Cosimo Rosselli, Life of Moses (det.), Sistine Chapel
Anastacia Marx de Salcedo
Guest Contributor, Slow Food Boston
Things been a bit tough the past few years? Maybe your consulting gig as a $150/hr e-enabler went south after the 2008 financial industry meltdown. Maybe your stupidvisor called you into her office all teary-eyed and gave you the “things aren’t working out” talk. Maybe you foolhardily decided now was the time to dedicate yourself 100% to your dream of becoming a world-famous Twitter artist. The fact is more than half of us are struggling with a downsized income, and 62% have clamped down on our spending. Praise be!
Last month, I posted about my attempts to eat slow ‘n’ cheap ($1.25 per person-meal; the allotment for a family of four with an annual income of $44,100), and got so discouraged I wandered into the wine section to drink up my grocery wad. You responded by giving me an earful (in the form of over 135 suggestions, some of them running to several paragraphs) on how to adhere to Slow Food principles* without blowing the rent money—here on Public Radio Kitchen, the Slow Food USA blog, the Slow Food USA Facebook page and in person at the PRK/Slow Food Boston “Slow Food on No Dough” potluck held June 30th. Thank you. I’ve read each and every one, and I now see the light.
Not only is it possible to eat well without spending a lot, it’s better for you—and the planet!
All you people currently subsisting on thrice-daily Extra Value Meals? No more excuses! Everyone can afford to eat the Slow Food way! (Some businesses in low-income neighborhoods provide more access to liquor than to fresh, local food, but that’s a different issue.) And once you trim the most costly items from your bill—usually animal products or prepared foods—you inadvertently follow Micheal Pollan’s famous seven-word prescription for a healthy diet: “Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.” So, if the Great Recession has decimated your earning power, rejoice. This is a golden opportunity for an eating habits makeover.
10 RULES FOR EATING SLOW ‘N’ CHEAP
- Base your meals on beans, peas, legumes, whole grains and vegetables. (And don’t forget the nuts, seeds and oils.) For inspiration, look to the peasant cuisines available on virtually every continent, for example, these inexpensive Mediterranean dishes.
- Eat less meat. Eat some meatless meals and use meat as flavoring rather than the main act. Buy your meat from farms and if you have freezer space, by the side or quarter. Use cheaper cuts.
- Eat less dairy. How much milk, cheese, butter, yoghurt and ice cream does your family really need? Use dairy products sparingly, to add flavor and richness.
- Eliminate or reduce prepared and convenience foods. You know which ones I mean!
- Buy fresh produce from farms—CSAs, farmers’ markets, farmstands—in season. (But don’t sweat it the rest of the year!) To reduce cost further, you can do a CSA workshare, attend farmers’ markets just before closing (when vendors really want to get rid of stuff) or, if you’re eligible, with food program coupons and discounts. If you have to buy produce at the supermarket, follow the EWG’s guidelines for avoiding the most pesticide-laden fruits and vegetables.
- Buy in bulk. Both in the bulk aisle and by purchasing larger-sized containers.
- Choose smaller fish. The lower on the food chain, the cheaper. Also: fewer bioaccumulated toxins. For seafood lovers, there’s the Cape Ann Community Supported Fishery, or pick fish from this list from the New England Aquarium’s sustainable seafood program.
- Keep a garden. Choose easy-to-grow, prolific and nutritious vegetables such as greens and herbs for flavoring. If you have no space, try window or porch container gardening, or contact your city or town about community gardens. Forage a bit if you know how. (Volunteer to weed at a farm; many edible weeds—purslane, lambsquarter, amaranth—flourish in fields, and you’ll have the added benefit of knowing they haven’t been sprayed.)
- Cook from scratch. Here are some recipes from our potluck to get you started.
- Break the rules from time to time! (After all, Moses did—literally!) Treat yourself to that Wagyu filet mignon or Extreme Kickin’ Chili Doritos®! No one likes a food fanatic. :-)
Amen.
*Slow Food Principles
1. Buy local, seasonal and sustainable food when possible.
2. Prepare food from scratch.
3. Enjoy meals in community.
Great post. So glad you helped people figure out that eating Slow is totally possible on a budget – it’s not about switching to all high-end meats and produce from expensive specialty markets! I put it this way: don’t increase your food budget in order to eat better. Instead, take the food budget you have, and figure out what you’re willing to do in order to afford the most wholesome, local foods. If it means less meat and more home cooking – the taste and the community connections you make will make the trade-off well worth it.
Anastacia. Great piece ! short, sweet and on the money. We’d love to get rid of a few bad habits and save some coin at the same time.
Will try – to comply.
ConiErni
Thanks Anastacia,
Concise and to the point. Well worth sharing.
