← HerMoney with Jean Chatzky
HerMoney with Jean Chatzky
Ep 463: Dinner With 10 Ingredients Or Less
00:41:34
The secret to cooking more and spending less.
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- [00:00]
Ali Slagle
And what I would recommend and what I do is I look in my fridge and I see what is going to go bad. First, it could be as simple as some dill that I should probably use and I start from there. So I always work to use what I already have and then maybe I have a protein in the freezer that I could defrost. So I start to kind of triangulate and see what will go bad the quickest and then what I want to eat.
- [00:25]
Jean Chatzky
Have you checked out Investing Fix yet? Investing Fix is our investing club for women. And if you haven't given us a look, see, consider this your official nudge. We are in the thick of earnings season and last session, my co host, Karen Feinerman from cnbc, she broke down exactly why listening to the earnings calls that companies make public is just another tool in your arsenal. She shared a list of the key things that she pays attention to when she's listening into these earnings calls, plus when it's okay to wait till the call is over and then listen to it at one and a half speed. You get all the information at half the time. Next session, a few of our Investing Fix members are going to share what they learn from listening in to earnings calls and that'll affect what we buy and what we sell in our portfolio. It's as interactive and comprehensive as it sounds. And if you want in, join us at investingfix.com we spell Fix with two X's. We'll send you all the information that you need so that you can start making informed investing moves right away. Can't wait to see you there.
- [01:48]
Katherine Tuggle
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- [02:20]
Jean Chatzky
Hey everyone. Thanks so much for joining me today on Hermoney. I'm Jean Chatky and I want to know if you, like me, have ever found yourself running frantically to the grocery store because you are missing one ingredient. One. But you need it desperately for whatever you are trying to make for dinner. Maybe it is thyme, maybe it's bay leaves. Often in my house, it's buttermilk. I could go on, but then you use that thing one time and watch as it slowly goes bad in the back of your fridge. Look, I have done this more times than I could count. And watch. With food prices continuing to rise, it just feels worse every single time. Which is just one of the reasons that I am so excited to talk to Ali Slagle today. She is the queen of fast and flexible recipes and using fewer ingredients in more ways. That is straight out of the bio of her incredible substack, which is called 40 ingredients forever. Allie is also a New York Times contributor. She is the author of the James Beard Award nominated cookbook, I Dream of dinner so you don't have to. Probably the cookbook that I have given as a gift more than any other. Allie, thank you so much for being here.
- [03:45]
Ali Slagle
Thank you so much for having me.
- [03:48]
Jean Chatzky
The premise of your sub stack, 40 ingredients forever is. Well, it's right in the title, right? So we don't have to go through the entire supermarket or even the entire list of 40. What are the few things 5 to 10 that you think everybody must have in their kitchen at all times if they want to have a prayer of getting dinner on the table?
- [04:13]
Ali Slagle
Well, the true answer is I think you should start with the food you really want to eat. If there's food in your house that you really want to eat, you're probably going to eat it. So for me, that's chickpeas, pasta, eggs, garlic, lemon and oil. I think I could live for a really long time with just those ingredients.
- [04:36]
Jean Chatzky
Wow. Chickpeas is a really interesting one on the list. I have all the rest. And I do have chickpeas in the house, but I rarely reach for them. Maybe we can talk about that. Food prices have gone up 28% in the past five years. That is honestly as insane as it sounds. And the one thing that people can't stop talking about is the price of eggs. A lot of people think that the price of eggs is responsible for the winner of the presidential election. Eggs are on your list of ingredients. I always have eggs in my fridge. I love breakfast for dinner. I don't think there's a swap for eggs. First of all, is there a good swap for eggs?
- [05:20]
Ali Slagle
It depends on how you're using them. If you want to make scrambled eggs, you could make a tofu scramble. You could. I'm not sure that's really what you had in mind when you wanted scrambled eggs. If you're using eggs in a recipe as a binder for meatloaf or in baking, there are swaps you can do. But yes. Eggs are one of those things that are really hard to find a swap for. I do agree with you.
- [05:45]
Jean Chatzky
What about the other must have ingredients? Are there things that we should get used to thinking of as fungible? In the grocery store, when you listed the must have ingredients, could chickpeas be cannellini? Beans be turkey? Could oil be something else? What's the key to getting yourself comfortable with swapping things in and out?
