Everyone is looking for ways to save money. Consumable items are one of the most obvious areas of savings. I am often asked how we manage to keep our grocery budget low, and the tips below will help you find ways to slice your grocery bill by at least 20 percent...Plan a Menu Write the menu on the family calendar that has everything else on it. The activities listed on this calendar will trigger your thoughts on who will be available for each day's meals. It will also highlight crunch days so you can plan accordingly. Days where you are running kids around after school or work may require a slow cooker meal. The family calendar helps you recognize these days and plan accordingly. One key element for saving the 20% is to use your favorite store's sales flier when planning the menu which leads me to the next item.
Shop the Sales If you do not get the weekly sales flier delivered, look online. I review our store's flier on the web each week. Plan your menu around the meats and produce that are on sale that week. If there is a particularly good sale item that you use often make a note to stock up on it. Over time, you get a general feel for how much of one item you might need before the next sale. Many areas repeat sales every twelve weeks. I find that certain items go on sale much more frequently. I am fairly aware of how often the sales come around for my most commonly used ingredients. In my house, this week's menu will have sale items from both last week's and this week's ads. If ground beef family packs are at a super low price, you can stock up and use it for several weeks. I generally bring the sales flier to the dinner table one night and mention the meats and produce on sale. I ask family members what sounds good to them and get other requests for the grocery list. Make your menu from the sales flier and then make your grocery list using both the menu and the sales flier.
Buy Only What You Need I make my grocery list on business reply envelopes from junk mail inserts. It provides a place for the coupons and cash. We all know that you are supposed to make a list and stick to it. That is impossible for me but not impossible for my husband. I am the family cook so when I go through the store, I end up spending more. Sure, I might pick up an item or two that should have been on the list but reality is that I pick up a lot of things that we really do not need. So, my husband takes the list, shops only the list and comes home with whatever is on the list. I chuckle as I write this because it is important to note that he calls me at least twice during every grocery excursion. If everyone is agreeable, give this chore to the one who is most likely to spend the least.
Cook from scratch There are those who are clueless on how to cook from scratch and know it, there are those who think they are scratch cooks, and finally, there are those who really are scratch cooks. I ask people to check their pantries and refrigerators to determine which kind of cook they are. True scratch cooks usually don't have a lot of the following:
. Boxed mixes such as pancake mix, brownie mix, cake mix, seasoned noodle mixes, seasoned rice mixes, and muffin mixes.
. Jarred items such as meat marinades, pasta sauces, cheese sauces/dips, and salad dressings.
. Packet mixes such as taco seasoning, gravy packets, and soup packets.
. Bottles of iced tea, sports drinks, chocolate milk, and sweet drinks.
. Cans of soup, enchilada sauces, chili, ready-made pasta dishes, and spaghetti sauce.
If you routinely buy a lot of the items above, that isn't scratch cooking. Scratch cooking is making nacho cheese sauce using a basic white sauce and cheese. Scratch cooking is making pancakes and muffins using flour, sugar, milk, oil and eggs. Scratch cooking means making gravy from pan drippings, taco seasoning from spices kept on hand, and iced tea by boiling tea bags in water. Scratch cooks make their own chili and a lot of their own soups. Scratch cooks use basic brown or white rice and season it accordingly. I do not wish to imply that scratch cooking is necessarily the best way to cook, but it certainly is the cheapest way to cook. Most scratch cooks have their favorite packets, boxes and jars, but for the most part, you won't find their pantry full of them.
If you realize that maybe you are not a scratch cook, there are all sorts of websites and cookbooks that can help you become one. It is very rewarding because it allows you to have more control over the quality of food you serve your family in addition to saving money. If you choose not to be a scratch cook, make note of the prepared items you buy regularly and know what the rock bottom prices are for them and try to buy them at those prices.
