How To Save Money In The Pantry

I've been blessed to have known a good many people from all walks of life and social stations in life. Many of them taught me about what it means to be a survivor, and not allow yourself to be a victim of any circumstance -- including hard financial times. One such person, was an older woman named Ann, who at all times kept a "Empty Pocketbook Pantry." This pantry extended far beyond the borders of the kitchen, and what's on the pantry shelf.

Ann was in her early seventies when I met her. She and I (along with many others) commuted daily on a train - travelling more than three hours each way from West Virginia to Washington, D.C. to our jobs. Ann had been a child during the Great Depression, growing up in Kansas. She had also been a WWII nurse, and served in both Korea and Vietnam. Additionally, Ann was a widow with a young child during part of those tough times. Thanks to those experiences, she wore an invisible sign on her forehead that read, "Compassionate Character."

Very quickly she "adopted" me on one of my early commutes, despite the fact that my own mother shared the same morning commute. Both women couldn't stand each other. That made for some interesting times, especially as each morning, we were greeted with Ann having "saved" me a seat, which was of course, right next to her. Very often with that pronouncement, my mother would mutter under her breath -- "You'd better go sit with your other mother," and leave me in the dust of her annoyed stomp back to the next train car.

Looking back, I probably needed two mothers to balance each other out. My mother is who she is. Maternal instincts don't run prominent in her mothering skills -- she's more the type that believes in a sink-or-swim style of tough love. She loves you, but don't expect a lot of help with everyday life. She wants you to at all times, stand on your own two feet. Sometimes that's a good thing, other times it can leave you adrift in a perilous life.

At the time, I didn't have a car, and lived downtown in a fairly rough neighborhood after dark. My mother got off work earlier than I did. While she didn't live but a few couple of miles away -- it did not matter to her that I had to walk the dark streets to an empty apartment, nor did winter snows, and rainy weather factor into her mindset. Her take on my additional foot commute, was if I wanted a ride, I needed to convince my employer to give me the same hours as she had (fat chance of that ever happening in Fortune 500 America).

Whereas, Ann, my other mother was there without asking, even if I was on the last train, to pick me up and drop me home. It didn't matter to her if the weather was bad outside. Ann was more of a "smother" kind of mother. She also had an not-so-secret motive in picking me up -- she had an adult son living at home that she wanted to marry off. Since he was often more unemployed than not, she had zeroed in on me as a candidate. It was hard not to love her (even if at times, she border-lined on being a little crazy).

On a snowy Friday evening, like the buzzer that went off on my alarm clock every workday morning -- there was Ann, waiting for me to get off the last commuter train. Since it was the weekend, she was intent on taking me home to her house for a hot dinner, and to show me her latest hand-made jewelry project.

The meal was very pleasant, and surprisingly she had an exceptionally fresh salad on the table. One thing about semi-rural towns is that "fresh" salad greens and "fresh" vegetables are very limited at the local mom and pop style super markets. Fresh is determined by being in season with the local farmers. Wilted and rotted greens of any kind, were more the rule than the exception, during winter months.

It was over this salad, that I learned the secrets of keeping an empty pocketbook pantry, when I asked, "What's this? Did you carry the makings of a great salad home on the train?

Looking at me like I'd grown two heads, "You haven't heard of an empty pocketbook pantry? Didn't your mother teach you anything?"

"Never heard of it, tell me about it," I replied while hoping she'd stay off the topic of my wayward lacking education and my mother, who after all, is my mother. After a long work week, I was in no mood for a discussion of dysfunctional families.

"During World War II, I was in France, tending to troops waiting to well enough to be sent home. I was staying with a family who were stranded there by the war. They were practically the only ones in town, who had decent food on the table every night, not just for themselves either."

"During this time period, there was a great disparity between the rich and the poor. For ordinary citizens, grocery shelves were primarily empty, and few had money to buy anything. At the time, no onions could be found in any public supermarket. The weekly egg ration was two eggs per person."

"All the credit in this family, went to the grandparents who also lived in the home. They'd fled their homeland, carrying few valuables, and claimed the most valuable of all possessions outside of their family members -- were the seeds they'd saved by sewing them inside the grandmother's pocketbook's lining and in garments. Inside her purse, she only carried a handkerchief and a photo, never any money, as they had none. The seeds were to stock their empty pocketbook pantry once they found safety."

"The foundation of an empty pocketbook pantry begins with always having the basic ingredients for a proper salad -- lettuce, carrots, and bunching onions. Many varieties of romaine or leaf lettuces, only take a mere sixty days until harvest. Carrots can be grown in just fifty to sixty days. Bunching onions or scallions, can be ready for the table in about the same amount of time, maybe less. These were the varieties of seeds sewn in behind the Grandmother's purse lining."

"In the cuff's of the grandfather's pants, she had sewn the seeds of zucchini's, pumpkins, and cucumbers. They knew that there are certain vine vegetable crops that guarantee abundant crops, even under the most difficult growing situations. These are zucchinis, cucumbers, and pumpkins. Just one zucchini plant will grow enough zucchini for an entire family of four. Two cucumber plants will make enough pickles for that same family, in addition to providing them with ample cukes. Pumpkins will not only provide nourishment, but produce prolific seeds both for eating and future crops."

"The Grandfather also wore a hand-made vest, laced with fishing line instead of thread, hidden pockets included fishing hooks, and seeds of parsley, mint, rosemary, and thyme."

"Going a step further, the grandmother had also sewn peas into the hem of her slip, taking care to embroider around each one as a decoration and a means of throwing off suspicion should enemy troops search them. At this time, seeds of any kind were confiscated as contraband. Even being caught with a pea pod could cause you to get arrested, if you came across the wrong soldier, check point or border guard."

