Thursday: Food

Frugal Food.

There are times of financial crisis or uncertainty in almost every marriage, sometimes brief, sometimes extended, but it's possible to survive and even to thrive during them. A big part of every household budget is food. What will make the difference is your skill levels. These are some of the things which have helped us survive some really long periods of little money.

1. Cooking everything from scratch and I mean everything.
2. Preserving my own food.
3. Eating seasonally.
4. keeping a store cupboard well stocked.
5. Planned purchasing.
6. Meal planning
7. Teaching children to eat a wide variety of foods from early on.
8. Using my freezer to its full capacity.
9. Growing at least some of our own food.
10. Being hospitable and thinking generously.

All of the above have helped me and I am sure that I have left lots off the list. I didn't mention using coupons because, in my country, it's not always terribly helpful. 20p off something that costs £2 isn't much help to me when there is another brand of the same item which only costs £1 in the first place. However, I know that in other countries this can be extremely helpful

Do you recognise that you need to skill up? don't panic. There will be more articles on these subjects in coming weeks. In the mean time, you could pick one topic and research it yourself! Invest in your own education, as mentioned in yesterday's post, and buy a good book on preserving food, for example. My Good Housekeeping Complete Book of Preserving for example is older than both my children and is still useful to me!

Mimi is a wife to Jamie, mother to two grown up children, a mother-in-law and a grandmother to a darling little grand-daughter. She home-educated her children and now teaches exam subjects to groups of home-educated children. She's a Worship Leader in her church and has a passion for helping women raise children to adulthood with a strong faith in the Lord Jesus.