add peas!
There is an organization called Self Help and Resource Exchange that can help you save on food costs. You volunteer for 2 hours, and in exchange for that you can purchase $30 of food for $15. That is for a miscellaneous assortment that varies month to month. They also have specials, also half-price, that focus on meat or seasonal items. Your volunteer work can be something you’d be doing anyway, or you can volunteer with SHARE, sorting and distributing food.
http://www.sharefoodprogram.org/about_spa.htm
If you don’t have a large crock-pot, see if someone will lend you one for a while. Also, you may want to consider reusable plastic containers rather than single-use plastic bags to freeze stuff.
Everything everyone else has said. Especially the cheese thing. It is alot cheaper to buy in bulk, grate or slice or whatever and then freeze it. That is what we did in my family.
I get the little packages of brown gravy mix and mix leftover meats (whatever I didn’t use the night before) and pour it over rice.
Canned veggies are cheaper than frozen or fresh. Frozen are cheaper than fresh. If you have to have fresh, alter your diet to what is in season and then count it as a treat if it is really expensive.
Try meatless meals a few nights a week. Beans are good and cheap. Besides that they are cheaper, they are better for you.
Here is a site: http://www.meatlessmonday.com/
You can use less meat products (the expensive part of a meal) and not feel deprived by cutting meat into little pieces- I think this is why casseroles are so popular. For instance, a standard meal may include a chicken breast per person, but a single chopped up chicken breast can feed two if stir fried with veggies, mixed with rice and veggies, or added to a sauce served over rice or noodles.
I try to get as much flavor out of things to make up for less volume. A couple of pieces of bacon will season a dish of fried potatos (with cheese, onions, garlic) and leave everyone feeling satisfied.
I think there is one up there near Drake road on Stadium drive. I saw another one up there somewhere else but for the life of me I can’t remember where. Aldis is pretty cheap too.
I agree with Iteki, you can trade time for money. You can make some killer soups that act as a main course. If I’m trying to save money I like recipies that only use a little meat for flavor. Kilbasa chopped up in a nice rice/bean combination is great. The only thing I would not skimp on is bread. Stay away from the cheap white stuff. Make your own. Make ice tea instead of drinking pop.
What you eat will actually be driven by what you have to cook with. Start with a list of cooking utensils.
You’d be surprised what you can make that doesn’t cost much, tastes great, and is good for you.
A couple of thoughts that haven’t been posted.
[list]
[li]Read the supermarket ads. Your favorite market may be charging a kin’s ransom for eggs this week, but the one down the road has them on sale. [/li][li]See if there is a farmer’s market held near you. This is a great place for produce and sometimes eggs. If the price is the same, you are getting fresher. Many times the price is less, and the food is fresher. Hint shop all the stalls, the guy at the end may be .50 less per pound.[/li][li]Learn a little bit about meat, and what cuts are what. This last week I was jonesing for beef stew. At the supermarket stew meat was 4.35/lb At Sam’s club 3.82/ and it looked like shit. However they had these two packs of the most beauriful boneless chuck roasts for 2.82/lb. I bought one. I cut the smaller roast into stew meat. I made a big pot of stew that fed the whole family last night and tonight. (I still have at least one more meal for us later in the week) I cut the larger roast into two pieces and froze them. One will probably become chili, and the other pot roast.[/li]See if you can find a day old bread store near you. Big discounts on bread.
netscape 6 - Well, ha. I rarely go further north than Vine St on Westnedge, and other than that, no further than Kilgore. Do most of my stuff in Portage. (Or maybe southern K’zoo - it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.)
When I lived in Three Rivers, there was one there, Don’t know if it’s still there, and I don’t want to drive all that way to find out.
Yeah it’s still there. They stopped selling 3 liters though. That really sucks.
Wow, thank you all for your suggestions (and please keep them coming)! I had expected this thread to sink into obscurity, but it looks like the art of eating cheap is still alive and well among Dopers!
