#homemaking reference

Hello!  I’m not going to be putting out a low spoons menu every week unless it’s super popular (haha with my 87 followers), but I figured I’d do a post with some low cost, low spoons meal ideas.  This is meant to be low spoon, not no spoon.  I might do a post on basically-zero-spoon meals too.

Breakfast

Microwave scrambled eggs, especially if you have a decent dishwasher.  Microwave eggs tend to stick to the container even if you grease it.  You can add in whatever you want- frozen spinach, frozen chopped veggies, cheese, a bit of milk, bacon bits, nutritional yeast, hot sauce or salsa.  If your additions are frozen, microwave them till thawed first, then add the eggs to the same container and mix.  Microwave about one minute for each egg, then break up and stir in the cooked chunks with the uncooked egg.  Then microwave in 30 second increments until done.  For a lower spoons option, microwave for two minutes per egg.  They’ll be cooked really unevenly but you won’t have to stand up as much.

Instant oatmeal!  Again, additions are key.  Nuts, nut butter, canned, frozen or fresh fruit, brown sugar, maple syrup, butter, nutella, chocolate chips.  Thaw frozen fruit in the microwave in the same container you microwave the oatmeal in.

Quick oats can also be microwaved, and they’re significantly cheaper than the instant packets.  Use about the same amount of water and oats and microwave for two minutes.  These are very forgiving and turn out great even if your ratio is pretty far off.  Err on the side of a little more water and you can’t go wrong.

Smoothies are low spoons if you have a blender and you can rinse out the blending containers immediately.  If you’re hand washing and the container is going to sit for a while, either fill it with water or skip the smoothie.  Smoothie recipes are almost endless but my favorite simple one is this:  a handful of frozen fruit, and milk to fill up the rest of the volume that I want my smoothie to be.  That’s it.  If I have the spoons, I sometimes add a spoonful of sugar, a bit of vanilla, some yogurt, or a second kind of fruit.

Lunches and Dinners

Oven sandwiches.  I used to work at an Isaac’s restaurant in Pennsylvania, and their formula for sandwiches is something I still use: Toast your bread, spread dressing on it, put lunch meat and sliced or shredded cheese on that, melt till bubbly on broil, then add cold veggies.  Absolutely unbeatable.  A few of my favorites: flatbread with ranch, muenster, cheddar, spinach, alfalfa sprouts, and tomato; pretzel roll with mustard, ham, swiss, lettuce, and tomato; rye with thousand island dressing, corned beef, muenster, cole slaw, lettuce, tomato, and red onion.  Again, the combinations are endless.  Look up the Isaac’s Restaurant menu for more ideas.

Chicken veggie soup.  This one is slightly higher spoons, but it yields a lot.  While sitting, remove all the meat from a storebought rotisserie chicken.  Put all the bones, gristle, fat, etc. in a big pot and cover with water.  Boil 1 hour or more.  If you want, you can add spices like rosemary, thyme, and garlic, but you don’t have to.  Strain the broth into another pot and throw away the chicken carcass.  Add whatever veggies you have (except broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts) to the broth.  Those bags of frozen peas and carrots are easy and pretty cheap.  Cook till the veggies are done.  Add the chicken meat back in.  This freezes well, so you can make a big batch while you have the energy, eat it for dinner, and freeze the rest for another dinner or three.  You can also extend this meal with rice or pasta.

Green Bean Casserole.  Combine two cans of green beans, one can of cream of mushroom soup, and a handful of french fried onions in a microwave safe dish and microwave till hot and bubbly.  If you do this in the oven or toaster oven, top the dish with more french fried onions and maybe some cheese.

Any Meal Winners

This post is a collaboration between me and @macgyvermedical.

Okay listen, it would be nice- very nice- to live next to a WinCo or an Aldi. But whether it’s a lack of affordable transportation or simple distance, sometimes the grocery store you have access to is not the most affordable option. And by “not the most affordable”, I mean potentially a Safeway or even, God forbid, a Whole Foods. 

So today we went to a Whole Foods to see what one could potentially afford if they’re looking at the dirtiest of dirt cheap at the most expensive grocery store chain in the USA. And folks, I’ll be honest, it’s pretty bleak. Not impossible, like, you can do it. But nutritionally complete will be the only thing it will be, and you’re still going to be paying a minimum of $8-10 per day per person (if you were willing to do beans and rice and onions and frozen spinach for every meal, you could get it down to $6/day, but that would be tough). 

