This week I went thrift shopping. I love it. It's both exciting and calming. It's both economical and affordable. Finding diamonds in the rough sewn hems of dresses worn decades ago makes me laugh and linger for hours in stores filled with more of the same. I found a great butter crock complete with a knife that hides in the lid. The black booties I have been wearing for 7 years have now been replaced by a new, unused pair with a sexier heel. My final purchase of the week was a Bodum french press for the bargain price of four hundred and ninety- nine cents. Recycled goods in great condition for a much lesser price!
Today I am meal planning; a bit later in the week than usual but the kids have been on vacation as well. Coupons steadily arrive in the mail for canned veggies, supermarket mayonnaise, frozen pizza, and processed chicken. A couple of years ago I really tried to apply coupons to my grocery cart in order to bargain my way through the list, but it has forever been difficult to accomplish. Do I purchase four boxes of cereal so I can get the milk for free? Well, since we don't typically eat cereal, "No." Although I try to clip the savings, I am left wanting for coupons that involve real food.
I am cheap; there is no doubt about it. If I find something I want I wait until it's on sale or I find it in a thrift store. I only buy my shampoo if it's a bogo deal or better (there are great coupons for shampoo). But, for the last year or so, food isn't something I am willing to cheap out on. Food. It goes into my body and my cells eat it. My brain is supported and maintained by the food I eat. My organs are surrounded by tissues made from the things I choose to put in my body. I am the food I decide to eat. And, more importantly, because we have three kids who eat anything we put in front of them, 'they are what we decide they eat~'
Food hasn't always been something I would pay a good dollar for. When we were first married I bought a lot of frozen food. Frozen veggies, frozen bread, frozen meat, frozen concentrated juice. I have always made my own spaghetti sauce but it was then and is now from canned tomatoes. We have weened cereal out of the kids' diets over the last few years and now eat eggs with toast or oatmeal with raisins or fruit with yogurt. My uncle Paul, though, put us to shame just a few days ago by showing us home-made raviolis when in my freezer lie the mass produced pouches in a plastic bag... our food choices are still evolving but the evolution is quicker now; more appreciated and palatable.
Food, real food, is expensive. Cheaper to buy two liters of soda than skim milk. Cheaper to buy juice sweetened with high fructose corn syrup and colored with dye than to buy the kind that comes from a fruit. Cheaper to buy bleached, enriched flour than to buy flour. However, I encourage you to begin an evolution toward real food. Support your choices with vitamins; no one vitamin works on its own. Drink water; often times water is free! Enjoy new, fresh, real food at your table and maybe find a thrift store to save what you can't in coupons.
As always, remember to wash your hands; computers are awfully filthy things...
Anna~
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