The Downshift: The What and Why of our $4/Day Food Budget

This is the first post in our $4/Day Food Experiment. Read More Posts in This Series Here:

Post 2: Preparing to eat on $4/day (and our week 1 shopping list)
Post 3: Week 1 meals and recipes and how it went 
Post 4: Week 2 Shopping List and Prep
Post 5: The Nacho Debacle and Meals for Week Two
Post 6: How Week 2 on a $4/Day Budget Went, & Week 3 Shopping List
Post 7: Week Three Recipes and Cooking Disasters
Post 8: $4/Day Food Budget Shopping List (Week 4)
Post 9: $4/Day Food Menu – Week Four
Post 10: $4/Day Shopping List and Meals (Week 5)
Post 11: 10 Lessons Learned Eating on $4/Day

In February, we went the full month on a $200 food budget. We had read that the average Canadian family (of 4) spent $411 per month. At the time, we were spending pretty much all of our expendable (read: anything not going to monthly home expenses and home and car bills) on food.

We love food. We especially love fresh, local food (particularly when we aren’t the ones cooking because nether of us are great in the kitchen). $411 seemed challenging, and there are only two of us in our house.

Our initial food haul from the first time we tried this.

Our initial food haul from the first time we tried this.

We did it, but as the month went on, it became so much more than a personal challenge. We heard from so many people about their struggles with food security, about the challenges of affording fresh, healthy food, about the impacts of not getting enough fresh healthy foods, and about all the many, many challenges outside of actual cost that come into food security like prep and cooking skills, time, and access.

We heard about, and personally experienced, what it felt like to not have enough food. Hunger pains and stress and lack of energy and lack of focus. We did it, but it only felt like a partial success.

We knew we would try this again. We wanted to put our lessons learned into action, but we knew we still needed more help.

Enter the Good and Cheap cookbook. If you haven’t heard of this amazing free cookbook designed to fit into a SNAP budget (the US food stamp program – $4/day) created by Leanne Brown as her final project for her master’s degree in Food Studies at NYU, you need to read about it. You can do that  (and download a free copy of the cookbook) here: http://www.leannebrown.com/cookbooks

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We came across it over the summer and started playing around with the recipes. They were all really good, and most were quite simple to prepare. But we wondered if we actually had a restrictive budget of $4 per person per day if it would work. Food seems to be more expensive in Canada than in the US, and many recipes call on spices and other items resulting from a pantry built over time (which she discusses in the book). We wanted to know how long it would take to build a pantry, and what it would look like step by step if you were starting from scratch.

So, that’s what we’re doing.

Unlike last time, we’re starting from scratch. Empty cupboards, empty fridge. Also unlike last time, wine and beer are being included in our food budget, and we’ve decided to never purchase more than a weeks worth of food at a time (unlike last time when we spent $123 up front and created and froze meals).

As with last time, if we get in a bind we’ll consider alternate food options – what we call our ‘creativity clause’. Examples would be community dining (like potlucks – where we still contribute to food made), alternate eating opportunities (volunteer commitments where food is served, etc), free events where food is served, work commitments where food is served, exchanging skills for food, etc. BUT because we also want this to be easy to follow along with, we’ll still create and freeze meals during these occasions should they arise.

A moment of pure food joy at a community dinner  taken in February when we tried this the first time.

A moment of pure food joy at a community dinner taken in February when we tried this the first time.

Like last time, we will also be incorporating as much local food as we are able to. We’ve committed to at least 50% (determined by dollars) of our budget will be locally grown or produced.

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This time, we also want to explore foraging (though we’ve never done that before, so that could be a big failure.)

The best part about our February challenge was how many people joined in the conversation. We’d love to hear your tips, struggles and successes in the comments below. We hope that this way the conversation continues to evolve, and that we can all benefit from each other’s experience and knowledge when it comes to eating healthy on a tight budget. Tweet to us at @GillianWesleyNS and @DrewMooreNS with the hashtag #NSfoodsecurity.

Read the next post in this series – What we bought, where we bought it , how much it cost, and how we prepared for living on $4/day.  

This is the first post in our $4/Day Food Experiment. Read More Posts in This Series Here:

Post 2: Preparing to eat on $4/day (and our week 1 shopping list)
Post 3: Week 1 meals and recipes and how it went 
Post 4: Week 2 Shopping List and Prep
Post 5: The Nacho Debacle and Meals for Week Two
Post 6: How Week 2 on a $4/Day Budget Went, & Week 3 Shopping List
Post 7: Week Three Recipes and Cooking Disasters
Post 8: $4/Day Food Budget Shopping List (Week 4)
Post 9: $4/Day Food Menu – Week Four
Post 10: $4/Day Shopping List and Meals (Week 5)
Post 11: 10 Lessons Learned Eating on $4/Day

 

About the author

Gillian Wesley

Since getting together six years ago, we have given away our television, begun weekly DIY nights, experimented with urban homesteading, challenged ourselves to drive less (100 days car-free in 2013), and have learned more about food security. We have experimented with a range of budgeting strategies, all of which involve consuming less stuff. We buy food with reducing packaging in mind. We got a dog. We have been doing these things for a variety of reasons: financial, social, environmental, to achieve a better work-life balance. It has resulted in us enjoying an increasingly simple and satisfying lifestyle. We’ve been influenced by a lot of people we’ve encountered and things we’ve read about along the way, notably the Transition Movement, the Antigonish Movement, and, more recently, traditional Acadien living. And we’ve learned that we are by no means alone. There are many, many people who are taking steps to downshift their lives. Sign up for our eNewsletter, and we’ll send you a round-up of our new and upcoming projects once a month.