But if it’s what you’ve got, it’s what you’ve got. And we’re here to give you some ideas as to how it might look. To get us started: The cheapest protein is dry beans, coming in at $0.75/lb (that’s after cooking, as purchased at $2.99/lb) (runner up, peanut butter at $1.92/lb). The cheapest meat is whole chicken at $2.49/lb. The cheapest starch is all-purpose flour at $0.64/lb (runner up white or brown rice, both $0.80/lb). The cheapest vegetable is carrot at $1.05/lb, (runner up, yellow onion at $1.69/lb, frozen spinach at $1.92/lb). The cheapest fruit is banana at $0.69/lb (runner up pears and plantains at $1.29/lb). The cheapest fat is vegetable oil at $2.08/lb.

There are a number of other foods we found that could work in moderation for a less expensive diet. There were a number of vegetables (among them various types of cabbage, squash, and daikon radish) at $1.99/lb. White potatoes make a slightly more expensive starch at $1.09/lb. Frozen fruit and vegetables tended to be in the $2.50-4/lb range (except spinach). Milk was $4.09/gal,  eggs were $0.28 each, and butter was $4.48/lb. Shredded cheese (the cheapest version of cheese) was $5/lb. Meats other than whole chicken are almost not worth mentioning, but you could get ground pork and pork butt for $6/lb. Split peas and lentils were $4/lb. Pasta ran $1.29/lb and pasta sauce was $2.24/lb. 

Notice that, like when pricing out everything for any other store, trying to put everything in the same unit price will help compare fats to fats, protein to protein, vegetable to vegetable, and starch to starch. Most of the labels at Whole Foods had a unit price in ounces, which we converted to pounds by multiplying by 16 because it was easier, especially for things like protein and vegetables, which are frequently sold by the pound. 

So, here are some ideas for relatively inexpensive meals with the least expensive foods at Whole Foods. You are going to have to cook, even things like tortillas and homemade bread and other things you’d probably be able to afford to buy pre-made at other stores (bread and tortillas were prohibitively expensive here, but flour was reasonable. We didn’t look at yeast, but if you were really strapped flatbreads are good or there are many good recipes for sourdough starters out there). These are meals that would reasonably keep you spending about $8-10/day per person at Whole Foods: 

Beans, rice, frozen spinach, hot sauce, onion, a banana (this is the absolute rock bottom cheapest meal I could make that was more than just beans and rice, and it works out to a little less than $2 for a third of a day’s calories.)

Mixed sliced banana and frozen strawberries for fruit salad

Homemade tortillas with beans and cheese

Homemade pasta with sauce and cheese

Peanut butter and jelly on homemade bread

Rice pudding with brown rice for breakfast

Oatmeal with cinnamon and diced pears

Baked squash with chicken 

Rice and edamame with soy sauce and homemade pickled radish

Sheet pan frozen french fries and frozen cauliflower with cheese

Black bean burgers with homemade buns, cheese, and homemade pickled red onion

Fried potatoes or taro (a standby for adding calories to a meal in our house!)

Oatmeal with peanut butter and bananas

Chicken and rice stew with onion and carrot

Stir fried rice with cabbage, onion, carrot, and ground pork

Quiche with spinach and homemade pie crust

Cheese pizza with homemade crust (or bbq chicken pizza with homemade bbq sauce)

Split pea soup

Curried lentils and rice with california blend veggies

Sausage-carrot- rice casserole with homemade cream of soup

Cabbage and mashed potatoes with sausage patties

Onion soup (need to buy beef bouillon)

Mofongo 

Strawberry or mango smoothie

Copper pennies (a kind of pickled carrot)

Banana “ice cream”

Taro-pork fritters

Tempura cauliflower

@blip-bloop-bloop asked: How to make healthy food fairly cheaply, when the spoon bank is closed and you have no freezer

Thank you for this blog’s first ask!

Since you need food that’s low spoons and freezer-free, you’ll need food that’s preserved in ways other than freezing.  That leaves you lots of options, mainly canned, dried, and pickled.  

Pickled is pretty obvious- you can get a number of veggies pickled from the store, and they add great flavor/color/variety to meals without needing any prep other than taking them out of the jar.  They can be relatively expensive, but they tend to last a long time since they’re so strongly flavored that you only need a little at a time.  I’ll do another post on making your own pickled veggies.  In order to encourage my family (of two) to eat more pickled things, I sometimes put a small dish of pickles out on the table for meals.  If you do dishes by hand or the dish is otherwise spooniful, skip it and set the jar directly on the table.  If you find that you really like adding pickled foods to your meals, ethnic grocery stores often have different kinds of pickled foods than your standard western grocery.  Budget tip- don’t buy refrigerated pickled food unless you really like them and can afford them; the canned stuff is almost always cheaper.  