I saw several people mention that it is cheaper to make your own bread. I was always led to believe that it was actually more expensive. What’s the SD here?
Another vote for reducing or eliminating meat. Last winter I saw a newspaper article about poor people having trouble feeding their families, in which several were quoted decrying the high price of meat and saying “how can I feed my family?” Um, newsflash: meat is EXPENSIVE. You can get more food (priced by weight) and better nutrition (less fat) by getting your protein from beans, greens, etc.
Mr. S and I almost never buy meat to cook at home (more a dietary choice than cost, plus we find it too messy to cook), but when we do we are amazed at the prices. I do like the ideas for making chicken last for several meals. Soup = good.
It depends on how much/little you pay for bread and how much/little you can get yeast and flour for. Around here the Dollar Tree sells the high end “crammed full of grain” breads for a dollar a loaf when the groceries pull them. I like to have a couple of these on hand in the freezer. If you get flour when it’s on super sale it’s dirt cheap, and the main expense in bread is the yeast. It’s FAR FAR cheaper to get it in the jar rather than the packets, and I believe if you can find it in a bulk store it’s FAR FAR less than that still. Most bread recipes make 2 loaves from the 2.25 Tablespoons of yeast (or whatever the packet works out to) so you can make a couple loaves for like 40 cents or something I think. Plus you can make your own concoctions like thyme, basil & garlic, etc. Yummm!
Don’t bread machines require special mixes, etc? I’ve never really liked “bread machine” bread. The only kinds I’ve had seemed very dense.
Sure, it is possible to buy cheap bread, but really crappy full-of-air whitebread that only fills you for a second. I think the saving is that you can make “expensive” bread, as voguevixen said (that one sounds great btw!). The saving is also in that you make as much as you intend to eat, and therefore aren’t throwing away stale bread that you didn’t have a chance to eat (which you should of course never do, bread and butter pudding is fantastic with stale bread and so are breadcrumbs for the top of an ovenbaked chicken and broccoli gratain). You are probably running the oven to cook something else anyhow sure.
You can freeze bread, and breadcrumbs too of course.
Where I am we have Aldi’s stores which are similar to Save-A-Lot. Great prices for canned vegetables, frozen juice, and dairy products. However, I’ve learned to stay away from the meat.
We also have an Aunt Millie’s bakery outlet. They stock bread products that the grocery stores are getting rid of because they are close to the expiration date. 39 cents a loaf and are usually good for about a week, longer if you refrigerate it.
Wal-mart can be a good source for some things like milk and eggs if the grocery stores don’t currently have them on sale.
If there is a Big Lots where you are, stroll in there about once a week and see what they have. Usually their prices aren’t any better than grocery store prices, but sometimes they get a huge shipment of something that they have to unload cheap, like cereal, canned foods, etc.
At some Sam’s they have butcher shops/delis where you can get deli meat much cheaper than the supermarkets (ham and turkey about $2.50 per pound). You usually have to buy about 2 or 3 pounds, so figure out how much you’ll use in a week, put that in the fridge and freeze the rest.
I’m an avid coupon clipper. Collecting coupons is a great way to get cheap food, especially if your local grocer’s double and triple them. If you get the Sunday paper, clip the coupons for products you would buy if you got a really good deal on them. When products you want go on sale, check to see if you have a coupon for it and you could get it for practically nothing. I save a lot of money this way and get things like Rice-A-Roni for nothing and cereal for less than a dollar per box. Just be concerned on how much the product ends up costing, not what you’re saving.
One of my favorite cheap meals is quesadillas. Get some chicken (bone-in chicken is usually on sale for $1 per pound) or cheap steak as mentioned above and cut it in small chunks, cook it with taco or fajita seasonings. Spray Pam on a clean frying pan and place a flour tortilla flat (can usually get a 10 pack for about $1) on it. Load one side of the tortilla with chicken, cheddar cheese, and whatever else you like (onion, green peppers). Fold the tortillas over and cook each side until the cheese is melted. Yummy.