- [06:15]
Ali Slagle
So my, my whole goal with 40 ingredients forever is not for everyone to go out and buy these 40 exact ingredients. My goal is for them to see what is possible with kind of a capsule collection of ingredients. And one of the posts that I wrote for the substack shows kind of a recipe that I would never make. It was a chef's recipe that had so many ingredients and had so many steps. And I went through and I explained what each ingredient is doing in that recipe. So let's say lemon, they're fruity and they're also acidic. What else can do both of those things? So I basically went through and explained what each ingredient is doing in a recipe and then what swaps I could make based on my 40 ingredients. And the whole point of that was to show that everything kind of is fungible at a certain point. Everything. You could probably, if you have a well stocked kitchen, you could probably make do.
- [07:10]
Jean Chatzky
How did you get to this point in your life? How did you grow up around food? How did you become a cook? How did you start to write recipes?
- [07:20]
Ali Slagle
You know, I've never worked in kitchens. I didn't go to cooking school, but I had a mom who would cook all of my meals. And it was just watching her. She didn't follow recipes. She just kind of moved through the kitchen, chopping, sauteing, seeing what looked good in her fridge. And that's really where I take inspiration, is just seeing what you have and making something that you want to eat. So I watched her a lot. And then I worked at a book publisher where I kind of learned the structure of a recipe and what you need to express in a recipe so that someone could make the food that you're trying to make.
- [07:57]
Jean Chatzky
When you hear people say, I eat out so much because I can't cook, it's just too hard. I'm bad at. It doesn't come naturally to me. Every time I go to the grocery store, I come home with stuff I don't need. What's your reaction to all of those excuses? Because we know they're all excuses.
- [08:16]
Ali Slagle
They are excuses. The tricky thing about cooking is There are so many parts of cooking. There's the deciding what to eat, there's the grocery shopping, there's the prepping, then the cooking, then the cleaning, and then the eating. So there are many moments where you can make a decision of how that step works best for you. So when people say, I don't like cooking, I ask them, what do you not like about cooking? Because if you don't like the splatter, you have to clean up after you search chicken breasts like make a soup, there's no cleanup to that. Or if things feel too hurried for you, if you're making a stir fry or something, throw something in the oven and walk away and go do something else. So I think it's really about trying a lot of different ways of cooking and seeing what works well for you and then just doing that in as many ways as you can find.
- [09:01]
Jean Chatzky
I think that is such a good point. I realized a long time ago that the thing that I don't like about cooking is deciding what's for dinner. And so I don't decide. My husband decides, and this has just been our deal. He can't cook a thing. I mean, he probably could if he tried. He just doesn't try. But I never have to decide what's for dinner, which for me is such a gift. I mean, he does also sometimes do the shopping or I'll do it if it's more convenient. That doesn't bother me. But just this pressure to figure out what to put on the table, especially during the pandemic, I could not. I couldn't take it anymore. I was so sick of my own food. And that's when we really started relying so heavily on the recipes in the New York Times, including many of yours. That's when he just started sending me recipes out of the Times and I would make them. And it. It took that really heavy part of the equation out of it for me. He also cleans, which is nice. He doesn't load a dishwasher the way that I want him to, but I have learned to shut up about that. Which other parts of the cooking process bother people the most, do you think?
- [10:26]
Ali Slagle
I think you hit on a really big one, which is the decision making part of it, which is the what am I going to make for dinner? And I think if you go online, it can be really overwhelming. And what I would recommend and what I do is I look in my fridge and I see what is going to go bad first. It could be as simple as some dill that I should probably use And I start from there. So I always work to use what I already have. And then maybe I have a protein in the freezer that I could defrost. So I start to kind of triangulate and see what will go bad the quickest. And then what I want to eat.
- [11:00]
Jean Chatzky
Are there things that you, in addition to your top five, are there things that you always keep in the freezer, for example, so that you know you can pull out a meal? I've watched you do this, this trick with your newsletter where you ask people what they have, and then you sort of create dinner around them. What are you pulling from? Are you pulling an acid and a protein and a veg? Like, how are you thinking about this puzzle?
