"cshenk" > wrote in message
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> wrote in rec.food.cooking:
>
>> The family?
>>
>> The Beardsleys, of California, as featured in the Lucille Ball movie
>> "Yours, Mine, and Ours."
>>
>> Before the movie, their story was written by the mother as "Who Gets
>> the Drumstick?" (Helen was a widow with 8 kids, he was a widower with
>> 10. They had two more.)
>>
>> In that book (chapter 12), a researcher comes to the house a month
>> after the wedding in the fall of 1961, to do the math on how they
>> manage. He concludes that they spend 66 cents a day for food, per
>> person. According to one inflation calculator, that's $5.15 in 2014 -
>> and another says $5.16 in 2015. (I assume they were strict about not
>> wasting food!)
>>
>> What's interesting, though, is that I DO waste food, unfortunately,
>> but MY food budget, last December, was $120 a month - or about $4 a
>> day!
>>
>> Also, there was clearly a mistake in the book - the mother said they
>> spent $450 a month on food, so unless she meant $400, that would be
>> just under 74 cents per person per day (using 365.25 days a year, I
>> mean), not 66 cents!
>>
>> Thoughts? Granted, I'm sure there are all sorts of reasons food might
>> be cheaper now - someone also once said that in the 19th century,
>> too, food was pricey but servants were cheap, which was why Louisa
>> May Alcott, in "Little Women" could get away with calling her family
>> "poor" even though they had a servant, Hannah.
>>
>>
>> Lenona.
>
> I actully run an average of 4.45 a day per person (all adults). The
> people who can't believe that can happen, generally are getting things
> like pre-stuffed chicken breasts and a lot of premade frozen stuff to
> nuke.
>
> Of course it doesn't hurt at all if you learn to make real bread. I
> make all ours and most of the time I spend about 60 cents to make the
> equal of a loaf.
>
> It's mostly raw produce, flour, rice, butter and a few sauces/canned
> items like tomatoes here. Mixed million ways, it is not at all boring.
I can eat cheaply and most of the time, I do. But I also have a fondness
for olives and I don't always eat the cheap ones. I think that my daughter
eats cheaply most of the time too but her favorite expensive thing is steak.
I do try to limit the steak to once or twice a week though.
As for the premade frozen stuff, that's stuff that one can get for cheap or
even free if one wants it one isn't picky. I can't tell you how many of
those Magnum ice cream bars I got for free when they first came out. But
nobody in this house would eat them so getting them was a waste of my time.
Now I don't buy too much frozen stuff for myself only because it mostly
contains things that I can't eat. I do buy the little hamburger patties in
pita bread. Alas, I have not seen any coupons for those. And the stores
that are putting them on sale do not carry any that I can eat. I can only
eat that one kind.
If you have no concern for nutrition or really how the food tastes, then you
can get a lot of prepared stuff for next to nothing, if you can get the
coupons. But that's not the sort of stuff that we eat much of at all.
1961 food prices vs. today (for a family with 18 kids)
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