Killing your $1000 Grocery Bill
A few years ago, I was at a party eating some amazing food at the potluck buffet. In my area, there seems to be a friendly competition among the 25-40 crowd of trying to out-chef each other. It’s a contest I heartily approve of and I am happy to be both an underdog competitor and a judge.
Anyway, the topic turned to how good we have it in our lives, with such plentiful food that we can afford to spend hours combining exotic ingredients just for the sake of overfilling our bellies. “Yeah.. I know it’s a bit over the top”, I said, “but I probably spend 80 bucks a week on food. I think it’s worth it if you can afford it”.
“Eighty dollars a week on food for the three of you? That’s IT??”, said a friend, “We spend more than three times that amount!!”
“Whoa”, I thought, “I guess I’m not as spendy as I thought”.
Of course, the person telling me about her high food bill was more of a typical high-income spender in many ways. Her family also took out loans to buy new cars, had at least one $2500 road bike in the garage, and hired out the household chores to allow them to conveniently work a double-career-with-kids while still taking plenty of short vacations involving air travel. Looking back, I probably could have predicted a non-Mustachian grocery bill. But the experience still reminded me of the amazing variety of spending levels we all have available to us here in the United States. It is simultaneously one of the cheapest industrialized countries in the world to live in, and the most expensive. It all depends on the choices you make in your shopping, because everything in the world is available right here for your buying convenience.
When you look it up, the average food cost for a family of four in the US is actually quite high, at $944 per month. But to call it “food cost” makes it sound like it’s out of your control. I would call this the average food spending. Just like the average family’s transportation cost is not some fixed punishment that the cruel world imposes on them.. it’s a measure of the amount of driving that they have designed into their lives, multiplied by the level of inefficiency of the vehicles they have chosen for themselves.
Instead of shooting for the average, you can design your own food cost. Let’s say a family of four wants to spend only $365 per month on groceries, saving them $579 per month over the USDA average family. Investing this savings would compound into about $102,483.00 every ten years, which would obviously make a pretty big improvement in the financial health of the average young family.
To hit a monthly grocery spending target like that, you first have to understand what you are buying. There are four mouths to feed, each consuming three meals a day or 91.25 meals per month. Let’s say they all need adult levels of calories, so about 2000 per day.
To meet this level of grocery spending, each meal needs average out to about $1.00 per person, and provide about 667 calories. Of course, there can be plenty of variation in the cost and calories, and you might eat 6 smaller meals and snacks instead of three big 667 calorie blasters. But these are the fundamental numbers we’d need to hit.
Can it be done? Coincidentally, this is about the level of my own grocery spending when I’m in semi-frugal mode (if you scale it down to 3 people and $273/month), and in the non-frugal mode mode we currently shop in, we spend closer to $365/month for three people, resulting in a cost per meal of $1.33. So the answer is a definite Yes.
All of us eat very well, with a fair amount of luxury spending thrown into that amount – the grocery spending includes gourmet coffee every day, a lot of organic and gluten-free specialties, food for parties, and other things that you buy when you’re not worried about cashflow at all. Plus I consume far more than my share of calories due to all-bike transportation and physical labor, my son is growing about six inches a year, and Mrs. Money Mustache does crossfit workouts three times a week, increasing her food needs as well.
“But damn, a buck for a whole meal? “, you might say. “That’s the price of a shitty Burger King dollar menu mini burger on a soggy white bun – BEFORE TAX!”.
Luckily, I don’t eat at Burger King, and neither should you. But let’s see how much it costs for 667 calories of some actual food staples that should be part of your diet:
Cost per 667 calorie “Meal” of common foods:
Basmati Rice: 25 cents
Spaghetti noodles: 28 cents
Black beans (uncooked): 49 cents
Natural (peanuts only) Peanut Butter: 53.36 cents
California Raw Almonds: 80 cents
Bananas: 92 cents
Potatoes: 57 cents
Canola Oil: 14.38 cents
Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil: 57 cents
Cheddar cheese: $1.09
Apples: $2.79
Organic cage-free eggs: $2.85
Organic boneless skinless chicken breast: $8.00
Aha.. now things are sounding much better. Although not all of the foods above cost less than $1 per meal, they certainly average out to less than that. And when planning your menu to meet a certain budget, averaging out is exactly your goal. You still want to be able to eat apples, organic chicken breast, or whatever your heart desires. You just have to not eat entirely those most expensive foods.
