There's nothing like a hurricane (or two) to completely blow your food budget for the month.
The first hurricane was a breeze. Granted, a very strong, knock-you-over kind of a breeze, but still... We managed to get through with minimal damage and only flickering power outages. (We did lose the Internet on that one, but I got a lot of reading done.) The second one, though, that was the doozy.
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From the first gust of tropical winds, it knocked out our power (and cell service—talk about frantic, I couldn't even access the lesser social medias—quelle horreur). So, we sat. In the dark. On the edge of our seats, tv remote in hand, just waiting for the power to flick back on. When it got dark out and the power was still off, we went to bed. We hoped by closing our eyes the power would magically be back on in the morning (never mind that it was only 7 o'clock, but I mean, with no power what'er ya' going to do? Can't watch Jeopardy, and reading by candle light may seem romantic but at the first singed set of eyebrows, no one is laughing).
Needless to say, the power did not magically come back on when we awoke the next morning... or the morning after that... or the morning after that. It took 5 days. Five days of our food slowly coming to room temperature in their various coolers packed with melting ice and little blue cubes of iceless goo.
By the time the power did come back, our coolers were filled with little islands of spoiled food floating in oceans of melted ice. (I know what you're thinking. I should totally be a poet.)
Anyway, that was my food budget completely blown. I think we managed to save the bread, butter, and tortillas, but seriously, not much else. (by the way, does mustard go bad?)
On the plus side, my fridge has never been cleaner.
So, what's a person to do, other than start again from scratch. Literally. I can't afford to replace everything, so I'll be making lots of stuff from scratch this month.
Once we got the Internet back (and I could breathe again), I started looking up foodstuffs that I could make vs. buy. Just looking for any little leg up as far as the blown budget went. Some of the stuff that came up was a bit of a head scratcher. It was like, "dude! why would you ever buy that?" Although there were a few things that would end up costing far more to make (I'm looking at you ketchup). Then again, who am I to judge. You do you with your red wine vinegar and crushed whole cloves.
This is the list I came up with:
- Sourdough bread & starter
- Breadcrumbs
- Pasta sauce
- Enchilada sauce (after all, I do have a lot of tortillas)
- Soup stock & soups
- Tahini
- Salad dressing
- Yellow mustard
- Mayonaise
- Hummus
- Falafel
Plus my usual monthly homemade fare:
- Yogurt (in the Instant Pot)
- Almond butter
- Oil-free Granola
- Refried beans (in the Instant Pot)
I know there are probably a ton of other things I can make from scratch in addition to this stuff. But we all have to start somewhere, am I right?
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