Not when you can’t even afford ketchup it isn’t
Not that I’m currently that bad off.
Make your own bread.
There are many recipes on no kneed bread dough on the net if you don’t have a mixer or claim time is an issue. OR are totally new to baking. It is becoming quite popular on baking blogs.
Real bread is more filling and can be much more nutritious and is always cheaper than store bought. If you start to do it regularly it is easy and satisfying. Twice a week should be plenty. Just make 2-3 loaves a shot and freeze one. Most dough is quite forgiving and can have multiple uses. Get a recipe you like and put it in a loaf pan for sandwiches. Make small balls for rolls or hamburger buns. Roll them out for pizza. A focaccia dough can do this to a degree. Add and adjust wheat flour to taste. You wont win an award for using one recipe like this but it will work and be satisfying and healthier and cheaper than the grocery store alternatives. Once you get use to it add more recipes. Buy your flour in 50# bags if you have room for it or not.
Shop** frequently** at multiple stores. Get use to the sale cycles and just buy stuff on sale. And do not fear walking out of a store with nothing. Do your best to start memorizing prices. Start with staples and work your way up.
Ethnic markets are awesome. The Hispanic markets near me have cheap produce and spices. I wish I lived near an Indian market, for cheap, interesting beans and spices. If you can swing by a Chinese market, dried mushrooms like shiitakes last basically forever, reconstitute quickly, and are a great pantry staple.
Beans and whole grains are your friends. They’re cheap and healthy. Canned beans are much easier, but they cost twice as much in my local grocery. You might want to cook up big batches of beans, then freeze in single-use sizes. Barley, brown rice, bulgur, etc., cost very little per pound and are better for you than white starches. Bulgur is practically instant food - boil it for five minutes and it’s done.
I agree that not buying spices is a false economy. If you’re going to make good, cheap food that you and your family will not feel deprived eating, you need for it to taste like something. I go all out on the spices, and I doubt it costs me more than $20/year. I agree that ethnic markets are the way to go for this - shop around for spices, because the little glass McCormick jars they sell at my supermarket cost three times what the plastic Badilla ones on the next shelf do, and the ones in the Hispanic supermarket cost less than that. Obviously, if it’s spices or calories, buy the calories, but it doesn’t sound like you’re that bad off.
As others have said, start liking hot cereal for breakfast. A big box of old-fashioned rolled oats is very cheap and hearty; farina has much less fiber to it so I don’t find it very filling. You can make either with powdered milk (very cheap) to add calcium and make it richer. You can also make your own granola with the rolled oats if you prefer your cereal cold in the morning, for not much more money. Bought granola is a huge ripoff.
Make your own bread, and make sure to buy yeast in the big one-pound containers rather than the tiny quarter-ounce packages, which cost at least 20 times as much per ounce. My one-pound container of yeast actually cost less (total, not per ounce) than the tiny envelopes sitting next to it on the same shelf, so even if I only wanted to make bread once, it still would have been cheaper. If you’ve never made bread before, take ‘Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day’ out of the library for an incredibly easy method for pretty good bread - you make the dough once every week or so, put it in your fridge, then pull off lumps of it and bake whenever you want bread. Bread you make on your own is incredibly cheap; I prefer to make bran- or partially whole-wheat breads because they’ve got more fiber, but whatever works for you.
There are plenty of cheap, hearty dinner soups, which with bread can make for a very solid meal. Some soup ideas:
Kale and white bean soup. With sausage and chicken stock if you have it, although without them it costs next to nothing. Kale is $0.99/pound at my expensive Manhattan grocery store. I gave my recipe in this thread, which is full of good soup recipes.
Lentil Soup - I like a red lentil soup, cooked with some bulgur, carrots, and tomato paste, but there are many versions.
Cabbage and Potato Soup (with onions and nutmeg, and perhaps carrots, peas, canned tomatoes, etc. ) The cheapest dinner I’ve got.
Root Vegetables and White Bean Soup (saute an onion and some garlic until starting to brown, add root veggies of choice (carrots, parsnips, potatoes, sweet potatoes, celery root, etc.) along with chopped celery, bay leaf, salt, pepper, a few stems of parsley or dill if you like, and perhaps some winter squash, cook in water to cover until tender, dump in pre-cooked or canned white beans, and partially puree if desired, after removing the bay leaf.)
