Last week, we wrapped up our June theme learning to enjoy eating most of our meals at home. To close out this month, today's episode is with our first ever expert guest. Amy Cross is an expert in food storage and preservation. She shares practical approaches to reducing food waste and spending even while accommodating food allergies, sensitivities, picky eaters, and everything in between. Let's hear what Amy has to share today about making the most of our grocery budget. I'm Carly Hill, and this is the Debt Free Mom Podcast.
All right, today I have Amy Cross on the podcast with me. Amy is a grocery expert who teaches other people to feed their family and stick to a budget, which is what we've been talking about on Debt Free Mom for the last month. So I'm so excited to have Amy come on and share some of her expertise with us. So thanks for being here, Amy.
Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you today.
So my first question is, can you tell me how you got into this becoming your thing? How did you go from whatever you did before to starting this growing audience and channel all about groceries and food budgets and all those things?
Well, it's kind of interesting cuz this is going to play next week, which is actually our two year anniversary of me starting Instagram and the blog. And it, we were in the middle of the pandemic. I had owned a housekeeping company for 15 years. We were foster parents and we didn't have our littles with us during that time.
And I was. So bored. Like, so bored. And I kept seeing questions that kept popping up on different social media pages. Jordan Pages, shelf cooking is where this kind of first started. Somebody was asking about their blueberries and how they were scared to go to the grocery store and didn't wanna take their kids to the grocery store, middle of the pandemic, you know, and saying that they couldn't get their blueberries to last more than four days. And I was just like my blueberries are a month old in the fridge and like, It blew up on her page and Jordan messaged me. She's like, Amy, you have something here that people don't even know. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like it's just my fridge, you know? I just. I didn't understand it at the time, and so I ended up starting an Instagram page cuz she wanted to share me and I didn't want my personal page shared with my family. And so I started an Instagram page, we called it The Cross Legacy. Our last name was Cross, and that's our family motto. And so that's what I named my Instagram.
And then over that weekend of July 4th, like literally that weekend, we were in the middle of the kitchen remodel and we were down to the studs, like everywhere like, there was no ceiling in our kitchen. I was bored. I was like hiding down in the office trying to like just get away from everything, the noise. And I decided to take a blogging course. And so since I couldn't take pictures of things that I was making, all the things, I just took some random pictures of something I had in my fridge, which was strawberries in a jar. And I was just trying to figure out how to do like a recipe card. So, making this post, I was really just trying to figure out how to make a website. Like I've never done that. I, I owned a housekeeping company and. That post, which went up on July 3rd, 2021, has now went viral. It has started a trend. It's been shared over 18 million times. I have like two bestselling books now. I've had a TED Talk, we've had a grocery course because of this. Like all of these things have came because somebody shared my picture of my berries and then I decided it to like, oh, I'll post the instructions about this. So, It is just became this worldwide trend to be able to keep your produce fresh longer.
Amazing. So that was the thing that really started it all, was how to not have your food go to waste in the fridge?
Yeah. Yeah. So the average family in the United States throws away 30 to 40% of the food that they buy, and the World Economic Forum came out last spring, and I know not everybody agrees with them and all the things, but their study came out last spring saying it was, 61% globally for household food waste. So if a family's spending a thousand dollars on groceries a month, they're throwing away $600 a month on groceries, but it's just crazy. We spend hundred and $35 per person on groceries per month for our family, and we're organic allergy family.
Okay. That was one big thing that I knew I wanted to focus on because a lot of times a lot of people are in that situation and so often they basically count themselves out from being able to stay on a budget in any way and just say, well, in order to accommodate the things we have to accommodate for, that means that our food budget is gonna be astronomical. So I love that you in your own home have that as well, so that those people listening don't have to say, well, what she says doesn't apply to me because of our allergies or because we have that. So can you share a little bit how even though you have some unique dietary needs that you have to accommodate for that you're able to do that and still stick to a budget?
We have zero food waste.
Amazing.
So most families are throwing away 40% or 60% or somewhere in between of what they're buying. And we actually use everything that we are buying. And I only go to the grocery store once every three weeks and have fresh produce the whole entire time. You know, not having to go into the store to grab an avocado and walking out, spending a hundred dollars, you know. You don't just go and grab the avocado, you know? Being able to keep avocados fresh for a month, you know, and being able to have all these produce items that are always here reduces me needing to go to the store. And I will clarify that we do have a milk delivery that comes every two weeks, cuz that's always the mom question that comes. So we live in the Seattle area and milk actually gets delivered to our house. So we do get milk that gets delivered to our house every two weeks, but whatever your grocery cycle is of how often you go, and if you keep track of that, like a lot of people go every day or every other day to go and grab something and you know, the prices being so high, if you could just push that out to only going once a week or going once every two weeks, you know, you don't have to like, oh, I'm not gonna go for a month like Amy, you know? Just spreading it out a little bit more and really using the things that are in your refrigerator first and use them up before you go again. Then you will save a ton of money just with that.
