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Grow a garden and learn to can your own stuff. You can grow herbs in a sunny window. We've been doing a big garden for years, green beans, crowder peas, tomatoes, corn, okra, peppers, broccoli, brussel sprouts, lima beans, red 'taters, greens, etc. My mother taught me to use a pressure canner when I was but a wee lad and I've been doing canning on my own since shortly after college. My wife laughed the first time she saw me canning beans, but now she realizes how much better they are compared to what is commercially available. She's also come to love my fried okra. She was bugging me just this morning to put in a row of her favorite green beans today. I also have fruit trees, grape vines and blueberry bushes and we make preserves and jelly and dry fruit for hiking snacks. I have planted 8 pecan trees, but they are still a couple of years from producing. We do harvest wild black walnuts off our property every year, though. We pick wild blackberries and huckleberries from a super secret location, too.

We split a 4H beef critter with a neighbor every year. Contact your local 4H to see if a similar arrangement is available in your area. It's the best beef you've ever eaten and at an average of $2/lb, it's cheap, too. Since our 4H grower also grows his own corn for fattening up his critters, his prices haven't been affected much by the rising price of corn. The beef is much higher quality that what you see in a typical grocery store. I have a few yard birds for delicious brown eggs and two ponds for small mouth bass and catfish. I've been building a greenhouse this spring to extend my growing season. If times get tight, I'll kill a deer and put that in the freezer, too.

All these things put better, cheaper food on my table from known sources. During the growing season we have fresh veggies coming in daily. It takes a few days a year to stock the pantry for the winter. A lot of folks claim they don't have the time to do this stuff, but if you consider the time you spend going to and from the store, plus shopping time, much less the time wasted watching mindless crap on TV, it's pretty close to the same and the food you grow yourself is light years ahead of what is commercially available. If you don't have room to do what I'm doing, find a "you pick" farm in your area and can and preserve what you pick. There's one of those in my area for strawberries and we always go and get a gallon or two for home made ice cream all summer.