If you listen much to the news right now, you’ve probably heard some stories about various Costco and Sam’s Club locations rationing rice, flour or oil purchases. You may have also heard about how bad the food situation is in many countries that are poorer than the United States. It’s getting rough out there.  Some countries are limiting or refusing to export rice.

The big question is: How much should you worry?

If you are in the United States, as I am, you probably don’t have too much to worry about, at least so far. There’s not a shortage here. But people are very naturally concerned, just from looking at the worldwide picture.

My own inclination is to keep an eye on things. I’m not ready to stock up heavily… aw heck, I can’t do that very easily since my husband’s still looking for work. But even if we had a little more financial flexibility, I don’t believe I’d be panicking at this point.

For one thing, we grow so much rice we export a lot of it. Even now.

However, I have told my husband I would like to garden more intensively this year, once we know for sure that we aren’t moving. Rice, flour and oil aren’t the only foods that are subject to increased prices. Fresh produce has gone up in a lot of places, and I rarely see things like tomatoes at prices I’m willing to pay anymore.

It’s also educational for the kids. Mine had a great time last summer going out and picking fresh tomatoes to snack on, and they’ve learned a lot about edible leaves… most especially that they always have to ask first to be sure they have the right plant.

A garden costs some money to get started, especially if you haven’t had one before, but in the long run it has great potential to help you cope with rising food prices.

Food prices have been hit hard by inflation of late, with the worst increases in about 20 years. Meat, milk, bread, eggs, produce all cost more than they used to. It’s getting harder and harder to feed a family healthy meals.

Fortunately, it’s not necessarily impossible, merely more challenging.

One of the simplest things you can do to help your food budget is to cut waste. Here in the United States tremendous amounts of food are wasted by most families. If you work harder on using up your leftovers you can save a significant amount of money.

For example, pack up dinner leftovers for lunch the next day. You can eat them yourself or send them with an ice pack with the kids to school if it’s something that tastes good enough cold. A thermos bottle can help with foods that should be eaten warm. Just make sure you heat the food hot enough that a good thermos will keep it over 140 degrees F.

Think also about what you’re eating. If you can cut back on the amount of meat you consume in a meal and/or have the occasional meatless meal you can save quite a bit. Beans, rice, lentils and such can be significantly cheaper than meats. Vegetarian meals can be quite tasty.

Similarly you can reconsider the cuts of meat you buy. Cheaper cuts can still taste quite good if prepared correctly. Crock pots are great at making even cheap meats tender.

With chicken, buying a whole one can have advantages. It’s enough for 1-2 meals, depending on the size of your family, and you can make soup from the leftovers for yet another cheap meal.

But much of your savings come down to how you shop for food. Start paying close attention to the flyers that come from grocery stores near to you. You won’t save if you’re driving too far, but if you’re lucky you will have at least a few stores to choose from. You may as well shop each for the items they have at good prices.

Keeping a price book can be a big help. You can do it alphabetically or by the order of the items in the store you shop most, but know what regular prices are and what standard sale prices are. This helps you to figure out if it’s an unusually good deal that you should stock up on if you can, or if you need to figure out an alternative that week.

Coupons can also be a help if, and I emphasize IF, they are items you would be buying anyhow. If you weren’t going to buy it, you can end up spending more money and ending up with things you aren’t going to use up.

Plan your meals around the coupons and deals that you find each week. By planning ahead you can buy only what you need and reduce your food waste still further. It also helps to limit your spontaneous purchases if you can tell yourself you aren’t going to use it.

For those who have the space and a sufficiently green thumb, gardening is another option. A good garden is exercise combined with a food source. It’s also great for teaching children about where their food really comes from. And of course homegrown produce simply tastes better.

All parents have some sort of food battle with kids. It’s just how these things work.

Not last night’s dinner,
but it sure looks good!

For example, last night I told my daughter we were having fish for dinner. She’s eaten it well in the past, so no worries, right?

Except she has suddenly decided she doesn’t like fish. Before it’s done cooking and even before she’s seen it.

I really should have said ‘chicken’. Odds are good she would have eaten it then.

So I played around with her a little. I had a topping on the fish, and she readily admitted that she loved the topping. It was a mix of bread crumbs, chopped cashews, honey and mustard. Really wonderful, and she admitted that she loved the topping.

So I told her about the nuts. Hey, the main part of the dinner was spoiled anyhow.

