My husband and I have always tried to save money on our food bill. He does most of the grocery shopping and always checks those prices underneath the item that tell you how much it costs per oz. Most of the time its cheaper to buy the larger amounts if you figure the cost per ounce. What he points out, though, is that it isn't cheaper to buy in bulk if you aren't going to USE the extra! I tended to overlook this obvious fact. The big rule at our house is don't WASTE food!
When the kids were at home we would eat plain nutritious meals during the week and cook more expensive dishes on the weekend. We like to cook gourmet on the weekends, so its not like we do without good food, but we try to keep costs down. If we make a recipe that calls for an expensive ingredient, we buy only the amt. we need. If you get some expensive cheese from the deli, they will actually sell you 5 pieces or whatever you need for the recipe. A lot of people are embarrassed to buy less than a half pound or whatever the standard amount is. If we have to buy more of something than we need, we try to find another recipe that uses that ingredient before it goes bad and has to be thrown out.
We almost never throw food out, but eat the leftovers. We also try to figure the right amounts to cook when entertaining. I know people who will make enough for an army to feed 8 people and then throw the leftover food in the garbage disposal (just to prove they aren't cheap?)
My husband loves turkey and dressing so on Thansksgiving he packages up some for the freezer and pulls some out ever so often for months.
We only buy our favorite cereal or cookies if the store has them on sale.
A typical week night dinner for the kids was something like broiled chicken, fresh broccoli (which they all love-yuck!) a starch and a piece of fresh fruit and milk. None of them have grown up to be big sweets eaters, they are not overweight and when they went away to college they could figure out how to throw together a decent meal with whatever ingredients they have around ( we always have lots of herbs and spices to flavor things- they can be bought cheaper in the bulk dept of the grocery).
We even save the paper grocery bags to put inside the large wastebaskets and the plastic ones for other uses.
My husband brown bagged his lunch 4 days a week for years and only went out on Friday.
Another money saving tip- my husband is an accountant and he figured out that if you eat lunch out five days a week (which we do now) you can save a thousand dollars a year by not ordering a beverage and just asking for a glass of water. Who knew???
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