Better food, more cash $$

James and I finally mastered the merger between eating superfoods and maintaining our food budget. Yesterday, we spent $75 on groceries for the entire week buying nothing but super foods! Our average per person, per meal cost is about $1.78, not including snacks!

Last night, I was talking with one of my good friends, and she was questioning me about my grocery bill. She asked me, “how on earth do you spend so little on groceries?” I threw out an immediate response stating that I thought meal planning was the method that keeps our grocery bill down.

However, after I hung up the phone with her, I sat at my kitchen table and reflected for a few minutes about all of the strategies we use to buy better food and spend less money. I called her back about five minutes later and shared some other tips. I don’t know if my call back was helpful, or if she officially thinks that I am crazy!

Once I started reflecting, I thought that others might enjoy learning how we keep our food bill so low. After all, who doesn’t want extra $$ in their pocket!?

• Meal Plan- We devote at least three hours on Sundays to plan our meals. We sit down together and think about what we would like to eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks for the entire week. Sometimes we search online for “budget recipes” to help with this process.

• Grocery List-We create a grocery list based on our plan, and we determine the exact portion of each item we will buy. For example, we buy 10 apples and 10 oranges for the week so that we can each eat an apple and an orange every day as a snack.

• Avoid Convenience-We buy the most affordable food options at all costs. For example, we buy a huge five pound bag of regular carrots, peel the skin, and dice them ourselves into mini carrot sticks, rather than buying baby carrots.

• Shop unit price- We constantly compare the unit price of foods. We learned that the best “deal” changes from week to week.

• Bulk cooking- Generally we have about three different dinner meals each week. We cook three bulk meals and eat the same thing for at least two to three nights in a row. This saves a ton of money because we avoid buying multiple ingredients for multiple meals. We choose one lunch meal for the week, cook the meal, and divide the meal into individual Tupperware containers.

• Stick to the list- We made a pack to only buy what is on the list. If we did not plan for an item, we do not buy the item!

• Use “fillers”- We think of creative ways to stuff cheaper food into more expensive food to keep our food budget low. For example, we stuff tons of veggies in our white meat turkey burgers to save $$ on ground white meat turkey, a high price item.

• Buy Frozen- We always buy seven bags of frozen veggies every week. We eat one each night, and we find that the frozen veggies are just as good as fresh and they cost less!

• Water only- We don’t’ buy any drinks (except milk). We only drink water from the tap, and we learned that this saves us tons of $$ If we want wine, or any other alcoholic beverage, we use our personal spending money.
• Avoid eating out- We try to avoid eating out because we learned that one meal at a restaurant costs us as much as half a week’s worth of groceries! If we do eat out, we use our allotted personal spending money. Most of the time, we do not want to waste our spending money on eating out!

When we will pay more for better food:

• Sodium- We always compare the sodium content of everything we buy. If one item costs less, but has higher sodium content than a more expensive item, we will buy the more expensive item.

• Sugar- We compare labels for sugar content. If one item has a significantly higher amount of sugar than another item, we will buy the item with less sugar.

We started this shopping/food plan about one year ago. Before we implemented these little tips, we went grocery shopping mindlessly. We purchased foods that caught our attention, packaging directed our nutrition! We spent at least $130, or more on food every week, and we ate out at least twice per week. In 2009, we estimate that we saved about $3960 by following this simple plan! If you would have told me a year ago that I could eat healthier, lost weight, feel better, and have an extra $3960 I wouldn’t believe you! Today I am living proof!

Sweet Potato Minestrone- Last week, our favorite meal was this sweet potato minestrone soup! I included a link to the online recipe. We cooked the soup, as directed, and we ate this soup for dinner three nights, and James ate it for lunch one day! Pretty sweet deal, very filling, and delicious!

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Sweet-Potato-Minestrone/Detail.aspx