A couple of people have recently asked me about my food budget so I thought I'd share some of my top tips/personal guidelines for shopping.
I love food. If you
haven’t figured that out yet, you probably haven’t talked to me in person or
read more than one of blog posts. If we
were rich, I would live on nuts, expensive types of seafood such as shrimp and
lobster, rich cheeses, locally raised cattle and poultry, berries in and out of
season, and we would take exotic foodcations around the world. Ha, a girl can
dream. We are a single-income family and
that single-income isn’t particularly amazing so we live on a budget. Here are some tips on how we keep our food
budget very low.
Money is such a relative thing these days. One man’s poor is another man’s rich. Here are a couple of food related
examples.
There are two basic extremes: 1. the lady I heard on the
radio who said she was spending $250 a week for a family of five and thought
her budget was fairly low (maybe she had three teenage sons who live to
eat. I acknowledge that this very really
possibility). 2. The stories you hear of
the family of 5 who only spends $250 a month on food.
Where do we fall on that chart? Well, without going into any details, I will
say that we are somewhere in between. I
think that our food budget is very modest but, at the same time, we don’t
starve or constantly pinch pennies on every little thing. As I mentioned in the previous post, if you
include the 2 ½ y/o, we eat for less than $4/day. If you only count Aaron and myself, we
probably eat for just a little more than that. I once read a blog post about someone who was
on a tight budget and spent just about the same amount as our family for a
family our size. She wrote up some of
her favorite recipes which included several hot dog recipes and recommended
buying chips at certain times to save money.
Way to depress this foodie. I
like hot dogs and chips once in a while but for the same amount of money she
could be eating much yummier and diverse food.
So I’m going to share with you some of my food buying
guidelines. I'm not going to call them rules because I sometimes "break" them. But first a few
qualifications:
- Let me start by saying that they are only guidelines. I once made hotdogs wrapped in crescent rolls served with a side of tater tots for dinner. I loved every second of rebelliousness and I still have yet to repent. I break every single one of these guidelines from time to time with no shame.
- We try not to be judgmental of others’ food choices. I used to catch myself judging the person in front of me at the grocery store based upon the food in their cart. Then I got pregnant with Kira. Driven by my morning sickness, I quickly loaded my cart with ginger ale, ramen noodles, mac ‘n’ cheese, crackers, and cereal. Talk about a log in my own eye.
- We love to eat food with other people no matter what it is. I am very blessed to say that we are remarkably unpicky eaters. I firmly believe that food is meant to be shared and I would love to share it with you even if all I have to offer is hot dogs and potato chips. Seriously. I personally used to be terrified to make food for certain people because they had, what seemed to me, rigid eating guidelines. Can’t eat gluten, wouldn’t eat meat, only ate organic, etc. Fortunately, I’m getting over that phobia and I never want to appear that way to other people unless I find out that one of us has a severe food allergy.
Here are several cheats/qualifications:
- We have a separate budget for eating out.
- We have a separate budget for helping others out which I sometimes pull from when we have company over for dinner.
- We grow a garden and do not include the expense in our food budget. Friends and family sometimes give us some of the overflow from their gardens. This really only saves us any money for maybe 2 months in the summer.
Ok, so now on the guidelines. I have quite a few so I’ll break this up into
a couple of posts.
Guideline #1: Plan out your menus in advance.
Easy peasy. It takes
a little work but saves a lot of money and time. That you can know that lettuce you used on
your wonderful panini today won’t be wasted but can be used up tomorrow in a
salad. And you won’t be making as many
trips to the store so you can save on time and gas. It also saves on frustration.
Guideline #2: Shop at
more than one grocery store.
I realize that this one might depend on how many small
children you have. I currently shop at
two different grocery stores and buy milk at a third. I personally like to begin my shopping trip
at Aldi as they generally have the best prices.
I like to get some of my produce, most of my meat and my cheese from
Kroger. I try to avoid Wal-Mart like the
plague. Some people will tell you that
shopping at Wal-Mart all the time is the cheapest way to go. That is actually wrong. If you compare the prices and the sale
prices, you’ll find that some things may be cheaper at Wal-Mart but quite a few
of them are cheaper elsewhere. All you
need to do is start comparing prices and quality. Spend some time soaking up the sale ads.
Guideline #3: Figure
out the best time to shop at your store.
One day, I realized that the there was an unbelievable
amount of meat and produce marked for quick sale at my grocery store. I realized that the employees of those
departments starting marking it down at a certain time every day and if you
come about 30 minutes after they start, you can find some great deals. The other day I scored some nice quality
ground chicken for $1.50/lb and some bananas still in great shape for
$.38/lb. I stuck the chicken in the
freezer for the world’s best chicken burgers and whatever bananas don’t get
eaten the next few days will also go in the freezer to someday be made into
banana ice cream or smoothies. One time
I asked the employee marking down the bananas what was wrong with them. He responded that his store was required to
mark down a certain amount of bananas a day and that they always tried to get
rid of the overripe and bruised ones but that sometimes they had to mark down
the ones that were perfectly ok.
Guideline #4: Stock
up during sales and pay attention to coupons.
