There are many ways to save on your food bill each week. Prices keep going up for food and everything else a family needs to purchase. I'm going to share some of the easy things we do to help save money on our food costs.
Ways to Save On Your Food Bill: Use What You Already Have.
There are many ways you can save on your food bill. I don't know about you, but I always seem to have extra items in my pantry that have been relegated to the back of the shelf and often overlooked. On weeks when my food budget is tight I can almost always go to the pantry and pull out ingredients that I had forgotten about. If I can't come up with a recipe to use the ingredients in, I can search online for a recipe with those ingredients included.
The key to these types of meals for my family is to not tell them we're eating from the pantry until after the meal has been consumed! Then they can congratulate me for my ingenuity in coming up with a great meal. This makes me feel good to finally use food that has been in my pantry for awhile. There's nothing worse than pulling out a can from the back of the pantry shelf and realizing it expired two years ago. I know this from experience!
Another Way To Save: Look At Store Flyers
I often have in mind a meal plan for the week according to what is going on with everyone's schedule. However, when I look at the flyer for a particular store I often tweak the menu a bit. I try to never buy specialty ingredients that will bust my budget just to prepare a specific meal that week.
Planning ahead by browsing store sales flyers allows me to eat more seasonally. I can also buy what is currently at a low price. So, I have a flexible meal plan in place that I may or may not change once I see the sales for the week. Planning and the ability to be flexible is key for this to work.
That ability to change the plan a bit allows me to take advantage of what is seasonal and what is currently on sale. Along the same lines, I often find marked down items at the grocery. I may not have planned to have porkchops that week. However, if I find a marked down package of chops I have more options. I can plan to freeze the pork chops quickly or work the pork chops into the weekly meal plan.
Ways To Save On Your Food Bill: Leftovers
My family doesn't always like the idea of leftovers! I don't know why. I always feel twinges of guilt about food being wasted so when we unexpectedly end up with too much at the end of a meal.
Often, I create another meal to use up those extra's. For example, I might use the leftover taco meat in chili or as a baked potato topping. I have to confess I do not always tell my family I do this. They seem to have some "leftover food bias."
These are just a few of the ways I do to keep the grocery budget under control. There are many more ways that I will try to share in a future post. In the meantime, what do you do to try to save money at the grocery store?
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