Frugal Pantry Keeping, A Dried Bean Challenge Part 1

I love finding ways to make my budget go as far as possible. Since I did not work outside the home, but chose to be home with our kids and to home school, I had to make the most of our single income. One thing that I learned early on was the best way to make the most of what we had was to spend as little as possible.  I calculated my "earnings" and contribution to the household, by writing down all the ways I saved the family money. I often saved us far more than I could have earned, and there is no tax on not making or not spending money!

When we started planning our emergency pantry, I used the skills I developed while running a home, and raising two active, hungry boys, on one income. I spent a lot of time researching ways to cut food costs, but still have quality foods for our emergency provisions. One way I did this was to break out the costs of each of the foods we normally had in the pantry, and see how low I could go for each item. For example: Which was cheaper, the canned black beans on sale at Harris Teeter, or bulk bag of dried beans from Sam's Club, that we can ourselves? Sometimes combining grocery store sales and coupons was the best way to go, other times I could get the best deals buying bulk from Sam's or from my co-op. Of course, I also preserved as much as I could from our own land, but there is no way to grow everything we need... Which ever way I went , the objective was to provide the best quality food for storage, at the best price I could get. The farther I stretched our prep budget the more I could put in our pantry.

So today just for fun, I will show you how I challenge myself to see how low I can go and how far I can stretch our food budget. Harris Teeter had black beans on sale for $1 a 15 oz. can,, Sam's Club black beans come in a 10 lb. bag for $8.43. That would make the sale cans a little less than $1 a pound and the bag of beans 84 cents a lb. As a rule of thumb, a pound of dried beans, after they are cooked is equal to 3/ 15 oz. cans of beans. So, even on sale the canned beans are more expensive than the bag of dried beans. But I will work through the rest of the process and see what it costs after going through the canning process. I purchased 2/10 lb. bags of beans, (16.86 plus tax). I want to have some put away for long term storage, some to can for ready to use and some to make into food that is backpack ready. The first step is to package for long term what isn't going to be used for canning. Then I need to have a supply of beans on hand ready to use, for the 3 month pantry. Of the 20 pounds of dried beans, I will store 7 lb. of the beans in mylar with oxygen absorbers and put the mylar bag in a 2 gallon bucket with a gasket lid. The 13 pounds that are left of the 20, will be divided between canning, cooking and dehydrating and a pot of soup.

I will be canning 20 pints of beans, the cost per pint of beans at this point is 28 cents a pint. The dome part of the canning lids run about $1.50 a dozen and we will need 20, at $3 for 24, the cost of the lid is 13 cents per jar. The fuel expenditure for running the stove is negligible, so I am not adding that to the cost of the beans. There is the matter of time expended to do the canning, but I am not factoring it in either since this is how I earn my keep... For someone else the calculations might shake out differently. Not everyone has the time or desire to go through the whole canning operation and the beans on sale suit their needs. But for me quality, safety from too much salt, BPA and other additives, and a cost of 2.5 cents an oz., (in comparison to the 6 cents an oz. for the sale beans), are motivation enough for me. I also have the satisfaction of seeing those lovely jars of food lined up in the pantry, knowing that they came from my efforts.

The rest of the beans were cooked and dehydrated, and used to create some other forms of storable food. There will be more on that subject in part two of this post. So for today, how low can I go? Forty one cents a pint is pretty low!