Out of the mouths of babes

The look. You know, the one that children get on their faces when they realize (perhaps not for the first time) that their parents are flippin' crazy. Call us perverse, but we kinda like it. It's nice to still be able to surprise them. When we told them about our project for a large family to live (as if) off the largesse, their initial reaction was to wonder if we were putting them on. As it dawned on them that we were for real, they started testing the limits of our proposed madness. They were already mourning over the loss of Chinese takeout and 'fun' foods. The younger children asked if we were poor because we wanted to cut down our food bill. "Why would you want to save money" they asked. That was when we knew that this project had real value.

We had obviously set the example that there were no limits when it came to buying food. We bought whatever we wanted at the grocery store, and went out wherever and whenever we wanted. We're Americans. It's our right to eat, and eat well. We're entitled. Ok, that's nonsense. No one is entitled to anything. We know that. Hard work, responsibility, blah, blah blah. We've given the speech so many times even our eyes are starting to glaze over. But evidently our strong work ethic hadn't carried over all that well as a strong food ethic. Time to work on that...

When we decided to inaugurate our year of food thrift by splurging at a restaurant (way to confuse the kids!), we called it the Last Supper. Our literal child Katharine (9 years old, future District Attorney and Judge) earnestly wanted to know "Will we be eating any more suppers, ever?" Erik is a little more world-wise and has a few more years of experience with the Parental Units. He wanted to know if this was in any way a reprise of our foray into eating raw foods. He still has macrobiotic emotional scars from when we made and dined on most of the recipes in Alicia Silverstone's book The Kind Diet. What can we say, it's a rough economy, and we're doing our part to make sure that therapists have a little job security too.

Home made muffins

In addition to getting the message across to the children that culinary consumption and economic consumption share more than just a last name, we have already seen some healthy dividends from our brief investment: They've learned that spending less on food means the money we have set aside will buy more food. The children have begun to understand the idea of a unit price (price per oz or lb) by reading the labels and doing the math, or just looking at the unit prices that have already been calculated by the store. The older children have made it a challenge to discover the lowest priced item. We reward their success with what children want most anyway: our look of approval.

Erik said that he realized that homemade meals mean healthier food. If this turns out to be the only thing they get out of our experience this year, then it's all going to be worth it.