Cooking For One or Two - A Guide to Budget Meals and Stretching Your Money

The title of this post is a bit misleading, but I want to illustrate a point about food budgets and finances. About 10 years ago, a politician (from the province of Ontario, Canada, if you're keeping track), said that welfare recipients should be able to get by on a food budget of about $80/m. Of course, there was an outcry about this. The average single person back then might have been spending about $120-160/m on groceries. Now this was when gasoline was literally about 1/4 the price it is now. So delivery costs hadn't pushed up the price of everything.

About 2 years ago, I mentioned this food budget fiasco to my father (divorced and living on his own), and he said that he actually managed to get by on about $16/wk for groceries. Now keep a couple of things in mind:

(1) This was 2 years ago. Gasoline was about two-thirds its current price. Some food items have gone up considerably. (Which is why I prefer to go to Oriental groceries and Farmers' Market.)

(2) My father is in his early 70s and doesn't eat much as he used to.

(3) He consumes almost no animal protein. Maybe a bit of fish at most once a week. He gets most of his protein from lentils and legumes, and some mushrooms.

Inspired by this, for the past two years, I've been trying to follow his example. While I cannot get my budget down as low as he has, I seem to be able to average about $20-22/wk over a month, but only for some months. My biggest cost is usually meat. (I was a vegetarian for several years, but because of health reasons, I have to have some meat protein.). I have, however, managed to keep my food budget mostly in check. In future entries, I'll post some of my father's vegetarian recipes and his tips for stretching your food budget.

(c) Copyright 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://cookingforone-or-two.blogspot.com

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