Evening Edge

Feeding a family is one thing. Stacey Newbern feeds an army.

She and her husband Randy have eight offspring, all boys: Nicholas, 18, Joseph, 15, Samuel, 13, Elijah, 9, Silas, 7, Abel, 6, Ethan, 4, and Matthew, 22 months.

Elissa Eubanks/ AJC (ENLARGE)

Before Randy and Stacey Newbern hit the grocery store in their west Georgia home, Stacey plans the menu for the week and only buys the ingredients she'll need for those meals. They feed a family of 10 on a food budget of $230-$250 per week.

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At a time when food prices are rising faster than they have in decades, this platoon hoovers up a weekly diet of five dozen eggs, six jumbo bags of Malt-O-Meal cereal, three supersized jars of peanut butter and 12 gallons of milk.

"Us older boys try not to eat thirds, fourths and fifths," eldest son Nicholas confided recently, as he and Joseph put an early supper on the table at the Newbern family's mobile home near Whitesburg, midway between Carrollton and Newnan.

Joseph set the table and assembled a salad while Nicholas dished out crock-pot chili and a pan of cornbread that Mom had started earlier in the day. Elijah put out the silverware. Stacey and Randy, both 39, let the older boys handle every detail, while the younger siblings waited patiently.

Considering the tight quarters and the crowd eager for vittles, the late-afternoon meal went as smoothly as a military operation. That was no accident. When you've got a small army to feed, says Randy, an 8-year military veteran, you do what the Army does. That means:

• Discipline: Everybody waits until everybody is served. Nobody eats until everybody prays.

• Chain of command: Stacey controls the kitchen but delegates responsibilities.

• Simple food and lots of it: Today's chili supper, made with four pounds of ground turkey, five cans of beans, four cans of tomatoes and two packs of Wal-Mart brand dry chili spices, fills two crock pots. There will even be enough for leftovers. Cost for the whole meal, including salad and cornbread: $11.

'Bean night' and ground turkey

Yet even at this low cost, grocery bills are taking a bite out of the Newbern budget.

They're not alone. This year, rising food prices have had shoppers howling and stomachs growling. Milk has jumped in price by 21 percent over the previous year. Eggs are up 40 percent. Overall, food prices have grown by the greatest margin in almost 20 years.

Combine food costs with soaring prices at the gas pump and Stacey and Randy Newbern are feeling the pinch. Stacey, a longtime stay-at-home mom, got back into the job market last December, working at an immediate-care facility in Douglasville. She's also attending classes toward her nursing degree at West Central Technical College in Carrollton.

Randy, a machinist who builds fuel cells for military aircraft at G&S Precision Machinery in Newnan, had plans to construct a new home on the five wooded acres that the Newberns bought a year ago. Those plans, along with summer vacation hopes, are on hold. For now, they're staying put in their three-bedroom, 16-by-80-foot mobile home on the same wooded lot.

Always thrifty, the Newberns are well-positioned to deal with tight times. Shade trees in this rural setting keep their house cool, so they leave the air conditioning off most of the time. They've eliminated eating out altogether, instituted a "bean night" once a week, pretty much excised junk food and soda, and switched from ground beef to ground turkey.

Stacey also has turned meal planning into an art form. Before she heads out on her once-a-week shopping trip, she creates a menu for every day of the week, and knows precisely what she'll need for every meal. She shops at Wal-Mart, searches out store brands, buys in bulk and takes advantage of the chest freezer out in the shed, spending about $230-$250 a week on average.

She also tailors the food she prepares for the best impact. There are no onions in her chili because, she knows, the kids will just pick them out anyway. In turn, you don't hear her boys complaining, "I don't like this." They don't get a choice.

Pleasure, pain and pizza

Mom and Dad rely on dishes that are cheap, easy and dependable. Wednesday's $11 chili meal was followed by spaghetti on Thursday ($11), homemade pizza on Friday ($10), and salmon patties on Saturday ($12).

Occasionally, says Stacey, she will splurge for a feast, frying up chicken and okra and green tomatoes, and using up a 10-pound bag of potatoes making potato salad.

There is plenty to eat, but some meals are more eagerly anticipated than others. Pizza night, for example, is a combination of pleasure and pain. Pleasure, because mom's home-made pizza is fantastic. Pain, because there are only so many slices to go around, so the boys don't wait for the pizza to cool before they start chomping.

"They eat as fast as they can, saying, 'Ow!' Ow!' Ow!' " said Stacey.

The Newberns home-schooled all their boys until Stacey went back to work, at which point Abel, Silas and Elijah started going to public school. The parents saw their food bills decrease, as the little guys had access to economical breakfasts and lunches at school. (Joseph and Samuel are still schooled at home; Nicholas, who plans to join the Air Force, is taking courses at West Central Technical College.)

Sharing the cooking duties doesn't always works out. Joseph, for instance, doesn't use the grill these days, not since an incident that involved chicken breasts and a fire extinguisher. But working as a team helps them surmount difficulties, as on this day, when lightning knocks out the well-pump and the family is without water.

After supper they load their dirty dishes into a plastic tub, and head to church in their 15-passenger van, the only vehicle big enough for the whole group. (It drinks $500 in gasoline a month.)

Later, they'll take the dishes over to Stacey's parents' house for washing.

Working together — or else

When Stacey starts nursing school full-time in July their household income will drop from around $75,000 to around $55,000, and they'll have to tighten their belts another notch. That means more in-home haircuts and vegetables from grandmom's garden.

The boys have started a few tomato plants, but neither parent has time to till and care for a big garden. They also tried raising chickens, but that experiment ended quickly. It turned out Rocky, the family's shepherd/chow mix, "likes the way they taste."

The Newberns couldn't bring themselves to fry up the survivors, because they'd become friends. So the chickens were transferred to a neighbor's home in the country.

Yes the Newbern family is a big family, but food and housing is no big deal. With bunkbeds and four boys to a room, they fit just fine, and with chili dinners, there's always enough to eat.

And a little Army philosophy helps things run smoothly: "You learn to work together with others, you learn to get along with others," said Randy. "Whether you want to or not."