Have you ever wondered how much food was enough?
I mean, really truly enough?
A few weeks ago I found myself standing over the kitchen sink, trying to think of an idea to write about for my post at The Nourishing Home this month. Mentally, I ran through the contents of the cabinets one at a time, trying to think of a fun, summer recipe that you guys would enjoy.
It was about the time my brain got to cabinet #3 that I realized we had a lot of food.
And by a lot, I meant a couple hundred pounds.
Then last weekend, my dad brought home 200lbs MORE.
Think I’m kidding? Here’s my fridge via Instagram this past Sunday:
See the bare space in the middle and little bit of room at the top? That’s now filled with more berries.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m INCREDIBLY thankful for this blessing and the same he did for us last year, but even as we kept filling the fridge, I couldn’t help but think ahead to what we still needed from Costco or Grocery Outlet this week.
Yes, as 400lbs of food was piled in my kitchen, there was still a feeling that we needed more.
I’m over at The Nourishing home today, humbling bearing my inner thoughts on the topic of “how much food is enough“? I hope you’ll join me and be encouraged.
At the same time, I hope you’re challenged too, to really consider what we already have and to find contentment in it.
I share in the post how many days I think we could go with just eating the food we already have. You’ll have to click over to read it for yourself, but I encourage you to join in the discussion with me:
Great post! I’m sure we could go at least 3 weeks. Definitely something to think about as I plan our next weekly menu. I’ve been following you for awhile and really enjoy your site. I’ve made a few of your recipes (turned chicken, trail mix, almond and coconut milk and all were great!) but more importantly, you’ve made me start thinking more about frugality and saving where I can. We’re renting a beach house next week and I’ve got solid meal plans and ideas of what to take with us thanks to you!
Jennifer, it is such a blessing to me to hear that Crumbs has helped you – thank YOU for being a loyal reader and for taking the time to leave such an encouraging note!
Great post Tiffany. I have that same nagging thought of “I need to go the the grocery store” even if I just went. Thanks for this post it made me realize that I need to be teaching contentment to my kids more because they are the ones that would really complain if we ate only what we had for a few weeks! (My son’s teenage friends already make fun of our pantry because it is so bare compared to their houses!) I don’t care. I refuse to buy the junk food they are looking for.
Wow Debbie, I hadn’t even thought of the impact that this types of attitude and actions have on our kids! I can’t even count the number of times we’ve had the “be content with what you have” talk on legos or whatever, but here I am being discontent with the enormous provision we’ve been provided. Eye-opener and convicting indeed.
Personally, I love your attitude of “take it or leave it” when it comes to serving healthy options to the kids friends. You never know – your options might be the only healthy food they see or eat all day.
LOVE this post and am so grateful to you for being courageous to share this. The Lord has used it to make a huge impact in my heart and I am confident He will do the same in others as well. So grateful for His many blessings and provision! xo
Thank you Kelly for allowing me to share the burden of my heart with your readers. He is absolutely amazing in the way He works through His people!
I know that we might be able to survive about 2 maybe 3 days on what is in my house right now. We are a family of 7. 5 kids 6 and under. I have a budget of $250-300 for two weeks. This is to cover food. Diapers. All household cleaning. It is tough. We have food allergies. I have Fibromyalgia and.Chronic Fatigue
. I am out of flour. My mom grinds fresh whole wheat berries for me and I make my own and buy bread. Most of my shopping is done at Aldi. We rarely eat out. We eat a LOT of beans and Rice. I am down to my last bag of rice which happens.to be short.grain. I have used all my homemade stock and we only have one pound of ground beef left.
I try and “eat up” all we have as much as possible before going shopping. I am thankful for the fresh canned tomatoes from my mother’s garden
I am amazed at the $330 for a month. But since my family is double yours maybe that is the difference. Or we just eat more. My kids eat a loaf of bread for lunch. I am curious what I can learn from your site. I cook everything from scratch except for the occasional frozen Pizza. It is quite challenging. Especially with two in diapers.