"You see, the family used these the empty pocket book idea -- to insure that their family would have a pantry quickly stocked with food, regardless of their finances, wherever they ended up, or local food supply. They brought enough seeds with them that they could also share them, and sell them. Seeds to them, represented hope and security."

As Ann concluded her story, she revealed that since living with that family during the war, she had made a vow that once the war was over, she would always keep an empty pocketbook pantry -- stocked with food for the lean times, both for her and to share with others in need. She also planted the same kinds of seeds the family carried into France, to grow each year, in honor of their memory.

After dinner and dishes, we sat watching the snow fall, bundled up with blankets on her couch, sipping hot mint tea (from mint leaves she had grown). While I pondered the possibilities of how hope can survive in the smallest of seeds -- Ann tried to talk to her deceased husband Buzz, by way of her ouija board. She apparently needed him to tell her where she misplaced her latest jewelry creation to show me. She may have been a little crazy, but at least she was a compassionate character. I never heard Buzz answer, but she swore he did. Who am I to say differently? She found the necklace in short order, which "they" gifted me, as apparently that was Buzz's idea. I still wear that necklace today.

I once worked for a major grocery chain’s produce distribution center’s corporate offices. Like with many jobs, there were opportunities for learning about things in marketing that you, as a consumer, never think of. One of those things is, what the reality of how fruits and vegetables are priced for the market.

Here are some facts:

• One part of the pricing equation is of course, what the competition is asking for the exact same item. You’d be amazed at the cloak and dagger spying that goes on between grocery super markets major competitors in any given region.
• Then, the powers that make the pricing decisions, decide to undercut their competition on certain produce items -- making them the specials of the week.
• The price that it costs to obtain the produce in any given week can spike up or down dramatically, depending upon season and a lot of other variables.

Therefore, when every produce buyer is buying strawberries at a ridiculously high prices, and the competition has decided to make strawberries a “special” and sell it way below what it costs them -- all in an effort to get customers to flock to their door -- here’s what happens.

The lettuce that costs the produce buyer only ten cents a head, ends up being sold at the grocery store for a dollar and seventy-nine cents a head -- all to make up for the losses on the more coveted strawberries. Of course, I don’t have to point out that this applies to all other produce items. It’s all part of the plan that keeps our supermarket prices high and climbing higher every day.

Lettuce is one of the empty pocketbook pantry specials, that you don’t have to go out to the store for. Lettuce is easily grown, both inside the house and outside in some climates.

For a couple of bucks or less, you can buy lettuce seed and have fresh lettuce every day for months. If you buy the mixed variety of lettuce seed, compare the price of what you’d pay, in most cases over three dollars for in the grocery (and much of what’s in the bag would be well on it’s way to being wilted or old). You’ll more than get back your seed investment in your first harvest

I'm sure that if Ann was alive today, she would have been intrigued by such products are the AeroGarden, and other such growing innovations such as the Floating Gardens.

They also have a romaine lettuce seed kit that is excellent for beginning gardeners, although I think it's not cost effective. You can successfully grow lettuce without the "kit" for a couple of dollars vs. twenty dollars (plus shipping and handling) for the hand-holding kit.

I've used such systems to the delight of young children and adults, for a kitchen table top conversation piece. Price-wise, the growing system is a little hefty, but if you shop around at stores like Big Lots, etc. you can find similar or the same, for a whole lot less than Brookstones AeroGarden.

One justification I have for owning at least one such indoor growing system, is that they are an ideal tool for teaching children the many joys of growing their own food. Picky eaters who are "green" food phobic, forget their pre-conceived food fears, when they get into harvesting their own. This teaching tip really works well for kids from age two to seven.

Floating Gardens are less expensive and a more reasonable way to go, if you have ample natural lighting indoors. They are, of course, a hydroponics system, and once you've purchased or seen one, you can easily replicate a home-made version of them, if you are handy with your hands and mind in that way.

For example, a simple grow light and two planter (one larger than the other and fitting inside the other, a few stones, etc. can be made into such a system -- without near the expense of the store bought ones. It all depends on your standards of decorating or your cleverness in design.

Easy to use, this plant lighting growing system allows you to successfully grow table-top plants in any climate or season, even in rooms where natural sunlight is lacking.

I have one child who will probably never willingly eat a carrot, although her mother has tried and tried. After thirty-six years, the closest I've come is getting her to willingly eat a "carrot" was tempting her with a carrot jelly bean.

What she's only recently discovered, is that she's been eating them for her whole life, just hidden in spaghetti sauces, spice cupcakes, and the like.

Here's a little few little known facts about carrots:

• A lot of people don't know that carrots come in a variety of colors, even purple.
• Another amazing fact about carrots, is that their seeds are so tiny that just a teaspoon of them is about two thousand carrot plants. That's a lot of carrots.
• It's possible that we could even solve our gasoline problem using carrots as a bio fuel. However, it would take about six thousand carrots drive one mile. Note: I'm mathematically challenged, so don't look to me to tell you how many teaspoons of carrot seeds, it would take to grow enough carrots to drive one mile.

As near as I could gather from Ann's World War II story, the family brought parsley, mint, rosemary, and thyme seeds with them to insure that even the poorest of meals could be spiced up. The mint was both a health remedy and a soothing tea.

Each of their choices in seeds, had to do with being both easily portable (i.e. small seeds or prolific seeds) and grown quickly in less than two months. The grandparents believed that they were capable of foraging for about two months if they could supplement their diet with fish, which was why the vest was sewn with heavy fishing line as opposed to thread. The fish hooks were hidden because the grandfather was certain that someone would steal them.