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So, we sold it all, moved north and bought a 1,400-square-foot house on one acre with river frontage.

Now we were able to pay the mortgage, the car payment, the credit cards and the hydro, but there was almost nothing left for groceries

Something had to change.

After reading many articles about paying off debt, managing money and just plain having enough to eat, here’s a few ideas to think about: Control your money; keep as much of it as you can; if you don’t truly need it, don’t buy it.

We started to hatch out a plan: Pay the bills first, then figure out how two people can eat healthy for only $20 a week.

In the beginning it was a struggle.

Here’s what we bought the first week: Coffee, $5; coffee cream, $0.99; liver, $2; whole chicken, $5; 10 pounds of potatoes, $1; flour, $3; apples, $2; sugar $1.

The first thing I did was make an inventory of everything on hand. We had baking staples like baking powder, soda and salt. Powdered milk, three bags of dried soup beans, cinnamon, cider vinegar and molasses. This food had to last for one week.

That’s 21 meals and seven snacks for two people, or 42 meals and 14 snacks.

It was clear we needed more food, but there was no more money to spend.

We started searching for other ways to procure food. There was a local farm advertising for help with their harvest — labour in exchange for food.

Our first job was to harvest carrots; it was fun. We went home with six boxes of misshapen carrots that the farm could not sell.

At home, we peeled, trimmed and sliced up those carrots. After we pressure canned them, we yielded 40 jars of carrot coins.

Now we could add an orange vegetable to our meals. We completed another job at the farm.

Our reward was five old laying hens and one crusty old rooster named Roger.

“Ok, there you go,” the farmer said as he placed the box of chickens in our back seat.

“With these birds, you should be able to create a larger flock so you always have eggs.”

The farmer told us to let the hens hatch out their eggs. Then we would keep replacing the old birds with young ones. Did we know what that meant? No!

The thought of fresh eggs for breakfast made us so hungry. We just nodded, said “thank you” and drove home with our new flock of chickens.

That was 20 years ago. Today we raise chickens, eat lots of eggs and enrich our garden soil with composted chicken bedding.

That’s the history of how this column came to be.

We figured out a way to eat well without spending very much money.

It can be done and we want to share our knowledge with you.

Every two weeks the column will feature shopping tips and tools you can use to

plus a favourite recipe and new super saver tools.

This week’s Super Saving Tool

Connect yourself to these money saving apps. The apps are free. They offer you marked down produce, bakery and meat. They are simple to use and will allow you to have more food on your plate for less.

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Loblaws, No Frills and Superstore are among the stores that participate with this app, offering produce, meat and a variety of non-perishable goods nearing the best before date at up to 50 per cent off the retail cost.

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Sobeys is a company listed on this app, which lists surplus grocery items at costs discounted by 25 to 60 per cent and often has meat listed.

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Too Good To Go lists companies offering surplus food items for a discounted cost. Tim Hortons is on this app.

Recipe for this week

Pita pizza

Tastes so good. You won’t believe you just made it for almost nothing.

Ingredients

• 1 pita
• Pizza, salsa or tomato sauce
• Grated cheese
• Bits of meat and vegetables fresh or frozen
• Leftover any food you have on hand

Method

• Set oven at 400 F
• Move oven rack to the lowest level
• Spread each pizza with tomato sauce
• Sprinkle cheese over sauce
• Add bits of meat and vegetable
• Place pitas on a baking sheet
• Bake for 15 minutes

Be careful; they are hot. Cool slightly before eating.