- [11:32]
Ali Slagle
I always want to have a vegetable because I just feel better when I eat vegetables. I think protein is good to have. Maybe not essential, but it really depends on you. I think a lot about texture. I think texture is one of those things that really is important to enjoying the food you're eating. Sometimes you want just soft bite after soft bite, like in a lentil soup or something like that. But sometimes you want the contrast of a soft bean with a crispy skin fish. So I'm thinking about all of those things, and I realize that as I'm saying this, this is like a cook talking. This is someone who really like dreams in food. And this might be hard for a lot of people to put together on their own, but I think if you start with a recipe that looks good to you and you learn how to adapt it to what you need. So thinking about what each ingredient is doing and then simplifying it from there, I think you'll find that cooking might be more enjoyable.
- [12:23]
Jean Chatzky
In preparation for this show, you asked for a list of the stuff that I keep in the kitchen so that we could play your game, which you call show me your forevers, I'll make you dinner. And granted, I think my listeners know I'm a pretty frequent cook. I like to cook more than I like to go out. And I do have a pretty large list of things on hand. I always have chicken thighs, which I like so much more than the other parts of the chicken. I always have some frozen shrimp. I usually have salad stuff and lemon and garlic and potatoes and some canned stuff. I always have Rao's, right? When I go to Costco, Rao's is one of the very first things that I throw in my cart. Rao's. And really big jars of Grey Poupon. I have a little cheese, usually parm or feta, because it's not too hard on my stomach. And diced tomatoes, some pasta, different shapes. Sometimes I make them together. What would you. What would you do with that?
- [13:28]
Ali Slagle
First of all, I love your list of ingredients. I would say if someone to your question of how do you stock your kitchen? This is a great example of hitting all the categories of things. So you have frozen proteins in the freezer so they won't go bad. You don't have pressure to eat them before they go to waste. I agree with you about chicken thighs. I think they're much more versatile. They're harder to overcook. I think you'll just enjoy eating them a lot more than a boneless chicken breast. You have fresh stuff, but not too many, so there's not a ton of pressure for it to go bad. You have really assertive seasonings like lemon and garlic. And then you have things in the pantry that can be the base of a dinner, like canned beans or like rice. And then you have some accompaniments that are already, like, really flavorful from the jar, so you have less to do. I'm also a Ral's Costco buyer, so we really are on the same page about that chicken broth, too. Parm and feta. So for the sake of showing how to be flexible in a recipe, I thought I would mention a recipe that I wrote on my substack, which is called crispy lamb and lemon rice, and make it with your ingredients. So you can do it with ground turkey. You can add garlic. You can skip the shallot. So what you do is you sear the turkey, add some garlic, add chicken broth, the zest and juice of a lemon, and some rice. So then you cover it and boil it. And what happens is the turkey won't dry out because you're cooking it in liquid, but it still has flavor because you're browning it from the skillet. And then the lemon is infusing the rice, so it's really flavorful from the start. And then what you can do is once the rice is cooked, you can just eat it right from there, or you can add a little oil and sear the bottom of the rice, kind of like tahdig or the bottom of a bibimbap at a Korean restaurant. So you have the texture of the crispy rice and then kind of the nicely steamed rice on top. And then if you want a vegetable, add some cucumbers or a green vegetable.
- [15:26]
Jean Chatzky
That sounds amazing. If you were gonna sear the rice, you take it out of the pan, put the oil in and then put it back in or you just, you mush it around.
- [15:36]
Ali Slagle
You can just drizzle it around the edges of the rice and the oil will kind of dribble down underneath the rice and we'll sear it. I learned the method from Samin Nosrat. She has a really great Tahdig recipe that that is perfect. But this is kind of a simpler version of that.
- [15:53]
Jean Chatzky
You put a lid on it.
- [15:55]
Ali Slagle
You put a lid on it when you're cooking the rice, but when you're searing the rice, you just let it sizzle.
- [15:59]
Jean Chatzky
Okay, and how long does it have to stay there? I don't want to ruin this beautiful dinner.
- [16:04]
Ali Slagle
The rice takes about 17 minutes, and then the searing takes about five. You can just peek under and see if it's golden.
