Rose City Receipts: How a Corvallis Writer Feeds Her Family of 3

Hi, {{first__name | reader}},

Welcome to Rose City Receipts, a new feature of Stumptown Savings where Portland-area residents take us inside their strategies for balancing grocery shopping, eating out, and staying on budget. Want to be featured in a future Rose City Receipts? Let me know!

Today, we hear from Peggy Purdue in Corvallis. Peggy is a talented writer, poet, author, and the mother of a young son. She is working on an exciting new project called "Portraits," which dives into the shared humanity behind our differences and explores what truly matters in our lives and communities. Peggy walks us through how she juggles her son’s and husband’s food preferences, her mission to reduce waste, and her battle with a spring cold.

Who are you? Peggy Perdue, writer, poet
Where do you live? Corvallis
What’s your weekly grocery budget (roughly)?: $150 (our son eats a lot more now, so it’s probably time to adjust this)
How many people are you shopping for?: 3 people (2 adults, 1 child)
What are your favorite stores?: We use WinCo for most foods, and then trips to First Alternative Co-op for produce and specialty items or emergencies, because it's a block from us
What’s your top priority when it comes to grocery shopping?: Reducing waste — food and plastics

I grew up eating whatever was put on my plate. I love comfort foods, but I also love healthy food that tastes good. I could eat salads and sandwiches every day. Food is very much an experience and a resource. I try to eat only what I need and try not to leave the table feeling gluttonously full (except when I have a big serving of spaghetti and garlic bread), but I’ll admit, that’s easier said than done.

It's funny, now, as a mom, one of the most satisfying things is watching my son happily eat. I want him to have a happy and healthy relationship with food, and I've found myself wanting to share my favorite foods and memories, as well as giving him new experiences of his own, which become new experiences for me.

At this point, my biggest struggle is working around people's preferences. My son is 7 and doesn't like gooey cheese (really?!), but my husband is a pescatarian, so to be honest, he's sometimes the hardest one to cook for. Though we’re not as strict, now, with a son to feed. 

Weekly total: $219.50
Eating out total: $0 ($19.93 total, but it was covered by a gift card and my mom)
Groceries total: $219.50
Most-expensive line item: $22.99 (bourbon, for the blueberry-bourbon barbecue sauce, though it’s not included in our “food” budget)
Least-expensive line item: school lunches
Number of grocery trips: 5
Number of meals out: 1

Ugh. Sick day. I had been feeling sluggish for a few days, so I never really got around to meal planning. The good news / bad news was that I already had an idea of what we were going to be eating because it was HOT. And since we’ve had several years of practice now with too-hot-to-cook summers, I’ve got a bit of an arsenal for no-cook meals. Also, my son’s still in school for a week, so I didn’t have to figure out lunch, and we had some easy snacks left over from last week’s purchases. We did a vegetarian Italian hoagie for dinner, but I didn’t get around to buying the tomato. Or the baguette. The co-op had the tomato, but no more baguettes. We made it work as sandwiches. 

Monday total: $4.07

I pretty much slept all day. Luckily, Tuesdays are usually when my husband cooks, so he did the grocery shopping and made burritos for dinner. We’d fallen behind on quite a few food staples, so the grocery bill was a bit high. 

Lunch was the hard part. We didn’t have leftovers from Monday, and my son had a field trip, which required a home lunch (they provide a school lunch if needed, but he hates their peanut butter and jelly — and I can’t blame him). With me sick, it was up to my husband. So, my son got homemade PB&J instead. 

One thing I actually like about being sick is that I follow a regimen I had read about a couple of years ago to get over a cold faster. It recommends putting chickpeas and pumpkin seeds on your salad, and since I’m a salad lover, I follow that menu almost every time I’m sick. We usually have these on hand, so I cut up some lettuce and whatever veggies and cheese we had in the fridge, then crumbled some multigrain crackers on top. For after-school snacks this week, I had already made orange-vanilla ice pops over the weekend, so my son ate that and a bowl of cereal.

We also had all the ingredients for a granola recipe I had seen in a cookbook I picked up from the library (”Toaster Oven Perfection” from America’s Test Kitchen), so I made that for breakfast for the next day.

Tuesday total: $58.70

Feeling better. Had a lot to catch up on, but I didn’t want to overdo it. So I spent a slow morning reorganizing my week, and then meal planning for today and tomorrow. Since it had cooled off considerably, I decided to start up the oven and make pita. I love making pita. It’s so easy, and no matter how badly I make them, they’re still better than anything at the store (although never, never as good as the ones at Ya Hala when we lived in Portland). My son LOVES pita. 

