Help reducing grocery bill?

[patandchickens]

You can can homemade soup? <snip> canned homemade stock... can you do that?

Pressure canner (not pressure cooker, pressure CANNER). Very easy, you just put the hot stock (or soup) into jars and put the lids on and can them for the appropriate time for that size jar and thickness of soup. Super easy, once you have a pressure canner.

And once you have a pressure canner you can also can veggies when they are in season (or on sale) and cheap, if your husband likes them that way

Or, to save freezer space without buying a pressure canner, you can make your chicken or beef stock REALLY STRONG (do two "shifts" of carcasses in it, and/or reduce it down) so that you are freezing it in a smaller volume. Reduced way down, good beef stock (especially) is excellent frozen in icecube trays for use in sauces etc, or of course you can dilute it back down with water for soup type purposes.

It is a BIG price difference from buying stock or soup. I mean, what's a quart of your usual-brand stock cost you? You can make 1-2+ quarts of it from the carcass of one chicken, which you et the meat off so using the carcass for stock is sort of a freebie anyhow

Pat

 

[tortoise]

We were spending $120/week on groceries for 2 adults, 1 toddler. I think our food expenses are still very high. But I do see some things you could improve upon.

Bone broth is super easy to do. Save bones. Save veggie scraps (like little leftover bits, clean scraps. Throw it all in a big soup pot, boil it down to however "thick" you like your broth and season it.

Portion it out and fridge or freeze it. It is so much better than yucky grocery store canned broth! FYI: bone broth with set into a jelly when it is cold. It will liquify when it is heated up.

Soup is a good one to make in advance. However, we don't ever seem to have leftovers.

The biggest difference now is on meat. We got 2 deer this year, have some fish (big walleye fillets, etc) that we caught over summer, and rabbit meat too. We buy bacon (on sale as a loss leader), frozen chicken breast (I've been finding is $2 off/bag).

Another big one is frozen pizza. I figured out how to bake a pizza that rivals DiGiorno.

I plan to start "stretching" meat. My mom is a MASTER of this. Sloppy joe can be equally as tasty if burger is mixed 50/50 with rice. So many other examples of this!

I set price points, I won't buy certain products over a certain price. I won't pay more than $2/lb for butter. And recently it was $4/lb! But I had stocked up at $2/lb and didn't have to buy any butter until the price went back down.

The last month I have not bought many items that are not loss leaders. The savings per shopping trip ar 20 - 25%. I also shop at a grocery-only store if I'm tempted to buy any "extras."

There are some awesome ideas on this thread. I work on a price book so I know what stores have what items for less. (Elbow macaroni is cheaper at the grocery store versus WalMart. Oats at ALDI are 1/4 the price of anywhere else!, etc) Also this list helps me find "how good" a sale is.

But I haven't gone back through receipts. I should do that to pick up on bad shopping habits.

 

[patandchickens]

Oh, also, in terms of leftovers and soup... they can very easily be the same thing Most leftovers make EXCELLENT soup ingredients. My whole life, my mom always had a container int he freezer that all plausible leftovers went into, then when it got full it would be combined with a jar of tomatoes or something like that, and spices added and adjusted, and sometimes other stuff added to round it out (pasta or kielbasa or more veggies), and it was always SUPER soup. Never the same twice, but, hey

Even some surprising things actually go well in soup -- for instance leftover lettuce from a too-big salad (don't freeze it, make the soup the next day and toss it in 'fresh') or green-beans-with-slivered-almonds.

I do this less now that I have chickens but there are always some things that chickens won't eat, or that would be too good in soup to waste on the chickens <g>.

Pat

 

[journey11]

The cost of things has gone up so much. It frustrates my grocery bill too.

I've gotten to where I don't buy any extras or "fun stuff", unless we've had a very good paycheck. Just staying out of the store helps a lot. Planning ahead and getting it all in one or two trips a month and staying out of the store for last minute purchases helps to avoid those impulse buys. If it's hurting your budget bad enough, it would be wise to give up the alcohol, if you can , since that is empty calories. Sounds like you are already doing a lot to save as it is. Maybe only shop sales and stock up, get produce items in season (cheaper) and freeze the extras for later.

It's tough shopping nowadays. Such a drastic difference from when I was first married and started keeping house 8 years ago. When the gas prices went up, that was the first thing my FIL predicted was grocery costs going up, since everything comes in by truck. But even when the gas went back down, things did not adjust. It really keeps you on your toes trying to stay ahead of the game! Good luck!

 

[AnnaRaven]

I agree on making your own soup - you don't even have to can it. Just use a crock pot and start it in the morning, it is done by evening. If you have lean meat, you can toss it right in and it will cook completely in the pot - I cut it up finer than commercial stew meat so it goes further (kitchen shears do a fast job of that). It doesn't need to be time consuming, and it does not need to mean that your family cannot eat what they like.