- [16:10]
Jean Chatzky
And that's sounds amazing, Allie. As you can expect, I have more questions, but we are gonna take a quick break. When we come back, we we're going to talk about ways to make cooking take less time and those recipes that you can make over and over again.
- [16:28]
Katherine Tuggle
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- [16:59]
Jean Chatzky
Are back with Ali Slagle, author of 40 Ingredients Forever and the wonderful book I Dream of Dinner so you don't have to. Your cookbook promises strictly 45 minute, 10 ingredient meals. Although to your credit, you usually only use 5 to 8. What's the most popular recipe that your readers turn to again and again?
- [17:26]
Ali Slagle
The first one that comes to mind is the one pot chicken piccata with orzo. You cook boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cubes of it, brown it, and then you add aromatics like garlic and capers. And you cook the orzo right with the boneless thighs in chicken broth. I mean, it's actually very similar to that crispy rice I just mentioned to you.
- [17:49]
Jean Chatzky
It sounds great. What's your favorite in the book?
- [17:52]
Ali Slagle
That's a really hard question. The first thing that came to mind, maybe because it's so blistering cold right now, is the gochujang gravy. The idea is that it's a meat sauce but it takes less time and it requires fewer ingredients because you use this fermented Korean chili paste to bring all of the flavor really quickly.
- [18:10]
Jean Chatzky
The recipe from the times of yours that I find myself going back to again and again is the Greek chicken, which is just, just delicious. When we talk about things going bad in the book, you talk about making pantry lurkers and produce on its last legs. As much of the main star of the recipe as farmer's market celebrities. What are the things that we should buy more of and what are the things that we should buy less of? Or maybe not at all. I mean, when we are thinking about our grocery budget in this era where things have just gone up and up and up and we hear that oft cited statistic about food waste. First of all, the food waste station with people who are hungry just bothers me every time I hear it. But it also it's. If you were raised by parents who grew up in the depression like mine did, you don't like to throw away food. You eat your leftovers and you enjoy them. What do you think we overdo it on and under do it on?
- [19:26]
Ali Slagle
It really depends on the person. I think what, what might be helpful for people is to spend a week or a couple weeks writing down everything they're really eating and seeing what trends there are, what they actually eat really often and buying more of that and maybe then looking around their pantry and seeing what they're not using. Because I think it really depends on what you actually will end up eating.
- [19:51]
Jean Chatzky
Okay, you're speaking my language. I don't think that you know it, but, but we are big trackers here. When we're trying to help somebody get their finances straight, we go through a backwards budgeting process. It's what we do in our finance fix coaching classes. Because if you know where your money is going, then you can make changes about where you want your money to actually go. And this is, I think very much the same concept. What foods do you suspect that people will find they're buying that they shouldn't be buying, they're probably buying a lot.
- [20:35]
Ali Slagle
Of snacks and then they're probably buying a lot of takeout. And then when you think about what you would save just by cooking at home, I think it's an easy way to save a buck.
- [20:50]
Jean Chatzky
It is. Although for all of those reasons we were talking about before, people get nervous, they just get scared. For non cooks or reluctant cooks or cooks who believe they can't cook, how do you get them started?
- [21:11]
Ali Slagle
I would start really small. I would start with something you really want to eat. What was the thing that you grew up eating that you really love? Maybe it's Kraft Mac and Cheese, but opening that box is cooking. You did something. You know, you put a pot on the stove and you did that. And then maybe you might think about how to make it spicy because you like spice. I think it's just really, really baby steps. I think, too, it's starting with recipes that are really simple. You should be able to read the recipe through and understand every step and that you feel like you can do it. So it's really about finding the recipe writers that kind of speak to you in that way.
- [21:50]
Jean Chatzky
Besides your own recipes, whose do you turn to?
- [21:53]
Ali Slagle
I think Sola Al Wayli is really wonderful. She has beginner recipes in her bookstore here, but she also has more complicated recipes. But she outlines which are easy and which are complicated. I think either way, she's such a clear recipe writer that you feel like you can do anything.
- [22:14]
Jean Chatzky
Yeah, we love Sola. She was on the podcast about six months ago when her book came out, and it was. It was a treat. You shared a photo of the Brooklyn kitchen where you spent six years testing recipes for the New York Times and for your book. Why do you think people feel that they need a big, fancy kitchen before they can really get started cooking?
