Before you decide what to buy and cook each week, consider what’s available inexpensively right now.
What’s on sale?
What’s in season?
What’s already in your freezer/fridge/pantry that needs to be used?
(Using what you have before it goes bad is a very cheap option!)
If you insist on eating fresh strawberries every week of the year, you’ll spend a lot more than if you eat whatever fruit happens to be inexpensive each week.
If you make a bunch of beef meals on a week when chicken was cheap, you’ll be spending more than necessary.
And if you buy new produce/meat when you’ve still got stuff to use up at home, you’ll probably be wasting money.
Being flexible about what you eat can really help your grocery budget, especially if you don’t have access to a place with everyday low prices, such as Aldi or Costco.
Even at Aldi, though, this applies. Each week, they have 4-5 produce items at an especially good price, and I make a point of buying those.
(Which is why I have plenty of grapes and blueberries right now!)
So.
Figure out what you can get cheaply right now, and make a meal plan based on that.
P.S. I have to point out that you can buy almost anything at the grocery store, even out of season and not on sale, and still spend less than you would on takeout. So if takeout is the main struggle for you, just focus on cooking at home. That’s your first step to spending less on food, so buy whatever you need to make the eating at home thing happen.
Richard Zorniak
Saturday 12th of January 2019
Hello Frugal Girl!
The other day 'we' ran-out of liquid laundry detergent so - we - used hand lotion from the bottle instead...Seems to have worked-out okay. Alas, washing machines in apt tower DO NOT allow powered detergent...sigh.
Question: Any discussion around organic chicken versus chicken raised GMO to fit a tray in terms of taste of cooked chicken and ethics?
Best Regards from Richard on an okay winter day in Vancouver BC, Canada Richard
Randi Macdonald
Wednesday 9th of January 2019
I only buy fruit in season. I won't buy fresh berries in the winter because they are coming from Chili or Venezuela. I've tasted the blueberries and they are just nasty to me. I eat a ton of stone fruit( local) in the summer and I look forward to all my summer fruits when they are in season and amazing. We get all our summer fruit at the farmer's market. In the winter, we buy citrus and pears and apples. We eat that and bananas and some canned fruit if I'm missing peaches. I also freeze berries when they are fresh, to use in pancakes and muffins.
Faith
Wednesday 9th of January 2019
I looked at the picture of grapes and blueberries and said, "she shopped at Aldi this week. That looks just like my fruit selection right now." :) An aldi just opened in our town (the closest was an hour away) and it is the best thing to happen to my grocery budget ever!! I love that store. I can see why you have always written about how great it is.
Vallied
Wednesday 9th of January 2019
I eat yogurt with berries every morning. I used to buy fresh blueberries every week until I realized how much they were and how far they traveled to get to me! Now, I buy local Michigan blueberries every summer at the farmer's market and freeze them in baggies. If I start to run low in the winter, I just go to Aldi and buy frozen. I notice no difference in the quality since I'm not using them in a fruit salad or something.
This week Aldi had avocados for 49 cents and pineapple for 99cents! I can go through a bunch of avocados but only could justify one pineapple- has anyone frozen cut pineapple and had good results?
Did I mention that I LOVE Aldi?!
Athena
Tuesday 8th of January 2019
I've gotten my husband to start looking at buying what's in season now. He LOVES cherries and nectarines but he's learned to ask when they are in season since they're just too expensive to buy the rest of the year. We will stock up, freeze and can them when they're in season (he loves cherry jam!). I also look at the weekly ads for stores in town and search for good deals. When I find them we stock up and buy enough to last hopefully until the next sale. This means our pantry is filled with canned vegetables right now since they were on sale frequently in November!