Food and Finances

Be A Supermarket Genie
My wife is a great shopper when it comes to buying food. Most people don’t know that she has managed to keep our grocery budget to $250 a month for a family of four for years. (And I eat like a horse). She comes from an extremely frugal family where lessons on savings were learned early. She and her sister, Linda Reyburn,  have come up with a few tips to help others consider new ways and ideas of saving in the food area of their lives. Enjoy and save!

Generics. Don’t know about you, but sometimes I find that generics aren’t as good as name brands. In those situations one might choose name brands. But for things such as flour, sugar, salt, bleach or virtually dozens of other items you find in the grocery store, the only discernible difference is price. Paying more for an identical product is more than extravagant; it’s stupid.

Lists. Writing down what you need — and ignoring everything not on your list — will save money. It will also save time and fuel expense by preventing repeat trips to the store for things you forgot.

Stoop and bend. Smart merchants place the most profitable items at eye level and on end caps. Stoop, bend and look around for the best values. These days, stores make it easy to see prices per ounce; don’t look at the red price tag, look at the real amount in the fine print – you’ll be shocked by the difference!

Coupons. For decades, coupons have been a shopper’s best friend. These days online coupon sites have made them easier to find and use. If you haven’t used a coupon search engine yet, do so. It’s a new routine. Internet first, then store.

Don’t shop hungry or in groups. It makes you buy more, and extra people often suggest things that you want to buy but really shouldn’t – in order to make them happy for the moment, you are putting your budget at risk.

Bottled water makes advertisers wealthy, and keeps you poor. If you really have concerns about water quality, buy a cheap water filter and fill your own bottles.  Simply drinking the water at a colder temperature makes it taste better; place them in the fridge, and you can be hydrated and save money at the same time.

Grate savings. You pay more to have someone else grate your cheese for you, or your carrots. (Don’t even get me started on pre-cut fruit and vegetable trays – what a racket!) You’ll also save by cutting up whole chickens, slicing your own pickles, becoming your own cold-cut butcher and using a blender or rolling pin to make your own bread crumbs.

Save on starch. Fancy boil-in-bag or flavored rice’s routinely cost 10 times the amount of the old-fashioned kind. All it takes to make rice is the ability to boil water. Bags of smaller potatoes are often half the cost per pound of big baking potatoes. Bake two little ones instead of one big one. Your stomach won’t notice.

Home is Where the Real Savings Are
Though savings in supermarkets can be exciting, it doesn’t touch what you can save just by doing things at home. Cook from scratch is probably the best way to save on food — the more prepared the food, the more it costs, and the less healthy it is. If you’ve ever really sat down and calculated the amount of your paycheck that is spent on eating out (because you’re tired or your spouse is tired or you forgot to brown-bag it to work), the cost can make you ill.  Even the “value menu” adds up alarmingly.

Alter your recipes. You can substitute cheaper veggies (sliced carrots) for more expensive ones (zucchini). You can also probably reduce the cheese or sugar in your baking slightly without noticeably altering the taste; ingredients are often ‘rounded up’ for easier measuring. There are ways of stretching just about everything. Make your cookies and muffins a bit smaller, and make more of them. Add a little more water to your concentrated juice. Add extra potatoes, beans, etc., to stretch casseroles and soups.

Extend yourself. Adding cottage cheese to hamburger will enhance the flavor, add protein and allow you to increase servings from four to six per pound. Substitute apple sauce for oil in baked goods, for extra health and extra savings; the moisture content is the same. It’s all about tricking the taste buds. New life for old bread. Leftover bread and rolls can be toasted in a toaster oven and chopped up into croutons, or added to hamburger meat for patties that hold their shape, or made into stuffing. So Thanksgiving comes a little early!

Freezer Rules
The freezer is your friend. Always cook extra, then freeze the leftovers. That saves the time you need to be able to cook from scratch, and reduces your excuses for those nights when you ‘just don’t feel like cooking’.

Milk your budget. Milk about to expire? Freeze it. You can thaw it out and use it later. Same with things that might be rotting in your vegetable drawer: onions, parsley, tomatoes, garlic. Not only will freezing keep it from rotting, it will keep it from stinking.

Creative leftovers. Nearly every meal ends up with a few odds and ends that aren’t eaten. Keep two lidded plastic containers in your freezer. After every meal, put veggie bits in one and meat bits in another. You can then periodically sprinkle the bits of meat on your pizzas, or combine the two and make a great soup. Always save the bones from your meat, so that you can throw them in the crockpot and have chicken soup or beef broth in a matter of hours.

The Power of Produce
Grow your own. Next time you buy fresh garlic, save the four inner cloves. Plant them about 1/2 inch deep. In less than six months, you’ll be in garlic city. There are many other herbs and vegetables that you can grow yourself, such as basil, rosemary, squash, carrots and green beans, to name a few. For those with a black thumb, go to a farmer’s market.

Keep produce fresher longer. Soon as you get home from a shopping trip, take 10 minutes to cut a thin slice off the end, wrap the ends of lettuce, celery, broccoli, or any other root vegetable in a wet paper towel, and place it in a plastic bag. That way, you won’t waste dollars on vegetables that wilt or go yellow in a matter of days.  Keep potatoes in the fridge, and place wet items such as tomatoes in plastic containers with holes, or in net bags. They will last up to a week longer without molding.
Make your own salad dressing. Mix 1/2 cup of vinegar, 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt, 1/4 teaspoon of pepper, 1/2 teaspoon of dry mustard, 1 minced garlic clove and 1 cup of salad oil. Voila! Delicious salad dressing at a fraction of the cost.

Bottom line? There are lots of ways to save on food. Some will be appetizing to you, some won’t. But there are few things in life tastier than paying off debt and achieving your monetary objectives, so if you harness any of these ideas, be sure to apply your savings to debt destruction.