Eggs: they’re cheap, like $1.19 for a dozen large. A good meat substitute. You can have fried or scrambled eggs for breakfast, you can make an egg salad and eat sandwiches for three days, and an omelette with cheese and veggies for dinner. At 2 eggs per meal, you could do the main course of 6 meals for under $1.50!
Also, if you have a bread maker, you probably could save some money by making your own bread. Pound for pound, it would probably be slightly cheaper to buy flour and yeast than to buy the pre-made bread. But if you bought cheap bread and waited for sales and bought in bulk and froze, you might do better buying pre-made. It really could go either way…
Avoid the chain grocers for all but the items only they carry.
Your first stop on any shopping trip should be a 99-cent store. They have many, many canned goods, spices, and other kitchen things (wraps, foils, bags, utensils, pots and pans, tupperware, etc), all for 99 cents or less. The last time I was in there, I got some frozen tuna steaks, 4 oz for 0.99, frozen smoked salmon, frozen scallops, frozen italian sausage, red and green enchilada sauce, red grapefruit sections, salad dressing, potato chips, a loaf of bread, pita bread, eggs, milk, toothpaste, a plastic watering can, a quart of motor oil, a roll of gift wrap, and some Balance bars.
(Image I will never forget: The homies in the next aisle, wearing their hip-hop fashion duds, were all lined up with their purchases for the evening’s feast: they were preparing to dine like royalty on a budget of less than $5 each. It was so ghetto, but also damn smart… I wish I had known about the 99-cent store before I met my wife.)
Then find a produce center… either a farmers’ market or an ethnic grocer or a small independant grocer. The produce may not be of the highest cosmetic quality, but for taste and nutrition and cost effectiveness, it can’t be beat.
It seems like nobody knows about these places except for poor ethnic moms and some restauranteurs. I just googled for the one in my town (Lake Avenue Produce Center in Pasadena CA) and the only mention of it was for city approval of its storefront redevelopment. And this place has an excellent deli counter, too (the prices aren’t better – the quality is).
re: Bread, and the making thereof.
I have a recipe from The Minimalist Cooks Dinner by Mark Bittman that makes awesome bread and there are only 4 ingredients:
All-purpose flour
water
salt
yeast
Buying the flour when in goes on sale (as low as 0.89 for 5 lbs) and the yeast in bulk at the food coop, one loaf costs about 0.25. It’s really good, too.
Bread machines don’t need mixes, but they do better with bread flour, which can be more expensive. I happen to like my bread dense and find Bread machine bread too airy.
Home Made Hamburger Helper Mix
This is really good…
1- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1- 1/3 cups non-fat dry milk
3 tablespoons onion powder
1/3 cup minced dried onion
1 tablespoon garlic powder
2 teaspoons beef bouillon granules ( in the soup department)
2 tablespoons dried parsley flakes
Mix all ingredients. Makes 2-1/2 cups of mix. Depending on taste, use 1/2 to 2/3 cup of the seasoning mix for each pound of hamburger… Add Noodles
Store in an airtight container for up to 3 months without flavor loss.
Make your own French Fries!! People look at me funny when I tell them I make my own.
They are a hundred times better than any fast food fries.
All you do is slicem’ and fryem’… *Lightly salt after frying
and you get NONE of the “preservatives” that are added to the above commercial products…
The dollar store isn’t always less expensive - sometimes you can get the same items for .89 cents at a regular store. It just seems less expensive because it’s at the discount store.
Baking your own bread is much cheaper than buying bread. I buy 40lb bags of bread flour at Costco and jars of yeast. I break the four down into 1 gal ziplock bags and store them in the vegetable drawer in my fridge. A loaf of bread costs about 25 cents to make, tastes better and is easy. I no longer use my bread machine (my puppy chewed the cord in half) but the actual work part of bread only takes about 15 minutes. The rising time is what takes the time. And I like the results of the handmade bread better.
We had lots of children and my parents did things like casseroles and pancakes for dinner. You can make french toast from stale bread.
StG