Just as the news was predicting, food prices are going up, making the tough job of providing healthy food for your family just that much harder. Last weekend I was able to take advantage of a two day sale at the little grocery store in the next town. I also used traveling to a doctor's appointment down towards the city as a chance to check out an Aldi store nearby. I was so pleasantly surprised at their prices! I was able to buy things that I had on my list for less there, and used the difference to refill some of things I used from my emergency meal cupboard. I still haven't been able to get the complete list of things I chose to have in there, but did replace what I used, so that makes me happy enough. I can't shop at Aldi on any regular basis, but will make sure if I ever have the chance to go by one, I will stop in.
I regularly shop at our little store in the next town as well as the dollar store with the occasional stop at Kroger when I need to go that way. The best way I have found to make use of these resources is to keep track of the sales that each place have every week. Once I know what is on sale I make my menu plan so I can take advantage of anything I have in the house to use up and combine it with things that are on sale. I try really hard not to pay full price for anything, but if I have to, I find Kroger is less expensive than our local grocery store. It would be so nice and convenient to only shop at one place, but the cost of that convenience is more than I am willing or able to pay.
I am so lucky that I have a car available to me and I know that not everyone is in that fortunate position, so I thought I would do a post about tips on saving money on groceries that we can use no matter where we shop or how we travel there. There are some tips, like buying in bulk, that don't really fit for a lot of people, so I wanted to stick to tips that can pretty much apply to everyone. A lot of blogs I look at assume that the reader has a car, has a lot of store choices available to them and that they have fully equipped kitchens. But that is not everyone's reality. I hope that no matter what situation you find yourself in, these tips will be helpful.
1. Use less meat. Seriously, this is the most effective way to save at the grocery store. Meat and cheese are the two most expensive foods I buy, so I look for ways to make them stretch or leave them out. I also look for ways to substitute a cheaper protein alternative. For example, tacos. We regularly eat tacos with ground beef mixed with lentils. I have also been known to use the cheap chicken patties cut up or cooked shredded chicken in place of the ground beef mixture for the protein part of our tacos if that was more cost effective or using up something we already had. One time I even used leftover beef roast that we had brought home from a family dinner, seasoned with taco seasoning and thrown in a tortilla.
There are tons of vegetarian recipes online, as well as recipes that help you stretch whatever meat you want to use. The most common way to stretch meat is to use it in something instead of as the main part of the meal. Stir fries, casseroles, soups, and pot pies are all ways to get meat in your bite without having to use a lot of it. By choosing to skip meat all together, you lower your costs even more. We eat spaghetti pretty regularly, it is a meatless meal for us. Pasta dishes can be pretty filling without meat. I also make a meatless pot pie that has lentils in it and several casseroles that can have the meat left out. Burritos are another meal that has no meat and that fills us up pretty regularly.
2. Choose the less expensive filler. We eat sandwiches a lot around here. They are just so handy to have on the go, and we are on the go a lot! If you have looked at any of my menu plans, you will see that we eat pretzels with our sandwiches. Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE potato chips and will splurge if they are on sale for close to what pretzels cost or have them for a special occasion, but pretzels are regularly the less expensive option of the two, so that is what I buy since one is not really healthier than the other. Crackers work too. The same applies to using sliced bread instead of buns. I can make a lot more sandwiches and burgers with a loaf of bread than I can with a package of buns. The bread/buns are really just filler and neither is more healthy than the other, so it is a good substitution for me.
I also use eggs a lot to fill my family up for pretty cheap. We will have boiled or deviled eggs in our lunches to help round them out, as a side for dinner or as a snack if someone is hungry or having a physically active day. If I know we are not eating much protein on a certain day, I try to serve eggs for breakfast or make egg salad as a substitute for lunch meat in sandwiches. Eggs are a super inexpensive protein that I often use as filler.
3. Menu planning. Menu planning helps prevent waste or emergency trips to the store. It also helps us take advantage of sales, leftovers, things that need used up, or food that is given to us. I cannot stress enough how important menu planning is. I did a post here about how I menu plan, but there are tons of different ways to organize how we plan to feed our family. Having a plan for the foods we buy ensures we won't be throwing out food that we spent good money on and helps to make sure that over the course of a week we are working in plenty of nutritional variety. I sit with the sale ad after going through the fridge to figure out my meal plan.
4. Cooking in batches. I often will cook enough of something to have as part of our dinner and then plan to use the extra for another meal later in the week. I often do this with rice. It doesn't take any longer to cook a big pot of rice than it does to cook a small one and rice stores well in the fridge. Or I will double a recipe and serve half for one meal and save the other half to have again during the week. It helps me out on busy nights when time is short so all I have to do is heat it up. I do this with chili. I make a double batch and we have it as soup one night, then I take the extra and make chili mac later in the week. Pasta dishes work well for this too.
These 4 tips are my most used strategies for keeping my food costs as low as possible, and keeping a budget for food costs helps me know if I am hitting my goals.
Here is a link to the USDA meal planning, shopping and budgeting guide for food stamps, and below are some links from Clemson about stretching your food dollars.
Before shopping , while shopping, and after you get home here is a shortened version
Do you have any tips that you use to save money while shopping? Please share in the comments!
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