Canola oil is the ultimate example. It is packed with calories, costs 17 cents per 667 calories, and it is very good for you. If you’re one of those Canola Oil Conspiracy Theorists, move up to Olive oil. That’s a higher-end alternative for even fancier people, and yet you can still get one third of a day worth of calories for 57 cents. Every time you dump these oils into a frying pan, or mix them into a recipe or a salad dressing, you’re lowering your food cost – the oil provides calories that your body might otherwise get from cans of Coke, Filet Mignon, or Burger King dollar menu burgers. And contrary to the 1990s low-fat-diet fad, the human body loves oil. It’s yummy, clean-burning, good for a giant range of body functions, and it is satisfying to eat too. I eat a fairly high-fat/low-carb diet these days, yet I’m leaner than ever, because the oily food doesn’t cause spikes of fake appetite like bread does. I’ve even been known to bring containers of pure olive oil in my backpack, taking spoonfuls straight from the jar to supplement calories on an extreme hike or high-energy work day.
Similarly, you can mix other foods from the under-$1.00 list into meals, freeing up space for expensive garnishes. Chicken and rice recipes with oils, spices, and vegetables are delicious and can be made in many different styles (Asian, Mediterranean, Indian, Mexican) while still coming in at under $1/meal.
For snacking, I usually eat handfuls of raw almonds combined with fresh fruits and vegetables. The almonds provide most of the calories, while the fruits provide the various nutrients and healthy stuff.
But What about Protein?
These days, the high-protein diet is back in style, especially among followers of the “Paleo” diet/religion. I am also a big fan of the nutrient, since it’s handy as part of strength training and exercise. Unfortunately, most people equate “protein” with “meat”, which is the most expensive way to get protein by any measure.
An average person might want to shoot for about 75 grams of protein per day, while an athlete might consume 150 grams. When you eat beans and rice in the same meal, you’re getting complete protein at virtually no cost. Nuts and especially peanut butter are also a good way to mix high calories with built-in protein.
Protein from high-quality meat and fish costs about 4 cents per gram, which would already put the Paleo-eating athlete over $6.00 per day just for his meat intake. But whey protein powder from Costco or an online source like Swanson Vitamins runs about 2.5 cents/gram which is a reasonable midpoint. The key is to look at the protein content already in your basic staples before deciding how much you need to supplement it, and then do so intelligently based on your own activity level.
The average American diet is actually quite oversupplied with protein, due to the fact that most people eat meat with every meal, even while most are not competitive weight-training athletes. The opportunity for savings is enormous!
Where to Get your Food
Not Here
To research this article, I biked over to the health food store in my town, a place called Natural Grocers that attempts to imitate Whole Foods. It seemed like a friendly place, where the customers are unsually slim, the bike rack is unusually full, and everyone brings their own cloth grocery bags.
But Holy Shit, were the prices ever ridiculous there! In one quick tour of the store, I observed a package of four ”Bison hotdogs” priced at $11.85, a two-pound bag of plain Tilapia filets at $25.00, and jugs of organic milk at $11.00 per gallon.
All of these prices are more than double the levels of the nearest Costco, which is one of the best places to shop for your calories and protein, unless you have even better options in your area. The prices I quoted in my $1.00 meals table above were Costco prices, and unless you already have unlimited money, you should stay miles away from Whole Foods or any of its cousins.