- [22:37]
Ali Slagle
That's a good question. You know, the thing about big kitchens is they actually don't make any sense to me because they're too spread out. You have to run around too much. I love cooking in a small space because it's more efficient. If you think about restaurant kitchens, they're just really well laid out, and you have everything that you need within arm's reach. So I think it's just a matter of perspective. I prefer to cook in a small space where I have everything I need really close at hand.
- [23:05]
Jean Chatzky
And what are the appliances that you think people actually need versus the ones that they buy?
- [23:13]
Ali Slagle
So after I lived in that Brooklyn kitchen, my partner and I remodeled a camper van, and we drove around the country for six months. So we built out a little kitchen in the back. So similar to the grocery eating tracking, I had to track what appliances I used most often. So anytime I would use something in my Brooklyn apartment, I would put in a box, and then that would make it into the camper van. And really what made it in was a large skillet, a good knife, a cutting board, a spoon. I think he can kind of do a lot with just that.
- [23:44]
Jean Chatzky
Yeah, absolutely. Although please don't ask me to give up my KitchenAid mixer because I really don't use my Cuisinart. I use my Cuisinart twice a year at the Jewish holidays. I use it to make potato kugel and I use it to make potato latkes. And otherwise I don't use it. And I probably could do those things by hand. But I really like my KitchenAid mixer.
- [24:05]
Ali Slagle
For a long time I didn't have a blender, a food processor, or a mixer. The cookbook doesn't use any of those gadgets.
- [24:12]
Jean Chatzky
Good to know we don't have to spend up for that. Just like my my Mr. Coffee coffee maker that seems to do the trick every single day. Again, we're we're a money show. We talk about food because when I ask people or when I look at people's budgets to find the places where money is just flowing through their fingers and they don't know, it's pretty much always food. And even if it's not just food, food is almost always on the list. Besides, just cook, what are your best ideas for saving money at the grocery store or saving money on our food budget in general?
- [24:56]
Ali Slagle
You know something I've been thinking about recently, which maybe isn't a very clear way to save money on your food, but really is to kind of to share the responsibility of making dinner by having people over for dinner some nights and then being invited to other people's houses for other nights. Where I live, we basically eat at other people's houses two or three nights a week. And it's not a dinner party. It's really just whatever people are cooking that night, they just invite a couple people over and then you don't have to cook that night, you don't have to do dishes that night, and you get to eat with other people. And I think if you get stressed out about cooking or the thought of doing it every single night, breaking it up with your friends is a really nice way to make it enjoyable.
- [25:43]
Jean Chatzky
I love that idea for a couple of reasons. I was thinking in answering a reader question recently about recipe quantities and portion sizes, and my two kids have not lived at home for quite some time, but I still often cook as much as I would if there were four of us, rather than knowing that there are just two of us. I do it by habit. I do it because that's sort of what the recipe demands. Often I'll freeze half and know that we have another dinner in the freezer. But what you just said reminds me of our Covid podcast, My Next Door Neighbors. We would have dinner with them a couple of nights a week at least. We weren't really seeing other people, but she would cook or I would cook or he would cook, not my husband. And it spread the load. But it also we really were not shopping for much more food. We were just sharing it.
- [26:44]
Ali Slagle
It feels like such a pleasure to do and it's also just easier. So I don't know why you wouldn't do it.
- [26:50]
Jean Chatzky
This conversation has been delightful. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for talking with me. We're going to have a mailbag coming up later in the week where you answer questions from our listeners, which is fantastic. What are we looking for from you next? Where would you like people to go to find more of you?
- [27:11]
Ali Slagle
I think my substack is a really fun place to be if you like simple recipes with a lot of swaps, a lot of substitution ideas so that you can use what you have. The subsec is called 40 ingredients forever.
- [27:24]
Jean Chatzky
Ali Slagle, thanks so much.
- [27:26]
Ali Slagle
Thank you.
- [27:27]
Jean Chatzky
We'll be right back.
- [27:28]
Katherine Tuggle
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- [27:55]
Jean Chatzky
Learn more@capella.edu and we are back for Mailbag. Katherine Tuggle is in the house. I so enjoyed that conversation. Are you finding your cooking a decent amount these days?