If your family is twice the size as mine, then your budget should be at least twice too! Remember that every family is different, and we’re not paying for diapers or addressing food allergies or chronic illness. There’s plenty of grace to go around Amy, and it sounds like you are doing a fantastic job of efficiently using what He has provided. I hope that you find helpful ideas on Crumbs, and I welcome you and look forward to getting to know you more. 🙂
Obviously, this is way out of Amy’s initial timeline, but the diaper bill alone must be crippling – and toxic. My daughter bought very inexpensive washable reusable diapers online when my grandson was small – he was even on the front page of a London (England) newspaper sporting them (mainly because he walked at nine months rather for any other reason – and that can be a sign if dyslexia, so nothing to get excited about – he isn’t, but my son was/is).
I think we could actually survive months. We raise our own beef and chickens. My sister in law raises pork. I have the better part of a deer in jars in the basement. We have a large garden, as well. I always have the nagging “there’s nothing to eat” feeling, too. This is ridiculous, as there are 2 freezers full of may at my house, and we are a family of 4, and my oldest child is only 2.
You’re reading my mind Lindsey. I feel so ashamed to admit that the nagging feeling is ever present, but I just reassure myself that we DO have plenty to eat, and then focus my eyes on what we have instead of what we don’t. It’s a daily battle though!!
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this post! Our daughter is a senior in HS this year and is also beginning some course work at our local community college. Talk about blowing the budget! Your timing could not have been better as we find ourself low on funds due to the added expenses from these new circumstances. We could probably eat a good 2-3 weeks on what we have on hand and what better time to try it out. Have loved exploring your site and look forward to more!
Thank you SC Susie! College tuition… yep, there’s a budget buster for sure! Hopefully a fresh set of eyes on the pantry can help out a bit. Welcome to Crumbs – I look forward to seeing more of you! 🙂
I used to be a couponer and we had several weeks worth of food on hand at all times. I stopped couponing and started buying real, whole food ingredients the way God made em. We went down to about a weeks worth of veggies and about a months worth of meat at one time. Now, we’re downsizing by selling the house and moving our five person household into a 28 foot travel trailer. We’re working on getting pantry basics down to the essentials and 2-3 days worth of produce. The problem is that I like produce and bulk from Costco and I’m worried about having food storage in the world we live in. The positive thing is that I’m learning to use what we have and substitute things instead of running to the store for every little thing. It makes me feel like I can actually cook when I use butter but the recipe calls for oil or broccoli when it calls for peas, especially when it ends up tasting good.
Stephanie! Mr. Crumbs and I have been talking about doing a long-term road trip in an RV, so it is refreshing to hear your story of downsizing in terms of the kitchen and food. While the idea of traveling sounds like so much fun, I admit to being a little scared about how “little” food we’d have access to. At the same time, how amazing is it to learn how to not just survive on the few basics, but actually thrive?! I’m inspired by your quest, and I do hope you keep us updated!!
It would be interesting to know if you could raise children in such circumstances. It would be interesting to learn about it. I suspect it might be less difficult in the USA than Britain. I don’t imagine such a lifestyle would be easy in an urban environment.
Having lived through a few hurricanes as a child when no one brought water and you pulled out the BBQ grills and had a block party eating all the perishable foods then your hurricanes stocks till the power came on a week later. We are prepared and could eat for many months on whats in the house, what we grow and produce. With the craziness of the world today anything could happen to screw up supply or if available make you concerned about the quality. Also feel blessed that most of our food comes from alternate/local sources.
I love that you have purpose behind your preparations Robin. I do think it’s important to be prepared, but I can assure you that unfortunately, it’s not the current attitude in my house.
We could easily go 6 months, no problem. We might get bored and miss things like bread after awhile but there would be plenty to eat. I do exactly the same thing. Despite two jam packed deep freezers, a pantry loaded with home canned goods from our garden, and filled cupboards and refrigerator, I will still think I need to go to the grocery store or Costco! Lately though I have stopped doing this more and more. I just prepare what we have fresh and put some of our preserved food with it as needed. I don’t worry about designing meal plans or anything like that. I quit thinking that if we had spaghetti we HAD to have peas just because that is what we usually have with spaghetti. If there are no peas available we eat something else. No one in the family seems to notice and everyone eats with gratitude and is nourished. Last winter I quit buying apples and bananas weekly out of habit. Instead we ate frozen peaches and berries, dried apples and applesauce. Once everyone got used to it, it was no big deal. Good question!