At a more community-oriented level, there are also good deals to be had in Mexican, Indian and Chinese grocery stores, Community-supported agriculture groups (CSAs), farmer’s markets, your own vegetable garden, and other old-fashioned sources. When the parking lot is not full of hybrids, there are international phone cards on display in the window, and the cashiers also stock their own shelves and do not speak much English, you are probably onto something good.
What to Eat
Finally, the fun part! As the wise people of India have proven beyond all other cultures*, amazing food is all about preparation and spices, rather than starting with costly ingredients. Once you know which ingredients make good staples, you can easily poke around on the Internet or in any cookbook to find an infinite number of good recipes that use them.
At the simplest “bachelor” level, you’ve got recipes like:
Fancy home fries:
Slice up about five big potatoes into thick french fry shapes, mix them around in a giant bowl along with a huge amount of canola or olive oil (maybe 1/3 cup), garlic, black pepper, cayenne pepper, paprika, and/or any spices you like (even curry!). Cook at 400F for 25 minutes on a metal tray.
Ding! You’ve got thousands of calories of deliciousness to use as a side dish, snack, or even combine with a salad to make a simple main meal.
At the next level, you can move up to something Mrs. M. has started making regularly:
Thai Curry and Coconut Butternut Squash Soup:
1 large butternut squash, about 2.5 pounds
1 tbsp oil
1/2 an onion, chopped up very small
1 tbsp freshly grated ginger
4 cloves garlic
2-3 tsp Thai Red Curry paste
4 cups chicken broth
1 13-14 oz can unsweetened coconut milk
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice
Fancy optional things:
Some toasted coconut for garnish
A few kaffir lime leaves, chopped up a bit
Cut the squash in half, take out the seeds, brush it with oil, and bake it for an hour at 400°F. Then scoop out the soft squash with a spoon when it’s done.
Fry the onion, ginger and garlic in some oil for a few minutes. Add the curry paste and cook for a few more minutes. Stir in the chicken broth, coconut milk, salt, squash and shredded lime leaves. Simmer for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the lime juice.
Finally, blend up the contents of the pan in a blender or a bowl with a hand mixer. Serve in colorful bowls with the garnishes.
This soup is extremely filling due to the deliciously high fat content of coconut milk, and so good you will not believe it came from your own kitchen. It also stores well in the fridge and freezer, and can be brought to work or on road trips and reheated anywhere.
Those are just two simple recipes. The key to frugal eating is to have at least ten good things you know how to make.
There are many chefs among the readers. Maybe we will get to hear some of their best low-cost and easy-to-make creations in the comments section below!
Further Reading:
Grocery Shopping with your Middle Finger – an old MMM classic on this same topic, where I first started thinking about cost per calorie. But there I was dealing with food stockups and sales rather than thinking of it on a per-meal or per-month basis.
* According to the strong opinion of my own taste buds
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Mr. Money Mustache is a family man living in the United States who retired from work, relatively wealthy, at about age 30. After several years of retirement, he noticed that his still-working peers were envious of his lifestyle. They were making more money than he ever had, yet they were somehow still broke. So he decided to write this blog to educate the world on how it is done.
Wow, this frugal spending on groceries is really inspiring. I’m a single guy, I eat quite a bit to fuel myself, as I work out pretty hard almost every day of the week. This includes heavy weight training, CrossFitting and martial arts for hours upon hours each day. I’m a pretty big guy, and I just simply eat a TON. I want to switch to a more veganish diet, for health, moral and frugal reasons.
Most of my cooking though, is really rudimentary. Grill a steak, steam a bag of broccoli. Bake a bag of frozen chicken, steam a bag of green beans. Add some brown rice. Drink almost a gallon of whole milk a day. I’m pretty lean so it seams like this is a good amount of calories and the proper macros for me, but I want to eat simpler (more simply?). Unfortunately the only way I could imagine to combine all of this awesome organic produce into a healthy, simple (I’m horrible in the kitchen), quick (again, hours a day, sometimes I don’t get home from training until 11pm) meal is by eating it raw and either juicing it or blending it or both. It’s tempting to get a good juicer just so I can fit this healthy eating into my lifestyle, but they aren’t cheap!