Split Pea Soup - Start with the recipe on the back of the bag of split peas, then play around with it.
Chickpea and Pasta soup - Saute a couple of chopped cloves of garlic, a chopped carrot, a chopped stalk of celery, and a chopped onion on medium-high for about five minutes. Stir in a teaspoon of dried rosemary and 2 cups of cooked or canned chickpeas, then add water to cover. Cover and simmer for ten minutes. Puree, and season with salt and pepper. Separately, cook 1/4 cup of small pasta (elbows, broken up pieces of spaghetti, whatever). Right before you serve it, stir the pasta into the soup and reheat. Garnish with parley for color if you have it.
Non-Soup Ideas:
Any chili, either vegetarian or not, that’s primarily bean based. For cheaper and healthier eating in general, try to use meat more as a condiment than as a main dish in of itself.
A cheap, non-soup lazy dinner for me is to saute one of the greens we like (kale, broccoli rabe, or chard) with a lot of garlic, then dump in a drained can of white beans when the greens are mostly done and cook until heated through. If you have some chunks of chicken (or probably ham, but I keep kosher and have never tried it), you could probably brown them first, set aside, and then add them back in with the beans. Serve with bread or a grain pilaf.
Bulgur with chickpeas - Saute a big chopped onion on medium until it softens. Add a can of chickpeas, a bay leaf, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, a few shakes allspice, and 1/2 teaspoon cumin
and stir, then add 1 can undrained chopped tomatoes, 1 cup of stock or water, and 3/4 cup medium or coarse-ground bulgur. Cover and let it cook until the liquid is absorbed. Top with chopped parsley if you’ve got it. This is one of my backup dinners, because you can make it purely with pantry items. You can replace the chickpeas with 1/2 pound of ground beef if you like - it’s a great way to get dinner for four out of 1/2 pound of meat. Serve with a vegetable soup (basic cream-of-broccoli/pea/butternut/whatever), or with a simple green veggie or salad. We eat this on its own as well, but then it’s just dinner for two, one of whom has an appetite for two or three normal people. The recipe is easily doubled.
Moroccan vegetable stew over couscous - I gave my recipe in the ‘what did you have for dinner last night’ thread a month or so ago, but I’m having search issues so you’ll have to find it yourself.
Kale and lime soup - not enough on its own to be dinner, but practically free: Saute a minced onion until golden. Add a couple of tablespoons of minced garlic and cook for a minute more, then add 4 cups stock or water and bring to a boil. Turn to low, add 1 tablespoon soy sauce or nam pla and 3 cups stemmed chopped kale leaves. Simmer until tender, about 10 minutes. Righ before serving, squeeze in a fresh lime. You can garnish with cilantro or a chopped jalapeno if you like.
I’m not a big egg person, but a frittata with lots of filling and not so much cheese ought to be very cheap per serving, especially if you use odds and ends kicking around the fridge as your filling. (Saute a chopped onion with some garlic, then add in diced whatever from fridge (greens, cubed potatoes, peppers, zucchini, cooked chopped broccoli, bits of meat, etc.) and saute until cooked. Cool, stir into beaten eggs (1-1.5 per person) with some grated cheese (use this as a flavoring agent, not a filling, since cheese is expensive), then pour into oven-safe pan on stovetop. Cook on medium heat for 10 minutes, then bake in 350 F oven for ten minutes, or until set on top.
Enjoy!
Do you have time for coupons? Admittedly it is very time consuming, but it helps us quite a bit. We are also a 3 person household, and we DO buy a lot of snacks. The fact that we live in a densely populated area and can drive to any of three major grocery stores in under ten minutes makes it easier for us to shop at different stores for different items. My husband scours the circulars and combines sales with coupons. He challenges himself to save a higher percentage each time he goes. It tends to be around 40% (as far as the store tapes are concerned). It’s a good day when a store has something on a buy one get one special AND we have a coupon.
As you’ve noticed, if your diet is boring you’re going to “fall off the wagon” of home cooking and spend too much on takeout and so going for the absolute cheapest of everything can be a false economy.