I LOVE my crockpot. I cook soup and braise meats etc. I just don't know what to do about the leftovers - freezing doesn't seem to work (I've tried it). DH apparently considers the freezer a no-mans land. So leftover soup hasn't been very successful.

I've never tried canning it though. Maybe that would work for us.

Ok, don't just watch what you already spent. And don't just write up a list.

Create a list in a spreadsheet - categorize your groceries. Make some extra columns beside the name of the grocery item:

St = Store - where you can usually get the best deal on that item (this helps you plan the trip better)
Avg Pr = Average Price - what you normally expect to pay for it, so you know if it is a good deal
Qty = Quantity - how many you need this trip
Cst = Cost - how much you plan to spend this time

At the bottom of each Cost column, do a total on that column. Then to the right of the last Cost column, do a grand total on all the Cost columns.

Usually it will take about four major column groups to list all the things you ordinarily buy, and you'll just fill in the amounts you need each trip, and the amount you expect to spend for them - erase the the cost on the ones you don't need that time. Leave a few blank lines in each category so you can put in unusual items that you only get now and again.

You now have a self-calculating shopping list, that will help you set a goal and stay under it. This works great, because you can juggle the items on the list, and the amounts, BEFORE you are in the store, so you can plan it out ahead when you have time to think about it and reason it out. Print it off and head to the store.

When you use it, then you'll be able to snap up sale items because you will KNOW when a sale item is a good price. Also, if you plan on spending $3 to get two cartons of eggs, and eggs are on sale for $.99 each, you know you can get three instead of two, and gradually accumulate an effective storage on things you frequently buy.

Okay. This makes sense. And I can access it on my cellphone when I'm at the store and update the price. I just realized I have only a vague sense of "average price" of many of the things we buy. I know how much milk is and other staples, but... yeah. That should help.

We shopped once a month for about 15 years, until our income became too erratic to do that. It is a fact that when you shop less often, you spend less, get more, and learn to plan better and make do better. The fewer times you get into the store, the less you tend to spend overall.

Meals out also push costs WAY up. Even grabbing a burger once a week can blow the budget.

I cook at home a lot to try to keep us from going out. Here's my challenges:

* If DH gets bored with the food, he'll go out.
* If it's leftovers, he won't eat it. He'll whine and say "what, we can't afford real food?" and then insist that I either cook something or go out. (Or grab some convenience food.)
* DH won't eat standard American cold-cuts (the cheap ones). He only eats imported Italian ones. I've cut down how often we eat them. But that's about all I can do on that.
* If he gets pasta less than 3 times a week, he whines. (DH tells me that the real Italian national sport is whining. ) At least I managed to get him onto whole wheat pastas and the new multi-grain pastas. And I measure it very carefully so he only gets 2oz of pasta.
* DH's not supposed to have a lot of carbs (diabetes 2) so when we don't have pasta, it's a meat dish generally, with a side salad and vegetable. Beans are carb-y and lentils really spike his blood sugar so even though we both love things like lentils&rice, that's something we could have as a small side, not as a meal.
* DS is tired of pasta. So he eats more of the leftovers (and I do them for lunch) on pasta nights. Or eats pizza. I had to stock up on frozen pizza so we'd have that available for him instead of him *ordering* it. You can get 6 frozen pizzas for the cost of one delivery!
* Seafood - we try to incorporate some fish or seafood at least once a week. It's expensive. I realized last night though that the place I've been getting seafood is more expensive than our local Safeway (it just moved in about 2 blocks away - thank goodness!) so I'll start buying there instead.
* Meats: we try to go for organic, freerange, grassfed, etc etc. That of course, makes it pricier.

I think the big thing is just not really knowing how much I'm spending on the different things I buy - so the spreadsheet sounds great. I'll track all my purchases for a month so I can see what I'm spending on each item and where, so I can start figuring out that "average" and also see what stores near here are cheaper on things I'd normally buy.

I can see from what I'm writing here that my biggest problem is falling into DH's thinking of just buying things that look good without thinking about it first. (He's never had to worry about the cost.)

It's unlikely that we'll be able to get away as cheap as others, but I'd like to cut down and, more important, control how much we're spending.

Hi, my name is Anna and I'm a wastrel.

 

[AnnaRaven]

Oh, also, in terms of leftovers and soup... they can very easily be the same thing Most leftovers make EXCELLENT soup ingredients. My whole life, my mom always had a container int he freezer that all plausible leftovers went into, then when it got full it would be combined with a jar of tomatoes or something like that, and spices added and adjusted, and sometimes other stuff added to round it out (pasta or kielbasa or more veggies), and it was always SUPER soup. Never the same twice, but, hey

Even some surprising things actually go well in soup -- for instance leftover lettuce from a too-big salad (don't freeze it, make the soup the next day and toss it in 'fresh') or green-beans-with-slivered-almonds.