Clean Like Grandma Did Cleaning supplies has gotten very fancy and very disposable. It is also very expensive. Think about how your grandmother cleaned windows. She probably used basic ingredients like ammonia, vinegar and water. She probably used old newspapers to wash her windows. Take a hard look at your cleaning supplies and see how it compares to Grandma's. Is your glass cleaner now a pack of wipes rather than an off brand bottle that requires a rag? Is your furniture cleaner now a wipe? Does your duster and toilet brush now require disposable replacements? These things are very convenient but add greatly to the grocery bill. My cleaning supplies consist of some very basic items such as ammonia, bleach, soap, and lots of rags made from old t-shirts, towels and sheets. When you wish to save money in any area, consider how grandma handled it.
Prepare for Tomorrow's Meal Tonight This suggestion came from a frugality book I read several years ago. This alone, saves our family about $100 a month. I know from personal experience that one of the hardest things to do at the end of a busy workday is to come home and cook dinner. Regardless of our vocations, we family cooks are busy all day. Thinking ahead by one day can save your family hundreds of dollars a year by avoiding fast food and restaurant meals. When I think ahead by one day, it almost guarantees we will eat at home the next day instead of heading to a restaurant. How many times have you eaten out because you forgot to thaw the meat? When cooking and cleaning up dinner tonight, take some steps to prepare tomorrow night's meal. Check the menu, verify you have the ingredients, gather the ingredients and place them front and center on the counter or on a shelf, and pull out the meat to thaw. If you are going to use the slow cooker, put all the ingredients in the crock and place it in the fridge. If you need another family member to start the process before you get home tomorrow night, put up the reminder sticky note tonight. If you need to marinate meat, whip up the marinade tonight and put a note on the garage door or fridge to remind yourself to pour the marinade over the meat in the morning. Also take the time to pack tomorrow's lunches for those who need one. My husband and teens clean up so I am free to work on these other things while they are busy. A nice benefit is that we are all in the kitchen after dinner still spending family time together. This simple change in habit of starting the process the night before saves us a minimum of $40 a week because it stops us from eating out.
Put Smorgasbord Night on the Menu This represents one of those things I thought everyone did and was surprised to learn otherwise. Smorgasbord night is our term for using leftovers. It is best understood if I describe a typical night. The night before grocery shopping day, I will do smorgasbord night. What I do is inventory everything we have not eaten during the week. I make a special effort to use anything that has a short life span. I generally display all the smorgasbord items on a big white platter or large cutting board for appeal. Here is how it works. One or two leftover pieces of pizza get cut into bite-sized pieces, heated, and placed on the platter. Remaining fruit gets cut into wedges or bite sized pieces and added to the platter. Enough deli turkey for one sandwich will get made into a sandwich, cut into wedges, and added to the platter. Raw vegetables are added. Sometimes I have some ingredients I can pull together from leftovers to make a wrap or a quesadilla. I will pull those together, cut them into smaller portions and add them to the platter. I use party toothpicks on some items like wraps to keep them together or on chunks of pineapple or other fruit for easy handling. Even an extra piece of lasagna or an extra burrito will get warmed and cut into smaller portions. Each family member gets a variety of food and walks away from the table feeling satisfied. I get the satisfaction of a cleaned out fridge and the good feeling of making sure we use up the food before bringing in more food.
Make Do with What You Have I initiated a $25 a week grocery challenge to some members last year. The goal for each family who took the challenge was to commit to cutting their grocery bill to $25 a week to buy bread, milk and perishables so we could use up what we had. The challenge forced us to make our own chicken broth, it forced us to use up some unusual grains we bought for special recipes, it forced us to get very creative with our cooking and to try new things. About a dozen took the challenge and the reality was that several of us felt like our food was multiplying. I found a mystery grain in my cupboard and after figuring out what it was (bulgur), cooked it like rice and now we know my family likes it better than rice. I started making chicken broth from scratch again by throwing the bones into a crock full of water with celery ends, onion ends, a clove of garlic and some pepper. I let it cook all night, turn it off in the morning and allow it to cool. Strain it and place the broth in container to freeze. Several of us made it 7 weeks spending 75% less than what we would normally spend.