So for example, every now and then “splurge” on the boneless salmon (which is about $3-4), instead of tuna, and make…
pasta with salmon cream sauce florentine!
Prep:
A. defrost a box of frozen chopped spinach. Squeeze out as much water as you can, until the spinach is compacted into a squishy green ball.
B. dice a small (or half a large) onion into small (1/4" square) peices.
C. Open and drain the salmon (4 oz can or packet)
D. Start boiling water for the pasta
-cook onion over med heat in a 2 TBSP butter or olive oil until it starts to look translucent.
-Add 1 TBSP flour, and stir it into the butter/onions until it is all mixed into the fat. Cook 1-2 minutes, stirring
-Add a cup of milk, pouring in 1/4 cup at a time and stirring quickly or whisking to get all the flour and liquid evenly combined. Let simmer while stirring 1-2 minutes to thicken.
-Add 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese and stir in (optional but tasty)
-Add salmon, stir in
-Add spinach, stir in
-Add a little black pepper, and salt to taste (parmesan cheese is usually salty so taste first if you used it)
Keep sauce warm over low heat while pasta boils. Stir in a little water or milk periodically if it gets too thick. Serve sauce over cooked pasta (I like linguine, but it doesn’t matter much)
You can check out Mark Bittman’s books like “The Minimalist Cooks Dinner” from the library. They are simple, tasty recipes you don’t have to be a fancy pants cook to follow (and typically require no expensive, unusual ingredients)
Learn to love dried beans and the dishes you can make with them. A pound of beans or lentils is around a buck, and rice is similarly cheap. Add in a touch of meat for flavor or accent, some spices, and you’re good to go. If you’ve already got a nice start on your spice rack and a little time, you can eat really good for hardly anything. Hell, if you have a crock pot or a pressure cooker, you don’t even really need all that much time. And beans go a long, long way. One pot is enough for the two of us to stuff ourselves silly, me to eat lunch a couple of days, me to have another dinner one night when he’s gone, and there’s still leftovers that eventually get scrapped.
If you eat a lot of ground beef anyway, you might try some pastitsio. It’s kind of like a greek Hamburger Helper made from scratch, and it’s on fairly regular rotation around here. It’s not the cheapest meal ever, because of the burger and the parmesan, but it’s not that pricey either and all the ingredients are readily available, even here in rural Appalachia.
Brown one pound ground beef in a skillet. Drain all but 1 tablespoon of fat and remove meat from pan. Use reserved fat to cook 1 minced onion, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, and 1/2 teaspoon salt until onion is softened. Add 2 tablespoons tomato paste, 6 minced cloves of garlic and 3/4 teaspoon oregano and stir for about 30 seconds, till you can really smell everything.
Stir in 3 cups of chicken broth (I usually use a spoonful of chicken paste and water), 1/2 cup cream (I use 1/2&1/2 because I have it around for coffee anyway and it’s less fatty), 8 ounces of macaroni, and your beef. Crank up the heat and cook until noodles are tender. Stir often.
Whisk up 1/2 cup cream with 1 teaspoon cornstarch, then stir into skillet until sauce is slightly thickened. Take skillet off heat and stir in 1/2 cup parmesan, salt and pepper to taste. Top with more parmesan and pop into a 475 degree oven till brown on top.
Let cool for several minutes before serving–it comes out of the oven screaming hot and the cheese WILL blister your mouth if you’re not careful. We usually just serve it with some crusty bread and a little bit of green salad.
If that’s the total food bill, no it’s not too shabby. But the OP says they don’t even buy breakfast or lunch foods, which gives me the impression that it’s $35-40/person just for dinners. If that impression is correct, and the OP is shopping every week, there’s plenty of room for that to be trimmed.
If you get bored of oatmeal, some dried fruit and a few nuts can go a long way to jazz it up. And if you get bored of those, and have some time on your hands, muffins and quick breads are super-easy to make from scratch; if you have baking staples in the house, you can whip up a batch of muffins in 10 minutes, and then they take maybe 25 min. in the oven. Almost anything tastes good in muffins: frozen or dried fruit, nuts, bananas, applesauce, canned pumpkin - go crazy once you get the hang of the basic recipe. Here are some recipes to start you off. (Muffin batter can be baked as a quick bread, and vice versa; the only thing that will change is the baking time.)