Immediately she announced that well… there was something in there she didn’t like and that was the nuts.

Cashews are the only nuts she likes when she admits to liking nuts. I know she was trying to play with my mind as much as I did with her when I mentioned the nuts. Besides, she kept nibbling it, if a bit slower.

Feeding kids is a funny thing. A favorite food one day is loathed another. And somehow it seems like just about all of them will eat any meat labeled ‘chicken’.

No matter what it really is.

I mentioned yesterday and the day before that I was going to help my kids make a graham cracker house this year before Christmas. It’s finally done and I thought I would share how we did it.

Ingredients:

graham crackers
assorted candies such as gum, spice drops, Spree, whatever you want to put on it
royal icing

Here’s the recipe for the royal icing:

1 egg white
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 tsp lemon extract (or vanilla extract, but lemon leaves the mix whiter)

Beat egg whites in a bowl until foamy. Slowly add powdered sugar and lemon extract until completely blended.

I made one batch of this to assemble the house the first day, and a double batch the next for attaching the candy. How much you need depends on how extensive you let the decorating get.

I covered two cookie sheets with wax paper. Only needed one for building the house, but for making the walls I needed two.

Next I took one graham cracker and cut it into triangles using a butcher knife. One nice firm hit with the heel of my hand to break the crackers in a fairly straight line. Probably any knife long enough with an uncurved blade will do for the job.

Because I knew the kids would want a big house, I used the icing to connect two crackers for each side, and used the triangles to make points to support the roof. I was pretty heavy handed with the icing. I forgot to borrow my mother’s cake decorating supplies to make this easier and neater. But I figured the excess would help to strengthen the crackers once it dried.

A cracker and a half made each of the roof panels. I measured along the triangles to figure that out.

I kept the royal icing in the fridge, covered lightly with a damp paper towel while these dried.

Once they were dry enough, I assembled the house. Without the right tools this was pretty difficult. I used a plastic baggie with a corner cut off to direct the icing as best I could. Not as good as regular cake decorating tips would do, but it helped to get the job done. (Note to self: Next time don’t forget to borrow the cake decorating tools!)

One roof segment cracked when I was trying to attach it, and by that point I had too little icing to do more than fix it. Not enough to save for reattaching it. So I fixed it and decided to reattach it today.

All that was yesterday. I wanted the icing very strong before I let the kids anywhere near anything.

This morning I reattached the roof, then coated it with frosting and shingled it with Necco wafers. This was the point at which I wondered if it would have been smarter to add them yesterday, before assembly. I had to hold them in place for several minutes to keep all the shingles from sliding down, off the roof.

This did later generate the thought that maybe decorating the sides in general would be easier to do as they lay flat on the wax paper. Only thing I don’t know is how that would impact the assembly of the house. Might have too many things in the way then.

Next I covered the surrounding wax paper with the royal icing and let the kids go at it. I did the decorating of the house itself, since the kids didn’t have the patience to hold the candies in one place long enough to do anything on the walls. But they did have a lot of fun placing candies and asking if they could eat another piece yet.

The pine tree and snowman made from spice drops were probably the most difficult. Dratted things took incredibly long to dry. I had to keep a hand on them for at least 15-20 minutes. The snowman was particularly stubborn.

Then I decided to add a little chocolate. I had decided early on that that would be the easiest way to give the snowman a face. So I melted some chocolate chips in the microwave, grabbed a toothpick and went to work. Then I added more chocolate to the house just because I could, and it was chocolate. Who needs more reason than that?

With everything finished, there was still more icing available. I decided that the last bits could be poured over the roof to make something of a snow effect. It was that or throw it out, and that just seemed like more fun.

All in all, I think it turned out rather well:

Technorati Tags: christmas recipes, graham cracker house, candy

The holidays are an expensive time of year, on the whole. All the food, presents and travel really add up. But if you can stock up for other parts of the year, it can be a great time to do so.

For example, even though I’m not hosting Thanksgiving in my home, I bought a turkey. How often do you have a chance to get meat at $0.39 a pound? And a lot of other foods that you can stock up on may go on great sales as well.

Much as turkey can get boring long before the whole bird is gone. I generally find a good range of ways to use it. It makes fair stir fry, especially spiced up with turmeric or other spices that really change up the flavor.

The hard part, of course, is that a lot of Thanksgiving dinner ingredients are fresh, and not so easily frozen. But you can find some things to stock up on to save a bit in the long run.