Yeah. So if any, if somebody is listening and they are kind of stuck in that where they're not meal planning maybe, so every day is like a blank slate where they have to stop in at the grocery store and grab something cuz they're coming up with that plan on the fly. What would you say is like one or two like starter things they could do to move towards, like you said, maybe not going from what they're doing now, all the way to only shopping once every three weeks, but what are some practical things they could do to kind of stretch that ideally to at least once a week?
I do things like, I try to stock versatile items that we can use multiple ways. So I just saw in your story that you were using hogie bones and making them into pizza, you know, like that kinda idea. That when you have a recipe, it doesn't have to be that particular one thing. Like what can you substitute in and make the same thing?
We utilize our freezer a lot, so I'm buying like tortilla shells or tortillas instead of taco crunchy shells and you know, those I can use for breakfast burritos or quesadillas or tacos, you know, a bunch of different ways where if I just bought crunchy tacos, we would only use them one way, you know?
And for just starting out, we're on this taco theme right now, but I always say that like the first thing you're thinking about that when you're starting to batch cook is taco meat. Like if you can do three to five pounds of taco meat at a time and put the other ones in dinner sized portions away, like that is the best starter like freezer mail ever is to be able to have taco meat ready to go in the freezer and you can pull it out in dinner size portions.
I think that is what you're saying is so true of being able to look at the exact same food and think about it in a different way. Instead of thinking, this ingredient is for this recipe, looking at it holistically and saying all these different spices and ingredients can be combined in different ways to make lots of different recipes so that you feel like you're eating variety, even if at its core it's basically the same food repackaged in different forms.
So another question people asked is what do you think about like bulk meat buying? Have you ever done like the massive either like Costco where you can get the giant pounds of ground beef or even up to like buying quarter of a cow? Have you found those things to be helpful in your pursuit of no food waste?
Okay, so our grocery budget is $135 per person, and right now we have two people in the house. So it's just my husband and I here right now. We have college aged kids, and then we were foster parents. So our family size has varied between two people and eight, you know, we're in between. So I've done it all and as recently as like two years ago too. So not, you know, like, I don't know what I'm talking about cuz it was 20 years ago kind of thing, like, so, it's just only been my husband and I for the last like, year and a half here. But we take $70 every month out of our grocery budget and we put that into a savings account and it's only for our grocery savings.
So my budget is, right now my budget is $270 a month, $135 per person, so $270 per month. I spent whatever. 1 99 at the grocery store when I went last week, so we had $69, I don't know, there was $69 leftover, pretty close to $70 that goes into a savings account for larger purchases. So, when we had a family at eight, our grocery budget was a thousand dollars a month, that it was still that same $70, $75 that I would put away a month.
So it's not per person. That gets so confusing. I talk about it more in my grocery course, but that $70 goes away and into a savings account and once every year to 18 months, depending on how many people we have at home, we buy half a cow.
Okay.
That goes in the freezer, and that is our beef for the year. And then sometimes we will buy half a hog to half a pig also, and then other times we're just, we choose not to do that. And you know, it just depends on the season and who's raising and that kind of stuff. But that's $70 a month helps us have food security for meat at our house at all times. We have one freezer in the garage that is our meat freezer, and I do want to say we do have a generator and we do gas and all those kind of things, so we wouldn't lose that meat.
But you know, just being able to put $70 aside a month, we're able to have, you know, steaks for $4.
Sure. So, so you have found that that is a smart way to go about buying meat instead of each week going into the grocery store and buying all the different meats for different recipes?
Yeah, absolutely. Like, I mean, cuz everything you buy is one set price. So, So it was $4 a pound. So our, you know, flame minons are $4 a pound and also our hamburger, you know, and I took, my grandmother is 94 and a half, and I take her to the grocery store and I help her. And she was buying a thing of hamburger the other day, and I was like, $26.
And I was just like, oh my goodness. Like that same size I would've maybe paid $12 for.
Yeah. Yeah, that is, that is a big amount of savings. So in order to do things like that, whether it's the half a cow or it's keeping your berries, your produce fresh for a whole month, what's your setup when it comes to having the fridge and freezer and pantry space? Because like I know for me with our six, the only thing I have is our main fridge and freezer. I don't have a chest freezer or anything like that. What is the setup that allows you to then stretch that long?
One, I don't buy very many things in boxes. Like packaging, like it's single ingredient items. So when you start getting a lot of those boxes of things, processed things, out of your freezers, you will find that you have so much more space in there. So that's probably my number one tip. And we do that because we are an allergy family. Literally anything that comes from the box, we can't eat like, Buddy is going to be allergic to something, but I know this is a podcast, but if it was on video, this little cabinet that's right behind me for 18 years, that was my only pantry cabinet. So we just did a remodel in the last well he just finished it last weekend. It's been a two and a half year process, but that was my only pantry cabinet. And again, we buy single ingredient items and I make a lot of things from scratch and that just takes up a lot less space. So when you're really focusing on buying wholesome things to feed your family, it might take a little bit more work but you will end up not having the space issue.
