How much of your family’s hard earned money goes to groceries? $150 per week? $100? Believe it or not, it’s relatively simple to spend as little as $50 per week on groceries for a family of five or six. But slashing the food bill down to those lower numbers means you may need to rethink the way your family eats.
Trying to save money on groceries? It can be almost like a game as you look for ways to outsmart the supermarket. Try these ideas for starters.
Simple Ways to Save on Groceries
Groceries are one of the few flexible items in a family budget, but it can sometimes be challenging to find creative ways to save on regular family food costs.
Where I live, a few things are usually cheap to buy: canned tuna, minced meat, hot dogs and chicken. We have one of these food items for main course one day a week.
The rest of the days of the week, we have something baked (pizza or pirogues), a vegetable dish and a soup.
A half can of tuna is enough for a main dish for four persons (in a tuna salad with rice). 60 grams of minced meat and 100 grams of chicken breast is enough for four (served with rice, potatoes, vegetables and beans or a youghurt sauce). Two hot dogs, finely diced, are enough for a meal for four (served over mashed potatoes or pasta and a salad or fried with eggs).
Since flour is cheap and bread is not, I bake all bread at home. It has to be fast and easy, so I make the dough in the mixer and let it rise quickly in the microwave oven (just below defrost for about 1 1/2 minutes for a dough made with 1 1/2 kg flour).
Then you just have to shape the dough, put the loaves on a baking sheet, rise for 10 minutes (at the most) and then bake it at 200 degrees Celsius.
You can close the oven just before the bread is done, and use the after heat, to save on electricity.
Breakfasts are very frugal, except on weekends, and even then they are very inexpensive. During week days we have toast and butter with a slice of tomato, topped with parsley. Sometimes we have sliced canned sausage or cottage cheese as well. If money is very short, I dice white bread, put it on a baking dish, pour over some olive oil, and sprinkle salt and oregano on top and put it under the grill for a few moments. Alternatively you can replace the oregano with minced garlic and diced tomatoes. Both are tasty and filling for a day when cash is in short supply.
Breakfasts on weekends consist of toast, boiled egg (1/2 egg per person), finely diced sausage (bratwurst) mixed in a cabbage salad, a quarter of a can of tuna (use as a spread on top of margarine) – and that’s about it…
Lunch is the main meal, served as soon as the children come from school. They are described in detail above.
Supper is usually soup with bread, or a warm double sandwich with canned mushrooms and oregano or garlic (no cheese).
Cheese, by the way, can be omitted from almost all recipes or the amount of cheese used can be diminished to a minimum. From 200 grams of cheese, I make 10 pizzas. With a variety of finely diced toppings, it tastes great anyway!
The amount that I spend on food, toothpaste, shampoo, washing powder, detergent, soap and toilet paper every month for four people is $130, or $42.50 a week, constantly throughout the year.
I build the meals around the cheepest food items available, I dice and freeze fresh vegetables and use in small amounts during all the month to give taste and colour to different dishes, and I do the same with canned vegetables like corn or peas with carrots.
I portion out the meat for each person at the table, and they take starches and vegetables themselves.
I am sure the frugal readers here already do the same as I do, and done with vigiliance, it is very much possible to feed a family of four on fourty-two dollars a week, and a family of five or six for a few dollars more, since the food I cook for fourty-two dollars allows one and a half serving per person.
I hope this post may be of help or encouragement to someone: – )!
I live in Israel, but the prices are about the same as in the U. S. (though the salaries are not…) For comparison I will give you the following prices:
1 can of tuna costs from $0.85 to $1.20.
1 kg of chicken breasts costs $7.30 and 1 kg of minced meat costs $6.10.
1 kg of hot dogs cost $2.45.
30 kg of flour can usually be had for $24.3 and 3 cans of vegetables for $2.43.
Fresh vegetables in season, and of good quality, can be had for about $0.85 per kg.I greatly rely on vegetables in stead of fruit as the source of vitamin C, as vegetables are so much cheaper than fruit.
Sorry, the monthly amount is $130 and the weekly amount is $32.50, not 42.50.
You can also save on foods by having the right food storage gadgets. There are many different types of of food savers, keepers or containers. Just decide which tools or gadgets will help you saving on food and get some of them.