That’s what I was trying to get at in my post #37. There are varying levels of involvement a person might want to have in meal planning & executing. But everything you choose not to do is something you have to pay someone else to do.
In my experience, it doesn’t take long to learn to joint a chicken, and if you don’t have a basic cookery book that will explain this and a thousand other things that are worth knowing, plus a really good kitchen knife, it’s time you did. It’s also hard to damage a chicken to the point of inedibility while you’re learning, so acquiring the skill costs very little in real terms and pays back many times over.
You raised an issue and I responded. You make up your mind.
The applicable phrase here is, I believe, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” You pay in money, or you pay in time. Now, some people enjoy cooking and preparing food, and some get a thrill from saving money. For those people, the time is hardly even paid; they enjoy it. For others (like myself) there’s no money to spend, so time it is. I would eat out a lot more than I do, if I could, but I can’t afford it, so I don’t.
Certainly it is possible to make food cheaper than to but it at a restaurant (or else, how could the restaurant make any money?), but you have to be willing to spend time on the endeavor. It may not be worth it to you, which is fine if you can afford to not cook, but it isn’t really all that hard, and you may find it worth the trouble to learn. It is a valuable skill, in the most basic meaning of the term. And you may, in fact, come to love it. Many people do.
Just like with a crockpot or a chest freezer, you have to regard your spice rack as an investment, rather than mentally adding the whole cost of that box of pepper to that one meal. I mean, I’ve probably got $50-$75 worth of spices in my cabinet at any one time.
And just take it for granted that a spice you buy for one recipe may get used in a bunch of other stuff, or it may just sit there forever after: it’s hard to tell until you’ve done a bit of cooking. I had to learn by doing that I’d go through cumin at a pretty good clip, but that jar of turmeric might not be used up in this decade.
Our Safeway commonly has whole chickens for that price. If you want to save money on grocery shopping, you need to look at the circular religiously, and plan a menu around the specials. Boneless skinless breasts are more, but of course you eat all of them.
Sure, but that’s not hard to do. “Bulk purchase” just means buying full-size containers rather than the smallest packages or “kits”. And it’s not much work to put leftover ingredients (or cooked foods) in the freezer.
Or if you make a meal for one, and have the leftovers for the next two days for lunch and diner.
I’m not sure it takes all that much time. Some meals do, but not all of them. Plus, you can do other things while waiting for stuff to cook, which you can’t do in a restaurant. When I was in college I cooked for myself in the dorm for the last two years (using hot plates and toaster ovens) and though I might have spend a little more time than those who ate downstairs in the dining hall, it wasn’t all that much more. And that was best case for eating out - going to a restaurant, waiting to be seated and waiting to be served takes time also.
I suspect someone just learning to cook takes longer to prepare a meal than someone experienced.
I bet that includes cleaning supplies, toilet paper, and the like. We spend about $115 a week for the two of us, and we don’t cheap out.
Even when we buy something relatively expensive, like crab, we compare it to what we’d pay in a restaurant and we clearly save a ton. You have to average things out. When you start out you pay a ton for spices and things, but after a while those purchases are rare. Before Christmas we ate down the freezer, and we found that some weeks we could take our entire weeks worth of purchase through the express lane.
I generally find cooking enjoyable but I don’t really care to buy whole chickens and joint them. For basic chicken taco type things doing it cheap and easy. Buy a rotisserie prepared chicken at the mega mart. Some salsa, cheese and tortillas. Pull the chicken apart and shred by hand. This should be enough meat for chicken tacos for 4 to 8 one person meals. If you think the cheap meal at the Mexican place next door is putting more meat than that in the meal you are incorrect. If that is to much work then buy the bags of frozen skinless boneless breasts. It is not like the chicken in the market has not been frozen. Unless you paid more for chicken that explicitly says it has never been frozen the chicken in the market has been frozen and pre thawed for your convenience.
Also I did not see any rice or beans being used. Make a big batch of rice and then freeze the rest in meal sized portions. Rice freezes really really well. Just nuke the bags for a few minutes and you are good to go.
As has been pointed out by virtually every body you can’t make a meal cheaper than an inexpensive restaurant especially if we are counting the taco place around the corner. You can however make a weeks worth of meals cheaper than inexpensive restaurant. But probably not a whole lot cheaper and If you think of cooking as a chore you may be better off going to the taco cart.