Our house is only 1100 square feet. It's not a big house. So, for a long time we had one freezer in the garage. And then when we remodeled the house, we got a new refrigerator and so we left the old refrigerator down there, but I really only used that refrigerator during harvest season. So it just has like random little pops or whatever down there in the refrigerator. But it's not, it's not a continuation of my kitchen refrigerator. I get accused of that all the time and it's like, there's literally nothing in there. You know, maybe 12 drinks in there like, but when it's harvest season then, then we do use it, you know, when I'm trying to process things and get them through, so,
So when you say harvest season, do you have a big garden or do you, how do you get those things that you're then harvesting? I see in the background big jars of canned tomatoes, maybe.
Yeah. I canned like a hundred pounds of tomatoes every year and then that I use to make our own ketchup and barbecue sauce and spaghetti sauce and, you know, everything that we need again. Allergy family, and then I'm diabetic, so a lot of tomato products and stuff have extra sugar in it. So if I can control the sugar, then it's good for me. But we live in a cul-de-sac, like in a neighborhood. I can like see Costco from my window, like we're right in, you know, town and we have a backyard garden. And chickens. We have six chickens. Three if you're in my town, because we're only supposed to have three, we only say that out loud. We have couple chickens, backyard. But our neighbor always says that if the city gets after us, they'll just say that the three of them are theirs.
They ran over.
Anyways we do have chickens and then a summer garden. We live in the Seattle area, so we don't really garden year round. And then that's kind of just fresh salad stuff, but really only in July and August for us, like we're not producing anything major here. And then the other things that I get when we travel to Eastern Washington, we'll come back, like last weekend we came back with fresh cherries, so I brought back like 20 pounds of cherries that I'll be making stuff with.
And then we get stuff at the local produce stands too, and the, so anybody anywhere can put up produce
Yes. So what you're saying is you don't have to live on a big farm in the country in order to do some of these things, which is good because I feel like most people don't. So when people are bringing home, like you said, the viral posts that you had that kind of started it all was the strawberries in a jar. When people are bringing home things from the grocery store, what would you say is one, like one of the most common mistakes when it comes to handling produce from the store that might be causing it to go bad that someone could change what they do in order to make it last longer?
Well, in my book I teach all the different produce items, but I used distilled white vinegar. That's 5% if you're here in the United States, which will kill off the molds, fours, coli, listeria, and other harmful pathogens. So right now, a lot of people have frozen strawberries that they purchased at the store in their refrigerator, in their freezers that have hepatitis A in them. They're being recalled and people aren't checking their packages kind of thing. If you're bringing your produce home, And washing it according to my instructions, then it will be safe. There's been so many people over the last two years that have tried to copy my hack and giving bad instructions, so seriously. Two minutes for the soaking time. Set a timer. Don't go like swap the laundry out, like stay right there and get your berries and produce items out of the water right away. And then you lay it out on a towel until it's bone dry. And then I store everything in glass with a paper towel at the bottom. And I have strawberries. Oh, let's start in the right order. Blackberries and raspberries will last like two and a half to three weeks. And then strawberries right at the three week mark. And then Grapes last four to six weeks and blueberries will last six to eight weeks. So, and then things like my avocados will stay fresh for a month. Lettuce will stay fresh for a month. Cilantro will stay fresh. Six to eight weeks, like parsley, six to eight weeks. Like they, it's literally learning how to store your produce items and, you know, a lot of things like people don't know. I grew up on a farm, so I think harvest season to harvest season.
Yeah.
So things like your potatoes and your onions, those onions will last harvest season to harvest season if they're not stored next to potatoes.
Potatoes. Yep.
It would last for a whole year. I got some garlic the other day and the tag on it, and I knew better. I knew better when I got it, but the tag on it said May, that it was packaged in May. Well, I know if it's packaged in May, those are actually last year's garlic because I don't pick garlic until July. So the one that's sprouting in there, I know I'm going to use first, you know, kind of think actually already almost a year old.
Okay.
That I just picked up at the store.
I feel like that's really helpful because, it's so common that it's almost a joke of the box of spring mix that you pick up from the grocery store so that you can let it die in the back of your fridge. Right. And so I, I often see, and I soak, you know, berries and stuff, but I've, I have never thought about processing like the the spring mix or the, the things that are, you know, those leafy vegetables. So you soak even those, or what do you do with something like spinach or a head of romaine lettuce?
You notice that those pre-washed items are the most recalled produce items out of everything else.
They're the dirtiest ones. Yes.
So, I very rarely buy anything that's already chopped up. Mostly because we don't know how long ago it was chopped up. So, I normally will get like, head of romaine lettuce and then I will cut it open and wash it and then let it to dry. So in my TED talk I talked about when you lay the leaves out to dry and then when you put them in the container to make sure that it looks like a roof with a stem at the top and not like a boat because. Whole time that the lettuce is in the container, it's going to release a little bit of moisture.
