Given current prices on everyday necessities, it’s a great time for a conservation conversations. How can you stay on your required diet, eat healthy food, not exhaust yourself, and spend less money?
Let’s start with a given. It will not be easy. Fighting this fact will delay making progress and mentally exhaust you. The quicker you make peace with a need for change that may make portions of your life more difficult, the sooner you will be able to improve your circumstances and quality of life overall.
Here are a few guidelines to follow when conservation is required.
Explore things that can stay the same. This can make transitions easier. For example, instead of giving up meals at a favorite farm-to-table restaurant, reduce the frequency. Skip the iced tea or soda in favor of water.
Stop buying things you throw away. We all have things that sit in the refrigerator or pantry because we thought they were a good idea at the time, but we don’t use often enough to justify keeping them on hand. Cocoa powder, vanilla beans, saffron, lasagna noodles, and hot sauce are things I seem to think I need all the time. I don’t.
Use less. Following a low histamine diet has resulted in me recognizing how much flavor can be imparted by a smidge of tomato sauce, a spoonful of ranch dressing, or a sprinkle of parmesan cheese. Reducing the amount I’d typically add has made things tolerable for my system and saved me money as well. For what to do with leftover tomato sauce – freeze it in ice cube trays to make it go a long way. You can also share with friends or neighbors.
Rely on herbs, spices, and veggies rather than cheese. Cheese is delicious. Cheese is also expensive. You can enhance the flavor of casseroles with herbs and spices. Potatoes, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and even beans can be used to add a creamy element to casseroles, soups, and one pot meals.
Add rice and/or beans. A meal will feel more substantial if you serve it with rice or beans. You can pull back on the amount of beef, pork, or chicken per person by serving bowls that include rice and/or beans.
We’ve made it through five guidelines that don’t require extra baking, sorting through sales, or organizing coupons. That may be enough to keep your budget working. If not, consider a few more:
Make more soup. Soup is delicious and filling whether it’s hot or cold. As we enjoy the farmers market, it’s a great time to use bits and pieces, leaves, and stems in soup. Fruit is best used quickly, but vegetable bits can be collected in a container in your fridge for several days before you need to cook them. Think carrot tops, beet greens, Brussels sprout leaves, chard or broccoli stems. Prep them when cleaning up after the meal in which you used the rest of the vegetable. That will leave you with a container of prepped vegetables to use in soup.
Substitute ground turkey for ground beef. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years because I prefer it, but it also makes sense for budgetary reasons. In meatloaf and burgers, I add a splash of Worcestershire sauce to beef up the flavor (see what I did there).
Make yogurt. This may sound like a big deal, but yogurt is one of the easiest things to make. You don’t need anything but milk, starter, and a place to keep it warm. I prefer to use whole milk, packaged starter, and a yogurt maker that holds jars. But you can use yogurt with live cultures as a starter and an instant pot to keep it warm. Making your own allows you to process it for 24 hours to break down all the lactose if you’re lactose intolerant. It eliminates all the added sugar of flavored yogurt, and it means your yogurt isn’t housed in plastic. Lots of bang for a minimum of prep time.
Freeze gluten-free items. Instead of buying ready-made gluten-free muffins, pancakes, waffles, or cookies, make two batches at a time and freeze one. Since 2020, the selection of prepackaged gluten-free items available in local stores has shrunk and prices have increased. This makes an occasional afternoon of baking seem like an increasingly welcome activity.
Dispose of disposables. Paper towels, paper napkins, and disposable plates all have washable alternatives. If you’re already overwhelmed with laundry or dishes, this may not be the appropriate place to cut back, but it’s an option to explore. You can also conserve by saving paper towels used to dry clean hands for later use cleaning the table or countertops.
These ten guidelines don’t eliminate but do minimize change and additional effort while reducing costs. Keep them in mind as we all deal with rising prices and are required to have conservation conversations.
