I researched how to raise hens from chicks so we could get our omega-3-filled eggs. I learned to stretch a single piece of cheap meat into nearly a week’s worth of dinners. I made my own cleaning products. Not because I liked it. Because it was cheap.

My goal was to have healthy, unprocessed food for $10 or less a day. Cereal was the first thing to go. It dawned on me that making granola was a matter of tossing oatmeal and nuts into a bowl with a little oil, honey and spices — and then baking until brown. No more $14 boxes of fancy grains with pomegranate antioxidants.

Bread wasn’t hard either; it was just a drawn-out procedure. Yeast, water, a little honey, salt, whole wheat flour, and assorted seeds. Mix; wait for rising; knead; wait; knead; wait; bake. I made batches and froze them. So long, Eli Zabar’s 10-buck Health Loaf. Hi there, homemade loaf for less than $1. I soon realized that it’s not necessary to follow every recipe to a T, particularly if it calls for expensive items. For example, if a recipe called for red wine, I used diluted balsamic vinegar, or even apple cider vinegar and a wee bit of honey mixed with water. If the recipe called for saffron I used turmeric, which is cheap in bulk at Patel Brothers in Jackson Heights, Queens. And I always added twice as much garlic to everything.

With all the fetishizing about terroirs and concerns about lead in urban soil in the eco-foodie blogosphere, I was scared to grow vegetables, period. But my kids and I planted seeds, bulbs and rhizomes inside in midwinter in little cups; we started a universe of tomatoes, squash, green beans, kale, beets, garlic and standard herbs. They were ready for planting by spring.

We quelled concerns about lead in the soil by hammering together boards to make a raised bed, and made “good” dirt from compost of decaying leaves and coffee grounds and the cheap soil at Home Depot. It quickly became obvious that anyone with a rectangle of sunny ground outside can grow stuff; you just need to think about what grows up and what grows sideways so that you can get it all in there properly.