Hey that’s interesting. I’ve never tried freezing rice. If I have left over (plain) rice I usually put it in a box in the fridge and when I want to use it I just boil some water, dump the rice in for a minute or so and drain it. Don’t think you can do that easily with frozen rice, though (and I don’t have a microwave).
I think they way you reheat rice from the fridge will work for rice from the freezer. It will just take a little longer. Give it a shot worst case you ruin 10 cents of rice.
I used to have a website link that helped people plan meals to save on groceries.
I learned a lot from the website - all I remember is that it also had a recipe search and you entered your main ingredient(s) and it would provide you with several recipes incl. leftover ideas. (for example: if you would have bought a roasted chicken for about the same price, you could have stretched the next meal into a casserole (mex casserole wouldve used the cheese, sour cream, and salsa) or a homemade chickensalad for sandwiches, bbq chk sandwiches, chkn enchaladas, etc etc)
When my kids were younger, we would spend half a day cooking, portioning, and freezing meals. Yes, it was several hours of cooking & cleaning but we did it as a family AND it provided a significant head start on meals for the next month or so.
CROCKPOT. Crockpots are your friend - especially when dealing with cheaper cuts of meat. Heck, I even put frozen chicken breasts in, covered with cream of whatever soup, hit the low setting and went to work. That takes what - 5min? Everything comes out cooked & tender & really good flavor.
The key to saving on groceries is to plan out the meals for the week up to a month. If you buy a-la-carte, it will be more expensive. Find a recipe site - most of them are free!
I don’t understand how 2 people could eat an entire block of cheese.
I cook and eat at home for every meal, still cheaper than eating out (both in terms of saving calories and dollah dollah bills) and my biggest problem is that I can’t eat the food fast enough, even when buying in severely reduced quantities. The freezer is my best friend.
I actually sat down and calculated how much money I saved one month by not eating out, not drinking Starbucks etc…it was just under $400. Then again, I refuse to eat $1.99 burritos so maybe that had something to do with it. I feed myself to the tune of $40 bucks a week maybe* (I don’t have the skillz to cut up whole chickens but a package of 4 boneless skinless breasts will last me approximately 2 weeks). I guesstimate much less. And those $400 per month now go into 401K or whatever stupid name the feds have given it.
*Recognising that I’m a cheaper grocery bill because I don’t eat red meat, nor do I drink alcohol, juice or soda.
Seconded. I’m still in the learning phase now. Fancy meals (that require more than two ingredients) are still difficult for me, but I’m starting to get simple stuff like steak and potatos down. Used to be I’d blow three hours just trying to cook chicken and rice properly; I was highly stressed and ruined the meal more often than not. Now I can throw stuff in the oven, walk away, and come back reasonably confident I’ll have something edible. Just takes practice and figuring out what works.
I’ll give it a try. I’m also going to try and freeze this potato curry base I’m making and see if that works.
Superfluous Parentheses, I make and freeze curry bases all the time. It’s actually how I deal with cooking during the weekday. Part of what used to drive me out of the house to eat out was the labour involved in coming home (I live by myself) and cooking a meal that I’m willing to eat. Since I only eat stuff like Indian, Thai etc., it mean having to sit there and dice and make all the curry bases from scratch and as miss elizabeth said, that’s a time investment. I’ve since figured out that the easiest way to do things is to make the base ahead of time and freeze it, then toss it in the fridge the day before and just dump the vegetables or meat or eggs in. It’s basically the equivalent of making your own pre-made curry sauce.
It’s been said already in this thread, but a lot of the “single pot” dishes like soup, (pasta) sauces and stews are relatively easy to make and store, and they’re also relatively robust with regards to cooking time - which means less timing stress - and if you’re still way off estimating cooking times, you could just cook the sauce / stew until it’s done, turn off the heat, cook the rest of the dish (pasta or potatoes don’t take that much time) and re-heat the sauce.
You can just wrap rice in saran wrap and put it in the freezer. When you’re ready to use it, just heat it in a microwave (still wrapped) for 2 minutes or so. No need to add water or anything. I have a rice cooker but I still make several cups of steamed rice at a time, and freeze the rest in 1-meal portions.
nevermind…missed page two