Pantry of a single mum . Living frugally without gardens and farms
Too many kids and not enough potatoes and how to live frugally and plan for the future without a garden or a farm. I was there.
We just bought, re-packaged, and froze lamb fillets, ground beef, chicken thighs, and pork sausages — delivered fresh from a local organic farm co-op in a polystyrene container (an esky, in Australian) that goes back at the next delivery. The delivery man was rather dishy too. For AU$300 (about US$192) I packaged meat for 38 meals: just under AU$7.90 per meal (US$5.05). Each portion covers dinner for two adults and a toddler, plus tomorrow’s lunch, which the worker of the family takes to the office the next day.
This is not new - we do this a few times a year - save heaps, support local chemical free farmers and always have something for dinner in the freezer.
By saving and storing food we bank security for our future selves.
My daughter is a single mum. And I was a single mum too. It is not simple. Too many kids and not enough potatoes. We learn to pivot, build networks and most of all find reliable sources for food. Sources we can sustain. Because the pantry of a single mum - a house with one breadwinner - needs to be dependable. Not last minute.
Scroll down if you want to jump straight to my Watching Brief - keeping track of the changing oil crisis. Keeping an eye on prices. Keeping up to date. It is a free post. But not shared across the email.
Kind of a personal project to share just with you.
Back to the pantry. And the fridge. Right now. Cut down on the waste. Buy only what you will eat. Plan what to eat. Left overs should be a part of a meal plan.
And don’t forget to label everything. Always. Don’t skip this step. With dates and descriptions.
Go on. Play with your food.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
The other day a reader told me I was full of shit (nicely) because for some people it is just too hard to keep a pantry up to date or afford to buy in bulk. Frugal needs planning and space. What do we do, she said. We live paycheck to paycheck, have no garden, no space for storage. Things are getting so expensive. By the time I have made dinner and spent time with the kids and homework I am done. We don’t all have space or time for a garden.
Oh good call, I thought. You are absolutely right to call me out on that. I apologized and here we are now.
I was a single working mum with four kids and two jobs. I know absolutely what they meant. This was an important comment.
One of the rented houses that I lived in when I was a single mum had only a tiny garden - enough for herbs and two rose bushes. I could put a few tomatoes out the back around a little concrete pad that came off my bedroom door but for a number of years - the tough ‘head down-bum up’ years - I was just too busy with work and kids and survival to grow much food. And I have to admit that during that period I simply could not get my head above water enough to even think of growing actual crops. I popped plants in here and there but forgot to water them or the dog lay on them - I didn’t care. I was too busy. And too stressed to be fair. And too tired. If I got a few tomatoes and courgette plant I was good. Once I grew sunflowers and pumpkin in the front. I was thrilled. I think I even got beans grown and in the freezer that year. But when I look back I can see that it was all too much.
Don’t get me wrong. We had tons of wild fun times, the kids and I drove to visit friends who lived on farms or in cities in the school holidays, we went to every event that had free food - including gallery openings and sausage sizzles at the tyre shop - growing food simmered on a back burner. Because I did not have the mental or physical space. Or time! Let’s not forget time.
So how did we survive. Because though we will never face dire food shortages. Like war torn countries. And I am not saying that the world is devolving into dire straits. None of that. It’s just that some things will be hard to get and I think we are looking at the petrol bill being high for good now. Things made with petroleum will get more expensive. But. We are clever. We will deal with it. This will be our new normal.
How can I help answer your question? By digging back into that time - the time when I was a single working mum, honestly. Not with those rose tinted glasses we tend to put on. Though the kids and I really did have a good time, we lived small and loud, but even with my two jobs I did not make a lot of money. It was hard in that time. I bought enough food for the kids and ate their leftovers. Shopped in second hand shops and when it was cold I pulled out my dad’s old wool coat and laid it over my bed. Period. How I did not just put my head down onto the ground and howl I don’t know - actually I think I did - but we won’t dwell there.
Here are some things I remember.
Refer back up to above about leftovers, then I will add that we didn’t eat a lot of meat. Meat was expensive; it needed to be saved for. About the only processed food we bought was Weetbix. I baked on weekends, I bought eggs by the tray from an egg farm and boiled a few every few days for lunches and snacks. Teenage kids eat a lot.
We knew what we were cooking each week. We made that list at Sunday dinner: when I say “we,” I mean the kids and I. They cooked too, from a young age. Because I worked two jobs.
I saved 10% of my wages into a special account. I called it my fuck off account. Then on our kitchen bench were two jars- one for food, one for extra expenses like shoes and heating. One of the jars was my mums tea caddy with a picture of queen Elizabeth on it which always made me smile. In those days my second job paid in cash and food. So I saved from the cash. Don’t tell on me. We really do what we have to do to feed our kids. I never had a credit card. No one did really . And spending cash is hard. And if I ate less we saved more for grocery day. I still squirrel away cash when I make any; it’s a hard habit to break. Knowing it is there makes me feel safe. From the food tin I bought bulk meat at a local bulk meat store. A different cut each time so I was able to accumulate a collection of meals in the freezer. Cheap stuff. Sausages. Mince. Stew meat. Whole chickens. Frozen chicken pieces were popular.
I bought boxes of vegetables from the stalls every weekend and spent an hour chopping them into meal-sized pieces, half I would quickly blanch then dry then store free flow in dated containers in the freezer. (I labeled everything on tape - still do). The other half I stored raw in the fridge for meals and lunches. They were great for snacks and school lunches and sped up meal prep considerably for the coming week.