Is there a good site for quick, simple, cheap, healthy, vegetarian(ish) recipes out there?? Most of them have some combination of those features, but not all or most. Even just a few recipes to help me out would be great! I normally cycle eating protein and carbs on heavy training days, and protein and fats on my primarily martial arts days, so it may be asking a bit much, but some idea of what to throw together with those macros would be awesome. It feels like a lack of education in this field is what is really holding me back from making the jump to this diet. Even a guide on how to prepare produce would be great, I wouldn’t know where to start with a raw turnip or head of broccoli, other than taking a clever to it and adding it to fire.
For those of you in this type of lifestyle with these constraints, have you found an investment in a juicer or blender or food processor to be worth it (as far as making the transition easier, meals quicker and easier to come up with considering ingredients on hand)?
I assume you have enough money to buy a blender. We use our Vita-Mix every single day and it is now lowering food costs by preparing our own hemp milk, peanut butter, etc… Time is a factor and we often make a smoothie that is a whole meal which is fantastic. We eat closest to Paleo but no eggs.
I do, but just wanted to make sure that people found it a wise investment, and it sounds like you have! That’s great to hear, thank you :) Where do you get the recipes for that stuff!? Sounds like I could do a lot with a blender!
I recommend http://happyherbivore.com/blog/ for great tasting, easy, healthy vegan recipes. She also has 2 cookbooks that are really good too, but on the website there are recipes listed. Also, I have a Vitamix which I love and I use it at least 5x weekly. Before I discovered MMM, I was quite the consumer of high-end kitchen helpers! I still have to fight this urge, lol. One of my very best investments though has to be my Zojirushi rice cooker. I use it every single day, sometimes twice a day. I primarily use it for brown jasmine rice and steel cut oats. I love that it has a timer and I can have my oatmeal ready for when I wake up. Hope this helps you!
Crock Pot Oatmeal
1 cup steel cut oats
2 sliced apples
1 tsp cinnamon
4 1/2 cups of water
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
more calories? 1/4 peanut butter or top with almonds after cooked!
Coat crock pot with a little bit of butter so oatmeal doesn’t stick
Mix ingredients in crock pot and turn on low for 6-8 hours. Perfect to put on when you go to bed and wake up to the delicious smell of baked apples, cinnamon and maple syrup!
Another great thing about Costco is their snack bar. Recently, my Mustachian-minded extended family members and I have started meeting there when we want to get together to “go out to eat”. We enjoy visiting with each other just as much as if we were at a traditional restaurant, and it feels like a treat, for a fraction of the cost.
I just wanted to add that I’ve gone berry picking a few times this summer (living in the PNW) and I got berries for $1.10/lb and loaded up my freezer. Now when I’m at the grocery store and see the tasteless, flown from half-way around the world berries for $5 I know I can just go to my fridge and get the berries I paid $1 for instead :)
There are many many great suggestions in this comment thread! I’m eager to start implementing some of them.
One of the things we include in our grocery budget is toiletries, paper towels, makeup (for me), diapers, etc.
Are there any suggestions or tips somewhere on this blog about these items?
Check out iheartcvs or southernsavers website for your toiletries, paper towels, diapers, etc. Drugstores are where you generally want to pick these items up as they are pretty close to free once you get the hang of how CVS, RIte-Aid, and Walgreens bonus bucks works.
with the current trend of food inflation on the rise, in addition to the adulterated and less than optimal (nutritionless) agricultural products reaching our shelves. I believe it is time to cut out commercial red meat (and most dairy) and start shopping at the farmers markets which are popping up in most urban areas. If you are on limited funds, try to get to the farmers market just before closing. Many farmers will drop their prices, happily. Plan our your daily menus based on less animal protein and more vegetables and whole grains (fiber) It’s time to “eat to live” instead of living to eat.
