Every month, my wife and I track how much time and money we spend growing food. This is the report for June 2009. (Here are the results for 2008.)
It’s the beginning of summer, and that means our garden is lush and green and growing. It also means there’s nothing exciting to write about. We’ve begun [...]

Kris and I recently bought another side of beef. Well, to be more accurate, we purchased one third of a cow. Every year, we go in with several other families to split an animal. This year, our portion of the purchase comprised:

46 pounds of lean hamburger (in 24 packs)
36-1/8 pounds of roasts (in 10 packs)
31-1/4 [...]

Is it possible to eat local organic food on a food-stamp budget? That’s the question Salon’s Siobhan Phillips set out to answer recently. For one month, Phillips and her husband gave themselves a budget of $248 to “eat ethically” in New Haven, Connecticut. She writes:

I had wondered about the elitism of ethical eating ever since [...]

This is a guest post from my wife, who has her own fan club around here. “You should have a section at GRS called Kris’ corner,” one reader wrote recently. That’s unlikely to happen, but she’s happy to drop by now and then with recipes and helpful hints. Here’s what she has to say about [...]

Every month, my wife and I track how much time and money we spend growing food. This is the report for May 2009. (Here are the results for 2008.)
What a difference a year makes! Our fruits, berries, and vegetables had a slow start last year (and then were further slowed by a cold, cold June). [...]

An Experiment in Cheap Living
Earlier this week, I shared some of the highlights from three years of GRS articles about saving money on food. Brett from The Art of Manliness, who knows that I collect old self-help books, sent me an excerpt from Dio Lewis’s 1872 volume, Our Digestion, or, My Jolly Friend’s Secret. Here [...]

While driving to our monthly book group discussion on Saturday, Kris and I had a conversation with our friend Courtney. Courtney’s family is beginning to feel a financial squeeze. Her husband’s employer is cutting jobs. To keep working, he’ll have to take a pay cut and move back to the position he left a couple [...]

Wine is one of those little things that bring me pleasure. I enjoy discovering new wines, but I’m not a wine snob. As I’ve mentioned before, my favorite wines are those that taste great but don’t break the bank.
I recently asked Gary Vaynerchuk — host of Wine Library TV — if he could suggest some [...]

Every month, my wife and I track how much time and money we spend growing food. This is the report for April 2009. (Here are the results for 2008.)
April was a slow month for our garden. We didn’t do much. Part of this is because we’ve become more efficient. But another part is because we [...]

Every month, my wife and I track how much time and money we spend growing food. This is the report for March 2009, which was written by Kris. (Here are the results for 2008.)
In Oregon, the month of March is unpredictable. Every gardener is itching to get outside, but it’s wet and cold with a [...]