The Washington Post ran an article today about – horrors of horrors – how the recession has caused families to cut coupons, visit stores closer to home, organize their errands in the most efficient possible way and stop eating organic.
Excuse me while I shed a tear or two.
Families with many kids have been doing this stuff for years. My mother would clip coupons from the Sunday paper while she made us breakfast. She always went shopping once a week, on the same day she went to the bank, and ran other errands. She only bought what was on sale, using coupons to get a double whammy. And she had a garden – although her vegetable plants didn’t usually produce much. Maybe these were behaviors from before she and my dad were well-off, but she has always maintained them. She still reads through the coupons every Sunday morning, buys only what’s on sale and does her shopping and errands once a week.
When Michael and I were eating vegan, our groceries were twenty dollars a week. Our lists were limited to beans, rice, tortillas, grains, canned and frozen vegetables. We ate very little fresh produce, and then we ate what was in season and frequently made the relatively short trip to the nearby farmer’s market.
Our food costs have gone up due to slim-fast and eating tons of fresh produce. But we’ve also cut other costs. We don’t have cable TV or tivo anymore. We aren’t running our air conditioner, even with my allergies and we had it fixed, so it’s much more efficient now. We’re attempting our own vegetable garden on a balcony in an apartment, a task that has proven difficult thus far. This way we can cut the costs of fresh produce and herbs and possibly do some canning if our plants are fruitful. Our grocery bills have gone up, but most of our other bills have gone down or gone away.
We’re in a pretty good situation, and I think it’s important to remind myself of that. We’re not struggling to pay our rent or put food on the table, and we have health care. There are literally millions of people in America worse off than us. I think it’s our duty – before we piss and moan – to actively try to reduce the wastefulness from our lives, with the thought in mind that we are fortunate to be where we are.
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I would love to go back to the way we were eating when we were “vegan.” Especially now that there’s a dramatic economic incentive to do so (I spent nearly $8 on turkey for sandwiches this week, and that buys a whole lot of vegetables).
I dislike everything that Slim-Fast represents, and I wish I could develop some sort of nutritionally equivalent loaf or something that we could make ourselves from actual honest food.
Oh well. I guess if it works, it works.
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