In any case if your goal is to eat healthier and greener you really can’t miss a great read at The Miami Herald; Dollar menu at home. The piece looks at Linda Watson creator of the website, Cook for Good. Watson has learned to spend about $1.12-1.16 per meal in recent years, mainly, it seems by sticking closer to the bottom of the food chain and cooking primarily from scratch. She also uses techniques that save water and energy, which of course is sustainable, but also saves you cash.

Watson ran another experiment along her quest to inexpensive meals to see if shopping more sustainably cost more, and it did, but only a little. AND that’s when she shopped at Whole Foods and Farmers Markets. If you grow some of your own organic food, you’d likely save even more. While on this new diet, both Watson ans her hubby felt better and lost weight too!

This article points out what I’m always saying, when it comes to saving money or eating green, we all make choices. If your choice is to cut out some meat and always cut out Doritos and soda, you’ll fare well. If your choice is to keep the processed foods you’re going to have a problem eating green for sure, and spending less a lot of the time.

Read the whole piece: Dollar menu at home.

For some specific tips related to organics, read, Organic Food Costs Rise – 11 Ways to Save Money on Organic Food.

[image via stock.xchng]

Post from: Thrifty Mommy

Opt for more expensive, but more filling breakfast cereals. You can get cereal pretty darn cheap with coupons and sales, but typical cold cereals may not fill you up, which means you may eat two bowls OR later need a bigger snack. It’s better to pay more for filling granola or another hearty cereal.

If you do buy granola or a grainy-minded cereal (see above), look for a bulk option. Bulk foods are usually less expensive than boxed, and most co-ops and natural food stores carry a great selection of bulk foods. Actually, most conventional stores now have a bulk section as well.

Make and freeze all your breakfast items in one day. IF you happen to have the freezer space, take an hour or two on a weekend day, whip up some french toast, pancakes, and waffles, and freeze them all. Homemade can cost way less that boxed frozen breakfasts. If you want to make them easy to reheat, try this; after you make say, 10 pancakes, place them on a cookie sheet in a single layer and freeze them, then wrap them up. This way when you go to grab one in the morning, they don’t stick together.

Make fruit juice from concentrate which tends to be cheaper than carton juice.

Buy fruit in season.

Opt for frozen fruit when fresh is priced too high. If you like berries or mango in the morning, in cereal, a smoothie, or just plain, frozen can cost less during off seasons.

Skip the meat. To be healthy, you really should only be buying organic meats. Typical conventional meat is stuffed with pesticides and other contaminates. However, organic meat can be costly. Make breakfast your veggie meal of the day. See which foods you should be buying organic.

Don’t just think “breakfast” – extra tortillas with eggs and cheese, pita bread with tuna, whole wheat crackers with hummus and fruit, and more can be eaten for breakfast. Think about the low-cost food items you frequently buy and consider which can be eaten for breakfast.

Whip up a smoothie. You can snag a HUGE tub o’ organic yogurt on the cheap, some frozen fruit, and some store brand organic milk and whip up a cheap and easy smoothie. See some smoothie recipes.

Get up on time. The most expensive meal mistake most people make is waking up late, or just in general running late all day. People who run late tend to grab food on the go (way more expensive than making food at home). Your alarm clock and some good ol’ will power can save you oodles of cash.

[image via stock.exchng]

Post from: Thrifty Mommy

Freeze leftover sauce right away. Actually you can freeze leftover anything right away, but my issue is sauce, hence the mention. I make homemade spaghetti and other sauces, but once in a while, if there’s a super sale, I’ll buy. With just my son and I in the house, we’d never eat an entire jar of sauce, so into the fridge it goes, where once in a while it sits until it’s nicely fuzzy. Bad planning. I’ve taken to freezing sauce and other items to save them.

Set your fridge below 40 degrees F and never stuff it totally full. For food to stay fresh and at the right cool temperature, air needs to circulate. Now, your freezer is another story – stuff that freezer to the max to save $ on energy.