I baked once a week: cheap cookies and bread and one meat pie. The cookies went into big containers in the freezer. I saw a farmer do this as a visiting teenager, we just pulled our frozen cookies out at snack time. Nothing was wasted that way. And frozen cookies in the summer are fun to eat!
In summer I bought boxes of tomatoes when they were cheap using cash from the beleagured food jar, and made summer sauce. If you look at my recipes you’ll see the tomato sauce is almost always there.
Every now and then we all piled into my big station wagon and drove out to the Watties factory and bought dented cans of spaghetti and baked beans. The kids always got peaches too.
I define sustainable living as being able to sustain how you live without doing too much harm to the planet and its inhabitants. Living with less. Growing one’s own herbs and greens. The question I come back to, in the kitchen, in the garden, at the market is not why is this good for the planet (though I hope it is). It’s simpler: can I keep doing this? Can the planet keep this up. Not just afford it. Can I keep doing it: physically, mentally, joyfully, without grinding myself and the planet down.
This underpinned a lot of my decisions but we also need to feed and educate our children right?
We only heated one room usually in the evening. In the winter morning reaching out from under the covers to turn off the alarm clock took an act of courage. We were cold in the winter but that did not stop us always having a window cracked open at night. Let the house smells out and the garden scents in.
But what if you don’t have a garden or a farm or chickens - and everything you read tells you to plant something and save seeds and get your greens in the ground before we can’t buy seeds anymore and all that really scary stuff. And you are living from paycheck to paycheck anyway.
Well. That is tough. I can help. We need to make sure everyone can create a viable and sustainable plan.
.Ok. This is the guts of it. The plan, your plan. Make one. And many of you know what I am talking about. We will never admit to being short a few quid but many of us are.
Sit down and make a plan. I promise you it will help. Firstly write down a kind of manifesto - Neela wrote about this. Look at who you are and what you want. What your objectives are. My intention was to train my kids to be adults who can pivot and cook and make the best of what they have. And who can see failures as lessons. They were grown-ups in training.
Make a budget. Make a meal plan. Make some decisions.
Fridges and pantry’s are not the same concept. When we think of the fridge we think of perishables. I am not talking about a condiment fridge because I have never had one. A fridge loaded with condiments. If you have to buy a jar of something then only use a teaspoon for a specific meal you make infrequently - find a new recipe. The fridge needs tight managing. With labels.
Use your freezer well. Have a list outside your freezer of what is in the freezer and when to use it by.
The pantry needs a long term plan. For the pantry and the cupboard and your staples - think at least two weeks ahead.
And save. Never spend it all. How to define this - hmm - I save 10% of my income into my fuck off account. I made this an automatic payment from my salary, and it went into an account I had limited access to. That way when the shit really did hit the fan and the car needed repairs or the washing machine broke or something like that, I had a little put aside. This is a hard one when you really are hand to mouth and I was, but if it is a defined amount like 10% or 5% it is somehow more maneageble. And it pays off. I promise.
So, write a budget. If you have a written budget maybe you would like to share your tips in a comment?
And yes, my Fuck Off account has grown. It is still growing. It is in a long term high interest account and it does the growing all by itself. My 10% still goes into it.
Think of yourself as a hunter and a forager. Hunt down your local farmers and metaphorically forage. Even that is hard to do - when you are in a city. But lots of these farmers and farm co-ops will deliver.
Hard times are coming. But we will be ok.
Us huntresses. Us foragers.
There is so much more to budgeting in an elegant, positive way - and I know you know most of it but if you have a question - write it in the Lounge of Comments - we are a wonderful community here - (in the lounge of comments) we will work with you - you are not alone. We will help you build a sustainable lifestyle.
We will make changes in accordance with our fiscal and political and environmental fluctuations. We must actually. We must stay informed and aware and use our considerable intelligence - intelligence and knowledge it took you and me an age to accumulate - to roll and bend and survive.
This is the beginning of the great liner turn: a slow committed arc into an oil free world, the whole vessel leaning into a new heading. It will take decades. It has to happen. So studying and planning for food security is paramount.
Look after yourself.
Love Celi
Over on the Watching Brief this week, I’ve been doing the maths on fuel and food costs — comparing Melbourne and Illinois, eggs and diesel and protein today, and what it all means for the grocery budget right now. There is hard news in there, but there is good news too, and a practical way through.
Come and have a look. I wrote this today as well.
The Watching Brief. May 23 2025
I like to know what I’m spending compared to what I was spending last month, and even last year, and why this is - so this series will run alongside our other posts.
Excellent advice, Cecilia, and I, too, a single mother of 5, vividly recall the days when the only meat we could afford was hot dogs (when they were on sale) and we called them 'tube steaks'. I worked a minimum wage job 5 days a week and an extra Saturday job as the lady in the grocery store trying to get people to take a sample and buy the product I was paid to push. At least I got to take the unsold stuff home and, if it wasn't too disgusting, that's what we ate for Sunday dinner. But we had tons of fun along the way and the now-adult kids say they appreciated those lessons in resilience. It does require a lot of self-discipline and, even now, living alone and nearly 80, I make meal plans for the week so that nothing goes to waste. Thank you for this wonderful post and I hope it generates a lot of good questions!
Love your writing Cecilia. The challenge and definition of living sustainably; the challenges of single mothers and folks that are dealing or have dealt with food scarcity; and your way of guiding us through moments of your life that reflect & teach. The garden, Mother Nature, the dirt, are all great teachers. Thanks for this!