How To Share Costs In A Stocked-Up Kitchen

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.

Now I’m Cookin’ With Ga — er, Wood!

My other “focus” project for myself this winter, in addition to the reading/decluttering project, has to do with cooking.  I’ve never been much of a cook, and now is the time to change that.  I’m not aiming toward fancy dishes, nor even toward a huge repertoire.  I just want to expand my list of what I can cook COMFORTABLY — meaning 1) in a hurry, 2) when I’m stressed, anxious or upset, and 3) without thinking too hard about it.  Without a cookbook would be nice, but some things are just going to need a written recipe — my goal is for it to be easy for me — meaning I know which cookbook it’s in, and what ingredients I need (without looking at the cookbook, so I can get the ingredients on a whim in town when I decide to make something) — or make sure I’ve stocked up so that I *know* I have what I need.  I think it’s also important that I develop a sense of what’s important and what’s flexible, for each meal, so that I know when I can substitute or do without some particular ingredient (as well as add extras!).

For example, a few years ago I decided that my “standard” potluck dish would be sauteed mushrooms.  It’s something that most people like, but it’s not a typical potluck dish so I never worry about someone else bringing the same thing.  I’ve made it often enough that I know what I put into it, I know whether I can make a batch with that partial stick of butter or whether I need more (and whether I can substitute olive oil for the butter if I want).  I know how little (or how much) garlic I want.  I know how much time it takes, how much of my energy it takes (ie how far in advance I need to start).  I’m comfortable with it, in other words.

I want to add ten dishes to my “comfortable” repertoire this winter.

Without getting too bogged down in rules, here’s what I’m thinking:

Stir fry, rice/beans, soup, stew, chili, bread, biscuits/gravy, pancakes, pie, cookies, lasagna.

Stir fry:  I’ve rarely if ever made a stir fry.  I want to make it often enough that I can ” throw a stir fry together” using whatever I have laying around.  I have a wok and want to get in the habit of using it (or get rid of it if it’s not the right tool, but from what I hear it’s an excellent tool).

Rice/beans:  Of course I’ve made rice and beans before.  But I want to experiment with some new kinds of beans, and a variety of seasonings.

Soup:  Ditto, I’ve made lots of different soups before.  But none that I can just “throw together”.  I’ve made some I really like (carrot-ginger, mmm!) that I just need to make a few more times so that it’s etched into my mind and I don’t need the recipe in front of me anymore.  With other soups I need to learn about spices, as the veggies turn out horribly bland, and the water isn’t brothy, so it’s just soggy veggies in water.  I think learning a few tricks about seasoning soups will do wonders for me.

Stew:  same as soup, just focusing on root vegetables (and perhaps a touch of meat if I can find local/organic sources — but perhaps not — I haven’t cooked meat at home for many years now, and haven’t decided to change that, but I’m not overly attached to it, as long as I’m happy with the source of the meat — oh, except for beef, I still boycott that).

Chili: I’ve only made chili once, and it was years ago and I’m pretty sure it had ground beef in it.  I’d like to learn to make a tasty vegetarian chili.

Bread:  I tried bread a handful of times in the past few years, and usually got something edible, but not overly.  I want to find a recipe that works for me and then make it regularly, matching however much bread I eat (which currently isn’t much, but the more soup I make, the more bread I will correspondingly want to have).

Pancakes:  I used to make them often when I was a kid, but I haven’t made them in years.

Biscuits/gravy:  I want to be able to make these on an early morning, knowing what I’m doing but not having to think too hard about it.

Pie:  I’ve made really good pumpkin pie a few times, but no other kind.  And definitely no homemade pie crusts — not sure if I’ll tackle that this winter or not.  But I’d like to add at least one other kind of pie to my repertoire.

Cookies:  I’ve rarely made cookies and I don’t plan to make them often — I just want to know how.  Sugar cookies seem to be what I want to know how to do.  The only successful cookies I can recall making were M&M cookies, which must have been about 35 years ago when I was a young teenager!

Lasagna — Never made it, want to know how.  Again, not that I plan to make it often, but it would be a good thing to make in order to have a week’s worth of “just heat” meals.  And, of course, I won’t be using meat, so I need to find a good vegetarian recipe.

Now, one twist to my cooking projects this winter is that I really want to emphasize non-traditional cooking methods.  Whenever the woodstove’s going, any stovetop cooking I’m doing will probably be done there.  And I’ll be interested in seeing how my solar oven works in the wintertime (it’s still sunny, after all!).  Further, I want to get more familiar with using my electric crockpot to slow-cook things — that way I can cook even on days I’m away working.

I’m not going to make a lot of strict rules about how many of these things I’ll get to, but they are all things I want to do/learn/add to my skills, so I’ll just do as many of them as I can get to.

