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This is part two in a two-part series. If you missed part one, check it out here!
6. Eat Real Foods!
Ok, so this is a tip that can cause your budget to shrink or grow. If you are not worried about consuming organic foods then this doesn’t necessary cause your budget to grow. Real foods are simple foods in the more natural state. Potatoes instead of potato chips…boneless, skinless chicken breasts rather than chicken nuggets…quick cooking oats rather than prepackaged sweetened oatmeal…
The basic idea here is that if you are buying processed or highly packaged foods, you are not only paying for the food, but the packaging, the workers at the factories, the physical building where the item is processed and the taxes the corporation must pay! It all adds up and you end up paying way more than what the food is actually valued at!
This tip also includes cutting out (or at least cutting back) things like soda and drink mixes. Mark and I have stopped drinking soda (although he still gets one at work now and again) and this has definitely helped cut back our budget.
7. Skip the meat!
We love meat and it is good for you too, but it can help your budget if you commit to just one or two meatless meals a week. Typically, the meat in a dish is the most expensive item.
We try to eat something like pasta with marinara sauce or beans and rice at least once a week….it is simple and filling and you won’t even miss the meat if you use some yummy cheese or delicious vegetables!
There are plenty of yummy vegetarian dishes out there! I have a few on my recipes page like Black and White Bean Chili, Spinach, Brown Rice and Cheese Casserole, Tortilla Casserole, and even my Beef and Veggie Soup with Lentils (just cut the beef)! Have fun going vegetarian every once in a while!
8. Stock up!
This is a really big budget saver! There are so many things that can be easily frozen and stored for later that you really must take advantage of great deals! Things like meat, tortillas and berries are things that I always stock up on and freeze when I see a great sale! Thinks like canned goods and bottled beverages can always be stored in the garage or pantry for later use too!
I will use the example of seasonal berries…here in Oregon, you can pick no-spray blueberries for a buck a pound during the late summer months. So last year, we picked close to 40 pounds of blueberries for a mere $40. We use them in breads and, of course, Green Smoothies. If I had bought the equivalent in blueberries at Costco (the best on-going price for frozen blueberries around here), I would have paid $10 for a 5 pound bag…that means I would have paid $80 for my blueberries rather than $40…that’s a savings of $40 just on blueberries for a year!
Also, when meat goes on sale, I clear out a shelf on the freezer and stock up big. Recently New Seasons was having a sale on meat…they had Boneless Skinless Chicken for $4/pound, Ground Lean Sirloin for $3/lb and Ground Turkey for $3/lb. I know that those sound like outrageous prices to pay for meat, but since switching to free-range, grass-fed, antibiotic free meats we normally pay $6-$7/lb for chicken and $5/lb for beef and turkey. Anyway, since meat was so cheap (relatively speaking), I bought up about 40 pounds of chicken breasts and 10 pounds each of sirloin and turkey. In order to have everything stay nice and fresh, I called the meat department and had them wrap it all in meal sized portions (1.5 lbs of chicken breasts/package and 1 pound of ground meat/package)! If you aren’t particular about your meat, this might mean stocking up when chicken breasts are on sale at $1.90/pound or ground beef is at $1/pound (my old “stock up” prices).
When things like tomatoes are on sale, you can buy them up and make marinara sauce or salsa and can it to keep for the rest of the year! If you don’t can (one of my goals for the year is to learn how to), you can easily freeze marinara sauce too (and someone once told me it is easy to freeze tomatoes whole!)! Or make up a few lasagnas and freeze the whole lasagna for a hassle free meal on night!
9. Make it Homemade!
You would be amazed at how much money you can save if you make your foods yourself! Things like bread, tortillas, rolls, muffins, and waffles are SO easy to make yourself (and most freeze beautifully)! If you want to challenge yourself, try making your own kefir, yogurt, or even cheese.
We make our own pizza dough for pizza night as well as our own “chicken tenders” from bread crumbs and boneless, skinless chicken breasts.
If you are the type of person who buys lots of frozen meals (lasagna, enchiladas, macaroni and cheese, etc.), try making those dishes homemade and freezing them for later use. I tend to make a double batch of anything freezable. Before cooking, I put anything that will not be eating that night into the freezer with instructions for how to cook and leave it for another night. This allows me to save money by buying bulk ingredients when on sale as well as using homemade ingredients AND it saves me time later on!
Check out my Soaked Granola Recipe as well as my Basic Whole Wheat Bread Recipe for a few homemade recipes to help cut your budget!
10. Never throw it out!
Ok…if it is rotten you can go ahead and thow it out…
However, if you have a jar of spaghetti sauce sitting in the fridge with a mere 1/4 of sauce left, don’t trash it-dump it into a container and stick it in the freezer. Everytime you have some leftover tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, or tomato paste-add those to the container. Next time you are making up some yummy marinara sauce (or a lasagna), just thaw your tomato “extras” and dump them into the pan with the rest of the sauce.
If you have just a tiny amount of meat or beans left after dinner, save them and make up a quesadilla the next day!…Leftover cooked veggies?? Save them and add to your morning eggs!…You get the idea here right?
If you try a new product and don’t like it, first find out if your store will take it back…stores like Costco and Trader Joes (and I believe New Seasons) will gladly take a product back and let you find something different! If your store doesn’t accept returns, try repurposing the product! For example….I bought some BBQ sauce awhile back that wasn’t my cup of tea for baking chicken in, so I mixed it with a little tomato sauce and added a few spices and herbs and used it as my sauce on a BBQ chicken pizza….once there was some pineapple, chicken, and pepper on the pizza, the sauce was hardly noticed and the flavor was enjoyable!
Sometimes it simply isn’t possible to return OR repurpose a product. In this case, I encourage you to see if any close friends or family would like it…if you can’t cut your budget back, might as well help a friends!
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Aside from couponing (which can help ANY budget) and growing your own produce/raising your own meat & eggs, these are some simple steps to shrink your grocery budget! I hope that they were helpful!
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