Ways to save money on groceries

[Steenibambini]

Do you have any specific ideas or creative ways to save money on groceries? Coupons aside, I'm looking for some ways to save money by buying very basic items.

For example:

Save money on pasta sauce - Just make your own! Buy the HUGE can of crushed tomatoes and get creative with your own spices, combine with cooked ground beef and freeze in family size meal portions. You can get about FOUR times the amount of pasta sauce than any other kind that you buy, even if it was sale and used a coupon!


Save money by being there less - Instead of running to the grocery store every week, try going only every 8 or 9 days. That way, by the end of the month, you'll have cut out an entire grocery trip!


Save money by using your slowcooker - Using a slowcooker allows you to buy less expensive cuts of meat because anything you throw into the pot will come out super tender and juicy! Also, a good slowcooker meal could be done once a week as you clean out your veggie crisper in the fridge. Throw in whatever veggies you have left over from the past week with a half chicken or stew beef and you could end up with a great dish to serve over rice or pasta!

Any other ideas??

[Andit]

Make your own dog/cat treats.

I buy ripe veggies at the grocery store (I check the clearance table in the produce section). I boil the veggies, dilute with water & mix with flour. I roll out the dough, cut into shapes & bake my own cookies.

My local butcher gives me free "bones for the dog". I boil them in a big pot of water for about an hour (I keep topping up the water). I freeze the "broth" in margarine tubs for the dog & an ice cube tray for the cat, & they get them as treats to lick/chew. It's a cheap, low-cal snack for them & gets liquid into them (great way to get a cat to drink more).

Hope this helps.

[Patty Smyth]

I buy my meat from a warehouse. You have to buy a bigger portion, for example a box of boneless chicken breasts(there is also no waste) is $45 but I have enough for several meals and we are 6 people.

[babygonnermann]

eat less

I'm not really kidding, though. Most of us eat outragously huge portions - if we eat the right portion sizes, you'll save on groceries.

Instead of buying cookies, make your own.

[Justine]

We spend quite a bit on groceries, it's hard not to. You like to eat what you like to eat. I find a lot of the "junk" food is really expensive and not necessary. Lots of frozen stuff is expensive, ie knorr frozen dinners, frozen veggies etc, so it's good to use coupons when you can, but I find for the majority of food that I purchase, there are no coupons available.

[Litesandsirens911]

2 of my girlfriends and I get together once a month to do a "cookoff"..we sit down, plan 3 meals, go shopping according to what is onsale in the flyers and go back to whomever the person's turn it is(to offer up her kitchen), and we cook enough meals for all three families of 6 each, and then divide the meals up.So we cook once, and take home enough for 3 meals each.Sometimes I will divide my three into 6 smaller meals, so I can just add a salad and rice let's say, like Babygonnerman stated, we can all afford to eat smaller portions sometimes.

Some recipes we've made are Lasagna, Chicken and rice casserole, stews, soups including homemade biscuits, roast beef (we shave it when it cools and each take home 1/3rd of the roast in au jus, then we just defrost the whole thing and make beef dip, it freezes well)..this month we are doing a shepard's pie,and this one :
http://www.communitykitchens.org.au/....cfm?recipe=66

anyways, this saves time, money, and goes a long way on making your grocery dollars count..i guess you can say we're sort of borrowing the idea from Community Kitchens organizations...sort of like a cookie exchange, but with meals you can freeze.

[Litesandsirens911]

also, I have a rule in my home, I guess because I was raised this way by my parents, I carried it on..no packaged junk except once a month, so no packaged cookies, treats, etc...I would rather do it from scratch myself.
We also never buy canned veggies or fruits, and never any prepackaged frozen foods unless it is the Europe's Best frozen fruit, as my girls like to make smoothies for breakfast sometimes.
I prefer to buy locally at the farm market and prep my veggies that way and freeze them myself..also, if I make my own Brownies, cookies, cakes, etc, I can put what I want in them, and that means less sugar .

[nv_jenn]

I want to be able to make things like lasagnas then freeze for future use.... I know how to do those but nothing else really.... LOL

[Patty Smyth]

In the summer I bought 5 bushels of tomatoes and have enough canned tomatoes for a year, maybe. You can't beat the freshness and it is very versatile. Pastas, braising, stews, soups.

I wish we had a cold storage room.

[haneylaw]

Meal plans! I make a list of say 10 dinners, buy all the ingredients I need for those and put the list on the fridge. There's my big shop done for 2 weeks, and there's no "why did I buy this" stuff leftover. Anything fresh I need as I go, I always go to the veggie market.

And as someone mentioned, warehouse packages of meat. Including roasts that you can cut your own steaks, separate a large package of chicken, etc.

[Andit]

Also, my parents have a meat grinder. They buy a large cut of meat (beef or pork), use the nicer part for roasts, the less presentable parts are ground up for hamburger, & the fatty parts are cooked up in a sort of stew with various veggies (a dish my parents have almost weekly cause they like it so much , the fatty bits get removed & the stew is served over pasta or rice). So, a $10 piece of meat makes roughly a dozen individual meals, including one fancy Sunday dinner (depending on what is served with the meals, it's sometimes stretched to about 20).

It's much cheaper to grind your own meat. The grinder cost about $60 at WM a couple of yrs ago, & paid for itself within a few months.

[Saving Moola]

Oooh! All this talk of food is making me so hungry. Sick @ home with a cold this week - feed a cold, starve a fever as they say. I usually grow & can my own tomatoes in jars - 250, 500 & 750 ml & sometimes in 1 l. size. I would either make the pasta sauce in bulk & then use them to make smaller batches of pasta sauces. Also, love to make bulk soups, chicken or turkey pot pies, lasagna, shepherd's pie, sloppy joes, taco meat in advance & freeze in smaller portions for my comfort foods or when I'm too lazy to cook a meal. Also great for late night meals when DH comes home from playing his sports. I love to make a light version of the Buffalo chicken wings, but with much less sauce. Just mix up all the ingred & put in 1 l. Ziploc freezer bags & they can be taken out the day before & placed in the fridge for thawing out for the next day. My favourite is a roast chicken. I always save the bones & put them in a plastic bag & put it in a lrg freezer bag where I have the rest of the chicken bones & just pull out a bag or 2 of bones for when I need it to make the broth.

[Abby5]

Don't eat meat a few times a week.
No take out
No package food-whole food only
Freeze left overs
Make two dinners out of one..and
pack lunches from leftover dinner
my list could go on...
save the ends of bread for bread crumbs

[Steenibambini]

Don't eat meat a few times a week.
No take out
No package food-whole food only
Freeze left overs
Make two dinners out of one..and
pack lunches from leftover dinner
my list could go on...
save the ends of bread for bread crumbs

No meat would be a great way to save, it's something I don't really think of.

Oh, I have a couple more:

No need to buy Pam when you have butter wrappers. Save them and freeze them after you've used up all the butter and you can easily pull them out to grease a pan whenever you need it!

Save on plastic baggies. Instead of throwing out your empty milk bags, cut them in half and use the bottom part as a fold top baggie, or use a twist-tie to seal it!

Gardens definitely save a lot of money. Plant a lot of foods that you can can. Ie. Berries for jam. I think canning is becoming a "lost art", it's something I'd really love to pick up!

[anisa]

great ideas
what are some ways that yall freeze raw meat and poultry, so that it doesn't go all weird in the freezer?