Hey, we're all clueless about things sometimes right! ๐ ๐
What you said about the fear-based stocking up is so real. It's an easy way to try to feel like you're in control when you have suffered from food insecurity in the past or when you're nervous about the state of the world generally. It makes total sense that you had that experience!
The point I was trying to make is that pre-determining the ingredients you need to buy will end up costing you money rather than making the meals based on what is currently discounted and cheap.
Yep, I got your point! I was agreeing with it, then adding my own thoughts about what I think is a complementary technique of stocking up on staples.
Re: poverty, I definitely agree with the sentiment of not beating yourself up by trying to optimize grocery habits when you're in survival mode. However, frugality is not lock-stepped with poverty. Since OP didn't mention living in poverty but was asking for cheap and healthy meal planning tips, I shared my thoughts on that.
Storing extra food can easily become wasteful if you don't do it mindfully. Buy what you use and use what you buy. Research take storage precautions to extend shelf life like I mentioned in my post (and your good point about pests!). In my experience, when you approach it like this, it's a great way to live more frugally by taking advantage of bulk discounts and sales. So personally, I disagree with the idea that stocking up is a bad thing.
Aside from reasons of frugality, it's nice to know you have a good amount of calories in your house in the case of, for example, a global pandemic. I know that's not the topic here, but just pointing out that there are other good reasons to store food.
This is a way to spend money for a looooong time before it is to make money
Life is pretty good, people are nice, food is great. This is not true for many, many people.
How can someone be in the same socioeconomic class with someone who makes $100k more than them per year? Both of those people cannot be middle class whatever that means anymore
Yep. It's also good to figure out what your nonperishable staples are and stock up on those when they go on sale or buy in bulk if they price per pound is cheaper.
If you're just getting into cooking, don't do this before you have a pretty good idea of what your staples are. Pay attention to the recipes you go back to over and over, find other recipes that use similar ingredients and try those too. My personal staples are canned tomatoes (whole peeled and crushed), olive oil, dried beans (chickpeas, black beans, kidney beans, white beans), and rice (basmati and short grain). I cook with all of these things a ton (and they're all pretty cheap, except for olive oil). If I see any of these things on sale I'll almost always grab some. I always have a pretty deep stock of all of them in my pantry. You must have a good system for organizing by expiration date. For stuff like rice and beans I like to store in Mason jars with oxygen absorbers to extend the shelf life.
Having this stuff on hand in larger amounts can also save money as a hedge against inflation and supply chain issues. Can also keep you fed if you get laid off.
Again, know what you'll use before you start with this approach. It doesn't save money to buy food on sale that you won't eat.
Yep. The climate apocalypse is here, just just not evenly distributed yet.
I love it! The fluffiness of the yellow petals is just perfect.
Honestly I'm dumb as hell, and when I didn't understand something I just trust my friends who I know share my values. MAGAs seem to have decided they trust Trump over their children, for the most part.
Holy shit I've been using markdown message boards for years and
you just blew my mind
Also even for accounts that are more than six days old, that's the beauty of the fediverse. Your instance does something you don't like, hit the bricks.
Yes, stuff like this saves me so much time in the long run. I have shortcut abbreviations I type for my zoom link, bookings link, phone number, email. Generic ticket closing response. Hex codes for colors in my work palette. Even kind of long bits of code when I find myself reusing them frequently.