Mom set a lasting example

Shopping or cooking, she taught how to stretch a dollar

As a working mother of five children, I would be much more excited to find an inexpensive, healthy, easy-to-prepare dinner recipe that everyone liked than a hundred dollar bill lying on the sidewalk. Lately when I walk into a store, it appears I need to find a hundred dollar bill lying on the sidewalk just to get the basics.

The most noticeable price increases have been those items without which I cannot live, namely the staples — milk, eggs, cheese, fresh fruits and vegetables, and bread. My addiction to coffee is killing me. I'm starting to like the taste of microwaved, day-old Folgers.

While meats have always been more expensive, fine cuts of steak are becoming a rare treat in our house. When I was growing up in Montana with my six siblings, we ate mostly trout and some form of deer meat. Occasionally we had steak.

My mom was the epitome of thriftiness. When I went shopping with her, I found out she had the butcher slice inexpensive roasts, then she barbecued them. We were never the wiser.

While I haven't pinched my pennies quite this tightly, I'm not likely to buy my 8-year-olds any cut of meat that costs more than $4.99 a pound. (I asked my husband Mike, "Where can we go fishing out here for some free grub?" He's still laughing.)

The cost of nonperishables doesn't seem to have quite caught up with the price of gasoline and perishables. I fight the urge to fill my freezer with the "just add eggs" breakfast skillet meals, whole wheat waffles, frozen vegetables, ice cream, chicken nuggets, corn dogs, etc., before the ripple effect kicks in on the rest of the regulars on my shopping list.

I'm starting to revert to the days when my mother cared for our family of nine — more hamburger and less steaks, meatloaf filled with bread crumbs to stretch that pound of hamburger, adding a little water to tomato sauce to ensure that none is left in the can, balancing jars of ketchup upside down for hours to get every drop out, and very few meals out.

My mom didn't waste anything. We had at least one day when we ate leftovers, stale bread became bread pudding after the mold was cut off, and soft bananas were made into banana bread. Milk was always added to scrambled eggs. We had a lot of soups, stews and casseroles that were one-offs of the leftovers we had last week.

She also ground up an old roast with her hand grinder and mixed it with mayonnaise and relish to make sandwiches for school the next day. If we didn't like what she had to offer, we were welcome to starve. The funny thing is when I was reminiscing to Mike about my mom, he said his mom did the exact same things with their family of seven.

This morning, I dared Mike to cut the mold off some bread that was on the crust of a sandwich he just made for one of our boys' lunches. "Our moms wouldn't waste that." He couldn't do it.

Shopping lists are great, but the real secret to keeping the grocery bill down is to leave the kids at home. Whenever I take my triplet boys or my 6-year-old daughter Maria, it's always the same story when we arrive at the checkout. "Who put the Barbie waffles in the cart? Where did all this candy come from? We are not getting Ding Dongs." You can only leave so many unwanted groceries with the cashier.

Bottom line: As my grocery bill goes up and my net income stays the same, something has to give. Budgeting is like dieting. My grocery bill, unfortunately, is like my weight. At my age, I just can't seem to get it down.

Lisa Brown is a working mother of five whose column appears weekly in Family Life. Reach her at lbrown@postandcourier.com.