And if it's like a boat, that stem will get brown. So make it look like a roof or an umbrella when you put it into the container. But lettuce will stay crunchy for a month and there, and there won't be any listeria on it cuz you've washed it.
Which is the really important part, right?
Yeah. It's safe to eat.
Yes. Awesome. Well, I love that, that is so helpful for making that last and just cutting back even a little bit on what you said, how often people or how much people are throwing away week after week. Because like I said, I, I think it's so common that I see, you know, meme posts about like, oh, I almost forgot to walk outta the grocery store without my little box of spring mix that's gonna die in the back of the fridge.
And it's so, it's just so common. So I love that those are really easy ways to incorporate into your grocery process that, like you said, two minutes. It does not take a bunch of time, but the reward for that time is huge in the fact that you can actually continue to use that food.
So when it comes to then you are so well-stocked with your freezer meat and then your canned good goods and your produce that's lasting in the fridge, what's your meal planning process like? How do you incorporate those foods that you already have into deciding what's for dinner this week?
Okay. I, every time I talk to anybody budget related and say, I don't meal plan, they like freak out. I really don't meal plan. I am, I normally stock the same ingredients and then add seasonal produce, so I always know that I'm gonna have onions and peppers and, you know, whatever my, you know, standard items are that I always have that I can use multiple ways.
But when I am looking in the refrigerator, I'm trying to see what needs to be used up in the next three days and then I pull out meat accordingly and, and plan that way. But I always say that I don't know what I wanna wear next Tuesday. How am I supposed to do what I wanna eat next Tuesday? Or as here we can have like an 80 degree day and a rainy 40 degree day, you know, back and forth. And so you never know if you wanna use the oven or you know, wanna do it on the barbecue. And I also have reflective sympathetic dystrophy. So, it's a pain syndrome and I have flareups. So that's kind of one of the reasons why over the years I learned how to batch cook and do things was I can just pull, if it's a bad day, I can just pull something out of the freezer and it's a prepared meal that I made on a different day that was a good day. And we always have things that we can rotate in and out. And a lot of times if you use, I use glass containers mostly, but I used to use like freezer bags. And when you freeze things flat in the free in the freezer, like you can make that work in your kitchen freezer and have a lot of different options that you can pull out easily for dinner.
So, another thing is I don't do like a big like meal prepping kind of day. Whenever I'm making a meal, I try to see if I can make it work for two or three days, like instead of those leftovers dying in the refrigerator, then I'm like, are those items that I can freeze and we can pull out for another meal? So it's really not more work, not more pants, you know, it's just planning a little bit ahead when I'm preparing something.
Yeah, I'm the same way. I, I tried long and ago in the past before I had kids to be like that meal prepper where I was like, Sunday, all my lunches for work or whatever, and that just never stuck for me. One, like you said, I don't like to, I don't know what I wanna eat for lunch on Friday, so I don't wanna make seven of the exact same thing. But then also just the time where it was like, if Sunday is my one day before I go back to work for the week, I don't wanna be standing in the kitchen the entire day. So I think what you're describing is a really happy medium between not having that full meal prep kind of thing, but then also taking advantage.
I like to ask myself, what else can I do while I'm here? So like if I'm already in the kitchen, cooking dinner for the next 30 minutes, is there, can I double up one or two tasks that will make tomorrow easier or that will make Wednesday easier? Which it blends the idea of a meal prepping day, but fits it into those little pockets of your day that you don't, so you don't feel like you're cooking constantly.
It is a new month. And that means a few things. July is my birthday month and I am really looking forward to spending my birthday on the beach with my family. The start of a new month also means I hear from people who set up a new budget with the hopes that this would be the month. Things change only to be disappointed that there was even less money in their account on the first of the month as there was the day before.
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I think one thing I wanna point out, because I have a lot of people who follow me, who also are not meal planners, but I think what enables you to not meal plan is how well you are planned and stocked when it comes to the food you have. So for most people, if they don't meal plan, it means the daily trips to the grocery store because they're suddenly thinking of a meal they wanna have. Where the difference or the distinctive between that and what you do is that you get to shop your own cabinets and your own freezer because you put that effort into being so well prepared and having food that lasts a long time. So that's another way to look at it. For people who are currently thinking, the idea of grocery shopping is overwhelming, the idea of meal planning is overwhelming.
You kind of get a lot more bang for your buck in that the time that you invest in making those foods last and having them on hand and fitting in your budget then enables you to not need to meal plan because you can rely on all the work you did to make that food available for yourself, just the day of or two days before to decide what you feel like eating.
Correct. Correct. And I know my team, when they're rewatching this, they're gonna be freaking out because they said, I don't meal plan. I do have a meal planner.
Yep.
No, we we have on our shelf, but I use it more for inventory and then for the grocery list. So, I like to keep an inventory of everything that we have in the freezer that's available, things that I know like in the next week that I need to use these up, that's kind of like if I'm looking in like, oh, I have asparagus that's been in there for a month and I need to use those. That's kind of how I plan my meals around that. But it was just like laughing about that.
