I've been thinking (see, you did  smell wood burning!) that it would be a great idea for grocery stores to offer teaching opportunities for customers to learn more cost-efficient ways to prepare meals. One local supermarket offers information about $10 meals (total for four people!) on their website that is a great jumping off place for a food economics campaign. I know there are many people who purchase prepackaged, prepared, frozen and/or take-out (take-away) meals specific to one instance of eating. I see them in the grocery store heaping these single-serving frozen dinners into their carts. I can understand the desire to portion control, but the expense alone would lend itself to portion control. As in, you don't have enough money to purchase more. 

A friend of my sons' went to the supermarket with them years ago in a summertime quest for a frozen treat. He was flabbergasted to find out that "Strawberry Shortcake" bars were available in a 6-piece box that was roughly the cost of two individual items. My sons took it for granted that everyone knew this information, and so did I, but I suppose that a lot of it's taught by parents to their children. And I also suppose that not all parents were brought up by and large by grandparents who lived through the Great Depression and World War II. And I further suppose now that not all parents, or people for that matter, took the lessons of frugality to heart and employed them each and every day. Perhaps if you have a job that pays a decent wage, those strategies aren't as crucial for survival.

But it's simple to learn how to cut up a chicken into the same set of edible pieces you can get prewrapped with the price marked up, saving the back and wingtips in a plastic bag in the freezer to become homemade soup on a cold day. And it's far less expensive to purchase the whole bird instead of pre-cut chicken parts. It's ridiculous to purchase marinated beef on a skewer at $11.99 per pound when you can buy a whole roast for $1.99 per pound, cut it up and marinate it yourself with condiments you probably already have, and use the rest for beef stew and soup and hamburgers.

And bottled water? Even on sale those 16.9 ounce bottles cost $1.25 per gallon. (Please bear in mind that I'm not even pricing the imported snooty water here, merely a domestic from New England whose source I trust.) I think it's no better for you than tap water and even if you must purchase spring water it can be had in gallon containers for 59 cents. (And don't forget, boys and girls, much of your bottled water is labeled "purified water" which could legitimately come from anywhere and then be put through a series of filters. Yuck. You can do that at home with any number of less-expensive filtration pitchers or faucet devices.) Over and above the debacle of paying extravagant prices for H₂O are all those plastic water bottles that not everyone recycles. Get yourself a screw-top bottle that you trust and refill it. Oh yes, please wash it out once in a while. 

So I hope that this and maybe other supermarkets (or other organizations for that matter) expand the public service of teaching about inexpensive meals to include some of the common sense wisdom that my children were brought up to know. If they need a consultant, I'm available and my rates are reasonable.