- [28:11]
Unknown
I never stop cooking in so many ways. I never stopped living like the 21 year old journalist in New York making $35,000 a year. I cook everything. We do not eat out. People talk about like postmates ing everything in New York and how expensive it is. I've literally never done that. I would never pay $30 to have somebody bring me a $20 burger ever. I would never do that. I don't care how rich I was. So short answer is yes, I'm cooking, but I'm not cooking any more than I have literally done my entire adult life.
- [28:43]
Jean Chatzky
Yeah, I don't think I'm cooking more either. Although restaurant prices these days just have me thinking twice when I eat out at all. And for that reason, maybe I'll opt to cook to invite people in for dinner. I entertain a lot, you know, that I don't know, particularly when it's cold out, I just don't want to go outside. So I end up cooking.
- [29:11]
Unknown
Yeah. Well, to your point on restaurant prices, I. My favorite restaurant in New York is Cafe Mogador. It's a Moroccan place. And I found that. Yes, we have. And I found it. I think the week I moved to the city, which was in 2004. And the first thing I ordered is the thing I always order, which is the chicken couscous. And when I first moved here, it was 11.50. And this last weekend it was $24. So it has more than doubled in price.
- [29:39]
Jean Chatzky
Yeah. And I think that's just typical. And I am so not blaming restaurants. No restaurant. You know, food costs are up, the price of people working in restaurants is up, benefit costs are up. It's all up. And so of course, you need to charge enough money to make a good living and stay open because we love our restaurants. But I'm just, I, I feel it when I go out.
- [30:08]
Unknown
Yeah, same.
- [30:09]
Jean Chatzky
Let's take a question.
- [30:11]
Unknown
Yeah. Our first question today comes from Tammy. She writes, I have a question about cash back credit cards. My Walmart credit card has always been my favorite because I get 5% cash back on online grocery orders. I just got a letter that it's changing to 1.5%. So I'm looking for a cashback card that might give me anywhere near that much on grocery orders. At Walmart, they're often excluded from grocery categories.
- [30:34]
Jean Chatzky
Thank you, Tammy. We love our credit card points, don't we? And we get very strategic about how we're going to use them. Based on this particular change and this particular card, I'm going to advise you to rethink your credit card strategy. Walmart has clearly made two decisions here. They've made a decision to lower the cash back on the card that they make money from, which means that they are finding that they're given too much back to their customers in this way. And, and they are opting out of the other grocery store cards because there's always a cost that gets passed along to the bottom line. So I would tell you to do two things differently. The first is to think about what else you put on your card. You may be better off with just a general cash back card that pays you cash back for more things. So blue cash from American Express, 3% at supermarkets, 3% at gas stations, 3% at retail. There are also cards that give you 1 to 2% back on everything that you buy. That may be a better way for you to go, particularly if there are other things that you could load onto your card and then not pay interest on them. The other thing that I might suggest, and I know that people have their favorites when it comes to places to shop, but is considering a different store. So Walmart cut this benefit, but Target still gives 5% cash back on their circle credit card. That's significant. If you're willing to switch from Walmart to Target, which may be asking too much, then you may be able to mirror those benefits. So that's just, that's just a two pronged approach to dealing with a question that doesn't have the answer that I know that you're looking for.
- [33:01]
Unknown
I love that. Jean. I think that this applies to bank accounts as applies to credit cards. Like, the rule of thumb is always shop around. Like, even if something doesn't change year to year, it's worth looking to see what's out there to see to make sure that you're getting the best possible deal.
- [33:15]
Jean Chatzky
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, you may decide that you have enough expenses just to justify a different card or making a switch. But I would also keep your eye on the Reddit threads for Walmart. If they get a big enough outcry about this change, maybe they'll change it back.