Your comment on spaghetti Leenie made me branch out and make my own last week. We had TONS of tomatoes and cooked some up for a fresh sauce, but no pasta. Instead of going shopping, I pulled out a cookbook and made our own (since we had plenty of grain on hand). It was so good! Then used leftover sauce with leftover rice for “spaghetti rice.” The kids loved it, and it used up what we had.
I think it’s the mindset more than anything, getting used to having certain dishes in certain ways. But one day at time right, one “no I won’t go” decision can change that mindset for the better. 🙂 Thank you for sharing your story Leenie!
Wow, you are totally right! And I’ve had the same thoughts myself, which is why once-in-awhile I take a “break” from the grocery store just to eat through everything we have stored in various places throughout the house (fridge, freezer, canning pantry, random-stuff pantry, dehydrated goods, … I just have so many “hiding places” for food!!).
I grew up poor and in the north. My husband and I moved to Texas 34 years ago. We immediately stocked up on groceries at all times preparing for emergencies. It took us years to get through our mind set that there would be no blizzards and we could go to the grocery store down the street even in bad weather. We have weathered three weeks of no electricity during Hurricane Ike. We always have a full chest freezer, two refrigerators and their freezers, a pantry, two shelving units in our laundry room and several air proof bins of food. We also have six kids ranging from 10 years old to 20. I know mentally that we have plenty of food to feed our family at least six months or more. My husband is also a real estate broker and we live on commissions. We never know when that next closing will be so we stock pile money and food. We usually do pretty good but when I start feeling worried about the future, then I have to fight the urge to go get more groceries. I am fortunate that my husband is even more frugal than me and we teach our kids all the time not to waste food, etc. Our 20 year old is going to college and working full time now and she will quote what we have taught her and share it with her boyfriend and friends. I just wish she would use it more on her personal financial choices but she has to learn everything from the school of hard knocks because of course, she knows everything, LOL
I do not do well with large shops or lots of people, and so I avoid shopping if at all possible. I have a store cupboard in which I keep the seasonal abundance I have preserved from each harvest and can enjoy the taste of summer year around. I have a freezer in which I can store the meat which comes in abundance at some times and is scarce at others, and where there once was lawn, I have a vegetable garden, from which I can pick whichever greens are ready pretty much year around (and feed the scraggly bits to the chickens who give me eggs). I feel significantly more free from the need to buy more and stock up since I stopped buying food products and started buying only the staple foods we need, and cooking from scratch. I find that practicing *enoughness* helps me realise and celebrate the abundance of creation and reminds me of the love of God as provider.
We (husband and I) live on the outskirts of London, England with a 100ftX30ft garden with our six chickens, five cats and dog (with two children now grown and living nearby). Always interested in food, cooking, ecology, environment. It is very hard to live economically within an ecologically-minded framework here, though I more than try. Really enjoyed reading this article in particular (I like your website generally). I prefer a fairly LCHF life with a decidedly Mediterranean bent – but Europe is increasingly covered in plastic polytunnels to feed the demand for fresh fruit and veg. Awfully hard to stick to principles and ethics in today’s world. I’ve even ended up with asthma as a result of ditching our car for a bike!
Another variable to consider is that certain seasons of life can interfere with your “normal.” I usually shop entirely at Aldi, with a few trips to Sam’s Club here and there (less than once a month, stocking up on coffee, toilet paper, etc. and getting larger packages of fruits and vegetables and a couple rotisserie chickens for various meals, and then making stock from the bones). However, I had my fourth baby a month ago (and had a very hard pregnancy) and it’s bitterly cold right now where I live, and influenza is running rampant in our town. The past couple months, I’ve been willing to spend a little more money to place grocery pickup orders from Walmart for the convenience of it. It’s a luxury that I normally wouldn’t allow myself, but I’m making a conscious choice to do it right now because I think it’s wise given my current circumstances. It is also easier for me to keep my meal plan in mind when assembling my order online than when walking through a store.
Also, this post helped me see that the fact that I’m consistently going over my budget has more to do with the fact that we haven’t adjusted the budget since we had two kids under 5 (and now we have a 9 year old, 6.5 year old, 3 year old, and newborn with a nursing mom), than anything I’m doing wrong. I certainly could stand to use up what I have in my pantry and freezer, but I feel like my “need to go grocery shopping” is usually about all the produce, milk, and bread we go through so quickly!