My Working Class Kitchen Secrets: Here’s How To Get More From the Grocery Store

But please understand: Frugality is not enough to boost you into the middle class

This is King Arthur’s 2020 Recipe of the Year. I emailed them, and they told me how to substitute sourdough for the yeast. I made this during the early lock-down period when my son was wishing for pizza and it was frankly more delicious than any restaurant meal could be. (Photo by Michelle Teheux)

I learned how to cook from an early age, but I had to move away from the meat and potato dishes I grew up with because I couldn’t always afford the meat. Through the years, I learned how to cook meals that were thrifty but not cheap.

There’s a difference: Those little packets of ramen noodles are cheap, but they’re not thrifty by my definition because you’re not getting much nutritional bang for your buck.

Let me be clear with you, first of all: Neither lentil stews nor homegrown tomatoes are going to lift you out of poverty. But if you’re financially struggling, your food budget is one thing you have reasonable control over.

I bake a loaf or two of sourdough bread per week. To get that crust, I let my loaves rise on parchment and then drop the whole thing into a very hot Dutch oven. (Photo by Michelle Teheux)

If nobody ever taught you how to cook from scratch, you can learn. Because even if you always considered yourself solidly middle class, you might feel alarmed by how much you’re currently spending at the grocery store.

Many people who have always bought convenience foods without a second thought are now having second thoughts.

Everyone but the wealthy is wincing at grocery prices right now, and it’s time to face facts: These prices are not going down. The person voters put back in the White House doesn’t care about you and everything he is doing is likely to actually increase food prices.

So if you are having trouble buying food or prefer not to devote so much money to your food bill, you’ll need to change how you shop and cook.

Not everyone knows how to cook

But everybody can learn. It’s not rocket science.

Finding the time is another story. In different seasons of my life I’ve sometimes cooked more and other times made compromises with convenience. I think my days of always making homemade yogurt, crackers and tortillas are probably gone, although I occasionally do these things for fun.

When I was a kid, I routinely started dinner after school. But dinners for my family of origin typically included some kind of meat, some kind of potato and a can of vegetables. Still, I did learn how to make things like pie crust, spaghetti sauce, many different potato dishes, cookies and that kind of thing. I had the foundation and wasn’t afraid to spill some flour.

I took a unique path to learning to cook from scratch. I had a job at a weekly newspaper fresh out of college, so I started interviewing cooks! I interviewed an older Mexican lady so I could learn how to make tortillas. Then I interviewed an older Italian lady and and she taught me how to make pasta and homemade pizza.

As a young mom, I loved La Leche League meetings and learned a lot about scratch cooking from their excellent cook book, Whole Foods for the Whole Family. (As far as I can tell, it’s out of print and you will have to find a used copy now).

I learned to cook before the internet existed so I had to be creative. You can go straight to video now.

Here’s how to evaluate recipes

The recipes promoted online or in various publications tend to be of two types: Half of them are crappy combinations of convenience foods that call for a box of this, a can of that and a bag of this other thing. They aren’t recipes so much as they are marketing campaigns to promote a client’s processed food products.

The other half call for exotic ingredients that are not budget-friendly or that I probably won’t ever use in another recipe.

Sorry, but I am not ever going to purchase a can of cream-of-anything soup for any reason and if that makes me a food snob, so be it. (However, I will make a basic white sauce and doctor it up appropriately to sub for the canned soup if a recipe otherwise sounds good).

I’m in the unenviable position of being an unwealthy food snob — that’s the worst kind

I love many New York Times recipes, but so many of them have the fatal flaw of calling for something that is either difficult to get here in flyover country or too expensive. One recent example I ran into: No, I will not buy chicory leaves just to make pumpkin fondue.

But it’s very possible to make delicious, nutritious and thrifty dishes that don’t take a ton of time to prepare. When you find a recipe for a food you like that hits all those requirements, you have a keeper.

Sometimes I enjoy putzing around in the kitchen doing things like making homemade cheese or a spectacular dessert for guests, but not every day.