This one is easy. If
my favorite brand of chicken thighs goes on sale for $.99, you can bet that
there will be 4-5 packages in my freezer the next day. This doesn’t work so hot for dairy products
or fresh fruit and vegetables but it works great for meat and pantry items. I am not an extreme couponer. Most coupons are for items that I would never
spend money on in the first place such as certain brands of cereal or snacks
for kids. However, I do try to spend
about 5 minutes a week checking some online coupons. I occasionally can get free toothpaste or a
few cents off of feta cheese. It takes
so little time that I consider it worth the effort. Also my Kroger routinely gives out coupons
for items I actually buy such as a free package of Kroger brand frozen veggies.
Guideline #5: Go
Meatless or at least use Less Meat
I consider myself to be very blessed as I’m married to a man
who actually eats vegetables. He even is
willing to eat vegetarian meals semi-regularly.
He will ask for meat if we have too many vegetarian meals in a row but
generally it is not a problem. I
typically try to average 1-2 vegetarian meals a week. In the summer this means that we eat a lot of
garden veggies. In the winter we focus
on hearty soups with freshly baked bread.
If your husband is a die-hard fan of meat, your best bet is
to try and go for a Less Meat approach.
In other words, increase the veg factor and decrease the meat. Instead of serving each person a whole
chicken breast (though chicken Piccata is to die for), I generally will make a
stir fry or curry. That way I can use 1
lb or less of meat and increase the vegetables.
Or if I’m making lasagna, instead of using a whole 1 lb of meat, I will
use 1/3 lb and add in some spinach and roasted veggies. I used this trick on my meat-lovin’ family
and they didn’t complain. Think about
how you can make the vegetables the star of the plate and the meat more of a
side dish.
Guideline #6: DIY
If you make it yourself, it will not only save you money but
will almost always taste better. For
instance, I can make a loaf of homemade whole wheat bread for probably around
$1 and 7 cups or so of homemade Greek yogurt for $1. Don’t even get me started on pie crusts, biscuits,
granola, jam, or pizza. Yes, it is work
but the results are more than worth it. Other hot DIY tips are to buy a chicken
with the bone on (it will be cheaper) and then use the leftover bones to make
some good quality chicken broth. Or buy
a large piece of meat when it is on sale such as a pork loin. Cook the whole thing and then freeze the
leftovers in small portions to be used for different meals.
Guideline #7: Don’t buy processed foods and focus your
shopping on the edges of the store
I do not regularly buy cold cereals, already-made dishes
from the frozen food department, lunch meat, chips, cookies, or crackers. Instead, I focus my shopping on the edges of
the store. I can get almost everything I
need in the produce, meat and dairy departments. Not only will this save you time and money
but it should also keep you healthier.
Instead of giving my children crackers for snack time, we try to have
things like fruit, fresh veggies, cheese or something homemade like a slice of
bread with peanut butter on it.
Guideline #7: Stock up on food when it is on sale
Whenever I see meat go on a good sale, I buy several weeks
worth and stick in my freezer. The same
applies to pantry staples. Whenever my
favorite brand of peanut butter went on sale for about $0.40 cheaper than
normal, you can bet that my cabinet was quickly filled up with 5
containers. I try to buy as much as we
can eat in the relative near future combined with how much I think our limited
cabinet space can hold.
Ok, so what does this actually look like on our table? Here is a sample of our meal plan for the
week. I don’t always do a great job of
planning out the side dishes in advance so you might notice a few “gaps” in the
plan.
Breakfasts: We eat a
lot of oatmeal (baked, stovetop, with bananas mushed up in it, and even
refrigerator style). We also have things
like pancakes, scrambled eggs, a Dutch baby or German pancake, and yogurt.
Lunch: We primarily have leftovers for lunch. Kira does eat a healthy amount of peanut
butter and jelly utilizing homemade whole wheat bread, natural PB and homemade
strawberry jam. If we have no leftovers,
I will oftentimes make up quesadillas and we do average one box of Mac ‘n’
Cheese per month (gasp!).
Dinner:
Monday: Eggels (a bagel as a sandwich made with scrambled
eggs, cheese, cream cheese, ham and spinach), hash browns on the stovetop and
cantaloupe and grapes.
Tuesday: A roasted whole chicken using an (I managed to get an
organic chicken for the same price as a regular one by combining Kroger coupons
and a sale), oven roasted potatoes, lima beans (Kira and Aaron love them for
some reason), and pineapple.
Wednesday: Malaysian Mango Chicken Curry over rice (using
the leftover chicken), and the leftover pineapple
Thursday: Spaghetti al Tonno with salad (lettuce from our
garden!) and freshly baked bread
Friday: BBQ Pork and Mango pizza (I’ll be utilizing some BBQ
pork that I made a few weeks ago and froze), roasted broccoli
Saturday: Roasted Veggie and Black Bean bowls topped with
guacamole with chips and salsa on the side. This is the best EVAH!
Sunday: Beef and Bean Chimichangas (I plan to make them up
the night before and then pop them in the oven after we get home from church),
guacamole, cilantro lime rice, pineapple
I tried to pick dishes that would utilize mango and avocado this week as those two items are on sale. I also plan on topping just about every dish with some fresh cilantro as my cilantro field is quickly going to seed. Kira loves to go over to the cilantro and stuff a few leaves in her mouth.
And that, my friends, is how we eat. I’m sure that I left out a ton and probably
inserted an extra heaping of typos. Any
thoughts? Hot tips? Questions?
 |
| Someone may or may not have tried to eat dirt today |
No comments:
Post a Comment