You’d have the internet scold squad threatening to call CPS for sure.
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This is why I started bringing a calculator on my shopping trips, until I bought a smartphone.
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Cleveland’s got a bunch of CSAs, and while most of them are subscription-based, one (CityFresh) allows you to order a week’s share to be picked up at your local farmers market. I’ve used the service a few times, and it’s been surprisingly easy. If you can’t afford to pay online, you can email or call them to make arrangements to pay at the market with cash or a SNAP card.
I’ve heard similar horror stories from people I know who subscribed to one particular CSA - and that farm doesn’t do a CSA anymore, probably because of the turnips and beets complaints!
Isn’t the price normalized, too? They introduced this over here a couple of years ago and I thought they got the idea from the U.S.
I really did not have much of a problem with the stuff in the box, even though there was almost no variety, but being forced to sign up for a weekly schedule became a nightmare in trying to use everything up.
I gave up the last month and threw away those last 3 boxes that were sitting around my kitchen because they were going bad. Donated one box.
Would still like to give the CSA thing another try, but i’m in the middle of a move so it’ll be a bit before i can afford it.
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Or teaching other people’s kids NOT to help themselves to your refrigerator, or they would never be welcome in your home again.
The ones who learned basic manners (ask before taking, say please and thank you, throw away your garbage, and also, no feet on the table) would get big bowls of soup (beef bones and the ugly veggies make yummy soup!) and homemade bread. Lots of teens in our neighborhood learned basic manners in order to get homemade bread.
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Lots of lower-income communities pool their resources. We had neighbours who would communally make huge pots of delicious, freezerable meals for everyone to help stretch food budgets.
My mom was pretty clear to me: “Here’s our dinner stuff. Here’s the snack stuff. Whatever your friends eat comes out of your portions - you choose what to share!”
Special exceptions were made for the children of families where I occasionally ate over, or who participated in the neighbourhood (well, building, really) potlucks.
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I’ve also heard of families pooling together and making huge bulk orders to get stuff as cheap as possible.
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Yep! My family (of 6 uncles and their families!) went a step further - they’d do a huge order in the US (when the CDN/US dollar was favourable) and truck everything back up here.
This had another side effect - LOTS of stuff wasn’t available in Canada at the time, especially a lot of cereals I’d see on US TV ads, so as a kid, I was always so excited after these trips because I’d invariably get some cool “only in the US” food. 
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I wonder how these bulk orders are done. Through a commercial distributor? Do these orders need to be picked up? I know some distributors will only deliver to places that are equipped to receive semi trucks and that can handle the off loading of the palettes. Don’t know if you might have some insight but just things that i’ve wondered about over the years.
The alternative is Costco i guess, and families might share the cost of membership.
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So, in our case, someone knew someone who worked for somewhere that already received bulk orders of “whatever”, and our families would request to add-on to their order.
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- What ingredients?
- Purchased where?
- If not freshly purchased, stored how? Where?
- What crockpot?
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Sometimes whole villages. Look up Pie Town in NM. It makes no sense for households to shop individually when there is usually someone every few days taking a truck to Springerville, Socorro, or Albuquerque.
You don’t even need to go to the asian or hispanic market. Where I live just going into the mexican aisle at the grocery store gives you a sizable discount on your beans.
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Their recipe for mac & cheese has been my go-to ever since I first watched.
If you have a place to store it to prevent it from going bad, and have the money to pay for it, this does cut the costs.
BUT - you also have to have the time to properly pack and preserve the bulk food or you will have 50 pounds of weevil-infested flour, or freezer-burned meat. And that’s money wasted.
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I did mention this in one of the posts of mine the preference is to go to an international market but the aisles are good too but in some stores the selection can be pretty limited.
As someone who was raised in a WC household, who has family and friends who are working class, this is all entirely true. It’s always good to see it and remember it when thinking of those who aren’t as lucky as I am right this second.
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Would you really kick hungry kids out for raiding the fridge? Really? HUNGRY KIDS. At their friend’s houses?
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