And when we’re very busy, we’re not always behaving in a frugal way. Oh, we haven’t been out buying flat-screen TVs and designer athletic shoes. It’s just that we’ve been relying more than usual on convenience foods and eating out. So now it’s the end of the month, and we need to tighten our belts (meaning both that we need to save money and that I need to lose a few pounds).

We’ve got a few things on the shelves and in the freezer to use up. So today, I went grocery shopping for the week and spent $22.36.

I didn’t use a single coupon. I generally don’t use coupons, unless they’re for something I would buy anyway and they’re attached to the store shelves. We don’t subscribe to the newspaper, and we don’t usually buy name-brand items, so I don’t feel it’s worth it.

No, I just kept it simple, and bought things that would supplement what we have already.

Here’s the tentative menu plan (dinners only):

• Baked salmon w/ zucchini (I have a slab of salmon from the farmers’ market in the freezer)
• Macaroni and cheese
• Pancakes
• Scrambled eggs
• Black beans w/ salsa and rice
• Split pea soup with bacon (I have a package of bacon ends to use up)

You may notice that I didn’t buy any fruits or vegetables except for the zucchini. We have on hand frozen veggies, apples, carrots, canned beets and canned mandarin oranges.  I might pick up some frozen apple juice another time; I forgot about it today. We also have young lettuces that we can thin out of the garden — yum!

We have both hot and cold breakfast cereals in stock, and plenty of coffee and milk.  We also have yogurt and cheese for a little protein boost.

For lunches, I restocked bread, mayo and peanut butter and bought a package of bologna and some tuna. We already had a package of hot dogs, and I bought buns today.  I often take leftovers for lunch, but I actually don’t anticipate having leftovers from the meals I have planned.

These aren’t the healthiest, most earth-friendly meals I’ve ever planned.  Well, except that they don’t contain a lot of meat! That’s earth-friendly. But they will get us through, and quite comfortably.

More resources on frugal eating:

• The Oregonian‘s Leslie Cole wrote a detailed article (with a video and recipes) last week on feeding a family well on a limited income.
• Jacquelyn at Broad Brains has been doing a series on Breaking Up With the Grocery Store, in which she has decided not to shop at the grocery store for a month. She’s using up her pantry stock and finding alternative ways to get food.
• Like I said, I mostly don’t do coupons, but if you do, be sure to check out Hot Coupon World for resources.
• Katy at The Non-Consumer Advocate is hosting a June Food Stamp Challenge, in which participants pledge to eat on a food stamp budget for the month.

Frugality should be a way of life, not something that we do only in case of emergency.  Oh, sure, there are times when we move to frugality extreme (dry beans and powdered milk all week because you had to pay the heating bill from the Snowpocalypse, anyone?  Or is that just me?).

But signs are pointing to this being more than just a recession.  Even if the economy does pick up a little due to governmental stimulus programs, the way we run the economy now just isn’t sustainable.  It’s all built on the ideas that growth is good, and that spending money on stuff is good.  It should be perfectly obvious to everyone that you can’t have infinite growth with a finite supply of resources, but we keep sticking our fingers in our ears and singing the consumerism song.

So I don’t want to hear about clipping coupons, making your own coffee, or keeping your tires inflated any more.  I want to hear about real change: about local economies that work, about communities where people are living, working and eating together, and about steady instead of growth.  I want to hear about people who are making lifestyle changes for good, not just until the economy picks up again.

None of these are a substitute for daily frugality, of course, but there are a lot of fun ideas and opportunities.

I’m doing a bit of thrifty cooking this week.  I’m saving time and money, because I spent Monday, which was a holiday from work for me, cooking up several dishes for the week.  I had a roast in the crock pot and two pots of bean soup on the stove.  We ate roast that night, but it was even better then next night as roast beef hash.  As for the beans, family-size portions went into the freezer for later in the week, and single servings went into containers for my lunch.  I reheated one family-size container of soup for our dinner tonight.  No cooking for me!  I’m glad I planned ahead, because I am ready to hit the sheets now, and it’s not even 9:00 yet.

Why didn’t I make a better choice?  It’s about the money.  I’d rather give them something like good arts and crafts supplies or dance classes or basketball camp.  But these didn’t fit into our ultra-slim gift budget.  Toys and games from Big Lots did.

I think we made fairly good choices, considering.  But I’m realizing that this is one reason why even poorer kids in the U.S. have so much stuff.

Well, I’m highly imperfect, so sometimes I do this and sometimes I don’t. It’s more likely that I’ll really turn to the pantry when we’re running out of money, and this is one of those weeks.

I decided to cook up a large bag of pinto beans that has been sitting around for a while. Sometimes I cook from recipes, and sometimes I don’t. Today, I didn’t feel like searching for a recipe and stressing about whether I had the right ingredients, so I decided to just wing it.

I boiled the beans for a few minutes and then let them soak for a couple of hours (no need to soak overnight). Then, I drained off the soaking water and replaced it with broth. I had one carton of beef broth, one carton of vegetable broth, and half a carton of chicken broth. I used them all. I added several spoonfuls of minced garlic from a jar, a couple of chopped onions, some cayenne pepper, and several dashes of hot sauce, and then let the whole thing simmer while I fried up some bacon.

After crumbling in the bacon, I let everything keep simmering while I made some cornbread. Oops! I had two boxes of cornbread mix, but no eggs, which are required ingredients on the box, and I know from experience that omitting the eggs doesn’t give a good result.

I decided to look up a cornbread recipe in my copy of The Little House Cookbook. Ma Ingalls’ cornbread recipes do not include eggs. I then decided to use the Johnny-cake recipe along with my boxed mixes. I used my two boxes of Jiffy corn bread mix in place of the dry ingredients, bacon grease for the fat, molasses sweetening, and regular milk with a tablespoon of vinegar in place of buttermilk. It turned out just fine — in fact, everyone loved it. The molasses was the perfect sweetener.

This was a highly successful shopping trip, and I’ve got plenty of leftovers for the week.