Check out the Urban Survival Kitchen on my site JunePagan.com Anyone interested in advice or recipe suggestions, i would be happy to help.
We all need to FACE the future of food that is Flavorful, Affordable, Clean and Eco-Conscious.
Another Canadian (with the attendant higher food costs) here. Personally, I think that if you can afford it without going into debt, spending more to eat really well is worth it, for health, environmental, and ethical reasons. Different people probably have different ideas on what it is to eat well, but my own personal rules are:
-No processed foods. Exceptions made here for a few Asian spice mixtures which my husband likes and I don’t know how to replicate, good quality dark chocolate chips to enhance the morning oatmeal, and mayo (homemade mayo has such a short shelf life, and we use so little of it, that I always end up having to throw some of it out).
-Organic when available, local when available, small-scale farmers when available. Good local sources for wheat, rye, and meat of all kinds are relatively easy to find here, but I end up paying through the nose for fruits and vegetables, even in season. It is what it is, and I accept it as a fact of life in this climate and location.
-Use meat sparingly (perhaps 2 or 3 times a week, for us) and as a small part of a main dish. This means that large hunks of meat like pork chops or steaks don’t tend to appear at table, but it’s really not an issue. And it has the very Mustachian benefit of cutting grocery costs significantly while also being better for the environment and (most likely) our waistlines.
So my grocery bills are mainly for organic fruit, veggies and grains, with a small amount of meat and dairy. It’s expensive ($600-$700 per month for two adults) but I make everything that we eat from scratch, I’m satisfied that it’s healthy, and we’re not wasting any of the food, so I’m fine with spending more. Hopefully we’ll be able to cut costs once we have a house, though *starts dreaming of elaborate vegetable garden*.
Hey there! I have to say that I came across this post when I Googled “eat meat about once a month” just to see what came up. I live in NJ and just got through the aftermath (much of it) of Hurricane Sandy and had to toss out a bit of meat that didn’t make it through the power outage we endured. I opened up my cabinet to see what I’d prepare for dinner and found a few bags of beans I hadn’t prepared (love bean soups) after discovering I only had frozen smoked sausage and a little chicken left in the freezer. I paused for a moment and thought about how good I’ve been feeling after having no power. I lost a few pounds after eating a bit lighter the last few days and feel more energetic having adopted an Amish sleep pattern since the darkness lulled me into bed earlier than my normal wee hours in front of the computer normally allow. It’s high time I start planning my meals better and why not now just weeks before Thanksgiving?
So, I pulled out the smoked sausage I will use in my lentil soup tonight. I’m so glad I found your post and you have a new follower. It just reinforced my natural frugality. I’ve often “afforded” myself a bit more extravagant cuts of meat due to the fact that I am single and so I’d rather have filet mignon once or twice a month rather than chicken or ground beef every single day. Now, however, I’m thinking I’d rather “afford” myself something even better. Yes, those occasional splurges are fine but I’d rather be smarter about how I eat on a daily basis and afford myself more money in my pockets and and a healthier body to boot.
I love to cook and I am genuinely looking forward to being smarter about what I select for my dining pleasure and my overall health. When I think about how many times I’ve said I can’t visit my best friend in AZ because I don’t have “extra cash”, I can easily calculate what I’ve overspent in “lazy” food (aka fast food) and convenience foods (frozen instead of fresh) and see how I could have visited quite a few times already, with a new laptop to boot.
Really looking forward to redirecting my money in 2013 and enjoying it more. Should be pretty easy for a single, frugal, smart girl like myself!
Kudos on the article!
I loved this post. And the comments too. What an amazing collection of resources. And so interesting how we all look at food so differently.
