When food gets too expensive – VG

It gets hard and it gets tough. But it is feasible. Just ask your parents, or grandparents. Or remember back to your own childhood.

My mother had a birthday last week and she had invited us to dinner. She is a minimum pensioner, and was going out to buy ingredients. Shortly after, the message ticked in:

«Potatoes cost 30 kroner a kilo! I stopped buying potatoes.

At that moment, the term “inflation” became far more vivid to me than the definition: a sustained growth in the general price level.

It became far more tangible than last week’s news that food prices have risen 5.6 percent since the summer of last year – and that meat and grain products have become as much as 10 percent more expensive.

This is the largest price increase in the same period of 40 years. And it will be more expensive.

Sober

My mother has talked a lot about electricity prices, she does not have a car, so she has not noticed that the petrol costs almost 25 kroner a liter right now. She is debt free, so I am glad she will not notice the interest rate increases when they now come with full force over the autumn.

But when mom refrains from buying potatoes. Then I know that there is danger on the way.

Because she’s sober. Mother is the minimum pensioner who always has money left over to buy birthday presents for her eleven grandchildren.

She is no waste. She belongs to a different generation, and a different group of women.

Her generation are people where we find many who are not out eating at restaurants so very often. Who does not throw away the vacuum cleaner if it does not work, but who tries to repair it. Going from store to store for the best deals. Which turns off all the lights in rooms they do not use.

They eat everyday food in everyday life – and a finer meal on Sundays – or Fridays for the mother’s part, because Friday is a public holiday for Muslims. And therefore even minimum pensioners like her can, in a way, have a safe and dignified life.

To live big on small

But rising inflation is becoming more difficult.

Then they tighten – as my mother now does. She fixes a birthday dinner just as lavishly, but with other accessories. We who eat notice nothing. We do not miss the potatoes.

And that’s how I grew up. In a poor immigrant family in a four-room apartment in Groruddalen in Oslo. Where the big freezer was always filled to the brim with food for the family of seven. Mostly because mother was sober. It was a matter of speculation.

Today, I and mine feel that a regular dinner is not a dinner, unless there is a good portion or two of meat for everyone at the table. Ideally, it should be something fancy, something you need a recipe and 10 ingredients to make.

It is not uncommon for vegetables and fruit and other food to be thrown out of the fridge that we have not had time to eat.

When I was little, I remember my parents buying one or two whole lambs at the immigrant shop in Greenland when it was season. They had this cut into small pieces, which they put in the freezer in half-kilo packages. And it was this pound that was dinner for seven.

The most delicious curry dishes. Lentils with lamb, spinach with lamb, cauliflower with lamb, potato with lamb. With fresh-off-the-forehead thin lefser, chapati.

We usually had a 25-kilo sack of rice, a tikilos package of whole wheat fine, and a bunch of par-kilo packages with different lens types lying around at all times. Vegetables were bought where they were cheapest. If that led to a Saturday trip to Greenland for the whole family.

Everything was made from scratch by my parents. We were full and well so. What I remember best from my childhood is just all the good food.

The Abundant Society

Norway, and thus children of immigrants, has had a sharp increase in prosperity in recent decades. There are few ordinary families who have had to turn over the crown when they have been in the grocery store. Our eating habits are characterized by abundance.

Although the cost of living is now rising sharply in this country, it is still the case for many that they can eat fresh fish on a regular Tuesday and coffee latte for a snack.

But it is inevitable that hundreds of thousands will have to prioritize differently and harder. That costs must be cut and consumption must go down.

It will be difficult for a generation where few have seen anything but very low housing rates and good and predictable finances.

However, it is possible to live soberly for a period of time, and at the same time be happy.

Do you know that immigrants score quite high on happiness in Norway? That Norwegians with a Somali background tops the statistics over who feels happiest in Norway?

I think it has something to do with sobriety. I think it has something to do with “immigrant women”. These who manage to run an entire, large household on one income.

I want all women out in paid work, especially immigrant women. But at the same time, it would be unfair to underestimate the crucial role that housewives play in keeping consumption down.

Consumption must go down

Now it is a matter of reducing consumption in Norway. This is the only way we can stop the price spiral with ever-increasing prices.

It is not poor immigrant families and single mothers who are large consumers. They already live cramped.

There are others who have to tighten up.

And here we all have something to learn from the older generations. Of single mothers, of disability benefits, and immigrant families, especially women. Those who have done nothing but live soberly.

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