One thing my new roommate and I are dealing with is something that more and more people might be facing in the coming times: different challenges in our attempt to equitably share food costs.
Back in the days of college roommates, sharing grocery costs was easy — you just split the grocery receipts, at least for items that both people consumed.
But now we have two factors complicating things. First, I’ve been stocking up on staples for years now. And second, we have different budgets and quality standards for some items — for example, one of us buys expensive dogfood and one of us buys cheaper stuff. And agreeing to each keep buying our separate items can make the household logistics a bit silly: feed this dog a scoop from THIS bag, and that dog a scoop from THAT bag… But if budget constraints preclude one person from going halfsies on the good quality stuff, that doesn’t mean the other person will wish to feed their dog the cheaper stuff. So, we keep the separate bags for different dogs. Good thing we have plenty of storage space! And sometimes it even feels a bit snobbish — like my dog is eating prime rib while hers are eating ground round. Sometimes I think I should just share the good stuff with her — but actually, I tried to do that — I suggested we mix bags together and the dogs get a mix — but K didn’t feel good about doing that, because she didn’t feel she could afford to pay for her share of the good stuff.
It got even more complicated when we considered ‘people food’. She of course wants to pay her share of food, but it certainly makes no sense for us to fuss over how much she should reimburse me for each cup of rice or beans we use from my stock — especially since we’ve been cooking together a lot, which is a HUGE benefit to me, as I need the motivation and inspiration to move toward being more of a cook myself.
Again, the challenge is not just to be equitable, but also to accommodate our differing budgets.
I’m interested to hear if anyone has any recommendations about this kind of situation. But in the meantime, here’s what we’ve agreed to:
I told her that she should consider that the rent she is paying me includes use of any of the stored staples in the house — this includes rice, beans, oatmeal, flour, spices, etc. If she’s regularly making something just for herself then perhaps this might feel awkward, but most of our use of those kinds of foods is for shared consumption. Also, she will share whatever staples she happens to have if it fits with our needs. Then, for the items we buy to complete our recipes, such as veggies, cheese, etc, we will share the cost. Some things, such as soymilk, we don’t want to have two containers open at the same time, so we will use up what I have (most of a case) and then we will share the cost of replacing it. This means that I’ve effectively contributed half of what I initially had to her, but all costs after that would be shared. That’s okay too — I just think of it as more “included in the rent” type stuff.
We’ve agreed to see how this approach works, and if anything doesn’t seem like it’s being addressed fairly, we’ll revisit it. But considering that managing my stocks is a separate but important part of being stocked up, I definitely want to encourage us to use what I have — especially that brown rice that’s already been stored for 2 years or so!
So far we’ve made a couple of delicious meals. First she made a cold bean and rice salad we’ve both been taking to work for lunch: black beans and brown rice, mixed with chopped cabbage, broccoli, carrots, garlic, cilantro, onions. Then we add some balsamic vinaigrette dressing, and yum!
We also made a lentil soup with curry powder, onion, garlic, various herbs, and a hamhock.
[Note: While I've never been a 100% vegetarian, I've only had meat a few times per year for several years now. Because K is not vegetarian, she sometimes wants meat in her dishes. But she doesn't make meat the center of the meal, nor eat it every day. Because I so value the cooking lessons/experience I'm gaining by cooking together with her, I've decided to relax my vegetarianism for a while. As I said, this does not mean meat in every meal, nor does it mean meat as the primary part of a meal. But I didn't object to the hamhock she put in the lentil soup, and I won't object to the buffalo meat we plan to put in a red bean chili this coming week. We might even make buffalo burgers once! I will, however, continue my beef boycott -- fortunately the buffalo is available and I doubt she'd want to eat regular beef anyway!]
And I’ve made pancakes a few times so far — that was one of the items on my list of ten things I wanted to add to my “do without thinking” cooking options. The pancakes haven’t worked too well, but we’re narrowing down the cause — honey that was too hard, a kamut mix that cooks differently than regular flour, and a pan that had burned spots on the surface and so didn’t cook well. We’ll try again tomorrow and see how many of these things we can change/fix.
I’ve also made one pumpkin pie this season, just after Thanksgiving. Need to do a few more before I can say it doesn’t require thinking, though.