I just got on a stir-fry kick. Buy a bottle of peanut or teriyaki sauce from the “ethnic foods” section and go to town! Make a big pot of rice (I use brown) and serve stir-fried meat and veggies over a big bed of it. The rice will fill you up and you can control your meat/veggie portions with ratios. One chicken breast + a potato + a zucchini + a couple carrots + whatever else you like (those are my cheap staples, along with peanuts for crunch) will be enough for 4-6 meals, in my kitchen.
Thanks everybody! I posted this right before I went off to work, so I’ve been able to read the thread, but not respond.
First, I hadn’t even thought about Mexican and Chinese stores. I drive by several on my way home from work, and I think they’re definitely worth exploring.
Second, the recipes are awesome 
I’m going to put those on the menu for the next time I go shopping.
Third, I will definitely look for no-knead bread recipes–or, get a dough hook for my Kitchenaid (it didn’t come with that particular attachment). I think that would be a good investment, because my sister loves to have sandwiches for breakfast and lunch. And besides, who doesn’t love freshly baked bread.
As for why we spend so much…I honestly don’t know. We’re not big on snacks, and we don’t buy expensive cereal. The most we get for lunch is store brand sliced turkey and some bread. But I know we’re not spending all that money on dinner food, either. I think it’s because we get everything else the household needs when we go out–cat food, cat litter, hair care/bathroom items (Jaime needs special soap b/c his skin gets grotesquely dry, Lindy needs certain conditioner, etc), paper towels, miscellaneous crap. It just feels like it’s always something. As much as I hate to, I might have to start going to Wal-Mart because I know that stuff is at least cheaper there (but I really hate to).
And I’ve definitely learned a few things…I’ve never even heard of Bulgur…Thank you again everybody.
Assuming you have no wrist or hand problems, kneading bread dough by hand isn’t really that tough, either. I usually knead (by hand) enough dough for three or four loaves at a time. My bread recipe is in in the thread I linked to, or pm/e-mail me for a copy.
In addition to the already mentioned suggestions, remember that turkey is your friend. I can usually buy different parts of turkey for $2-3 a pound. Turkey legs, wings, cutlets, breast or ground can be subbed for chicken and many times pork or beef. It is leaner (more useable meat per pound) and sometimes needs to be seasoned a bit differently, but very tasty.
Another meat option that is good, is venison. If one of you or a friend hunts and no one in the household has issues eating Bambi :D, it usually only costs $1 per pound or less after processing and next to free if you are able to butcher your own. It is lean and if anything like the deer around here, grain fed, eliminating most of the gamey taste.
Eggs and tofu are yet another protein option. Eggs @ $.11 each are dang near free and tofu @ $1.69 per pound can be seasoned to taste like darn near anything.
Farmer’s markets are great for fruits and veggies. Just remember to buy in season. The prices aren’t usually much less than at the grocery, but they taste so much better.
If you are buying the toiletries, laundry and cleaning supplies out of your stated budget, you’re doing pretty well already. Good luck in your efforts to further scale back.
I recommend 2 websites
http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/index.htm
check out the menus and recipes for feeding a family of 4 for $45.00/week and another for $70.00/week. They also have recipes and menus that use food from the Angelfood Ministries food boxes.
http://www.angelfoodministries.com/
Angelfood sells boxes of food for $30.00 and you get about $60.00 worth of food. It is open to anyone and everyone but also takes foodstamps. They are locateg all over the US, you order and pick up at a designated time each month. Here is an example of what you get for $30.00
1.5 lb. Ribeye Steak (4 x 6 oz.)
4 lb. Leg Quarters
1.5 lb. Beef Patties (4 x 6 oz.)
