The Quick Start Guide to Saving Money on Food
When you run into a month where there's "more days than money" here are some quick tips to help you cut back on your grocery bill.
Make an inventory of what you have on hand
Look in your pantry, refrigerator, and freezer. Make a list of every meal you can make without buying anything. Think about leftovers from dinner to provide lunch the next day. Here are some ideas for using up leftover bits:
- Bake bread or muffins if you can
- If you've got a bit of plain yogurt and some milk (even dried), you can make more yogurt
- Make a good soup from from leftovers or whatever you have around
- Make calzones from little bits of meat and vegetables can become calzones
- If you've tortillas, make quesadillas (or make your own tortillas)
- Make a chicken pot pie or beef pot pie with leftover chicken can become chicken pot pie
- Make fried rice or lo mein with leftover meat of any kind (or just veggies)
You get the idea. And in the future, these ideas might provide some incentive to save those bits of leftovers rather than throwing them away.
What can you make by buying just one more thing?
Get creative. If you just had X, you could make Y. Scour your old cookbooks. Look in the more "complete" ones that often have great ideas for using up stuff. Search the web with phrases like "leftover chicken recipes" or go to a site like Cooking By Numbers and list what you've got. They'll give you some great ideas. Other good are Expendable Edibles, Hillbilly Housewife, plus this site of Ramen Recipes. Student Cooking in the UK is another good source.
Shop the loss leaders to round out your menu
By now you probably have nearly a week's worth of menus. Pull out your grocery ads. Or go online to the SundaySaver. If you're not vegetarian, use my Cost Per Serving Calculator to see which cuts of beef, chicken, pork, or fish really gives you the best buy for your money. Plug in the sale price and compare the cost per serving. Then think how you can stretch that even further by lessening the amount of meat you use for a serving. Stretch it with fried rice, soup, burritos, and casseroles.
And even if you aren't vegetarian, think about some great vegetarian meals you can make. A pound of dried beans around here is usually just over $1. Pinto beans and cornbread will fill you up cheaply. Or cook them up and refry them for chalupas. If you've got eggs, make a quiche. Broccoli and tofu with peanut sauce over rice is cheap and healthy. Many of these vegetarian recipes could become a main dish or be combined to make a complete meal.
Don't forget breakfast
Boxed cereal can be very expensive. Here are some alternatives to think about:
- Breakfast burritos
- Cornmeal mush
- Granola
- Pancakes and serve with maple flavored syrup.
Think outside the box--just don't go spend $5 on a box of sugared nothing. Leftovers make a great breakfast sometimes and my kids are partial to soup on cold winter mornings.
Back to Cooking on a Budget
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