Canned food may end up being a staple for you, and that’s not a bad thing.  There are a wide variety of canned foods, and if you find that one particular type fits your budget really well, you can dress it up into different dishes in almost infinite ways if you have the spices.  Canned food also does well in the microwave, so it can be very quick to prepare.  I’ll include a couple of can-only recipes at the end of this post.

Dried foods are underappreciated, in my opinion.  They include things like spices and beans, but you can also get meats (chipped beef, beef jerky, squid snacks), mushrooms, and veggies.  Dried foods do take longer to prepare; options to decrease meal prep time include soaking overnight, using an instant pot, or getting a crock pot and letting it cook all day.  Some instant pots also have slow cooker options.  

Meat might be your biggest issue since it’s expensive to buy in small quantities.  I’d encourage you to check out what dry and canned meats and fish you have access to and then learn about how to stretch those into multiple meals (I’m also planning a post on this).  If frozen meat is cheaper than fresh, remember that you don’t have to keep it frozen for it to stay good.  Lots of meat that we buy “fresh,” especially fish, has been previously frozen, then thawed in the fridge.  To do this yourself, just put the meat in the fridge and keep it there.  It will probably make a puddle, so putting it in a container or on a plate is a good idea.  For fresh (or previously frozen) meat, instead of trying to stretch it into more servings, you may want to go ahead and eat bigger portions of meat but eat meat at fewer meals.  For example, stretching meat might look like making a can of mackerel into four meals instead of one by having mackerel salad, creamed mackerel on toast, mackerel fritters, and mackerel doria; bigger portions of fresh meat might look like buying a pack of four chicken breasts and having chicken (prepared in different ways) for dinner three nights in a row plus a lunch in there, then switching to beans or tofu for four nights.  Having a decent collection of dried spices can really help with having to eat the same thing “over and over.”

Meal ideas:

Tuna or chicken salad from canned meat on salad, bread, crackers, wraps, flatbreads

Green bean casserole (microwave)- two cans of drained green beans, one can of cream of mushroom soup, a handful of fried onions (the common brand is French’s in the US; onion powder will work if you don’t have fried onions).  Combine in a casserole dish and microwave till hot.  This recipe divides and doubles well too.

Creamed Chipped Beef on Toast

Dried mushroom and bean stew (all the recipes I can find have fancy ingredients that you don’t need to buy like pine nuts.  Do a google, pick one you like, and ask me for substitutions if you need to!)

Fish fritters- one drained 12-oz can of fish (we find mackerel is the cheapest for us), one or two eggs, and enough flour to make a loose dough (holds together but sticks to your hands).  Heat any oil you like in a pan on medium heat, make the dough into discs about the size and thickness of your palm, and fry till golden brown on both sides.  Flip them as many times as you need to.

How to cook dried beans: https://www.tumblr.com/tightwadspoonies/764918865665949696/dry-beans-on-the-stove-in-a-pressure-cooker-and?source=share 

Black bean soup from cans:

2 cans black beans

1 can corn

1 can chicken broth

1 can diced green chiles

1 can diced tomatoes

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tbsp taco seasoning (or to taste)

This post could also be titled "How I use the Tody app" (promise I’m not sponsored, and the app is free, and I’m going to provide a way to do everything without the app)

TLDR:  My routine needs to flex around my spoons, so I do homemaking tasks based on what spoons I have available using the Tody app to organize.  

You go on Pinterest.  Search “how to be a better housekeeper.”  Inevitably you’re going to come across some mom blogs that are like, here’s my daily homemaking routine, here’s my early morning routine as a mom of 12, etc. etc.  Youtube’s the same.  Homemaking routine motivation.  Weekly cleaning schedule for a busy working mom.  Hoo boy.

I’m honestly really happy that these people have found what works for them, and that they’re sharing it.  Sometimes those blogs and vlogs have stuff in them that’s really helpful for me.  But usually they don’t.  Usually, I’ll consume some of that type of content, remember Ma Ingalls saying “wash on Monday,” and try to cram myself into someone else’s routine for a few days.  And then I have a day where, for whatever reason, I just cannot.  Maybe I spent the early morning hours throwing up, or maybe breakfast takes me five hours to digest so I’m distracted by hunger, or maybe my back hurts, or it’s hot and I’m so dizzy I don’t want to stand up.  Whatever.  I tried this kind of stuff for a long time until I discovered an unchangeable truth about myself:  

Day to day, my spoons are unpredictable.  

When I plan out my week, I have no way of knowing what I’m going to feel like on any given day, which means that all those great plans invariably go out the window.  So I’ve learned to be flexible with myself.  I need a schedule that works for me, which means I need a schedule that can flex around my mental and physical needs.  