But and then talking about my grandma, she's from the Depression era. She's like 94. She'll be 95 in November. And she fell in January. And so she went from being like, you know, being able to drive at Christmas time and living by herself to now she needs care. And so I'm there like very often, almost every day. And When she was in the hospital, at the very beginning of this, I got to clean out her refrigerator and she's like, you know, anything that's bad in there, you know, let you know, go ahead and, you know, empty out.
And I was just like, I've been waiting years to hear you say that to me. You know, cuz her mindset of like food security is different than mine. So we have food security. We know that everything in our house is safe for our family to eat. And we rotate through those items and it's not that much effort, you know, all those things.
Well, grandma has this mental food security thing of just like hoarding food and never being able to get rid of it. So I was cleaning out her refrigerator and she had these foil packages. you know, like you get tuna fish, like in those spoil packages, they were chicken from 1993 in her refrigerator.
Refrigerator. There was mayonnaise in there from 2004 that was open and like she was like, had been eating out of it, you know, like. Like literally things that are way, way past best buy dates, you know? And guess, granted those chicken packets were like meant to maybe last like three to five years, but not 30 here.
Right.
Maybe older than some of your viewers. You know, like, but you know, her pantry and her different things, she just buys and buys and buys and she has no idea what's in her cabinets, and she just always feels like she needs to go to the store every couple days and she needs more. And I understand that. I didn't understand that for a long time. And you know, with us going through the pandemic, I think this whole new generation of all of us understand a lot what our grandmas and our great grandmas were trying to teach us. That, you know, those store shelves can be empty and prices can change and we can't always go to the store. We don't know what's going to happen with political climates and different things that happen in the world and storms and you know, being able to have some of that food security in your house to know that you have what your family needs doesn't have to cost more. If you're rotating through those items and it's not just being hidden under beds or in closets, you're rotating through those items, you really have what your family needs to get through a three day weekend, get through a storm, get through a couple days, you know, and if as you're building that up, you can build up more food security for your family, like that's just amazing. But we did it by $5 at a time. Like whenever there was something that was, you know, buy one, get one for free, then I got that. If it was on the list, if it was something that we, you know, were using, you know, cuz so many people think of food security and they think of things that they're not going to use, we just keep it totally rotated all the time.
I do three inventories of all of our stuff every year. So in January, I like right at the beginning of the new year when you like, got done with the holidays and you're trying to be really good on the budget and all those kinda things. I, I do a a complete inventory. And I'm checking everything, like checking our spices, checking all of our pantry kind of items, like really thoroughly going through everything and trying to see what is a year old that I need to start using up and really thinking, especially like baking season during the wintertime, trying to see what I can use up. Like flour only has a 18 month shelf life. A lot of people don't realize that. So, so things that I can rotate, it has dates on it. And then at the beginning of summer, so I normally do it around Easter time here, but when we still have kind of cold weather some days and then a warmer, you know, day, then I'm going through the freezers and I'm trying to look for anything that I prepped over the wintertime that uses the oven.
So if I have any extra lasagnas or different things in the freezer, I'm trying to use those up before we hit summertime. And then I do the same thing in the right when the kids are going back to school. So if we have hot dog buns that we don't normally use in the wintertime, I'm trying to use those summer time items up that we don't want to use, you know, during the off season necessarily. And that way it's not sitting there for an extra six months not being thought about. So, I really encourage like to take a good look at the items that you have at, at your house and be able to rotate through those.
And I think that is such an important part of food waste and also minimizing the budget. I think a lot of times people they're thinking, okay, I'm gonna try to get good about how much we're spending on groceries or eating more at home. And so they'll come up with a meal plan without looking at what they already have. And that makes it really expensive because then they go to the grocery store and are buying all new things, even though their house has a bunch of stuff. So I do think it's really important, both for food waste and for budget to look first at what you already have and because it's not like that's free food, but sometimes it does feel like free food because you've already spent the money. And so then actually using that enables you to stay on budget better. So I always, you know, I, I do meal plan once a week for what we're gonna do for the week. I don't assign meals to a day, so I do make, this is the seven meals I'm gonna make throughout the next week. And then each day I kind of pick what I feel like eating that day. But I do always do it standing in the kitchen so that I can have my pantry open and my fridge open and be like, what do I already have? Which is just a good way to approach life in general, not just food, but you know, just. What can I use that I already have right in front of me without feeling the need to go out and buy something new in order to be successful? Is, is I think a really good starting place for people who might be listening to this thinking they're overwhelmed by the idea of canning and then inventory. You know, all the big things that you and I both know people can grow into over time. And one of the great starting points would just be, use what I have. You know, have that mantra in your head of use what I've already bought.