Don’t store perishables in the fridge door. Of course anything in the fridge is perishable, but dairy and eggs will go bad quicker if they’re constantly exposed to outside the fridge air and off kilter temps.

Freeze all breads. This is an iffy tip. Some families devour a loaf a bread a day. However, as noted there’s just the two of us in my house, so bread lasts a while. In a small family, you should freeze bread, muffins, tortillas, and any other bread-based item to keep it fresh until you eat it.

I’ve heard that you should store cottage cheese upside down to make it last longer. I HATE cottage cheese, so I wouldn’t know, but it’s worth a shot.

Put most produce in the fridge, even items like bananas. Bananas will turn brown in the fridge, but only the outer peel. The one item to store on the counter would be tomatoes. It won’t make them last longer, but they quickly lose their taste in the fridge.

Have a back up plan for every item you buy. If you buy an item and there’s any sort of question about your family eating it before it goes bad, then you need a back up plan, or you need to quit buying that item. My two major back up plans are soups and ice pops.  If I have leftover noodles, veggies, or tofu, it can go into a soup. Ice pops are even better, because I will seriously toss anything into a mold and freeze it up. Old fruit, left over beans, scrapings of the jam jar, that very last bit of juice, milk mixed with chocolate, yogurt that expires, and even old veggies. I freeze it and my son always eats it – there’s some sort of kid allure when it comes to frozen treats. If you’re an ice pop newbie, read: 32 Unique Homemade Popsicle Recipes & Ideas.

What tips do you have for making groceries last longer? 

Post from: Thrifty Mommy

What you can do at home:

Plan ahead: Planning for meals that focus around known sale items is a smart way to save. Everyone knows chicken usually costs less than fish, and beans cost less then either. Plan the bulk of your menus around lower cost (but healthy food items). Additionally check out cookbooks at the library for recipes that focus on these food items.

Plan menus that are closer to the earth and homemade: It’s way more expensive to plan meals around pre-packaged and pre-cooked foods. Plan for meals that center around food that’s less touched – brown rice, whole veggies, dried beans, and so on cost less than rice mixes, frozen veggies in sauce, and cooked beans. With this in mind, try to cook with a homemade slant. Cooking from scratch doesn’t have to be a big old deal. A crock-pot or microwave can speed things up, even if you skip pre-packaged foods.

Make a list: People who head to the store with a list spend less. Once you’re at the store you’ll have no idea if you’re truly out of cinnamon and apple juice, or if your fuzzy memory is tricking you. Buying items you already have is a waste.

Use what you’ve got before buying more: When planning both your list and menus, start with what you have. You know that time you bought all those cans of tomato sauce on sale, the ones sitting in your cupboard? Plan a good amount of meals around those cans – sauces, soups, and so on.

Eat vegetarian: Even slashing meat from three meals a week can save oodles, and it’s sooooo much better for the earth.

What you can do at the store: 

Shop alone: Shopping with overzealous children or an impulsive spouse can wreak budget havoc.

Shop full: If you eat before shopping you’ll stick to your list and not impulse buy.

Be flexible: If you planned your meals (as noted above) you should still be flexible. If fish or fresh broccoli are on stellar sales you might buy these instead of items on your list that the store doesn’t have on a current sale. Work with your menu, but don’t be a slave.

Shop once: Frequent shopping trips encourage extra spending. Have a designated shopping day each week, or if you have a small family like mine, every two weeks. Once in a while we run out of fresh produce and have to make a mid-week trip, but overall we just shop once, and if we forget something, we deal until our next trip.

Don’t lose food: Losing track of food items you have because of poor organization is an evil budget drain.

Buy in bulk: Bulk foods are almost always a better deal than pre-packaged, and are better for the earth (less waste). If bulk foods freak you out, read – Bulk Food Storage: Flour and Other Dry Basics.