I made this batch of homemade mozzarella cheese a couple of years ago. It’s delicious, but I haven’t made cheese from scratch lately. Unless you actually own a cow, it probably won’t save you much money to make your own cheese. If anybody near me has a cow, though, let me know! (Photo by Michelle Teheux)

This newsletter, my Medium stories and my books do not write themselves, my dogs do not feed or walk themselves, my house does not clean itself and my lawn does not mow itself. Much as I’d enjoy it, I can’t spend all day every day in the kitchen.

If you’re not sure what to do with a few random ingredients you have on hand, type them into a search engine and see what recipes come up. If it’s a baked item, you probably need to follow the recipe closely. But if it’s soup or casserole, you can let your Inner Kitchen Rebel out to play. Switch one vegetable for another. Or substitute diced potatoes instead of rice or pasta, or vice versa. Nobody from the Kitchen Police will come to cite you for using a different kind of cheese, either.

This dish is a favorite of ours. I clean the sprouts and cut them in half, then place them face-down in a hot cast-iron skillet with plenty of olive oil. Salt liberally. I keep them on the stovetop until they’ve begun to caramelize, and then I stir them and let them finish in a hot oven.

My husband, Harrie, is a picky vegetarian who doesn’t like cheese. I cook around his preferences most of the time, but will indulge in meaty cheesy things when guests come or if I just have a craving – and then he’ll settle for a veggie burger or leftovers. (He does offer to cook but — shh! — I would rather eat my own cooking.)

One caution: It’s easy to save money by making a lot of carby rice and pasta dishes, but don’t skimp on the veggies.

There are certain foods I keep on hand at all times

Your list will vary but this one is mine:

• Black beans

• Garbanzo beans

• Brown rice

• Lentils

• Potatoes – both white and sweet varieties

• Carrots

• Onions – green, red and either yellow or white (Hint: I purchase red one week and white or yellow the other week so I always have some of each on hand. Red is better than white if you need a raw onion for a burger, sandwich or salad.)

• Celery

• Spinach, cauliflower, cabbage and Brussels sprouts

• Various pastas

• Jarred tomato-based pasta sauce – because most of the year, good fresh tomatoes aren’t available anyway

• Canned tomato products – see reason above

• Peanuts, cashews and walnuts

• Bananas, apples and oranges – strawberries or even raspberries if I want to splurge

• A block of Parmesan for grating – yes, you can buy a cheap green canister of the stuff, but it’s just not as flavorful and you’ll probably have to use more.

• Canned salmon and tuna

• Flour, both whole wheat and unbleached all-purpose

• Various herbs and spices

• Various baking ingredients like vanilla, baking powder, baking soda, etc.

• Frozen homemade chicken stock, although I can’t use it if I’m cooking for the vegetarians.

• Canned pumpkin

• A variety of frozen veggies I can tap if I run out of fresh ones. Frozen spinach is great added to a pasta sauce.

• Olive oil and butter

I bake sourdough bread about once a week

I made my starter when I was laid off from my newspaper job in 2015. It was a project I’d always wanted to do but didn’t have time.

My starter’s name is Seymour. When the pandemic came, I handed out (well, left on my porch) so many baby Seymours. I don’t know if anybody I gave starts to has kept them going, but mine is going strong. Yeast is expensive! Sourdough is just flour and water and thus dirt cheap. In addition to bread, I sometimes use my starter for things like pancakes, crumpets, popovers, etc.

Having a sourdough starter means finding things to do with the discard — like sourdough crumpets. My husband ate this entire batch. (Photo by Michelle Teheux)

My husband, like most Dutch people I know, eats way more carbs than most Americans do. For some reason, he gets away with this (as does every Dutch person I know!) but I cannot. So the bread products I make are mostly a gift to him and his crazy-high Dutch metabolism.

Here are some of my favorite thrifty dishes

We don’t usually eat breakfast and my husband packs fruits and sometimes homemade bread each day for work. I usually scrounge leftovers for my lunch. We get into ruts and the menu shifts by season but these are some examples:

• Lentil stew with carrots, onions, celery, tomatoes and spinach

• Vegetable soup – any combination of veggies I have on hand, usually with beans and/or pasta to make it hearty. I’m not a fan of watery soups.

