$15.00 A Week Food Budget

I have been on enough budgets in my life...single parent, making a mortgage payment and I have been laid off more than once. With all of the unemployment and people now losing unemployment, I wonder how people cut back? 

I once made my food budget $15.00 a week and I did it for about a month.

I will say that my pantry was pretty good at the time - I had plenty of dry beans, rice, pasta, hot cereal and flour. Also, I had dried herbs and spices - nothing extravagant, but I did not have this extra expense. What I did spend it on was milk, eggs, cheese and fruit and vegetables. And I made it work. I didn't starve and neither did my son. I didn't lose weight and we were not malnourished.

I made lentils; beans and rice; sauteed vegetables and made baked potatoes. We had eggs and cheese - I made burritos and quesadilla's. I have said this before - I am not vegetarian, but having meat was at the time a luxury and I was willing to give that up to pay my bills.

It is beneficial to move with the tide if you want to survive. I think I taught my son some valuable lessons when things like this happened to us. And I taught him to always eat healthy. It was not as though we never ate beans and rice or lentils or pasta without meat. When he was young he would never know anything was different but when he got older I told him how nutritious lentils and rice were and that if times are tough you never go hungry. Make home cooked meals people - and you will discover how resilient you are.