Food Prices Put Frugality On the Menu ; As Oil's Run-Up Ripples Into the Grocery Aisles, Mainers Respond by Finding Ways to Cut Costs. Series: Fighting Back: Surviving High-Priced Oil the Series Sunday: Mainers Look for Ways to Cut Crushing Cost of Fuel. Monday: Families Can Save On Heating Oil Charges This Winter. Today: Shoppers Are Cutting Their Grocery Bills. Wednesday: Drivers Can Use the Pump a Lot Less Often. Thursday: People Are Making Life Changes That Might Transform the State.

Summary

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Third of five parts

Bill and Taeko Lee are depending on a 10-by-15-foot plot of earth on Munjoy Hill in Portland as their source of fresh vegetables this year.

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Food Prices Put Frugality On the Menu ; As Oil's Run-Up Ripples Into the Grocery Aisles, Mainers Respond by Finding Ways to Cut Costs. Series: Fighting Back: Surviving High-Priced Oil the Series Sunday: Mainers Look for Ways to Cut Crushing Cost of Fuel. Monday: Families Can Save On Heating Oil Charges This Winter. Today: Shoppers Are Cutting Their Grocery Bills. Wednesday: Drivers Can Use the Pump a Lot Less Often. Thursday: People Are Making Life Changes That Might Transform the State.

They are already picking lettuce and rhubarb from their carefully tended spot in the community garden on North Street.

Later in the summer, they will harvest peas, tomatoes, cucumbers and the Asian vegetables that Taeko Lee uses in her native Japanese cuisine.

Lee also will forage for dandelion roots to make a coffee-like brew highly prized in Japan.

She will pick the mugwort that springs up in vacant city lots and along sidewalks ...

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