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A recipe for home stewardship

As a privileged, yuppie newspaper reporter in the 1980s, I was surprised to learn that the Salvation Army Citadel in my city was offering cooking classes for residents of its poorest neighborhood. I envisioned gourmet lessons a la Martha Stewart or Julia Child. What? Boeuf bourguignon avec champignons for the down and out?

Hardly, said the local Lieutenant in charge. Basic cooking classes teach poor people how to stretch their food dollars by making nutritious dishes from scratch, rather than buying expensive processed foods. It’s a stewardship two-fer, since it’s better for your pocketbook and your physical health.

The lesson has always stayed with me, and 25 years later I’m still eating well and saving money by making many meals the old-fashioned way.

I’m amazed at the variety of prepackaged meals available in the frozen-foods section. Today I saw ready-to-microwave frozen breakfast croissant with egg, cheese and sausage. Or the microwaveable hamburgers. Or the corndogs. My thought: Who eats these foodlike products?

Last year I started making my own bread. I like the feel of dough and the smell of bread cooking in the oven. It’s delicious, especially still warm from the oven and served with a swipe of butter. My bread has no preservatives or special chemicals to give it texture.

And true to the Salvation Army lieutenant’s observation, it is a lot cheaper

Here’s the breakdown:
0.25 – two cups of flour ($2.50 for a 5-pound bag, with 20 cups in a bag)
0.13 – one tablespoon of yeast ($6 a pound in bulk)
0.04 – one tablespoon of sugar ($3 for a 5 pound bag)
0.01 – one teaspoon of salt ($1 a pound)
0.06 – two tablespoons of canola oil ($2 a quart)
0.12 – cost of using electric oven at 350 for 30 minutes
Total: 61 cents

Of course, this is for the basic white bread made with the store-brand unbleached white flour. When I buy the fancy whole-wheat flour my wife craves, the price goes up. But just a little.

My family has come to love the taste of “Dad’s bread,” so I know I’m modeling good stewardship for the kids, as well as feeding them wholesome food baked with love.

The bottom line: If you want to eat well and make your food dollar go farther, you can make your own bread and learn how to cook from scratch. Your family will appreciate the effort.

 

 

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Would you eat less meat?

Exactly 40 years ago Frances Moore Lappé proposed a groundbreaking solution to a then-looming food crisis – eating less meat. Lappe’s book, Diet for a Small Planet criticized the vast stores of grain that are fed to animals for meat production. The book has sold millions of copies and is considered a classic.

The Green Revolution forestalled the food crisis that seemed imminent in the 1960s, but today a group of scientists is revisiting Lappe’s premise, saying that the world’s eating less meat will be crucial in the next 40 years, when the world’s population is expected to reach 9 billion.

The principle behind the suggestion is simple: It takes 7 pounds of grain to produce a pound of beef; 6.5 pounds of grain produce a pound of pork, and 2.5 pounds of grain to produce a pound of chicken, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. So if the same amount of grain were fed directly to people, the world would have a lot more food to go around.

Investigating how the world can sustainably feed 9 billion people by 2050, an international team of scientists worked for two years to put together a report to be published in the Oct. 20 issue of Nature. (Click here to read a summary. Click here to listen to an NPR story about it.) The group called for five dramatic steps in agriculture: halting farmland expansion in the tropics, closing yield gaps on underperforming lands, using agricultural inputs more strategically, reducing food waste and shifting diets away from meat. Currently, about 40 percent of the planet’s crops are fed to animals, the report said.

Stewards of physical wellbeing have known for years that it’s healthier to eat more plants and less meat. Now as the world braces for another 2 billion mouths to feed in the next 40 years, it may become a matter of stewardship of global resources.

Here are questions for the faithful steward:
-Do you eat too much meat? How much should you cut back?
-Would you be willing to eat less meat if it meant helping to feed people you will never meet who live half a world away?
-Do you think people will rise to the challenge of eating less meat for the sake of others, or will human nature prevail?

(Photo by avlxyz, used by Creative Commons License. Thanks!)

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Back to the days before credit cards

‘IT’S PERSONAL’ BLOG –

For a week and a half my wallet was nowhere to be found, so I spent time in the financial reality I enjoyed in the 1970s, before ATMs made cash available anywhere at the touch of a button, and before credit cards were easy to obtain – or at least for me!

The loss of my wallet sent me hurtling back in time to those days. Now there are two things you need to know. First, I KNEW my wallet was somewhere in my house or church office, so finding it was just a matter of time. Second, I put a hold on my credit cards just in case.

Here’s how my buying behavior changed:

– I planned my purchases, and then followed through more exactly. For instance, in the grocery store I actually stuck to the things on my list. With my debit card in hand, I would have loaded the cart with stuff we’d “probably need eventually.”

– I was not tempted, as I usually am, to stop by some store just because I’m in the neighborhood. In my country town, for instance, there is no Home Depot or Dick’s Sporting Goods, so whenever I’m in a place that has one, I might just stop by. You know, just to see if there’s something we might want.

– I didn’t even think about going out and buying stuff that we didn’t absolutely need. If shopping meant a trip to the bank or depleting a finite supply of cash-in-hand, it had better be worth it.

The experience brought me back to those days when, if you wanted to have money on a Sunday night, you had to make sure to go to the bank on Friday. No weekend money meant limited fun on Saturday night. Impulse buying was limited by the number and denomination of bills in your wallet. No $10,000 credit card limit to tempt me.

After 11 days my wallet turned up (as I suspected it would) in some stupid place I had carelessly thrown it — on a chair next to my desk, where it was swallowed in a pile of stuff. I reactivated my credit cards, but I’m not eager to go back to my old habits, because here is the best lesson of all:

– I spent a lot less money than I would have otherwise.

(Photo by Carlos A. Martinez, used by Creative Commons license. Thanks!)

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Personal Finance: Asking the Important Questions

So you want to improve your personal finances? That’s a great goal, but first one must ask and answer some important questions. Brad Chaffee of Enemy of Debt offers a thoughtful reflection on six important questions that must be considered before embarking upon a personal finance overhaul. Click here or the headline above to read more. (Photo by striatic used under Creative Commons License. Thanks!)

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Financial Fitness for Seminary–Car Payment

So you’re planning to enroll in seminary or another grad school program, but you have an uncomfortable debt load. One place to start is by eliminating any car payments. Read how Elle and her husband did it faster in this post from CoupleMoney. Click here or on the headline above. (Photo by Mr. Thomas used under Creative Commons License. Thanks!)

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Student Finance Tools

Here are some smart questions you should ask yourself: Where does your money go, how can you keep more of it from going “down the drain, and what will your student loans cost once  you graduate? And here are some smart tools to help you keep track. (Photo (c)  2011 Iwona Grodzka, via Bigstock.com)