Frugal Foodie?

A couple of weeks ago, your MatchGirl was at KeyFoods with a dear friend. Said dear friend is famous - infamous, perhaps - for his frugality. There are stories that span years to this friend's frugality.

And, honestly, in the current depression, I think we could all take a tip from frugal friend. But looking at some of the things he was buying - sugary cereal because it was on sale, the cheapest American "cheese" - started me wondering about eating well on a shoestring budget. As I teased this friend, he said that you can only eat "good" food if you spend a lot of money*. And, though MatchGirl has never had a lot of money, she will, gentle reader, shell out a little more for a grass fed pork chop over that one covered with freezer burn in the grocer's case. And, as my unemployment reaches it's 6 month mark, I am trying to rein in the spending - on necessities and on extras. So, I'm not going out a lot. I'm cooking most of my meals at home.

But what to do, dear readers, if you stare in your cupboard and see only bulgar wheat, a can of crushed tomatoes and some onions? What if you have only one egg and a quarter cup of sugar? What if you are just staring into that cupboard and all you can think, seeing how very bare it is, is that ordering pizza/thai/tacos would be so much easier than figuring out what the heck to cook? What's a gal on a budget to do?

I was alerted today to the website supercook.com. All you have to do is type in the ingredients laying about your kitchen and voila! the site searches the web for recipes with the ingredients that you already have. Now, I'm not saying that it is going to save you loads of cash, but I think it's a great way to cut back on one's food waste and use those random cans and veggies and frozen leftovers bits you have around.



*correction: Frugal friend was referring to that fact that it is not easy to eat cheaply if you are eating organic or local

"it's expensive to eat organic or local or (fill in the blank trendy dietary statement from the nyt style section)
but eating healthy is affordable
in fact really affordable. exhibit a: frozen veggies - cheap, healthy, easy"