Karl, you've made a great decision, and this is the start of a great adventure!

Hunting & fishing your own meat is not only awesome fun & satisfaction, it yields the very healthiest & lowest cost meat.  Yes, you can always spend an unlimited amount of money to hunt & fish (nothing unusual about $1,000/lb salmon), but my observation of people doing that is, that's what they headed out to do.  No need for fancy boats, outboards, and spendy rifles ... and toss the Cabela's sports-wear catalog.

Meat-wise, perhaps above all else principle-wise, hunting & killing your own is the best ethical approach.  I worry less about the pathogens & toxins in factory-meat, than I do about the fact that I'm supporting an all-round nasty arrangement, and shirking the ultimate responsibility - which is killing what I'm going to eat.

Most people know that hunting plugs straight into our essential, primal nature.  Many, however, find themselves hugely surprised at the powerful responses that are triggered by foraging plant foods.  Collecting botanical foods is probably the 800 pound sleeping gorilla.  (Just watch the kids go bananas.)

Yeah, I did San Diego in the Navy (admittedly, a long time ago) and I (still) have a good idea what would-be gatherers are up against.  Don't break laws (even silly ones) to get food-plants, but don't get too locked in on ol' Euel Gibbons, either.

There are cattle-raising districts where a major part of the forage is Prickly Pear cactus.  They mount a big propane tank on a trailer, attach a long hose & flame-thrower nozzle and singe the spines off a patch of the plants.  Cows learn the sound of the flame-thrower and the smell of toasted spines and come at a trot from a great distance.   Try the barbecue, or a little campfire.  Even a lighter will work.  (No, you can't really wash or brush the spines off effectively enough: for a tiny taste, peel.)

Kelp is the #1 essential micro-nutrient source for animal-feed formulations, and has been for centuries.  There is simply nothing else that covers health-optimization opportunities like seaweeds.  Outstanding natural seasoning, too.

Though San Diego is no foraging paradise, it is by no means a bust, either.  Remember, all arid country shows dramatic plant-flushes, when the occasional rain or wet season arrives.  Foraging is always 'boom & bust' - learn to dry & freeze & can the windfalls.

Finally, get off commercial water, and garden. Aim to buy your own piece of dirt, with water under the ground, and irrigate your own cultivations.  Until then, yank the geraniums out your pots and get radishes going (the greens are great too).  And, collect containers and start sprouting.  Many seeds make outstanding sprouts, and are among the most inexpensive of foods.  Sprouting is a great karma thing, too, (like killing ones' own meat), since it demands considerable humility to do the little chores in a timely way, in order to have quality sprouts.

There ya go, Karl - see ya in the brush!

Similar to the "shop around the edges" rule is this: don't buy anything that you can eat right away without preparing it in any way. Good: eggs, flour, dried beans, raw meats, pasta, potatoes. Bad: cookies, deli food, bottled juices, etc. There will be exceptions: milk. Probably cheese and bread. But it's a good start. If you process/prepare it, you're not paying someone else to do it, and it's better for you anyway.

Cool, Carrie!

In forested & rural areas, roadsides are major foraging-habitat (not much under heavy timber) ... but in the old days we just left those berries for the birds.  "They put lead in gasoline, ya know?!"

Now, (we banned lead in WA, oh, maybe a decade back), the old rule of thumb is being relaxed.  If you're going to sell berries though (Rubus ursinus, $30+/gal - mmm!) you still have to stay back from roads (find unused logging roads, and clearcuts).

.. But as a tactic for eliminating invasive species, the pickles may serve mainly to get people over their self-conscious inhibition against picking along the roads.  ;-)

My husband and I are members of a CSA in Vermont, where we pay roughly $45 a week for a share. At first it seemed a small fortune for just two people, but after doing it for several years, we have discovered that we spend very little else every week unless we go out, and $45 a week is a bargain for two people. Ours is a terrific CSA in which the farmer gives us a large bag of veg (mostly roots at this time of year, but he does sprouts, too) and supplements it with other locally grown and made products from surrounding farmers, so we'll get a loaf of bread, a pot of yoghurt, a hunk of cheese, a bag of mushrooms, a thing of maple syrup, eggs, etc. (Not all at once, but a selection of so-called "localvore" items each week.) I wonder if there are such ingenious CSAs elsewhere? I hope so.