Since I spent the afternoon baking, the rest of the meal was salad or store-bought: hummus, dolmas, greek salad, chickpea (left over from my previous salad) and kale (leftover from a previous meal) salad, crudites. I did make a couple of impulse purchases at the store (probably because I had skipped lunch … bad idea): sour watermelon candies and dill pickle cashews (addicting after the second bite, but at least it curbed my afternoon popcorn habit). 

Wednesday total: $76.45

Back to work. No time for grocery shopping, so I used some leftover macaroni. I made a creamy garlic pasta with shrimp and peas (from my garden!). 

Thursday total: $0

Last day of school! I took my son out for a treat, and my mom joined us. It was so cold, I could have had a hot chocolate! But we got a mango smoothie, herbal tea, and chocolate-strawberry cake. (The cakes at Coffee Culture are amazing and almost impossible to say no to.) I had just gotten a gift card as thanks for volunteering at my son’s school, so I used that, and my mom insisted on pitching in the rest. 

We’ve designated “Fried Food Fridays,” for which we heat up frozen foods. Today was fish sandwiches and tots.

Friday total: $0

My husband cooks breakfasts and dinners on the weekend. Saturday was red beans and rice. And for Father’s Day, we had a special flank steak and blueberry-bourbon barbecue sauce and salad. The blueberries were frozen, a purchase I made late last summer from a local u-pick and have been using throughout the year. $20 for a 10-pound bag.

I made a rare Sunday trip to the store to prepare for the next couple of days, since I wouldn’t have school hours to get things done, so that might have helped push us over our weekly budget. I also think because I hadn’t been feeling well, I took more shortcuts than I normally would.

Also, I made chocolate-hazelnut spread, which we use on oatmeal a lot. It’s like Nutella, but Nutella has palm oil, which I try not to buy for sustainability reasons.

Weekend total: $80.28

Pantry shopping. Shelf-stable foods are easy, inexpensive, and lifesavers. There is nothing better than being able to throw together a pot of chili or a pasta using mostly what's already and almost always in your house. Have a few quick, easy, go-to meals you can rely on and everyone loves. Oh, and grow your own onions! They're easy to grow and go in nearly every meal.

I also have to say, following Stumptown Savings, even though the prices and deals are for Portland, just reading the articles helps keep me more mindful of what I’m buying, where, and when. It also reminded me of what my mom used to do: check the sales, then make meals we love based on that. I think sometimes just putting that extra little bit of thought into what we eat and how we buy makes a difference in disrupting our habits.

I’ve tried a few pita recipes. The one I use is from Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” because we have the cookbook, and it’s one of the easiest. I’ve seen recipes range in oven temperature from 350 degrees to 500. I actually like the 350 degrees, because the 500 feels really fast and you have to pay attention to keep from overcooking them. But if you’re going to make them at 350 degrees, make sure to preheat the oven and that it’s at that temperature, or else the pitas take too long and just don’t quite come out as good. Once they puff up, they’re done! 

This recipe is incredibly satisfying, and is one of our go-to’s in the warmer months when you really just can’t turn on any heat. (We keep our air conditioning set at 85 degrees in the summers until just before my son’s bedtime.) The sauce soaks into the bread, so even a stale baguette is tolerable. But as the recipe says, assemble just before eating, to avoid an overly soggy sandwich. They’re vegetarian, but you could easily add a favorite lunch meat, though you don’t need it.

Peggy’s tip about keeping pantry staples on hand is a great one. Since college, I’ve always made sure to have cans of beans (several varieties) and various types of rice (brown, basmati, wild, frozen, etc.) on hand for those nights when I don’t have the energy or time to cook something from scratch. They provide a level of flexibility you just can’t beat. From simple Mediterranean bowls with brown rice, Trader Joe’s frozen kebab, chickpeas, and a quick yogurt sauce, to any number of Tex-Mex inspired dishes whipped up with a few cans of beans, these staples are lifesavers.

Also, Peggy has inspired me to try making pita! I’ve made plenty of naan, but pita seems like a fun new challenge, and I’ll use any excuse to eat hummus.

Want to be featured in Rose City Receipts? Email [email protected] and share your grocery shopping approach!

Happy saving!

Bryan M. Vance,
Founder/Publisher,
Stumptown Savings