I do the chopping frying and cleaning and she adds the finishing touches.

Mary Ostyn
Family Feasts for $75 a Week

I weigh in differently depending on the day. I’m a working mom of five, so weeknights have to be quick, easy things. And handily enough with those five children, they are all learning to cook on one night a week! The littlest one (age 5) knows how to jazz up bag salad with cherry tomatoes and sunflower seeds and he makes some great sandwiches. The oldest ones (16 and 18) can do anything Mom and Dad can do, because they’ve done it WITH us, and my 16-son makes anything Italian better than me!

On weekends that are carefree (very rare), we bake bread or cook up tons of meat for the freezer. They are learning all these skills for their someday families too!

Fabulous, fabulous article!

Studies have shown that organics are NOT nutritionally superior. They are better because they contain less (not *none*, but less) chemicals, but are nutritionally the same as non-organics. If you are looking for increased nutrition, think local farmers. The produce travels less from vine to plate, and thus retains more nutrients.

Studies have shown that if you MUST choose, locally grown non-organics are superior to organic food from across the country. (Of course, it goes without saying that locally grown organics would be the best choice when money is not a concern.)

We are also on a really tight budget so we have been really working with what we have in the house (something so simple – use what you have). This weekend we had French Dips. Instead of running to the store, I made the buns from stuff I had at home. It was time consuming and turned out just OK. Yet it filled the void and I got time to putz and not spend anything more.

On a side note, I was laid off recently, and our grocery bills have gone down a lot because I now have more time to spend doing things like making hoagie buns and refried beans from scratch. Sometimes the benefit of not spending those few dollars really is worth that extra hour.

Also, if you’re comparing homemade pasta with store-bought, at least compare it with the fresh pasta in the refrigerated section, not the dried boxed pasta! The price comparison is more accurate when you’re comparing like products.

It is about balance and compromise as you suggest.

Trent- I so agree with this. I love having lots of time to do the things I love to do. I’m a very DIY person. I’m constantly honing a balanced lifestyle where I can get along on less money and have more time, and I find this to be creatively challanging in itself.

Probably the best part of the whole thing, amen! :)

I also agree with Ruth (#4). Organic is just another thing most people tout as superior, when that isn’t always the case. It ticks me off when people throw it around like it makes them better, just because they can afford/choose to spend more money on food. Moderation is the key to a good diet, nothing else. Eat your cake, but eat your carrots too and you ought to be okay. (No where else in the world has the problems America has, but they eat mostly the same stuff! Europe actually has much better potato chips, IMO, and portion sizes are restaurants are typically smaller.)

Penn & Teller recently did a show on organic food – (S07E06) – guess we have been watching the same show.

“Organic” has become a marketing buzzword and tool because people will pay more for what they perceive is better even though it may not be all that much better. The public has been conditioned to believe that organic means more than it actually does. The criteria set forth by the government for what can be labeled organic is very loose and some very un-organic things are allowable. You would be very surprised to know that “organic” doesn’t automatically mean pesticide free. They use animal and plant based pesticides and fertilizers instead.

Most of the time, I can cook a meal for the three of us that will ast a few days and takes less than an hour, and that is from start thru clean-up. if it takes any longer than that, I simply don’t have the time to do it.

And most of our cooking is done just about “from scratch”.

It depends on what you’re comparing. Sure, if you compare blue-box mac & cheese with what you could make at home with “real” ingredients, the scratch-made stuff is better in all respects but price. But compare, say, a normal banana with an organic banana, and you’ll be hard pressed to find any sort of practical difference.

It’s only fair to compare like products. I’ve found that organic, free-range chicken (not raised on a factory farm) tastes a lot better than the regular cheap chickens. I haven’t investigated, but I don’t think there’s enough of a difference between the lowest generic brand of instant mac & cheese and the best organic box. I don’t think I’d end up buying either.

The differences I use to make my decisions are based more around whether I’m sure the food was raised well – grown by a local farmer, or produced by an artisan rather than a machine. That’s why I prefer to get my produce from farmers markets, and I buy whatever looks and smells best, regardless of “organic” or “no pesticide” labels. I can always wash the produce anyway.