I really don’t like to shop or go to the mall, but grocery shopping is the exception. I love it. I could spend an hour every day choosing fresh produce for my lunch and a new kind of cheese. My fridge and cupboards are probably stocked with enough to hold a siege for a month. In spite of all that, I manage to keep my grocery bill quite low using those simple tips.
Plan
Since I moved to Guatemala, going to the supermarket costs me $20 in gas. You better not forget anything. I make a list of what we usually eat
-
pasta, rice, potatoes
-
fruits and vegetables
-
fish and meat
-
juice and drinks
-
cheese and dairy
-
cans, sugar, salt, spices, flour
and any special ingredients for a particular recipe. Then I buy more expensive items that are on special offer and we don’t eat regularly. Often, you can buy short-dated products at big discounts if you plan appropriately and ensure you use them before they expire. Alcohol is cheap around Christmas. If there is a special on shrimp, I will freeze a few months’ worth.
Cook from scratch
I make most of the food from scratch, including pizza dough, cakes or juice from fresh fruit. It is much cheaper than buying a ready meal and you can freeze several portions in advance for a lazy day.
Substitute
If you don’t have an ingredient for a recipe, check this substitution table. You can make roughly the same meal using cheaper ingredients, or ingredients that you already have in your pantry.
Get the specials
It is only a bargain if you need it, but if you do need something on offer, stock up on it. Toilet paper and soap never go bad. With several pounds of meat you can prepare sandwich bags with enough meat for one meal and stock your freezer. The special deals will sometimes be cheaper than the store brand, a quick calculation can save you money. Here is Guatemala, strangely, smaller packs are sometimes cheaper than big bulks.
Zero waste
Zero food waste is actually one of my November goals. I rarely waste food but there is always the odd half vegetable or opened cream cheese that we don’t eat fast enough. Organize your meals around the food that will go bad quickly. I have a shelf on the fridge with things that need to be eaten asap. Half an onion and half a tomato can be blended for a breakfast egg sauce or chopped into an omelet.
Leftovers are frozen to avoid eating the same thing several days in a row.
Reuse a leftover white rice into a stir fry, pasta into a pasta salad or a casserole, potatoes into a stew. With a little imagination most of your leftovers can have a second life without being the same meal, and you save money on grocery shopping.
Grow
Even a little coriander or basil on your balcony can save you some money. If you are lucky enough to have a bigger patch in your garden, try growing the vegetables you eat the most, and/or the most expensive ones in the store. It is a fun activity too!
Don’t shop
The best way to save money on grocery shopping is not to go in the first place. We still need to eat, but now that the supermarket is so far, we go every two weeks, instead of one or twice a week. Then in between, I make another quick trip to a small town nearby and get fresh vegetables and fruit for the week.
This prevents impulse buying and you also save gas money and your time. Some people go grocery shopping once a year, or once every three months. I like my fresh veggies and don’t have the space to stock so much food, that the hot and humid climate would ruin anyway. But going twice a month should be more than enough.
What other tips do you have to same money on groceries?
Now on to the giveaway! It is super easy to enter, you just have to subscribe to my RSS feed. There are also a few more actions you can take to earn extra entries, good luck!
Great list! I’m looking forward to seeing how the giveaway goes.
good luck!
$20 in gas – That’s insane! Is gas super expensive where you live or are you just that far away?
I like the idea of having zero waste. My wife and I are fairly good, but we could be doing a hell of a lot better!
Gas is about $5 per gallon but the Landcruiser loves to pump gas and eats at least 4 gallons to take us, it’s around 80km round trip. Still far away to forget the bread. Try out freezing leftovers if you aren’t sure you’ll be around to eat them or something fresher is about to go bad. It helps me a lot.
Good tips Pauline! We’ve cut down our shopping to once every ten days. That has allowed us to spend less while at the same time significantly cut down on our food waste. We used to have produce that we’d regularly have to throw away and now we virtually use almost everything we buy.
That is amazing especially with the hectic life kids bring in. I love my freezer for that, anything that is not eaten goes back there and doesn’t go bad.