- [33:36]
Unknown
Definitely. Thanks, Jean. Our next question comes to us from Stephanie, who's wondering how to cut back on her grocery budget. Here's her question. My husband and I have been married for over 25 years. My husband does most of the cooking and the grocery shopping. Nice. He's quite the catch, she says. It's really his thing. He loves to cook and shop for food. For the past several years, we've been able to keep our food budget around 150 a week. And for most of that, we were a family of four. Now it's just the two of us. Our kids are in college or out of the house. We don't even do takeout. Before, we only ever got pizza once a week and we didn't go out much anyway. Our grocery bill has gone up to 200 a week. Our food price is just higher now. My husband insists there's nothing we can do about this, although he's never really gotten into things that would lower the budget, like planning meals around what's on sale, etc. On the one hand, I don't want to take away the thing he loves. On the other, this is an extra $200. Suggestions? Am I being unrealistic?
- [34:33]
Jean Chatzky
So, suggestions? Yes. Are you being unrealistic? Yes. Food prices, inflation on food has gone up significantly in the past few years. If you were reading the reports around the election, you know that the price of eggs, the price of milk, the price of meat, all of these things are being credited with one element of the Trump victory. People were just feeling this and they were feeling it every single time they went to the grocery store. So your husband has a definite point. Those staples are more expensive. But are there things that he could do about it? 100%. You mention meal planning and you mention buying things on sale. I think that the very best way to reduce your grocery budget and you can't do it on things necessarily that go bad very quickly, like dairy products, like vegetables. But things like chicken breast. Yeah, you buy it on sale, you put it in the freezer, you take it out of the freezer when you want to use it and you make sure that you are keeping your eye on that rotating calendar of sales that seems to repeat every five or six weeks. The other thing I would say is I wonder if he is still cooking for four even though you are a family of two. And I wonder this because I found myself doing it when things were changing with my own kids leaving the house. I didn't change the quantities that I was cooking. We ended up with significantly more in leftovers. And sometimes those leftovers got eaten and sometimes those leftovers did not get eaten. And that was just a lot of waste. And so if he hasn't quite adjusted his quantities and his recipes, then one way to just roll with the system that you've got in place is to cook once and eat twice. Make it your job, or make it his job to take half of whatever it is he cooks and package it up, put it in the freezer so that you've got another meal that you can pull out in a week or you can pull out in two weeks. I think think there's probably a little of all of that going on. The other thing that you can do is just help him with the sales calendar. Look, I give a lot of credit to a guy who both cooks and shops right. If he cleaned jackpot. But that's okay, you can clean up if he's cooking. If he doesn't have the stamina or the interest to pay attention to the sales calendar, you pay attention to it. Tell him this is the week where we are going to buy these things and we're gonna put em in the freezer and don't buy em next time cause we've already got them. And over time I think Those couple of changes will likely help.
- [37:56]
Unknown
I love that, Jean. I also think now that it's just the two of them, Costco might be their best friend. Right, Because Costco, first of all, Costco gives you two cards with your membership, which I think they mean to be split between like two partners. But my mom and dad have one card and my husband and I have one card. So we're using one membership between two households. So they could split that with somebody. And I think now that it's just the two of them, it's so easy to freeze things in packages of two. Like, I know those Costco chicken breasts come in packages of eight or 10 or 12. It's usually divisible by two, like two portions. So I think, you know, he can still buy for the whole family if that's his habit, if that's his instinct. But then they can just start portioning that out for the two of them.
- [38:42]
Jean Chatzky
Yeah, I learned to do that with the big Costco bags of shrimp. So Costco sells the two pound bags of shrimp. We love them, they're delicious. But I would take half a bag out of the freezer, which was too much for us. We'd end up with leftovers. It's not so great the next day and I started to portion the bag out when I get it. So it's already flash frozen. It's not going to unfreeze. But I'm portion controlling for my recipes in advance.
- [39:16]
Unknown
So smart. Thank Eugene.
- [39:19]
Jean Chatzky
Yeah, absolutely. And thanks so much to Ali Slagle for sharing why you don't need a million ingredients to make an amazing meal. If you love this episode, please give us a five star review. On Apple Podcasts, we always value your feedback. And if you want to keep the financial conversations going, join me for a deeper dive. HerMoney has two incredible programs. Finance Fix, which is designed to give you the ultimate money makeover, and Investing Fix, which is our investing club for women that meets bi weekly on Zoom. With both programs, we are leveling the playing fields for women's financial confidence and power. I would love to see you there. Her Money is produced by Hayley Pascalides. Our music is provided by Video Helper and our show comes to you through Megaphone. Thanks for joining us and we'll talk soon.