By Jeff Houck
Media General News Service

Eight years ago, Sally Shifke’s family in Tampa, Fla., was in a pinch. A career change for her husband, Howard, prompted her to go back to work to help make ends meet. Their three children were in elementary school at the time.

Shifke also started cooking more for her family instead of eating out at expensive restaurants. She began planning meals in advance and cooking on weekends in preparation for the hectic week ahead. She began shopping for sales on grocery items. She began buying in bulk and learning how to keep waste to a minimum.

“I was someone who never looked at prices,” Shifke says. “Suddenly, my whole existence was how much food cost.”

Shifke thinks back to those hard times and sees similarities to the economic downturn being experienced nationwide this year. She worries that escalating prices for all food items — especially staples such as butter and wheat products — already are putting in a bind those living on fixed or limited incomes. The 5-pound bag of carrots she used to buy for $1.88 is now $2.50.

Shifke thinks money problems might compel people to change their behaviors out of necessity.

“Economics are going to force people back in the kitchen,” she says. “I guarantee it.”

Her family’s financial fortunes have improved since those lean times, but she still applies the lessons she learned when shopping and cooking for her husband; son Steven, who’s now 17; and daughters Genevieve, 15, and Victoria, 11.

“You do what you have to do,” she says. “To stretch the dollar, you have to plan. It isn’t something that happens when you’re going up and down the grocery store aisle.”

Part of that plan involves extending the components of one meal into two or three.

Shifke buys two roasting chickens for $7.50. Instead of roasting one at a time, she’ll cook both simultaneously, filling the cavities with sprigs of rosemary, garlic cloves and a quartered lemon. (The rosemary comes from her backyard. She bought a couple of small plants a few years back and now has a bush to pluck from.)

“My family is only going to eat one chicken, with mashed potatoes and gravy and carrots, which I’ve roasted at the same time. I have this leftover chicken. I can then throw chicken from that second bird on pasta.”

She then takes the carcass of the two birds and refrigerates the bones until she can make chicken stock on the weekend. From that stock, she’ll make her favorite Mexican tortilla soup recipe from “Barefoot Contessa” Ina Garten.

“Most people don’t want to make chicken stock, but when you’re forced to do it, you just find the time,” Shifke says. “When I had no money, McDonald’s wasn’t even a consideration. The biggest treat was going to the convenience store and getting a Slurpee for a dollar.”

Pasta, rice and beans also go a long way, Shifke says. For a 20-minute dish on a weeknight, she’ll grate some zucchini or summer squash, add Parmesan cheese and sauteed onions, and spoon it on top of a plate of penne. Or she’ll drain a few cans of black beans; add chopped tomato, onions and bell pepper; and then add it to a bed of pasta.

“It is incredible,” she says. “It gives a whole different flavor and is just so much more satisfying. You’re not having to eat as much of the pasta, and you’re eating a healthier meal.”

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