Side benefits will be less money spent on eating out, more self-reliance, and a reduced chance of letting any of my stored food go to spoilage, once I actually follow the cardinal rule of food storage:  Store What You Eat and Eat What You Store.

Now I better go, because I’m getting hungry.  Let’s see if I can start on one of these projects tonight!

Restart: Blogging

Well, I’ve had a nice break from the blog, and I think I’m feeling ready to start posting again.

I’m in a different place mentally than I was a month ago (or however long it’s been since I posted).  A better place.  Much better.

I moved forward over the past month in the post-relationship mental processing — a giant leap forward.  This was really necessary for me, even though it’s been over six months since I moved out – I’d gotten stuck in a place where I recognized that my thoughts and judgements and opinions had been forced into his mold, but I was in denial about how dramatic that was, and I couldn’t step out of the mold quite yet.  Especially since we were still spending lots of time together.  In fact we’d been spending more and more time together, and I’d begun to wonder if we might not have a chance at getting back together.  I initiated a conversation where I started clarifying some of the things that hadn’t worked for me during our time together, and it blossomed into a dialogue of crystal clear communication (VERY rare for us, that was one of my issues actually) which, while encouraging in and of itself, made it very clear we are NOT getting back together.  As soon as that conversation was over, like magic, I felt freed up.  Freed up from constraints I hadn’t even realized I was carrying.  I apparently have a HUGE tolerance for walking on eggshells to accommodate another person.  For taking their perspective and denying any other (even though I usually have a personal view that’s a conglomeration of several perspectives).  I’m not sure that’s a wholly bad trait, but I guess I’d gotten rather carried away with it.  Discarding it, now that it doesn’t serve me, felt really good!

Anyway, so here I am back.  When I first started the blog, I used it almost as a diary, just posting tidbits of what happened each day or every couple days.  I think I might like to go back to that, instead of feeling like every post has to be so SIGNIFICANT.

Unfortunately, my first diaric post is of a vegetative day in which I did nothing except water the garden, surf the web, and make a pseudo-omelet for lunch with eggs (local), avocado (not local) and bleu cheese (not local).  The garlic was not local either, although I do have some local garlic, but I’m using up the pound from the co-op first before I get to the local heads.  Oh, and I added in a half a jalapeno from my own garden too.  As I’ll describe another time, my garden this year was truly a bust – hardly anything grew.  But there are bits and pieces that grew, and three jalapenos is three more than none.   Then tonight I made a salad from store-bought greens and tomatoes, and feta, and another avocado, and some other non-local stuff, but some of my own chard went in, plus slices of a local leek.

Growing Challenge — my selections

Okay, I’ve mentioned earlier that I’m participating in Melinda’s “Growing Challenge” for the upcoming garden season.  The rules of the Challenge are to grow at least one new thing in your garden this year, that you haven’t grown before, and to grow it from seed.  And, to report at least weekly, either to her or on a blog, about the experience.

So this week I’ve selected which items I’m going to grow for the Challenge.  Melinda started the challenge months ago so that people would have time to think/decide before buying their seeds.  Well, I went about it a little backwards — I bought my seeds months ago, as a hedge against the fast arrival of troubled times.  It just seemed like a good idea to have a good supply of open-pollinated seeds, so I placed my orders from Seeds of Change and Baker Creek back in November or December.  Of course, I figured that if my paranoia didn’t come to fruition, I could always make more seed purchases come spring.  But since I was ordering, I went ahead and ordered quite a bit.

So once I decided, just recently, to participate in the Challenge, I went through my stack of seed packets and pulled out any packets I had that were for items I hadn’t already grown before.  Then I mulled these over and decided which ones to use for the Challenge.  I realized as I perused, that I’ve grown lots of things before, but not very successfully!  So I still have lots to learn, lots to try.  But for the purposes of the Challenge, anything I’ve grown before won’t be officially part of the Challenge.

Okay, so here are my choices for the 2008 garden:

Sweet Banana Peppers (I’ve grown — barely — bell peppers before, but I maintain that banana peppers are different!) — I have some Ferry Morse seeds (last minute grab from the local grocery)

Turnips — Purple Top White Globe from Ferry Morse (ditto)

Lemon Balm

Honeydew Melon (Afghan Honeydew)

Ground Cherry

Rhubarb (Victoria Rhubarb)

and, the one I’m most excited about:

Dipper Gourd.

Now, I haven’t done detailed research about which of these items are best suited to my bioregional climate conditions or to my microclimate yard.  But I don’t care.  I have a friend not too far from here who grows bamboo in her yard, even though the zone charts say that would never happen.  She just tried it in a variety of microclimates until she found three places where it survived.

I’m going to further experiment by starting a few seeds of each of these things now, and then when it’s ground planting time, in addition to putting my starts in the ground I will attempt to sprout them from seed directly into the garden at that time. 

This will be fun!