Save Bits and Pieces I keep two containers in my freezer, one for beef based items and one for chicken based items. A small portion of beef roast left, it gets cut into soup or stew sized pieces and goes into the container. Six green beans left, they go into a container. A little dab of onion goes into the container. A small bit of gravy goes into the container. When the container is a little over half full, I make soup with it. Did you know that leftover mashed potatoes make terrific potatoes soup the next night?
Take a Trash Inventory Analyze your trash and see if what you are throwing away tells you something. Are you throwing away Ziploc bags instead of rewashing and reusing? Are you throwing out beef or chicken bones before using them to make broth? Are there a lot of paper towels going into the trash instead of using dishrags and cloth towels? When you throw away an old t-shirt, do you cut it up into rags and only throw away the unusable parts. Are you throwing away the heels of bread instead of saving them up and making homemade croutons, using them for French onion soup, or your own Italian bread crumb mix? I dust my house with old gym socks. I put them on both hands and go through with my spray and do double handed dusting. There is a lot of money in that trash can if you look at it with the right thought process.
The Art of LeftoversI don't know if everyone's family is like mine but no one in my house (except me) will actually open the lid of a plastic container to see what is inside it. That is where most of my food waste use to occur. These days, if I have enough roast beef and mashed potatoes left over for someone to have for lunch, I arrange it on a plate. I will put the gravy in a small glass bowl on the same plate. Then I will wrap the plate up with plastic wrap and set it on a shelf in the fridge. If I do this, DH will actually grab the plate and heat it up for lunch. I will often make a platter of fruits and veggies and do the same thing. I find that if I make the food look appealing and set it where it can be seen, it will actually get eaten and I have less waste. When the kids were younger, I would pull the platter of fruits and veggies out of the fridge right after school. I would add crackers and pb or cheese and maybe a couple of cookies. Since they were always starving after school, it was a great time to get them to eat some fruits and veggies. After school, I think they would have eaten cardboard if I arranged it artfully enough.
Learn to Pull a Meal Out of Thin AirYou look in the fridge and there doesn't seem to be much there. This is where creativity kicks in. I can usually pull together a fried rice dish or a quesadilla with just about anything. A little chicken or beef can easily turn into chicken or beef fried rice. Chopped carrots, chopped onion, chopped celery, a florret to broccoli chopped, one egg and the little bit of meat, an egg and some soy sauce can easily become an entree. Some tomato paste, dried herbs, chopped garlic and onion can become pizza sauce. Flour, water, sugar and yeast can become pizza crust. Greens such as fresh basil or some spinach and some cheese can become the toppings. Cheese, spinach, peppers, and onions and a little leftover chicken often become quesadillas for us. Cream cheese mixed with herbs and garlic can be spread on bagels or crackers served along with the remaining fruits or veggies to become a lighter meal. Think about some of the appetizers you see on restaurant menus and try to duplicate them as a lighter meal.
Learn to Say NO to OverconsumptionMy brother was complaining a couple weeks ago that his family goes through 4 gallons of milk a week. I just looked at him and said, "So stop it and don't buy 4 gallons. Only buy 2 and see if they still survive. I guarantee they will." He said he never says NO to milk. I disagree wholeheartedly. Just because they will consume it doesn't mean you are obligated to provide it to the saturation point. The nutritional needs AND the family budget need to be balanced. In our house, if we are out of milk, that means we are out of milk until shopping day. It taught our kids to ration things out a bit and to not be gluttonous about consuming all they wanted. If your kids can holler, "Mom, we are out of milk," and you replace it within 24 hours, you might consider evaluating consumption habits. Allowing family members to think they can consume from a limitless well is both expensive and leads to bad eating habits.
The point of this post is to think a few years back and consider how your grandmother would manage her household. As you get ready to pull an item off the shelf, ask yourself if your grandmother would have bought that item. If not, what would she have used instead? Bets are it is a lot cheaper than what you are about to buy.
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