We are not vegetarians, but we are "budgetarians." While food is not a family’s biggest expense, the cost has "a wide latitude, depending on your attitude." We have discovered a number of ways to keep the costs down while providing excellent, nutrition, balance, and variety. We skimp on cost, not health.

We eat meatless and low-meat dishes for both economic and health reasons. Vegetables, grains, and fruit are not usually expensive (with the exception of exotic and out of season items), and it is possible to get plenty of low-fat protein just by eating the right mixture of vegetables, sometimes in combination with grains. For recipes and ideas, read Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lapp . You don’t have to be a vegetarian to use a recipe from a vegetarian cookbook. Explore the cookbook shelves in your library or check about the appendix of this book for ideas. For a low fat "meatless" meatloaf, try "Neat Loaf," a recipe from The Peaceful Palate: Fine vegetarian Cuisine by Jennifer Raymond, and reprinted in Victoria Moran’s book, Get the Fat Out. For low-meat dishes, we often cook stir-fry meals, which use only a minimal amount of meat to provide a lot of flavor.

Dietary supplements are expensive, but we feel they are worth the cost.
The benefits of various dietary supplements on behavior problems, allergies, learning disabilities, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder may be controversial; however, few medical authorities will debate that good nutrition helps a child learn and keep healthy. And spending a bit more on good nutrition is a lot cheaper than paying medical bills.

Cooking ahead
We have found we are less tempted by fast food when we have our own healthy, homemade fast food right in the freezer. Buying food is often cheaper when you buy in bulk, and there’s less waste when meal-sized portions are in the freezer. (We don’t find so many unidentifiable gross objects in the recesses of our refrigerators either.) Not only is large-scale cooking cost efficient, it saves many hours a month in cooking, shopping, and cleaning up.Those are hours you can put to good use on family and educational pursuits. Mary Carney left her job as an intensive care nurse to be a full-time homeschool mother. Her book, Cooking Ahead makes these suggestions:

• If you are short on freezer containers or freezer space, use zipper-type plastic bags, which lie flat and stack easily in the freezer. Don’t give up on freezing because you don’t have a chest freezer. Even your refrigerator’s freezer compartment will give you a modified jump start on bulk cooking.
• Try canning as a good way to preserve cooked meat, soup, and vegetables without taking up freezer space.
• Check into purchasing from restaurant suppliers, food co-ops, and local farms for inexpensive food in large quantities. Carney says these resources are largely available but little known, so ask around.
• To learn how to create your own mixes read Make-a-Mix by Karine Eliason (Fisher Books 1995).

Tara Wohlenhaus and Nanci Slagel, co-authors of The Freezer Cooking Manual: A Month of meals Made Easy, started cooking in bulk when they were both homeschool mothers with seven children between them under the age of eight. Six years later, they do their buk cooking as a team about every three months ("seasonally") instead of monthly. Their book provides reproducible charts to help you design menus and plan for bulk cooking.

"We’ve never had a lot of money to through around. " says Nanci. "At the end of the homeschool day, I was always tired and felt that someone should be bringing me dinner. My reward was being able to pull dinner out of the freezer and stick it in the oven." It’s like having elves!

Although Nanci and Tara do not involve their children in the bulk cooking (they enjoy working together and letting the kids play), many others make it part of their homeschool curriculum.

Even if you don’t cook ahead in large quantities, you can doube up whatever you are making for diver with little additional time. To freeze in individual portions, place each portion on a cookie sheet and freeze before bagging. That way each piece will easily separate from the rest.

Tips for Quick, Healthy, Frugal Meals at Home

We are always on the lookout for cost-cutting hints and ideas for preparing nutritious food that appeals to family members of all ages. Here are a few that can enrich your homeschool while saving you money.