If you go to a grocery store, you are likely to find several other shoppers with convenience foods in their cart. From cans of soups to packages to frozen dinners, I wonder if these “convenience foods” really make life that much easier. I do know that they can waste a big chunk of your grocery bill. These five foods not only cost more but are not the best for your health. These five foods can be made so easily for a fraction of the cost.
- Bottled Teas: I made this stupid purchase move last month when I bought a box of Honest Tea from Costco. While they are organic, tasty teas, twelve teas cost me about $9-$10, not including CRV. The tea had natural sugar in it, but I can drink green tea “black” and not mind. It takes about five minutes to brew your own tea. Just place four tea bags in a medium container and microwave for five minutes. Transfer to a pitcher and add more water and sugar/honey if desired. This should make a gallon of tea for pennies a serving.
- Packaged, Cut Fruit: When I use to work at Starbucks, I was always amazed at how many people purchased the fruit bowls for $3.65. You can find these tiny bowls there today. Each bowl includes a few pieces of pineapple, a few grapes, and about two pieces of blueberries, strawberries, and kiwis. Ridiculous, right? For less than $10, you can buy strawberries, blueberries, grapes, kiwis, and a pineapple (depending on the sales). It takes only a few minutes to chop up all the fruit and separate them into single serving bags. I did this two weeks ago and was able to get 12 bags of fruit for less than $8. They were perfect for grabbing a snack on the run.
- Trail Mix: Sad to say, but trail mix is another overpriced, packaged item. While nuts are expensive, if you can buy them in bulk along with your favorite dried fruits, pretzels, and chocolate chips, you can make an affordable trail mix. Get creative and come up with new mixes, like white chocolate chips, cranberries, and cashews.
Frozen “TV” Entrees:I know this one is going to get me some angry looks. Have you looked at the back of a frozen dinner lately? Even healthier frozen dinners Lean Cuisines (and my beloved Amy’s Organics) are packed full of sodium. Truthfully, these lunches/dinners are so small! Unless you can get them for free, these frozen entrees are not a good deal financially. It is much better and dare I say, tastier to make a whole pot of chicken pasta or chicken breast with veggies from scratch. If you are relying on frozen entrees to help you get through the work week, here are two tips for you:
- Make extra dinner each night, package the leftovers in Tupperware and grab them in the morning on your way to work.
- Spend a few hours every weekend preparing your own “frozen entrees” by cooking up chicken breast and other desired meat, steaming vegetables, and cooking rices and pasta. Throw a serving size of protein, grain, and vegetables in five separate Tupperware containers and throw them in the freezer. The Tupperware containers that have dividers work very well. You can whip up whatever you would like to eat or make entrees more appealing with a sauce.
- Canned Soup: I love the ease of canned soup, especially when I am in a pinch. While many soups are low in fat and calories, their sodium content is astonishing. Anyone can make a tasty soup for pennies per serving. Just throw your desired ingredients in a crock pot in the morning and you will have a delicious soup by dinnertime. Just add vegetable, chicken, or beef broth (homemade is the tastiest and thriftiest) as the base and add your favorite herbs, vegetables, and meat. Twenty to thirty minutes before you want to eat the soup, throw in some rice, pasta, or quinoa. I then freeze leftovers in single serving Tupperware containers, pulling them out the night before. It is just as easy as taking a can of soup from the pantry.
Of course, when any of these products are at a low or free price, it is nice to have a few on hand. The point is to not to heavily rely on them from week to week when you can easily make them at home. What convenience foods do you make from scratch?
img credit:nickgraywfu on Flickr
I agree with all of these !! I refuse to buy frozen dinners, and when my old roommate would buy those packaged fruits and yogurt with granola I would sit there in disbelief, seeing her yogurt and granola cost her $7.00 when she could buy granola to sprinkle on yogurt literally just as easily, and the fruit was $17!!! It was insane.
My wife refuses to buy kids yogurt, one because it’s expensive and two, because it is way too high in sugar. She gets a big tub of plain yogurt, mixes in a couple jars of fruit flavored baby food, and they love it, and it’s a heck of a lot cheaper to boot.
Most points are right on. The cut fruit, though, might be different for different people. Like you, I hate the price for those fruit bowls (you also see them in the supermarkets). However, if a single person buys all the fruit you need to make your own fruit bowl, you end up with way too much fruit and some of it goes bad. Even though the total dollars spent might be less, the thought of throwing away food because you can’t eat it all is a hard one. Also, there’s a difference between an occasional mix of fruit when you feel like it, and a lot of fruit you now HAVE to eat because you bought it all.
If you eat a lot of fruit, the bowls make no sense, but if you want to eat a little now and then, they actually make some sense. Per pound not, perhaps, but in total dollars and in less waste they do…
Good points! I would add any prepared foods. You are paying for the preparation and it is less healthy for you.
Canned biscuits! Why pay for excess fat and grease when you can cut in a very little butter or oil, add fat-free buttermilk, and drop spoonfuls of the dough into a greased pan? 5 minutes, folks.
Those are big money wasters. It’s funny how people will pay that price. Convenience costs.
All the items mentioned in the article all just boil down to paying more for a very negligible amount of convenience. Essentially, people pay for these items out of laziness. Don’t pay more if it only takes a tiny amount of time to do it yourself. The convenient, processed stuff is all junk, and you can easily save money by spending a small amount of extra time to do it yourself.
These are all great ideas. we like to make soup, chili and other meals from scratch in bulk, and freeze them. We save time and money.
Great article. I featured it on the Frugal News Review podcast episode 18.
I buy all of these at times except the bottled teas. There are times when convenience outweighs saving money. If a frozen meal means I’ll eat at home that’s cheaper than a restaurant and worth the cost.
We used to buy frozen meals for the convenience factor, but eventually the $$ and the amount you get for it just wasn’t worth it anymore.
I buy canned soups when they’re on special, but by and large that ‘canned’ taste just grosses me out, no matter how good the deal.
I couldn’t agree more with this post. Great idea about making you own trail mix!
I’m guilty of most of these, especially this month while I tried to keep my grocery bill under control. I need to prioritize and plan meals at least once a week to avoid eating so much processed food. It’ll be hard for me to avoid those bottled teas, though – so tasty!