groceries — 2/3 — Beating Broke

3 Easy Ways to Get a Home Cooked Meal on the Table: Save Time and Money

March 9, 2015 By MelissaB 5 Comments

Do you cook at home? If so, how many times a week?

Chances are, your answer will vary depending on whether or not you work outside the home, your age, and your income.

Sure, cooking at home can save you plenty of money, but not a lot of us do it. According to Harris Interactive, “Two in five (41%) say they prepare meals at home five or more times a week and three in ten (29%) do so three to four times a week. One in five (19%) of U.S. adults prepare meals at home one to two times a week, and 11% say they rarely or never prepare meals at home.” There aren’t always easy ways to get a home cooked meal on the table.

In the last several years, my husband and I have made the switch to exclusively eating at home. We go out to eat less than 10 times a year, usually only when we’re traveling. What I’ve discovered is that cooking at home can actually be A LOT of work. Making healthy, low-cost food requires time and energy, and then there is all of the clean up to do afterwards. If I were still working full-time outside the home, I doubt that I would have time to cook as much as I do now.

Home Cooked Meal — Original IMG credit: DSC_0719 on Flickr

However, there are a number of strategies that can help make preparing foods at home easier.

Have a go to meal. Everyone should have a few easy meals that they can make from staples in the pantry when they’re short on time. Choices might include spaghetti, cheese quesadillas, grilled cheese sandwiches, etc. These meals may not be ideal nutritionally, but they’re still better than grabbing fast food, and they’ll save your wallet.

Use your slow cooker. Start the slow cooker in the morning, and when you come home, you’ll have a hot meal waiting for you. To save even more time, prep all of the ingredients the night before so in the busy morning, you can just dump in the ingredients and go.

Utilize freezer cooking. Take one day a month and cook up several meals for your family for the month. This might take you three to four hours, but then you will eliminate much of the cooking you’ll need to do for the rest of the month. Simply take a meal out of your freezer the night before you need it and then reheat it when you get home from work.

There are short cuts to freezer meals, too. Search Pinterest, and you’ll find crockpot freezer meals. Simply dump the ingredients in a freezer bag and freeze. This type of freezer cooking doesn’t require any cooking before putting it in the slow cooker, so you can make a month’s worth of meals in about an hour.

Another idea is to double any recipe you are already cooking and put the second one in the freezer for a busy night.

Don’t be discouraged if you haven’t yet mastered how to eat at home without spending all of your time cooking. As Marion Nestle, professor of food studies at New York University and author of What to Eat says, “Anything that you do that’s not fast food is terrific; cooking once a week is far better than not cooking at all. It’s the same argument as exercise: more is better than less and some is better than none” (The New York Times).

What is your favorite strategy to get a healthy meal on the table quickly?

4 Ways to Spend Less on Groceries Each Month

March 2, 2015 By MelissaB 4 Comments

Are you familiar with the USDA food plans? These plans state how much food should cost a family each month based on four categories: thrifty, low-cost, moderate and liberal. The plans are updated each month to accommodate food price increases. You determine how much your family should spend by choosing one of the four plans, and choosing the ages and members of your family.

For instance, according to the most recent USDA food plan, my family of five (2 adults and 3 kids ages 4 to 10), we should be spending approximately $176.60 a week on the thrifty plan up to $348.90 on the liberal plan. (Am I the only one saying “WOW!” to the liberal plan?)

Recently, I voluntarily decided to cut back on my freelance workload so that I could spend more time homeschooling my kids. We decided to tighten our belt and live off my husband’s income alone while banking the money I’m making.

We’ve been thrilled to spend under the USDA thrifty plan every week, usually by $40 or $50 a week, even though we cannot have gluten, dairy or corn. Here’s how we’ve been doing it:

Stock up when things are on sale. I now try to only buy fruits and veggies that are loss leaders in the weekly ads. When I see things at rock bottom prices, I stock up. Recently, oranges were on sale for 4 pounds for $1. I bought a case, which was 40 pounds. That case only cost me $10, and we’ve had fresh oranges for the last 5 weeks. We have one more week left before we run out. (Keep in mind that some stores will give you a discount when you buy a case, so you can save even more.)