I’d like to see your spreadsheet and sources. Our calculations don’t match by about 5x. Cheers
This is one of the most helpful and practical posts I’ve ever regarding grocery budgeting. Not to mention the very balanced and health minded advice from those commenting. Thanks all! I am aiming to lower our grocery costs for our family of four with a concern to keeping it as clean and organic as possible. I have a very hungry teenage boy, a husband works out frequently and eats a lot of meat, and two of us are on a gluten free diet. I’ve been budgeting $175 a week for groceries with toiletries but often have gone over that (closer to $210). I think that it mostly boils down to poor planning. However, we don’t eat out as a rule, with the exception of the occasional trip to Chipotle or the local taqueria on the weekend, and a monthly date night. My game plan is (1) Save a bit each week to join a CSA this summer (2) Start batch cooking on Sundays – soups, stews, breakfast burritos and mini frittatas (3) Start making my own granola bars (thanks for the tip Fredrick) (4) Buy a vitamix to start making smoothies again for my breakfast – way cheaper and more nutritious than juicing. Things we already have been implementing to save are soaking and slow cooking a large batch of beans for the week, and eating breakfast for dinner once a week (eggs and potatoes), and making stove popped popcorn for snacks for the kids. Hopefully we can trim this budget substantially :)
Just found this site, right on! My grocery budget is $100 a month. It’s the 20th, and I’m $35 in! Anyone who is willing to cook and eat out can do it! My friend was buying some $7 sandwiches yesterday, he told me they were great. I told him that’s cool, he bought two, and told me to buy one, I told him that I only eat what I cook at home. He looked at me funny and asked what that was about. Then offered to buy one for me. I kindly declined.
@MMM… discovered your blog a few days ago, and loving every bit… you’re putting an articulate voice to that little guy in my head that always yanks my chain about spending too much!
My wife and I are in crazy student loan debt, hundreds of thousands… but digging hard and thankfully the shovel keeps growing. You’ve inspired us to get hardcore about cutting spending… no restaurants, no more “miscellaneous”!!! I even added rolled oats to my special K this morning, what a WINNER!
Thanks dude… hey if you ever want to come visit the Appalachian mountains and even do some sailing, maybe we can do a house swap or something!
Hi there! Thanks for a great article! I just discovered your blog and like the commenter above am really loving it. I grew up in the very low-end of the economic spectrum (for example my mom once turned her nose up at the fact that I bought slightly more expensive red potatoes over the standard brown ones) and have spent most of my life struggling with what to me has always looked like overspending, especially on food. (By which I mean that when I was living with my boyfriend during the last year, I was spending $80 on food for the two of us every two weeks and we were eating lavishly and gaining unnecessary weight.) But still I find myself overspending on lavish items like high-end desserts, not buying carefully, buying out of season expensive items, etc. I’m going to take some of your suggestions here and see if I can’t implement them into my method. In the meantime I’d like to share with you a pretty cheap but delicious and lavish recipe that I happened to make up last night when wondering about dinner. In fact I’m eating the second portion of it right now, so I can testify that leftovers are just as tasty! And as an added bonus, this took me no more than 20 minutes to make.
Asian-inspired shrimp with rice, for 3 adult portions
1 – 1.5 cups of Basmati rice
1 pound frozen shrimp (peeled or in-shell makes no difference, choose whatever cheaper option is available)
2 cups, or 6-8 sections, of frozen spinach
2 tablespoons grated/crushed/finely diced garlic (about 6 cloves)
2 tablespoons plus juice of ginger (about 1 inch, peeled)
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
3 tablespoons soy sauce
Defrost shrimp and spinach but do not drain the spinach. Cook rice according to package or to personal preference. Combine oil, soy sauce, garlic, and ginger in a deep pan over medium heat and cook until garlic is fragrant, about 1 minute. Add shrimp and cook for about 5 minutes, until pink and curling into circles. Add spinach and its water, cook for about 2 minutes or until heated through, mixing as it cooks. Serve over rice.
I agree it is possible to eat well and healthy whole foods diet on a budget. Currently our family of five spends $600 a month on food, drinks, diapers and household items. That works out to $1.07 per meal or snack (4 ‘meals’ a day, though the kids eat at least 3 snacks a day)
All our grains and bulk staples are organic (Azure Standard company, we can afford this because of free shipping if there is a truck route nearby) We buy organic or natural meats (Costco, local butcher, other grocery stores) Eggs and dairy are sometimes organic. Last summer we were able to buy day old produce from an organic farm. We eat a lot of fresh fruit and veg daily. So while everything we eat is not 100% organic, it is high in whole foods.
