‘$300 down the drain’ – why I sent my teens grocery shopping: cost of living bites in 2023 | Rebecca Whitfield-Baker

As everything gets more expensive, maybe it’s time to remember how people coped in the old days, writes Rebecca Whitfield-Baker.

Seriously, could there be anything less fun than grocery shopping?

Give me the task of cleaning the toilets or scrubbing the floors any day over the dreaded trip to the supermarket.

And if it wasn’t already the least rewarding household chore, it’s got a whole lot worse of late.

I am not talking about looking on as some sniffling shopper insists on manhandling every single tomato on the shelf, seemingly unaware of that little thing that just disrupted the world called Covid.

Or, trying to navigate your trolley with its dodgy wheels around the designer leisurewear-clad, over-Botoxed browser who insists on ambling the aisles while talking in exaggerated tones with her mobile phone on speaker.

I am talking about the depressing cost of groceries and the fact that $300, while a significant amount of money, really won’t buy you a lot in 2023, especially if it includes a bit of meat, a few fresh fruit and vegetables and some hard-hitting laundry products to get the caked-on mud off your child’s white football guernsey.

If your house is anything like ours, you’ve barely had time to pack away the groceries before someone is complaining that “there’s nothing to eat”.

Even milk seems to disappear at incomprehensible speed; many a morning I’ve bemoaned the fact we don’t have a cow in the backyard, just so I could have a splash of milk in my coffee.

Feeling particularly tired and cranky when one of my two teenage “food vacuums” last complained about his grumbling stomach, I decided he and his brother could do the next shop.

So, armed with my debit card and a relatively small shopping list I ushered them out the door, in the direction of the local supermarket.

Son No. 2 came back shaking his head, “well, that’s $300 down the drain” while Son No. 1 inquired, did I “actually know how much this stuff costs?”.

Yep, I reckon I have a fairly good idea.

When you are not the one doing the weekly shop, what a trolley load of groceries cost can come as a surprise.

Of course, our family is lucky. While the cost of the weekly shop is depressingly high, there’s no chance anyone in our house will really go hungry anytime soon.

Not so, the case for so many. During the week crime reporter Todd Lewis wrote SAPOL had recorded a 25 per cent hike in shop thefts in the past 12 months with “thieves walking out of supermarkets with trolleys full of groceries every day”.

While stealing can’t be tolerated, you’ve got to feel for those who genuinely can’t see any other way to feed themselves or their families, and only hope it’s a situation those you love never face.

For me, the eye-watering cost of groceries has had me reaching for the old recipe books in the back of the cupboard, given to me when I married a farmer and moved to the Victorian Mallee many years ago. I figure, if anyone has any tips on making your food shop stretch further, it is our country womenfolk.

In fact, it was only a couple of years ago that the Country Women’s Association of Victoria – sharing its wisdom with Australian families since 1928 – released its book, Thrifty Cooking.

It offers a host of “thrifty tips” from cooking for a crowd, suggesting “casseroles, curries and pasta bakes are economical dishes … as they use the cheaper cuts of meat” to creating meat substitutes such as “mock chicken … a tasty and cheap sandwich spread”.

While I’m not planning on sending a plate of “mock chicken” sangers to the boys’ cricket afternoon tea table anytime soon, I love the sentiment.

Housewives of yesteryear were expert at stretching their food shop. Picture: iStock

So too, the handed-down gems, such as the Commonsense Cookery Book first published in 1914 and dubbed the “the book every home leaver takes with them when they fly the nest … it gives you recipes for everything from how to make toast to more complex dishes”.

This week I’ve also pulled out the 2007 preschool recipe book fundraiser I used to love but had forgotten about and the 126-page book of favourites from the wonderful home cooks in Western Australia’s central wheatbelt, gifted to me in 2006 – a precious “revised edition”.

Googling, “budget friendly healthy recipes” is all well and good, but there is nothing like flicking through an actual cooking book, especially one that includes notations from your mum and grandma.

Friends have shared some of their budget-stretching hacks, too, including opting for “slow-cooking cheaper cuts of meat, eating vegetarian meals … baking our own bread (it’s so easy)” and “fried rice on Fridays with whatever vegetables are left in the fridge … we call it ‘rice surprise’.”

So too, meal-planning, buying “bulk meat, I portion into smaller bags and freeze” and lots of mince, “it’s so versatile – tacos, spaghetti bolognaise, hamburgers … the recipes are endless – and relatively cheap”.

But my favourite has got to be the “120 Biscuits Recipe” … the one in which you can reportedly make 120 biscuits for $7, shared by one mum of three.

Who knew? Makes a $5.90 five-pack of Carman’s Oat Slices seem pretty extravagant.

So now the kids have got the shopping down pat, I reckon it’s time to call in Nanny for a few lessons in old-fashioned baking.

Originally published as ‘$300 down the drain’ – why I sent my teens grocery shopping: cost of living bites in 2023 | Rebecca Whitfield-Baker