift of hospitality in their new homes by hosting backyard picnics, game nights, and kids’ home birthday parties. With a little culinary creativity, you are helping them to create community and build friendships, while continuing your family legacy of spending less and living more, long after they are no longer relying on you to provide them with every meal. For more ideas about how to raise independent (and hospitable) kids, check out our book, A Catholic Guide to Spending Less and Living More