Four things that I do to make our budget affordable is we got a second hand bread machine and make bread (instead of $3.50 for a healthy loaf at the store, I can make a healthy one myself for about .50), make yogurt at home, bulk cook snacks for the freezer (cookies, muffins, sweet breads, smoothies) and make homemade laundry soap.
Even though I cringe at the ever rising costs of food, it is possible with a little creativity, to still eat well on a tight budget.
I know this thread has largely extinguished itself by now, but I only found this (excellent) article today.
Lots of people have lamented the fact that they struggle to find well priced local produce close to their homes and that the nearest Costco is some distance away and so can’t be visited on a weekly basis. I just wanted to point out that the emergence of the Costco type stores is a very key reason why your local stores aren’t there anymore, and why the ones that survive have to try and charge more to make the most of reduced foot traffic.
If we all made more effort to shop locally (albeit at a higher cost) then local communities will flourish, business will succeed and prices will start to become more competitive because the local stores will be able to get better wholesale rates due to their increased trading volumes. I know this thread is about saving money, and I know that shopping at Costco is a very cheap option, but it does also come at a cost. The cost of gas to make the trip is really only a small part of that; the cost to our local communities in terms of amenity, casual employment, convenience, social interaction, property values are all much greater.
I know MMM is a big fan of sustainable living – I just want to remind everyone that if we obsess about penny pinching at all costs, then the local store will become even more a thing of the past and that is ultimately not sustainable for anyone.
cheers
Paul
Right on! We joined a CSA this year. That’s about as local as it gets for produce. Since we’re vegan, produce is the majority of our diet, so I feel pretty good about the good we’re doing for our community, the environment, and for our health.
Stay away from big box stores if you can help it!
Your butternut squash soup recipe is great! I’ve made it a number of times. I’ve also made a vegetarian version and it worked out beautifully as well. I’ve had requests for the recipe and sent them to this page. Highly recommend it.
Love it. And love all the recipes as well! I generally enjoy the comments section just as much as the article itself – and am so pleased people included recipes! It’s so fun to try new and healthy meals on the fam!
I highly recommend learning to use a pressure cooker. A stew which may take several hours using traditional methods cooks in 15 minutes in the pressure cooker. Carrots, potatoes, beef, pork, beets, anything; they’ll be tender in just 15 minutes in a pressure cooker. Learn to use one. Then cook in bulk; eat the left overs.
Use a pressure cooker for any stew recipe, I’m not joking… cook a stew in 15 minutes and it’s amazing. I use ingredients from my garden plus wild game for protien
I know this post is old but these are a few fantastic resources for inexpensive quality food:
Bountiful baskets is a co-op you can order from weekly you just have to go pick up at the pickup location. This is a great winter produce option if you do a garden or CSA in the summer. If you volunteer to coordinate or sort boxes then you get a cheaper (free?) box:
http://www.bountifulbaskets.org/
I haven’t ordered from Zaycon but have a handful of friends who do. They do sale events and you have to pick it up. I think the quantities are fairly large so either split with another family or put it in the freezer in smaller packages.
https://www.zayconfoods.com/products
Someone mentioned Azure Stadard. I second that; great prices on some things but not all. Just price shop. Lots of good bulk and organic options.
One local CSA lets you trade 4 hours of your labor for a CSA box. Who knows, maybe your local farm would do something similar. Last summer I milked someone’s cow once a week and got the milk in exchange; we had more than we knew what to do with so we made a lot of yogurt, ice cream and cheese. And I learned a new skill. There are a lot of local food producers that could use help but can’t “pay” someone for it but you can learn a lot and have a ton of fun doing a trade/barter and both come out ahead.