At least once a week, at least, I would say almost once a day, I get somebody that says I have $55 and I need to make 10 meals that'll last until payday. Like that kinda scenario I get asked like literally almost every day. Something of that sort. And it's just like they don't even think, like, my first question is always like, what's in your refrigerator? Send me a picture of your refrigerator. Like, I'll try to help you. You know, or what's in your pantry? You like, they don't even think about that. They just want to know what they can go get to the store for those $55. Well, do you have eggs? Do you have flour? Do you have this? Do you know, like what can we pull together with some of the items that you have? And we just got done with a 12 week like pilot course with our local food bank and it. It's been so neat to be able to help families and us have been a family that had to use the food bank way back when.
And knowing that sometimes you're getting items that you don't know what to do with how you can make those meals with items that you were given and you don't necessarily normally cook with those. They're not normally necessarily something that you would pick from the store and to be able to make meals using, you know, different things and your family still using and being able to eat these items that you're getting is so important.
And what you're describing is flipping the order that a lot of people do. A lot of people will decide what they wanna eat and then go out and buy it because they don't have any of those ingredients. And when we flip the order and start with what are the foods that I have and then what sounds good to make using those foods, it becomes a lot more manageable and a lot, it doesn't take up as much time to be going out to the grocery store constantly.
I know one time I posted a dinner and then I said that for the, for the food that I use for the quantities that I use, that dinner costs like $15. And someone was like, well, that would cost me like $65. I was like, well, if I went, if I had none of these already in my fridge and pantry, if I had none of the spices on hand, then it would cost $65 to start from scratch. But, you know, having a well-stocked spice cabinet and having, you know, I already have olive oil or whatever it is, then it's like for the quantities of food that we use, it absolutely should not cost $65 to make one dinner for your family.
It feels obvious, but it's not obvious and easy aren't always the same thing to start with what we have and then build our plans around that. And I think that's where so often people are like, you know, oh well there's no way that food can actually cost that little, you know, that it can work into your budget that well. And it's like, it does take work. It definitely does take work in time, but it absolutely is possible. To start eating well at home without feeling like you have to take what you currently spend on food and double it in order to accomplish that.
I recently taught a class for a group of young moms, and assuming that they had like three or four people in their household is what I was kind of budgeting for. And so I went to the grocery store and I spent exactly $135 and only assuming that they had water, salt and pepper at home. And I had meals for two weeks and I was able to show them exactly how I would use these meals to be able to feed their families. You know, like a mom with toddlers, or you know, a four person household with littles $135, you know, and it was, it was all wholesome, you know, items. I was even excited that there was Annie's mac and cheese that was on sale, and it's not normally something that I would necessarily buy, but knowing that this would be something comforting that somebody else might use would be the other thing.
But being a foster mom when our little, so we had four under seven here for three years. And when they first started coming they didn't know produce and they didn't know items that weren't in packages and were in allergy family. So we didn't have a lot of items that were in packages and different things. And so I had always washed my produce, but it wasn't until I started putting it in the glass containers in the refrigerator so they could see the items better is kind of how that whole thing had started where we ended up with strawberries in a jar, but they could stand at the refrigerator and point to the red ones or the purple ones, and not knowing the names for strawberries or grapes or different produce items. They could open up and see this beautiful rainbow in the refrigerator, and it was a totally different lifestyle for them. You know, being able to teach young families that little kids do want to eat a rainbow, and the more eating, get them involved, even at the toddler stage all the way through, like they will eat more produce and enjoy it.
And probably comforting, or at least a familiar reference point to see it in something like a jar, because then it is a packaged food. Just to give them that touchpoint of like, this is similar to the things I've seen before, and it's something safe that I can eat that I, you know, that I've remembered.
I know even just involving kids in the process recently, I've put my boys, they're four, six, and eight, always in charge of prepping the strawberries when I buy them. That's one thing I bought kids safe knives and give them a cutting board and just evolving them in that process I think is so important for helping them enjoy it and then also be more curious about eating it. I have a, I have two kids who are not picky at all, and I have two kids who are terribly picky. And so helping them have you, you've been there
Yeah, I have a super picky vegetarian with allergies!
Yeah. Easy mom. Right.
I love her to pieces, but I was really happy when she moved out to go to college and she had to feed herself.
Yeah. She's like, oh, this is how much work my mom was doing.
And then pandemic happened and she moved back home and I was like, oh man. Like I said, too much. Like I wasn't excited that she was leaving, leaving. I was just excited that she had a feed herself.
Yes.
And then she moved back home. But she was home this weekend because it was her birthday. And it was just funny because I'm like, oh yeah, I forget like, you know, vegetarian and picky all these allergies, like,
Yeah. Fall back into step.
But it's all good. But. Yeah, I understand. I understand all these things. Like I'm diabetic, I have a health issue. I have a very picky daughter. We, so if everybody's home, we are soy, gluten, dairy, broad sugar cane allergies, and one vegetarian, and then me being diabetic on top of it. So like all the excuses we have, you know.
So you're like a, you're like a produce and meat family, but it is, I think it is really encouraging to hear that and see that. I, I think creativity is often born out of that adversity or those challenging boundaries. So to hear from someone who has so many more restrictions on that list than what we might have, I, I love the, and I think it's so relatable, the, like, if she can do it, I can do it kind of thing of like, okay, I might have, you know, I have one son who's lactose intolerant and I, you know, whatever.
