Groceries on the cheap has nothing to do with poor quality food. Cheap has to do with buying your food at less than what my mother always called top dollar.
I thing it interesting that there is a lot of people that call themselves frugal, because it sounds better and their frugal is in the eyes of the beholder. Three dollars for 12 ounces of broccoli is not frugal. That's four dollars a pound! Broccoli is a dollar a pound all the time. Just how much are you spending because you can't cut up a broccoli into heads. It can't take ten minutes to wash and chop a head of broccoli. The stems can be cooked into cream of broccoli soup.
Shop with dollar figures in your head. Stick as close to the dollar figures as possible . In the 80s my figure for fresh produce was .39. The. It went to .69. Now it's a dollar, Find the lowest price for veggies and fruit that look decent, If it doesn't look decent, I don't buy it. If it's too expensive, I skip it and we eat something else.
Having a breaking off point, keeps you from over spending your budget. Yes, it limits your foods, especially on the winter where we are more likely to buy frizen or canned. Bit we still have a good variety of foods on the spring and summer: berries, blueberries, apples, peaches, grapes, cantaloupe. Oranges, carrots, celery, potatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes. Lettuce, radishes.
Our go to cost for protein is two dollars. Here is where averaging comes into the mix. Beans and rice and eggs are really cheap. I get Washington grown chicken and pork loins for under a dollar and two dollars all the time. Eating beef once a week can be afforded at four dollars a pound for good hamburger when you average. So far, I have been able to keep shredded cheese at about two dollars a pound .
Buying rice and beans in bulk amounts helps. Buying quanity he,so soften the blow when prices go up. Seems like prices always go up, amd seldom go down. When they go up, just buy less or try to go without that particular product and substitute something else, That's almost impossible with the main core if your diet, but you can cut back on your consumption and pick other things that are less expensive. In the 70's when coffee too a huge hike because of a shortage, we drunk tea and bought coffee with hickory added. What's the line from the movie something like, tastes like ;););) , but you can eat it! Or something like that!
We are a nation of mothers that have always been able to roll with the punches, Our grandmothers or great grandmothers did it during the Great Depression, the Great Recession and the World War II. We all survived. We have a lot more access to information and ideas than they had. We have the www. That is full of recipes, ideas and goggle that can answer any question we may have. On a few key strokes we know what the substitution for something we don't have or the carb count in a particular item. Our grandmothers and great grandmothers would have never dreamed of the technology we have today. I can remember when the idea of a automatic dishwasher was the brunt of a joke on a sitcom. Like that was ever going to happen!
Good food cheap, not cheap food.
Four plus one is five. Four people, one meal. Five bucks
Better, cheaper faster.
More time shopping and planning and less time cooking.
Groceries on the cheap is looking at the "put the meal on the table train" from a diferent perspectives.
The emphasis is on purchasing good shelf stable or frozen food for a RBP in quantity - enough to last you until they goes on sale again or to keep a controlled non-perishable stock of the things you use on a weekly basis.
This means that instead of shopping daily or weekly for just the things you need to cook your
meals for the week. You go to two stores and buy :
1) a protein that is a RBP - enough to make that meal for x number of days. (I.e.: if you eat it once a week, buy enough for 4 meals.)
2) produce and dairy you will need to fill in the meals for the week.
3) a stock item, if you need to and it is on a RBP - enough to fill in to your self imposed stock level.
You often are paying 1/2 price for your food. This allows you to put well-balanced meals on the table consistently on a four dollar a day per person budget. You spend more time on the
locomotive ( planning and shopping ) end of the train, and less time in the caboose ( kitchen )by
cooking more efficiently.
Four dollars a day is the target amount for people on snap. My premise is that of you can do it on 4 dollars a day, spending More is not difficult.
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