Take today for example.  I’m working with a full kitchen, fully stocked pantry, high mental spoons, low pain, nausea, semi-unfixable low blood sugar, needing to have dinner on the table within about 45 minutes, and a husband who needs dinner and isn’t a great meal planner but can cook. I planned to have seafood chowder for dinner tonight, but my stomach is being weird, which means I’m a) going to have to have specific foods for dinner that are gastroparesis friendly, and b) too nauseous to deal with the smell of seafood.  I also forgot to defrost the shrimp, although I did repackage them into meal- sized bags so that wouldn’t be too much of an issue.  The real problem is the nausea and the smell.  So, instead of having seafood chowder, my husband is having leftover taro pork fritters from lunch, melon that’s already cut up in a bag in the fridge, and making himself a salad that’s just mixed greens straight out of the box and dressing.  I’ll have… probably hot chocolate and cheese. 

Since I’m not making dinner like I planned, I have some unexpected extra spoons, so I’m writing this post.  I’m also planning on wiping the counters, sweeping the kitchen floor, unloading and reloading the dishwasher, and cleaning the cat litter, since those things are both urgent and feel doable tonight.  However, the cleaning will have to wait until I’ve digested some food, which will have to wait until my med kicks in, so for now, here I am, writing. 

So how do I decide what to do?  First and most important, I have a written out list of homemaking tasks and how often they should be done.  I use an app called Tody, which is amazing, and you should all go get it. It’s on iphone and I think it’s on Android?  Is that what GooglePlay is?  It allows you to input all your homemaking tasks and how often they need to be done, and generates a to do list from that info.  If the app isn’t for you (requires a smartphone and the ability to use it without accommodations) you can do the same thing with pen and paper.  I’ll do my best to do a post about homemaking binders and link it here.  If there’s no link when you read this post, feel free to message or ask!

So here’s another TLDR:

Know what you need to do

Know how many spoons each task takes

Know how many spoons you have to spend on homemaking today

Make a list of doable tasks

Do the tasks

If you have any info on setting one, I'd be greatly interested!

Right now I budget $50/week but that's an arbitrary number I pulled from the air. Do I include my morning gas station coffee in that? What about the vending machines at my college? What even is a budget?

I, despite being an accounting major, am vexed by money!!

Great questions! 

What is a budget?

A budget is a comparison between income and expenditures.  When I write out a budget, I start with what we earn after taxes.  Then I list and subtract all of our non-negotiable, unchangeable expenses- rent or mortgage, flat rate utilities (water/sewer/trash for us), flat rate phone bill, insurance, utilities that we have a little influence over like electric.  Then I list and subtract approximate numbers for expenses that are essential but that we have an influence over- electric, groceries, and gasoline.  After I’ve subtracted all those, I have an idea of how much I have left over for savings and nonessentials, like entertainment, eating out, and holiday present savings.  Let’s do an example budget based on my own one income household:

Income: 3,450 per month

Unchangeable Expenses:

Rent: -1,400

Electric: -100

Water/Sewer/Trash: -90

Health Insurance: - 650

Gas: -120

Prescriptions and Appointments: -100

Laundry: - 25

Changeable Expenses: 

Grocery and Household: - 400

Savings: - 375

Entertainment: - 100

Eating Out: - 30

Pocket Money: -60 (30 each)

And that (I hope) all adds up to 0. The “changeable expenses” part is based largely on what you want- do you want to put those dollars into savings or entertainment?  No moral judgement here.  Humans need enrichment.  For us, our hobbies are all pretty cheap and savings is very important because of my lack of income potential and my husband’s mental health potentially causing gaps or dips in employment.  This section can also include something specific you’re saving up for, like a car, or that $200 vibrator.  Our entertainment section is for stuff we do together, like a comic con, and the pocket money is for stuff we do separately, like buying sweets or dice for d&d. 

So let’s say the budget is tighter.  We’ll start with zero savings and a lower income- two people working full time at average US minimum wage, which is $9.30/hr.

Income: 2,418 per month

Unchangeable Expenses:

Rent: - 1,000

Electric: -90

Water/Sewer/Trash: -90

Health Insurance: - 650

Gas: -120

Prescriptions and Appointments: -100

Laundry: - 25

Changeable Expenses: 

Grocery and Household: - 250

Savings: - 50

Entertainment: - 43

Eating Out: 0

Pocket Money: 0

But why even have a budget when you just spend whatever you have left on groceries and entertainment and then what’s left from that goes straight to savings?  

The first reason is that with a budget, you know how much you can spend on the changeable expenses.  If you’re regularly sticking to that $250 on groceries, you can be sure you’re ok to buy movie tickets and popcorn and still put a bit into savings.  