18 oz. Cheese Filled Manicotti
2 lb. Pork Rib Strips
1 lb. Chicken Breast Fajita Strips
1 lb. Ground Turkey
1 lb. Broccoli
1 lb. Peas
6 ct. Oatmeal Variety Box
32 oz. 2% Shelf Stable Milk
8 oz. Blueberry Muffin Mix
12 ct. White Corn Tortillas
1 lb. Pinto Beans
7 oz. Chicken Flavored Rice & Vermicelli
Dozen Eggs
Dessert
ALL THIS FOR THE LOW COST OF JUST $30.00
Having worked at two of the 3 largest grocery wholesalers in America, I can tell you that the markup on such items is much, much higher than on the food items in the store. So you are buying such items at one of the most expensive places to buy them, just because it’s convenient. Stop that, you can’t afford that convenience any more. Don’t buy anything at a grocery store that you don’t eat.
The crockpot/slow-cooker mentioned above is a great idea. And you can usually get them for almost nothing on Craigslist or at yard sales. You can make really good meals from cheaper cuts of meat, and save time, too.
One way to save money is to plan for a progression of meals, using leftovers from the previous one. So oven-roasted chicken with vegetables over noodles makes a great evening meal. Then the leftover chicken sliced makes nice sandwiches for lunch the next day, or chopped up to make chicken salad. Meanwhile the chicken carcass plus the leftover noodles go into the crockpot, to to cook into a nice chicken stew or chicken noodle soup for the next nights dinner.
If you have a freezer, and the money to invest, you can do a lot by buying items when they are on sale, and freezing them for use later. I’m still using green peppers that I bought on sale when they were in season, then cut up, put in plastic bags & froze.
Another good way to save on food costs is to cook dishes that use less of more expensive ingredients (usually meat) by stretching them out with cheaper ingredients. Lots of dishes are designed on that principle:
[ul]
[li]soups & stews.[/li][li]any kind of hotdish or casserole.[/li][li]anything cooked stir-fried, in fact almost any Chinese dish.[/li][li]any dish where the meat or fish is cut up into small pieces, and added to vegetables, pasta, rice, etc.[/li][/ul] There are tons of recipes for these kinds of things, and most taste really good.
I’ve been on a rice kick lately. Do you have a rice cooker?
Take any rice (I use brown or wild rice but white works fine) and prepare it according to the cooker’s instructions. Fill it with water, but I also toss in lots of cheap veggies: Lots of chopped up carrots, celery, onions, minced garlic, and mushrooms. And I mean LOTS. I take whatever I think looks good enough and double it because veggies tend to shrink. Toss in some bouillon cubes or miso paste and set it to cook. Just a few cheap veggies jazz up boring rice quite a bit. I make a big pot for the family to have over the week. They take it out, heat it up, and have it with whatever else they’re eating for dinner. It’s really cheap and convenient.
This is my philosophy. I enjoy eating way too much to eat like a survivalist. I buy bags of small frozen shrimp (I know what you are thinking, but adding three shrimp to anything makes it a fancy meal), bulk packs of thinly sliced steak or pork chops on sale, locally produced sausage, bacon and other things that are kinda expensive and stretch the heck out of them with pasta, rice, veggies ect. Invest in some spices, some flavored oils, top with a little parmesean or butter if you like and you can eat cheap and healthy without even a hint of depriving yourself.
We do have a rice cooker and a slow cooker already–I tend to use my slow cooker two or three times a month, so it wouldn’t be difficult at all to step it up to once or twice a week. We used to eat rice a lot, too. I don’t know why we moved away from that, but it is an excellent way to stretch meat.
I used to avoid buying things like this at a grocery store–but that’s when we lived literally next door to a Wal-mart. I guess I engaged in some selective amnesia about how much those items cost when we moved, and it became easier to buy everything at Smith’s.
So where is a good place to get these things?
I was certain the next line was going to be “…leave a bottle of cheap wine out in the yard as bait.”
In general, a place where such items are the main business, rather than an impulse or convenience buy.
So for pet food, I find the best prices at a big-box pet store, a local pet/nursery place, or a discount store like Target. NOT from a Vet – like grocery stores, pet food is a sideline for Vets, and a Vet’s office is one place with higher prices than a grocery store.
Paper goods, hair care, etc. seem to be cheapest at the big discount stores like Target. Some things that can be stored for a long time, I get in big quantities at CostCo – like a huge carton of paper towels. Much cheaper, and they’ll keep in the closet until I use them up.