I also found organic potatoes 5 pounds for $2, so I bought 40 pounds. Same for cabbage at 33 cents a pound. I bought 6 heads.

Inevitably, there are weeks where there are no good sales, so we eat from the pantry. This week is one of those weeks, so we will be eating a lot of meals with cabbage and potatoes.

Make your menu plan based on the items that are on sale. I’ve always made a menu plan. (If you don’t, start now! It’s such a money saver.) However, I made my menu plan first and then went shopping. Now, I do the opposite. I find out what is on sale, and I make my menu plan based on those items.

Make freezer meals based on low cost items. When I have extra time or extra groceries, I make freezer meals. Then, if there’s a week where we’ve run out of grocery money or there’s nothing good on sale, I have at least a week’s worth of meals in the freezer.

Be disciplined when going to big box stores. I love shopping at Costco, but I’m very careful to only buy what is on my list. I can get organic carrots 10 pounds for $6.99. I can buy a 2 pound bag of organic greens for less than $5. These prices can’t be beat! However, if I stray from my list and spend on impulse buys, I’m not saving any money.

What USDA plan is your weekly grocery spending closest to? What other tips do you have to save money on groceries?

Grocery Shopping Once a Month – Can You Do It?

September 29, 2014 By MelissaB 10 Comments

My husband and I recently bought a house, and we’d like to plump up our emergency fund just in case we have a large house expense. (Because, of course, when you have little savings, expensive things start to break. It’s the law of nature, right?)

To inspire myself, I reread America’s Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money by Steve and Annette Economides. One strategy of theirs that I latched onto is once a month shopping. The Economides shop once a month for their family of seven and right after shopping day, they make 15 to 17 freezer meals to help them on nights when they’re too busy to cook.

Alright, I already regularly cook freezer meals, so how hard could it be to shop once a month for my family of five?

As it turns out, very tough, at least the first month.

Breaking Bad Habits

I have a bad habit of making a big shopping trip on the weekend and then running to the store for this or that several times a week.

Do you do this, too? From all of the harried shoppers I see at the store at 5 p.m., I’m guessing I’m not alone.

The problem is that each time I run to the store, I buy more items than I initially went to the store to buy. The Economides recommend once a month shopping to avoid this kind of impulse buying that blows up the grocery budget.

Making the Big Shopping Trip

This month, eager to change my bad shopping habit, I scouted the deals and made my big, once a month shopping trip. I spent two days afterward cooking up meals to put in the freezer. I was set, or so I thought.

Turns out, limiting the impulse to stop by the store is more difficult than I thought.

There are a number of reasons why we’re struggling:

My husband likes fresh fruit and veggies. Our family wiped these out after a week, so back I went to the store to pick up some more.
I’m an impulse eater. If something sounds good to me, I want to make the recipe and have it for dinner. I don’t want to wait until my next monthly shopping trip to get the ingredients to make it. (The whim would have passed by then, which is the point, I guess.)
Eating up odds and ends at the end of the month is not fun. Sure, trying to make meals out of what food is left is fun, but the last few days, most of it doesn’t taste good.

Taking Baby Steps Moving Forward

While it would be easy to give up on the idea of once a month shopping, I haven’t yet because I know it can be a big money saver. Instead, I’m going to back up and move to twice a month shopping. This will allow me time to plan out our meals for two weeks, making sure we have all the ingredients we need. Many fruits and veggies stay good for nearly two weeks, so my husband will have the fresh fruits and veggies that he wants.

I don’t know if I’ll ever fully implement once a month shopping, but if I am successful with twice a month shopping, I will still significantly reduce my impulse shopping trips and improve my grocery budget.

How often do you grocery shop? Are you a multiple trip, impulse buyer like I am (was?), or are you a grocery store ninja?