• Potato soup with finely chopped spinach added at the very end (or kale added a bit earlier so it has time to become tender)

• Black beans over brown rice with lots of seasoning, possibly with diced tomatoes

• Bean loaf: Like meatloaf, but made with black beans and mashed sweet potato. I usually serve it with roasted Brussel sprouts.

• Pasta dishes: These are so versatile. Sometimes I make plain old spaghetti with tomato sauce and other times I make some other kind of sauce. (I freeze a big batch of homemade pesto every fall for use until the new crop of basil comes in.) I also like to use a garlicky pureed cooked spinach with cream and (for me) grated cheese. Sometimes I put lentils in the tomato sauce to make it more filling, since Harrie doesn’t eat meat. I have been known to make a tomato sauce for him and a cheesy sauce for me sometimes.

• Salads: Especially in summer, I like to make a big salad with lots of fresh vegetables. I never use iceberg. Usually I base my salads on spinach or a blend of greens. I’ll put hearty ingredients like beans, chopped cooked meat and shredded cheese on the side since Harrie and I have different preferences.

• Quickie dinners with planned leftovers: I’ll make extra rice, lentils or whatever on purpose for a quick meal the following night. A bowl of leftover rice is good topped with a fried egg. I tuck slices of leftover bean loaf into burritos with taco fixings. Chopped leftover roasted cauliflower is amazing when added to scrambled eggs and makes a welcome addition to Breakfast For Dinner. I sprinkle some cheese over the top of mine. You get the idea. Never throw out leftovers: Serve them in another way.

• Microwaved sweet potato topped with sour cream: This is one of my go-to fast dishes for myself, especially for lunch if I don’t have leftovers.

• Taco pizza: This is not what you are thinking. Harrie’s favorite restaurant in the Netherlands is a place called Canadian Corner that serves a thin-crust taco pizza. I thought that was an odd thing for someone who dislikes cheese to order, but when we went there, I realized it was nothing like the taco pizza you’d eat in the U.S. They would not give me the recipe, but my version is baked flour tortillas topped with seasoned vegetarian taco “meat” and then piled with chopped lettuce and shredded cabbage and some thousand island dressing. Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it! It looks like this.

• Never waste a chicken or turkey carcass! Turn it into stock. It’s easy and amazing and will make almost any non-vegetarian soup better.

• I include my recipe for Black Bean Loaf in this piece.

• My Patio Soup – essentially a very hearty minestrone – is here. I even break down the cost of making it.

• When I do eat breakfast, it’s often oatmeal. I stir in a bit of peanut butter and sliced bananas or sometimes nuts and raisins and cinnamon. Adding canned pumpkin to oatmeal is great with some cinnamon and a little touch of brown sugar, too! Never buy those little packets – they’re overpriced and full of sugar. Get the big canister. Homemade oatmeal is cheap, nutritious, fast and delicious. My kind of food!

• If you read my novel The Trailer Park Rules, you should know that everything Janiece — a thrifty mom living in a trailer park — cooks for her family is actually one of my dishes.

About Michelle Teheux

I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here or on Medium. My new book is The Trailer Park Rules. Tips accepted here at Ko-fi.

All wealthy families are alike; each poor family is poor in its own way.
— Leo Tolstoy, if he had written about a trailer park

For residents of the Loire Mobile Home Park, surviving means understanding which rules to follow and which to break. Each has landed in the trailer park for wildly different reasons.

Jonesy is a failed journalist with one dream left. Angel is the kind of irresponsible single mother society just shakes its head about, and her daughter Maya is the kid everybody overlooks. Jimmy and Janiece Jackson wanted to be the first in their families to achieve the American dream, but all the positive attitude in the world can’t solve their predicament. Darren is a disabled man trying to enjoy his life despite a dark past. Kaitlin is a former stripper with a sugar daddy, while Shirley is an older lady who has come down in the world and lives in denial. Nancy runs the park like a tyrant but finds out when a larger corporation takes over that she’s not different from the residents.

When the new owners jack up the lot rent, the lives of everyone in the park shift dramatically and in some cases tragically.

Welcome to the Loire Mobile Home Park! Please observe all rules.