A few tips on stretching food and the food budget:
1) Replace water for milk or other liquids if it will still give you the result you want.
2) Don’t pour the liquid off canned goods down the drain. That’s “free” veg or meat stock. Continually pour it into a large freezer container (a recycled used margarine tub or whatever) to use in a soup, casserole or even gravy. Yes, corn liquid or whatever can be subbed for milk or water in gravy. Yes, it will taste a little different but is still good. Pea liquid may be a bit strong if more than one can is in a freezer container so give it it’s own container and use it for liquid in split pea soup for which you also saved a ham bone. Beet juice can be used as the liquid in cakes or other baked goods or used in bortsch soup.
3) Boil bones, even chicken bones your family has chewed on if you don’t mind. Save the liquid off the boiled bones for meat stock to use in soup or gravy.
4) Same with saving liquid off canned fruits. Either pour it into tea or cheapo koolaid. Or heat it to make a topping for ice cream or top a wee bit of homemade pie or cookie dough for dessert.
5) Do a search for using egg shells for human calcium supplements. Of course, toss them in the compost or merely out in the yard for fertilizer.
6) One good sized potato costs pennies and is about the same weight as a bag of potato chips. The obvious savings is to make your own chips.
7) Save every little spoon of leftovers to use at the end of the week - soup, casserole, stuff into homemade dough for empanadas/quiche/dumplings/Asian wraps or top a homemade pizza dough.
11) Homemade yogurt costs pennies and a batch can be “chained” about 4 times as starter. One small 5 oz. store bought plain yogurt “with live cultures” is the starter for several first batches (freeze in ice cube tray and use each cube as 1 starter) and then use whatever type milk you wish. Use a glass quart jar (or whatever size) and place it in the oven (no lid) to incubate so no special equipment. Turn the oven on the lowest setting for 1 minute just to get it warm and turn it off before putting the jar in. Maybe needs another minute of warming after 4 hours in and you’ll have yogurt in 6-8 hours or overnight. If it doesn’t set up, incubate another hour or call it the drinking type so nothing is lost. Sub it for sour cream or milk in cooking or drain it in a colander to make cream cheese that is good enough to bake a cheese cake.
12) Don’t eat out. There are countless restaurant/fast food recipes online. Six Schlotzsky original sandwiches from scratch at home for the price of ONE going through the drive thru. Who can afford over $60 for six at the drive thru???Same with most all eating out pricing.
13) Don’t buy prepared foods and snacks. Learn to cook from scratch and teach the kids to cook so they can help out working parents. Keep most cooking time to 30 minutes so it isn’t stressful. Just do what you can to cut down on costs. Think about everything before it goes in the garbage. Good luck!
Already been doing that for a while now. Another year or so to go before there will be any relief....Only going to get worse.
Many good tips in your post about food and thrift. Thank you for posting!
My favorite Tightwad Gazette tip was to save dryer lint as a substitute for cotton balls.
So what you’re saying is live within you means.