Good source of protein, but you gotta be fast......
Posted on 05/01/2008 5:21:12 AM PDT by randita
Grocery costs are going through the roof. Do you have any suggestions for trimming the skyrocketing grocery bills?
We don't buy much in the way of pre-packaged or prepared food items and we do eat a lot of dried beans. Don't eat out much either. Still my weekly grocery bill is about 25% higher than I'd like.
Let the suggestions roll...
Good source of protein, but you gotta be fast......
Scratch red meats off your list. Learn to make your own soups, it’s cheaper than buying them by the can. I wish I could say the same about breads, but I haven’t found a way to make it cost-effective (I have one mouth to feed, my own).
Costco or Sam’s Club. If you don’t want to buy in bulk - Aldi’s is really good.
I “sale” shop....Buy 10 packages at a time....BUT KEEP TO THE THINGS YOU USE.
For God’s sake just don’t plant zucchini! Your neighbors beg you!
Compare the price for frozens and even canned items to the price of fresh. Sometimes they are significantly cheaper.
When you find a deal, make sure you try some first as some “deals”” are simply nasty tasting products.
Go on Mondays and Tuesdays and check the very end of the meat coolers. There are usually some discounted meats from the weekend that are perfectly good.
Plant a simple garden with some summer squash or other high yeild low maintenance plants. Nothing too elaborite, just enough to be fun and take an edge off the grocery bills.
Sweet potatoes are INCREDIBLY easy to prepare, relatively cheap and sweet and delicous. If your family is not wild about them plain with butter. Use sugar. Lot’s of it.
Make sure you keep onions and garlic on hand as they make almost anything better. Try to avoid buying soda and if you are don’t buy brand name soda. Koolaid is super cheap comparitavely and the kids usually enjoy making it. Iced tea is another lowcost alternative.
Look for a thrift shop where they sell bread, pasta and other foods cheaper.
Also look up this outfit. “Angel Food Ministries” I will look for them later myself. They sell prepacked food packages that are nutritous. Basic things like chicken nuggets, vegepacks etc.. They work through churches and you preorder a set package and pick it up when it’s ready.
Buy the Debbie Meyer Green Bags for your produce. They cost $10 for 20 bags, but you can reuse them about a dozen times. You can buy them on TV or from the Harriet Carter or Walter Drake websites. They really prolong the freshness of fruits and veggies, cutting down waste.
Lots of tips and recipes
Sounds like you are already on the right track.
What’s killin’ me is milk prices. Over 4 bucks a gallon-more than gas. I have 2 small ones at home, so we go through a lot of it.
Big pots of soup are great! You can eat on those for days!
The Mormons have a booklet about making the most of your food costs-ties in with their philosophy of emergency preparedness- I can’t recall the title, but it had some good lists and recipes for feeding a bunch on very little. I requested it years ago and it came in handy. (and no, I didn’t have any white shirt and black tie kids show up on my doorstep afterwards.)
I just wish I could recall the title of that Mormon brochure.
Ditto. Get rid of the majority of meat in the diet. Make soups with small quantities of meat, or go to vegetarian dishes like black beans and rice, lentils, or any other number of dried foods. You can take a little chicken or beef add some veggies and dried barley and make a delicious soup. And the truth is, it's better for us to eat this way.
We still eat fish, but that's because hubby and son catch it and I don't have to buy it.
This week I made a pot of black beans (minimal cost, maybe a buck for the bag of beans, some olive oil and spices), served it over rice with a salad on the side. Then mixed the leftover rice and beans together, and served up bean burritos the next night. If you have kids, make hot cereal instead of cold. Oatmeal or cream of wheat are a heck of a lot cheaper than boxed cereals.
Beef is cheap now but it won’t be for long. We use a lot of frozen veggies. Meatless at least twice a week.
lol... I never liked it growing up but I found the most awesome zucchini bread recipe. And to foooool my, I won't eat green veggies children, I put the zucchini in the blender so they would NOT know what they were eating.... Oh and in this recipe you do not have to salt and drain the zucchini before adding it to the batter. I then would add wheat germ to the batter and it made an excellent quick breakfast and/or snack time food. Haha on my kids, they thought they were getting to have cake for breakfast...
Dumpster diving. It’s not just for street bums anymore.
Costco, at least in my area, sells a gallon of milk for under $3. Might want to try there.
Box cereals were the biggest scam around until the Nigerians discovered the internet. Now, box cereals are just another scam. What, 4 bucks for a box of air? (I haven’t bought cereal in ages).
1 5 lb bag of bread flour costs about the same as a loaf of sliced whole grain bread.
A simple recipe, using about 3 cups of flour, 1 pkg of yeast, water, a little honey, oil, and salt, per loaf, is definitely cheaper, and tastes and smells ALOT better.
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