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7 Ways To Fundamentally Lower Your Food Costs

It all starts with changing where and how you get your food. Go someplace else or just bring a different approach!

  1. Grow Your Own.
  2. Buy In Bulk.
  3. Bargain.
  4. Cook.
  5. Share.
  6. Forage.
  7. Get it for free.
    + Bonus

Hit the jump below for the rest of the story. »

It all starts with changing where and how you get your food. Go someplace else or just bring a different approach!

  1. Grow Your Own.
  2. Buy In Bulk.
  3. Bargain.
  4. Cook.
  5. Share.
  6. Forage.
  7. Get it for free.
    + Bonus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO8AiKJeOlw

Full details after the jump.

Grow your own. Imagine walking out your door to a suburban/urban fruit and food forest, with a natural abundance almost unbelievable in it’s bounty. It’s not only possible, it’s probably the best thing you can for yourself and the planet, and potentially extremely rewarding. If you’re interested in growing a lot of food together *with* nature and not against it, check out Permaculture. It can even fix the desert: YouTube: Greening The Desert

Buy in bulk. With a little creativity, the potentially savings here are enormous! Calculate some meal costs small vs bulk. Think of ways you can split with neighbors or friends. Websites or social network apps will increasingly help with this.

Bargain or Haggle! Especially when you’re buying in bulk or at a farmer’s market, it makes a lot of sense (cents) to make an offer lower than the listed price. The more you buy, the bigger the discount you should expect. And, shop around, too!

Cook! Especially if you are buying foods in bulk… It makes sense to cook big meals and store them in your refrigerator for eating during the week. If you have enough time, it’s really nice to cook dinner every day, and prepare breakfast before going to bed.

Share. …with your family and friends, your neighbors, your apartment building, your whole neighborhood. Cook together! Eat together! Buy food together! Grow food together!

Forage your ‘hood.
Find Edible Wild Greens (Weeds) around your neighborhood for your Green Smoothies. Pick Fruit from trees hanging over the sidewalk. I couldn’t find any legal definition online, but it’s possible your city might. (see disclaimer). You can make a (Fruit PickerV2)  to reach those fruits that the rest of us can’t. If you’re going to eat a bunch it’s nice to bring some friends and eat and hang out, not just come and take the fruit and leave. Don’t be a stranger, we’re all fam.

Get it for free. Feeling desperate? Get a free meal at your local community shelter. (Notice: this makes you homeless person)

Bonus: Geurilla Gardening and Guerilla Grafting

Guerilla Gardening – Sunflowers of Parliament




Grafting Fruit Trees




* Guerilla Grafting is just Grafting onto public trees. For example, there are a ton of ornamental plum trees in my neighborhood that can carry all kinds of fruit. Another example is a big wild apple tree in your neighborhood that could be grafted with all of your favorite varieties. Learn what kinds of trees you have in your neighborhood and what you can do with them.

<rant>
Even better, you can do *all* of the above and stop PAYING for food altogether and get your hands back in the Production of our Economy! More than ever, we need individual competition in the food market to give us better options. As you may have noticed, people will eat practically *anything* if they’re hungry, so the more healthy better options we have available in more places, the better off we are. And I really like the idea of Public Fruit Orchards in park-like settings, where the community can learn permaculture techniques and co-create natural abundance through rainwater harvesting, accelerated composting with effective micro-organisms etc. Whoa permaculture for parks USA? Grass roots community program to encourage community participation in suburban/urban reforestry with combined fruit production. Educating neighbors how to produce their own food as healthily as possible to encourage maximum nutrition using completely natural homemade non toxic and recycled ingredients and materials to maximize productivity and reduce wasteful resource usage. Thinking of a wireframe hoop house open to the air, growing vines etc with built in hydroponics and aeroponics. The urban rainforest. Possibly Has optional/removable plastic cover for nighttime and or winter? Not sure best way to build. Sliding insulated cover goes over house during day for cooling, back over garden at night for heat retention for tropical fruits. Cold winters can be sustained inside the sealed insulated structure, with moved living quarters.
</rant>

Every house is different. We do what we can.

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