Sunday's Plate

Last week I found myself in a conversation about Walmart versus Schnucks cost. I mentioned that my groceries are usually lower than most people because I shop for scratch only groceries. Very little of what I buy is pre-made. As I looked at my groceries on the check out today for both my family and the school, I looked at what is pre-made and found: whole grain noodles, corn chips (Terry is addicted to corn chips) tomato sauce, and applesauce. Of these things, I can't make one - corn chips. I bought $150.00 at the store today, and everything was food. $50.00 was mine, and $100.00 was the school's.

I bought meat, vegetables, fruit, and cheese - enough to feed forty children breakfast, lunch, and snack for five days. Tomorrow, Terry will pick up another $150.00 at Aldi's and Sams. It will include paper products and soap.

I bought two beautiful chuck roasts @ five pounds. I got three pounds of ground chuck, cottage cheese, and two other cheeses for the lasagna we will have tomorrow. I got three pounds of chicken breasts on sale for chicken pot pie on Thursday. We will have two meatless days - Wednesday we will have tuna casserole with our famous cheese sauce, and on Friday we will have homemade pizza.

We will have homemade muffins tomorrow, whole grain cereal on Tuesday, whole grain waffles on Wednesday, sticky buns on Thursday, and whole grain pancakes on Friday.

Snacks will be whole grain, home baked, all week with an exception on Tuesday. It's a grab bag day.

We serve three fruits and vegetables at every lunch and aside from the applesauce, the fruit and vegetables we serve are fresh.

If I bought this pre-made, the cost would be prohibitive. If I had to spend breakfast money on Eggo Waffles, it would cost me $16.00 just for the waffles. If I had to spend money on syrup, add another $5.00. As it is my waffles cost about $2.00 to make for forty children. And I use whole grains so they are actually beneficial to the children rather than detrimental like Eggos.

When you consider the cost of bread products, a school could literally go broke trying to supply bread products three times a day, and it's the same at home. When I shop, I shop for the very best meat and vegetables a store has to offer, and I come away with the lowest tab because I'm willing to make the bread products from scratch.

Many women will say they don't have time to do this, but the truth is it doesn't take any longer to make most foods from scratch. The key is setting up your kitchen so that your flour and your sugar are not rubber banned in the ziplock at the back of your cabinet.

Kitchens are a utility room, not a "House Beautiful never do we touch affair. "I once had a friend with white carpeting in her kitchen. She, of course, never cooked. When I look at some of the kitchens at Lowes, I wonder how it would be to cook on furniture. My kitchen at home was built in 1830 and my "cabinets" consist of a hutch made probably 1860, and an oak sideboy from 1890, and a kindergarten cabinet from 1920. I have a sink and two "Johnny on the spot make me there" cabinets that hold nothing and about 2.5 square feet of landing space on either side of the sink. Yet in this small kitchen with its brick floor, I can prepare anything for as many as fifty people simply because I've set it up so that I can grab anything I need in one second. Setting up a working kitchen means having equipment out and ready to use. If your mixer is shoved in the back of the closet behind the old dog dishes, you are not likely to pull it out to use. If your food processor is on the top shelf and you have to get a chair to get it down, and then figure out how to put it together, you are unlikely to use that either.

Food that is used often needs to be out of the original container and put in a container you can grab in a second. Flour and sugar need to be housed in containers that grace your kitchen.

Lots of women complain about the mess in the kitchen after cooking. The trick to this is the first step. Run a sink of hot soapy water and wash as you go. Clean everything up and put it away as fast as you got it out. When I finish baking, the kitchen is as clean as it was before I even started, and that's the key to keeping it going. If your product is wonderful, and it took you no time to do, and your kitchen remains clean, you are much more likely to do it again.

The cost will be much less, the product much healthier, and your bill will come a tumbling down.
Next time we'll talk about making quickie foods that taste great.