The second reason is less obvious. What happens if we have an unexpected $400 expense?  Where is that money going to come from?  The answer is the reason why I talk about cooking and grocery budgets and homemaking so much.  We want to do as much as we possibly can to avoid a payment plan, since those many times include interest.  $50 can come from savings, $43 from entertainment.  We might be able to reduce gas a little, but most of that is for getting to and from a job.  Let’s say we can squeeze $15 out of gas.  That leaves us owing $292.  The first thing to do is cut that grocery budget as close to 0 as you possibly can by temporarily utilizing a food bank if it’s available.  If you know how to cook, you can get so much more out of your food bank than if you’re relying on it for premade foods.  The second thing to do, for that last $42, is cut elsewhere- those “unchangeable” expenses.  Electric?  Turn off the a/c or turn down the heat, or use it only in one room.  Use your microwave to cook everything you can.  Turn off lights, even if it only saves you pennies.  Let’s say we can get the electric bill down to $70, saving us $20.  The last $22 is going to come from somewhere you might not expect- laundry.  For this month, we’re going to be doing laundry in the bathtub and hanging your clothes all over our apartment to dry.

All of that takes skill- homemaking skill.  Nobody is born knowing how to cook from scratch and do laundry by hand, and this is no longer knowledge passed down from our parents.

Asparagus fridge pickles! You can pickle almost any veggie like this. Cut to fit the jar, stuff tightly into jar, fill jar halfway with vinegar and the rest with water, top with about 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp garlic. If you want your pickles spicy, add red pepper flakes on top or fresh hot peppers stuffed in with the veggies. Stick ‘em in the fridge and wait a week or two and you have homemade pickles!

Example: I wasn’t feeling good last week, and this week my husband just switched to grain/sugar/legume/dairy free (for medical reasons) so I’ve been spending more spoons on learning about that.

So today I’m behind and working with an average amount of spoons for me. I certainly can’t catch up on a week and a half of housekeeping in one day, so I’m making it my goal to check as many tasks as possible off my list, no matter how badly I have to do them. Speed and numbers, not perfection.

So far I’ve done the cat litter, switched to a new cat box we bought (Carina was pering down the side of the old smaller one), swept the whole house, mopped the kitchen, cleaned the counters, microwave, and stovetop, made the bed, cleaned the trash can, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and tidied the whole house. All of it badly.

There’s tomato sauce on the stove (but I got all the crumbs off!) dust on the floor (but only in the corners!), pee in the cat box (just a little), and spots on the kitchen floor (I’d have to bend down to get them).

It’s important to have a properly organized kitchen, especially if you’re low on physical spoons.  Those of you with joint issues, chronic pain, etc, know that every step is a choice, so if you can take fewer steps, make every movement count, you can have more for things other than cooking.

The organization of your kitchen depends on what you use most, and what appliances you have.  The general idea is to have a triangle between your cleaning area (sink), your main cooking appliance (usually stove or microwave), and your most accessed food storage (fridge).  This idea was invented in the 1920’s by Lillian Moller Gilbreth, the mom of the Cheaper By The Dozen family.  You don’t have to have ten kids to benefit from an organized kitchen though!

Organize in ways that work for you.  Here are some examples:

My sink and dishwasher are already right next to each other, as they are in most kitchens that have a dishwasher.  This makes it so I can stand at the sink and load the dishwasher with no steps in between.  My heaviest items- main cookware, plates, bowls, mugs, and serving dishes- are stored in the cabinet directly above the dishwasher, so I take no steps there either.  For silverware, cooking utensils, most random kitchen tools, and storage containers, they’re stored directly behind me, so I just have to turn around from the dishwasher.  The only things I take actual steps to put away are pots and pans stored under the oven, and rice maker and blender parts, which are the least frequently used and the farthest away.  If it’s easier for you to sit or kneel while unloading your dishwasher, consider storing your most used items in a lower cabinet.  Keep in mind though that this will mean you have to bend every time you access them.

Trash can placement is important for both physical and mental spoons.  If your trash can is far away and out of sight, that’s both more walking spoons and more remembering and motivation spoons.  If it’s under a cabinet, that’s bending spoons and remembering spoons, plus you probably have to clean the cabinet handle way more often and find a way to prevent trash smells from building up under the cabinet.  Place your trash can in view or just barely out of sight of your work area if possible.  If that’s not possible, be willing to move it to your current work area when needed- such as if you’re prepping a bunch of veggies or unpackaging stuff from the store or doing a project at the kitchen table where you end up with a bunch of little scraps.