I do this less now that I have chickens but there are always some things that chickens won't eat, or that would be too good in soup to waste on the chickens <g>.

Pat

I also make pasta sauces out of many leftovers. For example, two days ago, we had baked cod with anchovy, olives, capers and tomato. Last night, I took the leftovers and made them into a puttanesca sauce. DH thought it wasn't as good as my usual puttanesca sauce. But he ate it.

Question on the leftover salad: can you still do that even if the salad had dressing on it? Won't it wilt too badly or throw off the flavor in the soup? (Too vinegar-y?)

 

[AnnaRaven]

If you are finding some of your CSA veggies going bad, don't throw them out! I have a 1-gallon bag in my freezer that all my vegetable scraps go into - onion ends, carrot and potato peels, celery, etc. If you see you're not going to be able to use something before it goes bad, add it to the bag. Once the bag is full, make your own vegetable stock - I get 4 quarts from a 1-gallon bag of scraps. Then the scraps go into the compost.

I never, never, never throw out a carcass. Into the stock pot it goes and I make my own broth. I cook with broth at almost every meal, so this saves me a ton of $$$ over the year.

Great idea on the veggie scraps. I can do that!

I rarely if ever have a carcass - DH hates chicken. Eggs yes, but not chicken - so we don't have chicken carcasses. So that's why I generally buy chicken broth rather than making my own. And of course, it has to be no HFCS so it's more expensive. Ugh.

The last time I cooked any chicken it was for the dog (he ate a box of chocolates and the vet made him barf and then told us to feed him very bland boiled chicken breast for a couple days until his system recovered. )

Veggie broth I can do though. And maybe use that more often instead of the chicken broth I normally use.

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

do you have a yard you can rip out and grow a garden? raise meat chickens?

in the summer our grocery bill is about $25. but we use what we have, we what we grow, and grow what we eat.

as for you DH's diabetes.. the pasta is probably the worst thing he can eat. can you switch him to whole wheat instead? (i know, sacrilege)

good luck!

 

[AnnaRaven]

You can can homemade soup? <snip> canned homemade stock... can you do that?

Pressure canner (not pressure cooker, pressure CANNER). Very easy, you just put the hot stock (or soup) into jars and put the lids on and can them for the appropriate time for that size jar and thickness of soup. Super easy, once you have a pressure canner.

And once you have a pressure canner you can also can veggies when they are in season (or on sale) and cheap, if your husband likes them that way

Or, to save freezer space without buying a pressure canner, you can make your chicken or beef stock REALLY STRONG (do two "shifts" of carcasses in it, and/or reduce it down) so that you are freezing it in a smaller volume. Reduced way down, good beef stock (especially) is excellent frozen in icecube trays for use in sauces etc, or of course you can dilute it back down with water for soup type purposes.

It is a BIG price difference from buying stock or soup. I mean, what's a quart of your usual-brand stock cost you? You can make 1-2+ quarts of it from the carcass of one chicken, which you et the meat off so using the carcass for stock is sort of a freebie anyhow

Pat

So where do I get a pressure canner for reasonable prices? Target? Walmart? And I need canning jars and lids too, right? I'm willing to invest some money to save it later, but I'm not sure where the best place to buy such things are.

I'm in Sillycon Valley - so no TSC or FleetFarm, and no Aldis. We have Costco, Safeway, Target, Walmart, Sears, Lucky's and Trader Joes. Or I can buy online at Amazon or something. Suggestions for where to get a pressure canner and jars?

 

[patandchickens]

Question on the leftover salad: can you still do that even if the salad had dressing on it? Won't it wilt too badly or throw off the flavor in the soup? (Too vinegar-y?)

Well of course it probably depends on your personal tastes. But *many* is the time that Mom would throw in leftover salad from the previous night, fairly wilted and still wet with an oil and vinegar based dressing, and it was always quite good. I mean you wouldn't want that to be the WHOLE soup but as part of an all-sorts-of-stuff kind of soup it's fine. Mom actually often adds a small zot of vinegar to pots of soup when the seasonings don't seem quite right.

Even if you don't usually eat chicken it might still be cheaper to make your own chicken broth (since you are buying the expensive kind), you should sit down and figure it out. YOU could always eat the meat yourself. Or try the cooked shredded-with-your-fingers meat on a pizza, who could not like *that*?

If you make pot roast type things, the liquid makes real good soup base too.

Pat