And so it's like I can take and piece together the things that you have found to be successful and apply them to our own family. Cuz one way is not gonna work for every family. Which is why I think you and I both kind of take that approach of like, I'm gonna give you as much like knowledge and tips and tricks as possible. But at the end of the day, each person that's listening has to then apply it to what works for their family. And so giving them ways to make it easier and make it take less time and feel less overwhelming is so helpful in getting people out of that: I'm so overwhelmed that I'm not even gonna do anything frozen state.
Yeah, somebody had said right when I was starting all this, that this was different. Like I was different than Pioneer Woman or anybody else because I was bringing hope back to the kitchen. I wasn't just trying to like sell a cookbook or sell this, like I'm trying to like truly bring skills to bring hope back to the kitchen because for so long, like the kitchen has been such a place of stress. Like stress, like can you afford the groceries? Do you need this? You know, like when you have the items that you need in your house and you can feed your family and you know that you have what you need, you know, those skills are something they're just truly priceless. You know, it's something that over the generations we have lost.
Like my mom was a logger. Like I grew up on a 200 acre farm and my grandparents like did all the preserving and farming and all that kinda stuff. But my mom was a logger, like she was not at home. You know, like my parents were out in the woods and so I do learn a lot of gardening stuff from my mom, but she's not necessarily a kitchen, you know, kind of person.
And then, you know, on our other side of the family, like my husband's grandma, you know, like it's this whole different food security, like city living, food security, like that I was talking about that was different. But these generational things that should have been passed down to generations kind of got lost. And all of a sudden through this pandemic, people are really realizing and or I think like the last 10 years thinking back more to their roots and how they can do things better and you know, and some of that is trying to take wisdom from other people and learn these skills that should be passed on.
As overwhelming as something like the pandemic or rising prices can be, we have, I, it's a comfort and like you said, a hope building thing to really lean into, okay, I'm feeling squeezed in my finances, or I'm feeling overwhelmed by this, but it's not without hope. It's not something that I can't learn from and develop these skills, like you said, we saw you know, something as terrible as being home for all of those months and not being able to go anywhere. So many people picked up new habits and started their sourdough bread and you know, all those things that were kind of lost, like what you said. And now as we have doors have opened back up and now we're going out and doing things, hopefully we don't lose those things again and can still take the time to remember how much that helped our, our food budgets or whatever it was. And so I think of times in my life when our income was way smaller and our budget was way smaller, I was way more creative with food then than any time where I felt like, oh, well I can, you know, I'm comfortable I can buy what I want, or whatever that doesn't, that doesn't spark creativity, that doesn't install. Fire me to go about, you know, canning and preserving and all those things. But when I feel squeezed in my budget or when I feel like we have these other goals that I wanna get to, so I need to really work on my food budget, then that's when I'm coming up with, you know, some crazy banana lentil recipe that everybody ends up liking and you know, so it's like we, I think it's encouraging and like you said, hope inspiring that we can actually lean into those times that feel hard because they're gonna teach us something super valuable.
We like went debt free 15 years ago and have worked, we had everything besides the house and a student loan, like, you know, for years. And then, and it has saved us because we've had major, major medical things in our family that has happened that were totally unexpected over time. And when we were in those times of abundance, and we were like still like why is this family getting to go on vacation and we should be able to go on vacation and what is going on? Like, why, you know, what is going on? And we started to look at the grocery budget and the going out to eat budget and you know, our, why couldn't we afford date nights like, we hadn't been out on a date in so long and all those kind of things. And when I started dividing those things out and really planning for them then it just, it was so eye-opening to us for one, because I had cut everything else out of our budgets. You know, we had dropped gym memberships or, you know, different activities or cable or all those kind of things, but it felt like food was something that you couldn't cut. But when we started adding up how much we were actually spending, it was just like, oh, wow. We could really cut some of this here. But so way back then when we were doing that kind of stuff, We used to do a hundred dollars per person and now I have raised it to $135. So I do acknowledge that prices are more expensive right now. I do believe in buying in season and you can get better deals when you get things in season and to train your family to eat in season. So they're not asking for something that's outta season in the middle of winter time, you know?
Yeah.
And then we when we're dividing up our budget, we also have a, for going out to eat, it's divided in two categories. So we have a date night budget and we have a two lazy to cook budget. So if we have extra money on the budget, money goes into those two categories, but that way we still are able to go out on a date at least once a month and not like, oh my goodness, we stopped at Chick-fil-A and we ruined our whole, like, doing anything fun for the month. So we, that eating out is definitely in two different categories where, you know, if, if we happen to have a little bit of extra, it goes into the takeout, which isn't very often, but again, allergies, it's really hard.
Yeah, for sure.
But we still are getting that time together as a couple. We just had our 26th wedding anniversary last week. We're like high school sweetheart. We've been together forever and we survived a kitchen remodel and we're still happily married.
happily married. That's the important part.
