Developing a taste for home cooked food and a frugal lifestyle is a wonderful thing, and it is easier than you might think.
The more we practice our frugal lifestyle, including home cooked meals, the more we develop our frugal palate. This is not only a pallet for the taste of food but also one for the taste of life. We have come to expect the things that are frugal and usually have no taste for those that that are not. Let me give you one example related to food.
Back when my third child was an infant, my second child was a toddler and my first child was just starting school, my husband said, “let’s sell the house and move!” As you can imagine, things were rather chaotic. As a result, meals at our house were as easy as possible, namely mostly take out and frozen foods. While the food wasn’t too appealing, it was edible. We were addicted to Pepperidge Farm pot pies because they seemed so good, they were warm and presumably full of vegetables, they were easy to make and they required very little clean up (important when you are trying to sell a house with three young children and an overworked husband). They were also loaded with fat and calories, not to mention expensive. Of course I used coupons and sales and bulk buying to get them cheaply.
Now that life is more settled, I make our own pot pies from scratch. The ingredients are almost free. I kept having those Pepperidge pot pies in my mind as a yard stick. Would my pies ever be as good as theirs?
During my husband’s extended absence on a business trip, I dug out one of those Pepperidge Farm pot pies that we had recently gotten for pennies through sales. I looked forward to enjoying this treat. Guess what happened?
Check back later today when I continue my story and offer the idea behind the frugal palate phenomena.
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, technology in the Computing Blog, and creating a home in the Home Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
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