Cutting the Grocery Bill

In my last post, I shared ways in which it is possible to save money and live on one income. This time I’d like to share specific ways in which I’ve learned to save money on the grocery budget. I don’t pretend to know everything about being frugal! I just wanted to share what I’ve learned so far in my 5 years of home managing – maybe some of it will be helpful to you as well.

The first way we save money on our grocery bill is that most of our meals and snacks are homemade. I find that although this does take longer than purchasing everything pre-made, not only do the cost savings really add up, but so do the health benefits. Remember - if you are staying at home trying to live on one income, you will have more time to make many things from scratch. But where do you start?

It must be intimidating to think about doing this if you’re not used to it. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a household where my mom cooked most of our food from scratch. I learned how to make many things by helping her and for that I am very thankful.

If you’re new to cooking from scratch, I’d suggest that you incorporate one homemade thing a time, beginning with something that you spend the most money on.

From what I’ve observed in watching people go grocery shopping is that a large chunk of people’s budgets go toward snack and convenience foods. If this is the case in your budget, consider the following ideas for ways to cut costs on snacks:

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1. Make muffins and cookies. Muffins and cookies are great for filling in the corners between meals. If they are made from whole wheat flour or even half wheat and white, they will “stick to your ribs” between meals. When I tell people that we eat alot of muffins and cookies for snacks, I often hear “If I did that, I’d get fat!” However, if you are eating muffins, cookies, etc made from healthy ingredients instead of ones made from hydrogenated oils and refined sugar, your body can use them for healthy fuel.

Here are some of our family’s favorite muffin and cookie recipes:

Basic Muffin Recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (I use whole wheat pastry flour)
1/3 cup sugar (I use less than this amount of honey)
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 beaten egg
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup cooking oil

1. Grease 12 muffin cups; set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Make a well in the center of flour mixture; set aside
3. In another bowl combine egg, milk, oil and honey (if using). Add egg mixture all at once to the dry ingredients. Stir until just moistened (don’t over-mix!)
4. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full. Bakg in 400 degree oven for 18-20 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in muffin cups on a wire rack for 5 minutes, then remove from muffin cups.

Our variations:
Banana Muffins – Use above recipe, reduing milk to 1/2. Stir 3/4 cup mashed banana and 1/2 cup chopped nuts into the batter.

Blueberry Muffins – Use above recipe. Fold 3/4 fresh or rozen blueberries and 1tsp finely shredded lemon peel into the batter.

Carrot Muffins from Allrecipes.com

Banana Nut Muffins

Flax Muffins 

Peanut Butter Cookies

1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 tsp. baking powder
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup nuts, chopped
sugar to roll cookies in

1. Mix oil, honey and peanut butter until smooth
2. Add remaining ingredients
3. Form dough into balls and roll in sugar
4. Flatten with a fork in a criss-cross pattern
5. Bake 10-15 minutes at 350 degrees until golden brown – do not overbake!

No-Bake Peanut Butter Cocoa Oatmeal Cookies - super easy and yummy!

Quick Crisp Snack Bars -these bars are so easy and healthy, too!

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2. Buy bulk snacks and package them yourself. This may seem like a no-brainer, but I realize how those little convenience packs or “snack packs” look so tempting sitting there on the shelf at the store! It may seem like the time you save by buying them is worth it. It really takes almost no time at all to take a big package of something and split it up for the rest of the week.

Examples of this are:
Crackers – Buy the family size box and split into individual serving size sandwich baggies
Raisins – same as crackers
Yogurt - we usually buy plain yogurt in the large container and then add in whatever flavor we want. If you put a teaspoon of your favorite jam along with a bit of honey into plain yogurt, it tastes better than those individual yogurt cups!
Carrots-it only takes a few minutes to cut regular carrots up into carrot sticks. Those baby carrots cost almost twice as much as regular ones!

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Another way to save money on the grocery bill is to refuse to pay an excessive amount of money for foods that cost only pennies to make.

Examples of this are:

Rice vs. “Rice-a-Roni” type foods – Rice is dirt cheap. The only thing that is hard about rice is that you have to be home to wait for it to boil. Where I shop, a bag of brown rice is $1.00. This will last for many meals for our family. You also avoid all that sodium that is found in pre-made rice dishes!

Oatmeal vs. Instant oatmeal, Oatmeal breakfast bars, Oatmeal on the go, etc. – Plain oatmeal is very inexpensive. I buy a 25# bag of regular, organic, rolled oats from my co-op for less than $18.  How long would a #25 bag of oats last your family for oatmeal breakfasts? Contrary to popular belief, it really doesn’t take that long to cook real oatmeal. Then you can add in whatever you like! We love our “regular” style oatmeal, with raisins, cinnamon and vanilla. We also love “tropical oatmeal”, our name for oatmeal with vanilla, coconut and bananas cooked with it. Yum!

Granola vs. cold cereal - This is another food that seems like it will take WAY TOO LONG to make yourself. I never made it for years because I thought that very thing! But homemade granola doesn’t take long at all and you can make it as healthy or unhealthy as you want.   Here is my favorite granola recipe.

Peanut Butter Granola 

1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup crunchy peanut butter
1/3-3/4 cup honey
2 1/2 cups uncooked oats
vanilla

*add any of the following before baking:
1/2 cup sunflower seeds or nuts
1/2 cup coconut
1/4 cup wheat germ or bran
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup raisins or dates or craisins

1. Melt the first three ingredients in saucepan.
2. Remove from heat and stir in remaining ingredients
3. Spread on a greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for approximately 15 minutes, stirring occasionally to insure even browning.
4. Cool.

I usually make a triple batch and then store it in the refrigerator so it lasts longer.

Popcorn vs. microwave popcorn – Have you ever looked at the cost of a bag of regular old popcorn kernels? A big bowl of popcorn for movie night only uses up a fraction of the bag! Those air poppers are not that expensive and they really don’t take any longer than making the popcorn in the microwave!

Here are more inexpensive foods and their expensive store-bought counterparts:

• Mashed potatoes
• Homemade bread
• Waffles - you can make these ahead and freeze them for busy mornings. The best part is that you can make them from quality ingredients that will actually keep you full until lunchtime, unlike Eggo waffles which don’t last long on your stomach.
• Pancakes - you can either make them up and freeze them or make your own pancake mix. Pancake mix is nothing more than flour, sugar, the leavening agents and salt. Those ingredients don’t take long to put together. If you make a big batch of pancake mix, store it in the freezer in daily portions that will be easy to pull out and use.

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If you incorporate just one “from scratch” item at a time to your menu, you will see the savings start to add up. Your confidence may increase as well as you learn to make new things. This, in turn, will make cooking other things from scratch less intimidating.

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There are so many great websites out there with homemade and/or healthy recipes. Here are a few of my favorites where I’ve found lots of great budget recipes.

The Family Homestead - Crystal Miller has 8 children and feeds them all healthy foods made from scratch. Her recipes are usually very easy to make and best of all, they’re DELICIOUS! No gourmet ingredients needed with these recipes. Scroll down the linked page to see her recipes.

Hillbilly Housewife - This is a website I came across when we were on our tightest budget crunch. I knew that beans were inexpensive, but I wasn’t really sure what I could do with them. I found lots of great recipes and tips at this website for using beans and other inexpensive foods.

Allrecipes – A great place to find recipes, although you have to search a bit harder to find healthy recipes there.

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I have lots of other ways to share with you of how we cut our grocery budget besides cooking from scratch, but this post is already too long. If this topic interests you, be sure to check back here in the next few posts for more ideas. I promise they won’t be as long!

(However, there may be intermittent unrelated posts as I’m really excited about fall!)