I am always surprised by how expensive food is these days. It seems like every time we go to the grocery store, the food we usually purchase has increased in price yet again. Bummer :( Here are a bunch of ways that we save money on food...
- We cook from scratch. A lot.
- We generally use local grocery store apps when we shop and only buy items that are on sale then build menus around what we bought on sale (instead of making a menu then buying the items at full price).
- We love to buy deeply-discounted loss leaders or half-off clearance items then make interesting meals with them.
- One thing we don't buy is "processed" food that is simple and cheap to do at home (I can't believe people buy a cut up watermelon when it is easy--and much cheaper--to do this at home!).
- We shop at Costco and Sam's Club for staples (50 pound bag of rice, huge box of old fashioned oats, cases of canned tomatoes, etc).
- We shop at the local Mexican grocery store for super cheap produce.
- We shop at the local International Market and Filipino grocery store for specialty items (dried fish, kasha, patis, etc).
- We shop at Dollar Tree for random, inexpensive items like bread, jelly, tortillas, etc. Recently they had Heinz 57 for $1.25 a bottle so we bought a bunch of them.
- We cook large portions of food like soups, stews, and Filipino dishes then freeze the leftovers for future meals.
- I like to bake so at least once a week we eat homemade bread, cookies, desserts, etc.
- Hubby likes meat so he generally uses a small hunk of meat cut up into small pieces instead of cooking slabs of steak for example.
- I rarely eat meat so I use beans and lentils in place of meat in soups, stews, tacos, burritos, etc.
- We generally take our drinks in insulated tumblers anytime we will be out and about for a while.
- Hubby likes soda so we buy this on sale, usually on the "buy a half case, get one free" sales.
- I almost always drink water. Instead of buying bottled water, we bought some five-gallon water jugs, fill them up at the local water station (tap water tastes like Lake Mead here so most people buy purified water), then I fill up a pitcher of this water and keep it in the refrigerator.
- We also bring our own food when we will be out and about for the day (ie: when hubby bowls, hubby plays poker, or when I go on long walks). Hubby likes sandwiches and I like to heat up leftovers and put them in an insulated container then cut up veggies or easy-to-eat fruit to complete the meal.
- If we do eat out, it is almost always with a coupon (Subway, Del Taco coupons in weekly junk mail flyers) or free (from hubby's poker comps at the casino).
- Also when we eat out, we usually only order one meal, split it, and still have leftovers to take home.
- We keep a fully-stocked pantry so it is always easy to whip up some kind of quick meal (like spaghetti, canned soup, tacos, etc).
- We buy certain things like a spiral ham, turkey, etc after the holidays, put them in the freezer, then cook up the items when we have a party or other event to cook for.
- We have never used Door Dash or Uber Eats (the fees are outrageous!).
- Hubby always makes coffee at home in a $5 drip coffee maker he bought at the Goodwill.
- I (finally) broke my addiction to daily "Blast" coffee drinks at Baskin Robbins. Now I buy coffee ice cream at the store and make my own coffee drink for a fraction of the cost.
- Hubby watches food videos on YouTube then tries cooking new dishes all the time.
- We often cook for parties. Hubby is an excellent cook so whenever people invite us to parties we usually bring a (Filipino) main dish and I bring a (Filipino) dessert. This is much cheaper than buying a "party-sized" dish at Costco to bring.
- When we host parties, we tend to cook food that "stretches" like a huge bowl of chicken Caesar salad featuring $5 Costco chickens, big pots of spaghetti, Asian noodle dishes, fried rice, etc.
- Speaking of Costco chicken, we can make about six meals with one chicken: roast chicken wings/legs, shredded chicken for tacos, shredded chicken for chicken Caesar salad, shredded chicken for chicken salad sandwiches, chicken thighs for a pasta side, then use the bones for soup.
- We hard-boil a dozen eggs then use them throughout the week (egg salad sandwiches, deviled eggs, potato salad, garnish for soup, a quick protein snack, etc).
- We boil a bunch of potatoes then use them throughout the week (potato salad, boiled potatoes with gravy for a side dish, fried with onions and eggs for breakfast, etc).
- Tortillas have a dozen uses: breakfast wrap, salad wrap, turkey or ham wrap, bean and cheese burritos, enchiladas, etc.
- Pizza is super easy (and often cheaper) to make at home. Hamburgers taste way better when made at home. Pretty much any restaurant food can be easily--and cheaply--made at home. YouTube has an infinite number of videos on this topic.
- Speaking of YouTube, Julie Pacheco is one of my favorite YouTubers when it comes to ways to stretch your food budget.
- We hate to waste leftovers; they are either left in the fridge then incorporated into the next day's meals or labeled and put in the freezer to eat at a later date.
- We also give a lot of food away. The neighbor's kids have me on speed dial when they are craving brownies. Hubby's cousins drop by regularly and take home frozen Filipino leftovers. We often bring snacks for hubby's bowling team.
- Occasionally we will go to ethnic restaurants for food I can't recreate at home like Indian food, Ethiopian food, etc.
- When we buy bakery items at the grocery store, we buy them at half price on the day-old rack.
- Lots of "processed foods" can easily be made at home like yogurt, pudding, dried fruit, granola bars, beef jerky, etc.
- Some people in our area save money on food by having a garden (I haven't had much luck doing this in our desert environment, however).
- Another way to save money is to buy in bulk then can/pickle/smoke/freeze the items (like buying a giant bag of cucumbers and making pickles or buying strawberries on sale and making jam).
- Gleaning and foraging was popular when we lived in Washington. Each season we would pick wild blackberries and huckleberries for the freezer while friends would go out hunting for wild mushrooms.
- Speaking of DIY food sourcing, we used to hunt, fish, dig for clams, go crabbing and shrimping, dip for smelt, etc. and fill up the freezer that way.
- Soups, stews, and chili are easy to make with leftover items...a bean or a grain, assorted vegetables, a can of diced tomatoes for the base, liberal use of spices, and you have a cheap and yummy meal.
- We usually buy spices at ethnic stores as they are much cheaper than at the regular grocery store.
- I clean out the fridge every week; this way we know what food needs to be used up soon (also I hate reaching into the produce bin and find decomposing vegetables...yuck).
- We rarely eat out for breakfast as restaurant breakfasts are so expensive compared to the price and simplicity of cooking breakfast at home (for example, a bowl of oatmeal at a restaurant might be $7 while it costs 70 cents to make it at home!).
- Likewise, buying things like drinks and desserts at a restaurant are way more expensive than they should be so we drink water at restaurants and eat dessert at home.
- When in doubt, we check the unit cost for grocery items to make sure we are getting the best deal for our money. Hubby and I often do some quick mental math to determine if the almond milk is cheaper in the half gallon or gallon size when the gallon size is on sale.
- Another thing hubby does when we shop for groceries is whip out his cell phone then use the calculator to record all of the prices for the items we are buying; more often than not, we get overcharged for an item or two and need to have the cashier correct the price.
- When there is a random clearance or "too good to be true" price on an item, hubby takes a picture of it to show the cashier if the price doesn't ring up correctly.
- We try not to "over buy" food. Several years ago, the 99 Cent store had bags of brown rice for super cheap so we bought dozens of bags that we never got around to using and which eventually went rancid so we ended up throwing them away. What a waste of money!