I linked your article to my FB fan page and sent it out on Twitter.
Great Anastacia! I love everything you say, especially #1. Nothing like fabes, garbanzos and a good plato de lentejas. Our grandparents knew better.
Nice piece, Anastacia!
posted on the Harvest Co-op facebook page
(sorry, I don’t tweet – yet…)
Chris
Excellent article, and true. Also, most people who claim they can’t eat cheaply are eating too much in the first place.
The Cape Ann Community Supported Fishery is brilliant, but it’s not cheap. The whole-fish option is about $5/lb, but a lot of what you get isn’t edible. The fillet option works out to $11/pound for all-edible portion.
Great piece – I blog about food in London and my biggest stumbling block is people who say they can’t afford good food; have written several posts including Shopping Beyond the Barcode and My Local Weekly Shop, showing how it can be done – now need to do a specific cost-focused one.
http://acookslibrary.com/2010/06/21/shopping-beyond-the-barcode/
http://acookslibrary.com/2010/07/12/my-local-weekly-shop/
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Healthy Food needs to be seen more as a necessity than a luxury.
Use true convienience appliances like a crock pot to tenderize tougher cuts of meat and slow cook so your meal is ready when you are and you don’t have to frantically cook just before dinner. Saves your energy and power as well. Even if you have no stove as long as you have electricity you can plug in a crock pot. I have met a lot of people who I suspect do not even have the appliances to cook at home. Or they spend long hours in commute and have no time. A crock pot or other similar appliances might help them to eat healthy and go green.
Right on!!
Seriously? We eat a slow-food diet because it’s the cheapest way we know how to eat. Last year, I tracked how much we spent to feed our family of four for the first half of the year (the second half of the year got strange; I’m tracking the second half this year). Now granted, the first half of the year is the cheap half, but we spent $0.75 per person per meal for (mostly) locally grown produce, general groceries, and (entirely) locally grown meat. We do a lot of the work ourselves: we have a big garden and grow and butcher our own meat chickens. Still, in my experience, the slower the food, the cheaper.
Just today at the Brookline market I pointed out to someone that one ear of corn, one tomato and a few greens was enough for a salad for three. Rock on!
Interesting post, thank you. I am starting a similar experiment for 365 days to see if one can eat fresh, real, organic food on the food budget of minimum wage (12.6% of NYC’s minimum wage) – works out to be about $6/day…for a year. Suggestions most welcome…I am feeling a bit nervous about starting it. http://tipsyturnip.blogspot.com/2010/07/minimum-wage-food-challenge-countdown.html
On the grow your own front sometimes that’s too much to handle for one person or working parents, or elders or folks with a physical limitation. I’ve set up a web site that matches people who are interested in teaming up and sharing their yard space or gardens. Some of us are poor but working 3 jobs! Some of us are dirt loving diggers who live in apartments… so match made! We also support people who want to start CSAs in their neighborhoods by working with a bunch of neighbors to form yardshare farms… It’s working! The site is free as well!
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These are good suggestions. Being vegan, not eating out very often, and shopping at the farmers’ market all help keep my food bills down. Farmers at farmers’ markets and food stands often give you discounts on “seconds,” the fruits and vegetables that are great if eaten today or tomorrow but might not last much longer. I think people think of the slow food movement as being elitist sometimes because often at farmers’ markets you’ll see really expensive “artisanal” goat cheese or sheep’s cheese and very expensive cuts of meat. But people shouldn’t be eating cheese and other dairy and animal products every day, at every meal. So many people in North America still unfortunately think a meal without meat and cheese is not complete (thanks to lobbying by the meat and dairy industries) but all these animal products are making us obese, heart attack-prone and hurting our wallets.
I appreciate the article, but think it ignores the problem regarding about access to organic foods. I feel very uncomfortable eating “conventional” produce and nuts, so I spend more on organic. But I don’t think people who are on tight budgets can really afford to choose organic items. I wish that were different, and would like to see more people choose organics, so they could be a little more price competitive. I am especially troubled by the amount of toxins taken in by children who are fed pesticides along with their foods.
you forgot #11! eat with others.
ty
“No more excuses! Everyone can afford to eat the Slow Food way! (Some businesses in low-income neighborhoods provide more access to liquor than to fresh, local food, but that’s a different issue.)”
That’s not a different issue. Access is THE issue for the poor, both urban and rural. The data show that access changes eating habits. The web-savvy, blog-reading pro-Slow Food “poor” and the majority of the poor are very different populations. The 2009 poverty threshold is actually $21,756 for a family of four.
Thankfully the federal government has been persuaded to do more about access: http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2010pres/02/20100219a.html
Unfortunately, it’s not so informed about increasing employment, which has been the most effective means of enabling the poor to ditch poverty.
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