In the past we have bought things like oats, dried beans, and various other grains in bulk from farmers at ridiculously cheap prices (turns out you don't need quite as many beans as you think you do...large bag of Jacob's cattle beans, anyone?), so we are able to supplement our share with those, plus stuff we grew last summer that we have in the freezer or the basement, and half a lamb that we bought relatively inexpensively from a local farm that we keep in the freezer.

At the risk of sounding like a smug organic-type, my point is that we eat extremely well and remarkably cheaply. The only downside (which happens to be an upside for me, as I like to cook) is that you spend a fair amount of time cooking and washing up when you eat like this.  But it keeps you busy so you're not out spending money on other things...

Hope you can find a great CSA in SoCal, Karl. Some farmers (like ours) let you pay in installments, too, so you don't have to put all the money out up front.

- Trying-not-to-be-smug-in-VT (and really, who can be smug while wearing gloves, scarf, hat, long underwear and two pairs of socks inside the house?)

This is a great article and comments, but foraging for food is not a good idea unless you're very knowledgeable about a) the plants you're looking for and any potential look-alike POISONOUS plants, b) the way the land is managed, and c) whether or not it is legal to do what you're doing.  For example, foraging on most public lands in the US is strictly illegal in order to preserve the habitat (take only photos, leave only footprints). Foraging along highways is not a good idea despite the fact that gasoline is no longer leaded. Think of all the gross things you see on roads, such as leaking oil and other vehicle fluids. All that stuff washes off onto the roadside vegetation, especially if the median is sunken. Some transportation agencies also maintain medians with pesticides and herbicides.

One really great way to get free organic produce, especially in California, that hasn't been mentioned yet is to scope out your neighborhood for homes with fruit trees in their yards (lemons, oranges, plums, cherries, etc). Many homeowners are happy to have you come and pick the fruit as it ripens so that they don't have to pick up the fruit as it rots on the ground under the tree. Try leaving a note in the mailbox with your phone number and an offer to pick fruit at the owner's convenience. It's even more attractive to the homeowner if you team up with a bunch of friends (or make it a service project for a school or local shelter) so that you can take away fruit in bulk and make fewer visits. You may have to invest in a ladder or fruit-picker tool.

I have allergies to milk and soy and I have to be careful as to what is in my food.  This makes life very difficult.  I can't buy most processed foods.  I make my own lunchmeat to control what is in them.  I invested in a meat cutter and I buy beef roasts, ham, turkey, etc.  I find a recipe I think would make a great lunch meat and make it.  I try to make more than one type of meat at a time so I don't get bored with it.  I then slice it (cutting any meat away from any bones) and weight it out into pounds and freeze it.  I pull out a pound at a time and I've got a quick and tasty lunch.  Depending on the size of your family depends on how often you need to make roasts.  I only have to do this once every couple of months, but it is also just me and my husband.  By doing this I get better than organic lunchmeat and I pay way less per finished pound than I would per pound at the deli counter.

Oh by the way this is oh so much better when you make your own bread. ;0)

The cited 20% saving for bulk purchasing over packaged can easily be increased.  Just order the whole container, whatever they'd empty into the bulk bin.  Flour and rice in 20- to 40-lb bags, etc, are usually at least 10% cheaper per lb than the same product scooped out of the bins.  If you have enough storage, it's a real savings.  Just make sure to keep all products in airtight containers, and if you have spare room in a large freezer, keep frozen anything you won't use within a few months.

Both Whole Foods and my local health food place offer this discount.  In fact, the local store also offers discounts on cases of products--anything from body lotion to Quorn patties, I just let them know what I want and they call me when it comes and give me a discount!  I don't know if this exists anywhere else, though.