My goal for Groceries on the Cheap is to maintain a small stock of the basic foods we iuse to cook .
By shopping your pantry instead of going to the store an buying 1 weeks worth of garoceries you can cut your food bill because you are never paying full price for your food. Top dollar was my mother’s buzz word. The trick is to assess what you use on a regular basis, design meal plans to work with a minimum of proteins, and decide how far out you can buy food. Usually four to six weeks will afford you the luxury of finding another sale. Buying too much that can go stale dated is not in your best interest.
One key to make life easy is to make an informed decision on a limited variety of meat. We stick to chicken breast, hamburger , pork loin and sausage. I can get all of these.except good hamburger, for 2.00 or less a pound. All of these are versitle cuts of meat. The internet and Pinterest are full of recipes. This affords enough variety of meals so we don’t get bored.
I’m not going to pretend that this doesn’t take work to get set up. Once you have set yourself up, itnactually takes less time than trying to remember if you have all the ingredients to make something for dinner. Stick to basics.
We are going to have a harsh winter, according to the weather people. Its a good time to stock because stocking reduces the stress of having to embrace the weather to go out shopping. Stocking assures you the luxury of never being out of food.
Things to stock in case of emergency.
- Dry milk: you can get dry milk that has fat in it. It’s a lot better tasting than the non fat version that we had as children. It is more expensive than regular milk, but it is a good thing in a pinch. There are also shelf stable milks these days. I don't drink them, but my daughter does.
- Yeast: Storage in freezer prolongs its life. It is a staple here, so we use it up. There are recipes for easy breads. The most economical way to buy it is in a bulk block at Costco. —like three dollars or so.
- Flour: Another staple here, we buy it in the 25 lb bag.
- Eggs. A few dehydrated eggs are a good thing.
- Water - especially if you rely on a well for your water.
With those shelf stable ingredients, and canned goods you can survive without going to the store for some time and still maintain a regular diet.
Bleep storms happen to everybody sometimes. We have had emergency surgeries, the snow plow dump the snow in front of our driveway that turned to a big ice mound, any number of things can happen. Having basic ingredients that are usually purchased fresh goes a long way to reducing your stress. We have power outages here because of storms and trees. We keep logs and a power box charged and oil lamps and battery powered candles.
Cutting your food bill in half or less affords you the opportunity even on a small budget to prepare for emergencies—small or large.