Choose one or two stores and stick with them: Shopping all over wastes time, gas, money, and energy. Choose a store close to your house that has frequently well-priced items. If you have trouble figuring out which store that is shop at four different stores for a month (one each week) – make note of basics like produce, bread, milk, and so on to see which store has the best deals. Good everyday deals will save you more than crazy random sales on juice boxes or coupon cutting will. A grocery price book can be far more elaborate, but that’s a long post for another time.

Find deals:

Visit the following sites before shopping to help combat high food prices…

• My Grocery Deals
• Organic Grocery Deals
• Red Plum
• The Grocery Game 

Learn more about saving money on groceries:

Oddly I didn’t see this post before I started this one, but Katelyn just posted a Save Money on Groceries Round Up. Talk about a coincidence.

Organic Food Costs Rise – 11 Ways to Save Money on Organic Food

Best Foods to Buy Organic – why pay for organic if you don’t need to?

What other tips do you have to save on groceries? 

[images via stock.xchang]

Post from: Thrifty Mommy

1.  I talked recently about how I keep my grocery bills at $40 a week.
2. Deb had a great post about shopping for loss leaders.
3. Deb also reminds us to shop the perimeter.
4. Grocerysavingstips.com has a great list of over 20 tips for saving on groceries.
5. Thrifty Mommy offers a free way to find grocery deals.
6. Keeping the Castle talks about grocery shopping on a budget.
7. Solo Mother has a post about saving money on groceries.
8. Money Saving Mom talks about organizing coupons.
9. Angel Food Ministries offers boxes of food for around $30. They do not limit the boxes to low income families. They hope that people who have a bit more money and use their ministry will help others in different ways with the money they save on groceries.
10. Refund Cents has a subscription based site that is crammed with money saving chat. It costs $12 for a year to access the online site or you can pay more and get a print mag, too.

Post from: Thrifty Mommy

Can we save a lot of money through stocking groceries? Absolutely!  There are so many ways in which you can save while shopping for your groceries.  Actually some of these saving tips can even surprise you in the end.

Before doing your groceries, make a list first on the things you need to purchase.  You don’t want to waste time and money buying products that you don’t need at all, right?  You can also try comparing prices on different supermarkets near you.  Knowing which supermarket offers the lowest retailing price can help you save a lot of money.

Do you know that stockpiling of groceries is sometimes much better than buying items in few pieces?  If a certain good reaches its rock-bottom price, you should stockpile on it though it is not included on your “need” list.  The reason for doing this is because even if it’s not currently needed, there will still come a time that you will “need” that specific product which in turn saves money.

During sales or discounts is also the right time to use the coupons you collected which can further cut down the price and saves even more money.  Use also the coupons on the smaller packaged products because the discount tends to be much larger compared to the bigger package.

Put in mind that the food’s shelf life is very important.  We don’t want to stockpile on the easily perishable goods, do we?  So here is a list of groceries which have long shelf lives:
 
Unopened products with shelf life of 12 months and above:

• Baking powder, Cornstarch, Coffee, Drink mix, etc.

• Chocolates

• Gelatin

• Pasta

• Milk except Carnation and Evaporated

• Rice
• Salad Dressings

• Oil

• Vinegar

• Canned foods

• Catsup

• Spices and so much more.

Be a smart shopper.  Keep in mind that not all posted sales are really discounted or lowered in price.  Some goods are marked sale even if the market price is not changed at all.  This is the reason why we need to keep ourselves updated with the grocery pricing every now and then.

Another smart saving tip is buying generic goods than the branded ones.  The packaging and even the name of the brand constitutes an additional increase on the price.  If you’ll just choose wisely, you’ll realize that the generic and the branded are just of the same quality.

Avoid bringing the kids to the grocery store or else you’ll end up spending more instead of saving.  This is because kids want almost everything they see on the stores even if it’s not practical anymore.

Another thing to consider is to eat your meal before shopping.  A hungry stomach makes you buy more groceries than what you really need.

So the next time you decide to do your grocery, make sure to accomplish all the above guidelines first before buying impulsively.  Imagine how much money you’ll save next time.
(image from big-blue-bargains.com)

Post from: Thrifty Mommy