I'm always looking to squeeze nickels from turnips when it comes to my grocery bill. I learned to cook from my own Grandma, who fed a large family (and sometimes half the neighborhood) during the midst of the Great Depression and then all through the rationing of World War II. She lived, ate and breathed thrift and made sure that I knew not only how to can and "put food by" in other ways, but the economics involved. In time I raised my own large family on a very small, often minute, food budget - and sometimes fed half the neighborhood. So, it was with interest that I picked up Elizabeth Ratliff's
Rotation Cooking. Was I ever in for a surprise!
The first thing that struck me, on the very first page of the Introduction, is that Elizabeth clearly states that she does not worry about taking advantage of sales. Shortly thereafter (on the following page) I found this statement: "Be a frugal shopper, but be sensible as well. If your husband is the bread winner, it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend all day baking homemade bread to save five dollars instead of buying store bought bread." Not bake bread, one of the fastest & easiest things you can do to save money on your grocery bill, because your husband is the bread winner??!! I couldn't believe my eyes! Your husband is the "bread winner" so you don't need to concern yourself with the cost of bread? Please do note that a houseful of teenagers can go through an entire loaf of bread for an afternoon snack!
Let me digress here to the economics of baking your own bread for a minute. I happen to like to bake bagels. I mix up the dough, let it rise and shape the bagels in the evening before I go to bed, mostly during commercial breaks while I am watching TV. The bagels rise in the refrigerator overnight, then in the morning I spend about 20 minutes boiling, topping and baking them. I get 12 bagels about the same size as these
Thomas' Plain 6 Pre-Sliced Bagels 20 oz, which currently sell for $3.99 per package. My recipe uses about 2.5 pounds of bread flour, which I buy at a cost of $0.69 per pound. Yeast, salt and other incidentals add another $0.25 or so to the cost of the recipe. Thus, I get 12 large bagels at a cost of just about $2.00 - half the price of just one package of store-bought bagels. If you compare my bagels to the equivalent artisan bagels, which sell for $1 each or more, the savings are much greater. Not bake bread because your husband is the bread winner?! Malarkey!!
But, whatever, to each his own. I continued on with Elizabeth's book. My next surprise was to learn that not only does she buy all her groceries once a month (good plan), but she cooks all her meals once a month too - and requires three - yes, 3! - chest freezers to store it all. Nowhere does she mention or even account for the cost of buying three freezers or running three freezers - a dollar amount that can add up quite quickly, one that must rightly be counted as part of the food costs.
I do have to tell you I was distinctly unimpressed at the suggested menus. Revolted might be more the word in some cases - and I can tell you that my children would absolutely have staged an outright rebellion had I ever once attempted to serve them chicken spaghetti with okra gumbo and baked squash. (It is a really good thing Elizabeth warned me that her menus and recipes might not be to my family's tastes and that I could modify them.)
Finally, we come to the assembly part of the book - meal D01, Veggie Chicken Bake with Spinach and Cornbread. It doesn't look too bad in the tiny picture. But, then I notice that the recipe calls for using frozen vegetables as part of the casserole you are going to bake - a fine technique in a pinch because you had a massive power outage and need to salvage the contents of your freezer, but not one to be relied on day to day as a means to produce quality meals for your family. Whatever. I skimmed past "Thoroughly wash and dry 15 pounds of chicken leg quarters", flip the page and run smack-dab into "Pour the contents of two CORNBREAD MIXES into a quart freezer bag.. . . . . . . When chicken meals are completely frozen remove from casserole dishes, ,place one bag of frozen spinach and one bag of CORNBREAD MIX on top and wrap in freezer paper." (emphasis mine.) I couldn't believe my eyes! WHY on earth would anyone - anyone at all - FREEZE boxed cornbread mixes?? Why would anyone waste the freezer space? Or the electricity it costs to maintain a freezer to provide space for something that does not NEED to be frozen. Not to mention waste all that extra packaging? It costs real money to discard all that packaging! Not to mention the landfill space!
That did it for me. Whatever Elizabeth Ratliff's priorities are, I'm sorely afraid that truly saving money while serving her family the best food possible isn't really one of them. In these times of economic hardship, new demands on our more limited electrical generating resources and environmental concerns of waste management, I find her indifference appalling.
Definitely NOT recommended.
PS - As far as content goes,
Rotation Cooking is definitely a 1-star read. However, Elizabeth did include a functional Table of Contents and even made an effort to include links (they mostly don't work) to appropriate locations mentioned in the text. The second star is for effort, not content.