That was a big part, so,
That's amazing. And I think too, I mean it is, you know, I want always want people to be realistic with. I think going from eating out all the time and saying, oh, well I'm just gonna cold turkey, stop eating out completely is just not, I don't ever really see people stick to that successfully. So having a realistic budget that says we want to eat most of our meals at home, but we're also going to make room for, like you said, going out on a date or nights that you're just too tired, balances both of those things really well and allows it to feel more doable. And I think the important part too, as I've heard you describing what you're doing is like when you like the foods that are at home, you're less inclined to default to eating out all the time because you genuinely have food in your home that sounds tasty and is easy to make, and you can kind of go into that autopilot so that even on days that we do feel more tired, there's still something to eat in our house that sounds good. And our two options are not cook for 45 minutes in the kitchen or order pizza, like we have lots of options in between that allows us to still eat at home.
Right, right. When we were first cutting out the budget, the hardest thing is cuz we were both busy, you know, working all the time and now the house, was cutting the coffee budget cuz we used to stop at Starbucks or coffee stands all the time. And then going from like, oh, we can do that every other day, or you know, and it ended up being where, well that's like once a week and that's our pocket money that's coming over our pocket money. Now we can divide up and now like we might go maybe once every couple months and get coffee, but it's just kind of funny like those actions that you go into daily and you don't even think about how much they're adding up and how much they're affecting your family budget, like when you're really looking at it, but you're just trying to survive the daily grind and you can't see past that. And so it, it has taken creativity in different seasons of our lives. We've definitely had our ups and downs and all of this kind of things. But we still stick to doing things that we can afford and, and our family understands that like, that it's just not always in the budget to go do something else. This is what's in the budget right now and, you know, you're provided for, and all of our needs are met, and that's what's important.
Yeah. Yeah. I think being able to talk about that, especially with kids as they're getting older, to talk about it kind of in a neutral voice of that having something be in or out of the budget is just a fact of life. And it's not making some grand statement about like, you know, oh, well, we don't make enough for, we have this bad financial situation. Every single person has a inside and outside of the budget number. And so again, keeping that more of a neutral fact, like that's just a piece of information that something either does or does not fit into the budget, really helps kids to build a secure idea of money where they're like, like you said, like I have a roof over my head. We have food. Not being able to go to Chick-fil-A every single night does not mean that we don't have enough money or that there's something wrong, and we can just accept that that can be an occasional thing, not an all the time thing.
Not something that's planned for.
Yes, exactly. Well, this has been so helpful and I'm really excited to share this next week because I think it just rounds out that conversation and you add another dimension.
Your approach to food is very different than mine, even though I think at the, at its core, some of the principles overlap a lot of the way that we approach it. So I'm so glad that I can have this super different perspective that still shares just another method for approaching groceries and food that fits well into your family's budget. And I would love if you could tell my audience ways that they can learn more from you and then also where they can find you.
Well mostly go find me on Instagram. So we are @thecrosslegacy everywhere. But Instagram, I tease that that's my mailing list. We have over 118,000 people over there, and we're reaching a million people a month. Like it's really incredible what's happening. But we post every single day. So every single day you're going to get a new tip about saving money on groceries or what's fresh for produce site is, or those kind of things every single day over on Instagram.
We have 300 videos now on YouTube. So a lot of your questions can be answered by watching videos on YouTube, and then I have a blog. Everything is The Cross Legacy, and then I have a best selling book. It's called, "I Bought It. Now What?" And the best place to buy that is on our blog, on the website, thecrosslegacy.com.
There's one that is for the first 25 items and how to keep them fresh. And then we came out with the summer edition, so it has more of the summer items. So between the two books, it has the 50 top produce items. And then we also teach a grocery course. So the grocery course it's called The Grocery Solution, and that is on the website also. So the website, but Instagram. Instagram,
Instagram.
I am. I'm the same way. I always say like, I'm technically on YouTube and this thing and this thing, but if you really wanna follow me, Instagram's the place. Well, awesome. Thank you so much, Amy.
Thank you.
I don't know about you, but I learned so much listening to Amy. She has a unique approach to groceries, food storage, and meal planning. One of my biggest takeaways was that there is no one right way to go about eating at home and sticking to your budget. Her approach to both shopping and meal planning are extremely different from mine. But I learned so much from her. I wanted to know everything about her zero food waste approach and how to keep my food lasting longer. So I will be trying some of the storage and prep tips she shared here today. None of us want to be buying food and watching it go in the trash. So if you also found her advice and story to be so inspiring, you can find Amy on Instagram @thecrosslegacy, all one word and online thecrosslegacy.com.
(*Credits) Thanks for listening to the Debt Free Mom Podcast. If you want to join me as a guest on the show, go to dfmpodcast.com. The Debt Free Mom Podcast is hosted by me, Carly Hill, and is produced, edited, and mixed by Kyle Hill. Music for this episode was written by Kyle Hill. Hit subscribe wherever you're listening to join in with every new episode as we grow our confidence and contentment in our personal finances.
