Modern Living: The New Cuisine: Eating Without Going Broke

Diane Hackett, a La Grange, Ill., housewife, recently bought a live lamb for $10 and last weekend was headed for a farm where she intended to purchase a cheap goat. Mrs. Hackett is not after pets for her eight children; she plans to barbecue the goat. Lydia Galton of New York City recently performed the bloody job of slicing 100 Ibs. of liver; it was her turn to serve as distributor for the food co-op she and her neighbors have organized. In Dallas Mr. and Mrs. Jack Hollon have taken to growing wheat in their front yard and vegetables out back.

These are just a few of the measures being taken by people who want to continue to eat well without going broke during the nation's worst food-price inflation in 26 years. Across the U.S. this summer, the budget-conscious have been learning gardening, fishing for dinner, hoarding bargains when they can be found, seeking recipes that make cheap or unusual food palatable, and changing their style of entertaining.

The challenges of scarcity and rocketing prices are bringing out old-fashioned ingenuity along with the complaints, evoking a pioneer atmosphere in which acquiring victuals is once again an important matter even for the affluent. Kirsten Lumpkin, the wife of a Seattle construction man, bought a side of beef in company with some neighbors and has been canning her own fruit. "It's unsettling," she said last week while preparing to make sauerkraut for the first time in her life. "All of a sudden, eating has become sort of a focal point, and I think that's too bad."

In Berkeley, Anita Davidsen, a graduate student's wife, looks at it differently. "Now," she said, after learning to grow and can vegetables, "I can imagine how satisfying it was for great-grandmother—over a hot stove all day but socking away 30 quarts of whatever. I'm canning things to give away as Christmas gifts."

Freezer Run. The bargain hunters seem to fall into two camps: those determined to eat as much meat as ever and others willing to use high-protein alternatives to some extent. Mrs. Hackett, the lamb-and-goat lady from La Grange, speaks for the carnivores: "I know there are a lot of women who are going to ride it out with eggs and cheese, but I want meat."

She and her husband Jim, a computer-data trainee, have made a science of obtaining meat. Diane scouts out farmers willing to sell an animal cheap. After the farmer takes care of the slaughtering, her husband butchers the carcass. Next month the Hacketts plan to visit Mississippi, where a relative will sell them two pigs for $10 each.

The Hacketts are among the thousands of Americans who have recently bought a home freezer (theirs has a capacity of 1,700 Ibs.). That run on freezers has made them as hard to get as the beef they are intended to hold; some appliance stores are sold out completely, and others report sales increases of between 50% and 200% over last year.

With beef cattle currently the scarcest commodity of all, some people—a tiny minority, to be sure—are willing to turn to the horse. Carlson's, a butcher shop in Westbrook, Conn., that recently converted to horsemeat exclusively, now sells about 6,000 Ibs. of the stuff a day. The cuts have the same names and shapes as beef but cost half as much. The savings will grow when beef prices shoot up again next month.