I feel your pain about driving to the grocery store. My parents don’t have it quite so bad, but it is still half an hour to the nearest supermarket for my parents, and they live in the heavily populated eastern US!
That sounds strange to drive half an hour in the East to go shopping. It felt like a giant line of stores when I was there. I got hens and am starting a garden in order to be less dependent.
These are all great tips! Glad to be in the giveaway with you.
Having a plan and growing your own food are great ways to save a boatload. There isn’t much that bothers me more than seeing somebody randomly roaming through the isles not having any idea what they want to buy. It’s not that I care that they didn’t play…those people always just seem to be slow in general and get in the way of people that are on a mission. lol.
Do you time yourself and try to go even faster the next time :P?
Nice tips Pauline. I am sure your list making skills are superb due to the $20 gas bill that you have to fork out. That would hurt the budget if you forgot a couple of things.
I occasionally forget things, but that rather leads to creative cooking than a trip back to the store!
I only buy fresh produce when it’s in season. In addition to growing my own vegetables, I also pick freely growing Japanese wineberries in my backyard all July, then freeze them for winter use. I also put up homegrown tomatoes and homemade pesto sauce for winter use, although I have limited freezer space.
I try to use meat as a condiment rather than the main course. In a soup or stew, I’ll use half the amount called for; you really don’t need a full pound of meat in there.
Very true that you don’t need as much meat as the recipe calls for. I would still do it with the right amount though, and then on the day I unfreeze extra portions, add a few potatoes or rice as a side. I have read that whole tomatoes freeze and thaw well, although I have never tried. With limited freezer space, I would try to store pickled tomatoes, or tomato sauce in jars.
I like the idea of the idea of the zero waste goal!
I can’t stand to throw away food, I’d rather set money on fire! But it is never a total zero, although this month was particularly good.
Wow – $20 in gas! That’s some serious incentive to raising your own chickens. As for one extra tip: don’t go grocery-shopping while you’re hungry, ha! I’ve learned this one the hard way 🙂
Oh yes, my hips have learned that an extra bag of chips on the way home is NOT a good idea!
My biggest tip would be to have a good knowledge of what foods work well with each other in a recipe. You pointed out substitutes, which is right on! Sometimes we THINK we can’t make something because of missing ingredients when in reality all that’s needed is a quick substitute for something that works equally well.
This substitution table works pretty great, especially for very rare things, so that you don’t need to buy them for one particular recipe and have the rest rot in your fridge for month.
Good tips! I suppose they don’t have coupons where you are living now? haha I am so ignorant of other cultures sometimes.
They sometimes have coupons in the capital city, where Walmart is present. My little town up north has had a supermarket for about 5 years so we are already grateful for that!
Growing a few herbs and plants is a great way to save money. Plus, fresh stuff is always sooooo tasty.
You do save a lot, I can’t believe how much three leaves of basil cost in the stores. It is so easy to grow on the balcony even if you don’t have a garden
I can not wait to see how you make out on your eradicating food waste goal. How are the prices of wares at local villages? And would you ever consider tethering up a goat for milk and cheese, among other purposes?
I am doing pretty well on the food waste, having electricity and a fridge sure makes it easy. There is a little shop in the nearby village but you don’t find much. Prices are pretty high because they are used to selling in small quantity. People would come every day to buy one cube of chicken stock for lunch for example. In the end they pay a lot for the convenience of paying food in small installments.
I would love to have a goat but don’t know where to put it, she would eat my herbs garden and the other big piece of land is not properly fenced. Maybe later on!
We do a lot of these things. Great tips. I love the taste of the stuff out of my garden. It so much nicer to eat than what I buy at the store. I also cook from scratch every day. I love trying new recipes.
It is so rewarding to see stuff grow and say ”I did it myself”. How many months a year do you get things from your garden? I am pretty lucky here, should be able to have veggies year round 🙂
Only about 4. Living in Canada means our growing season is quite short.
Self reliance can really help you save money on your food bill. My grandparents grew a lot of their vegetables and saved a bunch of money. They also ate less meat than the average American and used every part of a turkey/chicken when they bought one.
I don’t think it’s possible to save that much even not cutting the diet, anyway would like to say again after giving a try the way you do shopping and cooking.