Tuesday Tip | Eat what's cheap right now.
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.
I SO agree! I will stock up on something like pasta (that will not go bad in the pantry) when I see it on the mark-down shelf at the grocery store for over 1/2 off. Same with meats....they are so expensive that I will add them to the freezer when I see a 50% sticker on it. My best girlfriend was over during the holidays and she said "Why do you have 10 spaghetti boxes in your pantry?!?". LOL. It will get used in the next few months. I also am sure to incorporate my Hungry Harvest vegetables throughout the week so nothing goes to waste.
That PS is where we are right now-- but I remember when we would spend lots of time on grocery circulars. The definition of being rich to me is being able to buy whatever we want at the grocery store.
Though when it comes to produce, what is cheap is also often what is best quality because food that is in season tends to taste better.
Yes, how important this is all depends on your financial situation. When every penny counts, it's not enough to just eat at home; you also have to be careful about WHAT you eat at home. When you have more financial wiggle room, it's enough to just focus on putting a meal on the table, and not SO important to decide what's going on the table.
I came to say what nicoleandmaggie said: what's cheap is usually what's in season, and therefore is fresher, tastier, and likely even more nutritious.
I also appreciate nicoleandmaggie's point that being rich is buying the produce you want. It's such a wonderful things.
FG, I strongly approve of your PS. So many get wrapped up in trying to do "the perfect thing," that the lose sight that "doing better" is the goal.
I have always planned my menu on what is on sale...if bell peppers are on sale, we have stuffed bell peppers. If they also have avocados on sale, we add in a mexican/ texmex meal or two. These are all made with ground chuck that I bought on sale and divided up and put in the freezer.
When I catch ground Chuck on sale, I also make and form meatloaves and wrap in press and seal wrap. I take straight from the freezer and cook. I cook a lot of ground chuck and freeze on cookie sheets and put in a big zip lock bag to use for tacos, spaghetti sauce or soup as needed.
I think it is quicker and there is always a meal in the freezer!
Yes! I started doing this with our produce. I love buying fruit/berries to nibble on as a snack. But if I buy cherries every week, it's going to put me in the poorhouse.
It's funny because what's on sale in the produce section is usually what's in season. I check my grocery store's sale paper and plan my menu based on the sale items.
My Aldi got shortes this week on all fruits and veggies. I went on Friday night and there was almost nothing there - especially the blueberries and bananas. I ended up buying more expensive bananas. UGH!
Ooh, that stinks! I hate when that happens.
Such great tips! I especially agree with shopping for what's in season . . . and, even more so, shoppng from your own fridge/pantry! I find some of my favourite, most creative dishes from those kitchen "shopping" trips 🙂
Shopping the pantry--actually standing there and looking at what's inside even when I know what's there--always seems to inspire me. So tonight we're having salmon loaf made with two cans of on sale salmon and the leftover crackers from two boxes I was given over the holidays.
Great tips! Hubby and I usually get almost the same groceries and fruit since we eat almost the same things every week hehe. Gotta check out what's cheap this season!
Great tip! I definitely used to do this more, and haven't been paying as much attention to circulars, etc, have just been shopping at one place that tends to have generally good prices. I should go back to this strategy.
So true! And "in season" also includes holidays. Super Bowl foods, (even for those of us who don't know who is playing), will be on sale the end of the month-- chips, cheese, little sausagey-things, dips, soda, all the junk food that goes with a party. Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day are similar.
Stores do at least token sales for Chinese New Year, Valentines Day, and Cinco de Mayo. Easter has a lot of baking things on sale ahead of time, as do Thanksgiving and Christmas with ham, turkey, various potatoes, and green been casserole ingredients. March is Frozen Foods month, and frozen fruits and vegetables are often as nutritious as fresh ones, certainly more so than canned versions.
How do I know what is on sale or "in season"? I usually shop at Ralph's (Kroger) and Trader Joes. Unfortunately, no Aldi's within 50 miles of me. I'm the person that just throws strawberries and blueberries in my basket all year, without really looking at the prices. I noticed last week that the strawberries looked pretty bad. Half of the berries had large amounts of white on them. I would probably do better if I bought "in season" fruit.
With global food production, "in season" is a little less of a thing than it used to be. But generally speaking, things like berries are cheaper in the spring, watermelon is super cheap in summertime, local peaches are cheap in late summer, root veggies are cheap in the wintertime, and so on, though that varies some depending on your region.
Trader Joes has pretty steady prices, so I don't think you need to worry too much about this when you shop there. But Kroger is definitely going to be running sales each week. If you hate poring through the circulate, just give the front page a quick glance. That's where most of the lowest prices will be, and if you can work some of your shopping around the produce and meat that's on the front page, it should save you a fair amount.
Here's a place to look: https://www.fieldtoplate.com/guide/ but the bottom line is that if the produce doesn't look amazing, it's probably not in season. For the best quality, see if you can find a farmer's market or produce market. It will be obvious at either of those what is in season. Right now in the Northern Hemisphere, apples are good (the heavier they are for their size, the better), citrus fruit, root veggies, hearty greens, winter squashes (pumpkin, butternut, kabocha). When it gets warm where you are, the spring things will come in - asparagus, more tender greens, strawberries, then other berries a bit later.
Yep, that sounds about right! There are some things I don't even bother buying when they're not in season just because the quality is so bad. For instance, peaches. Unless they're local, they always seem to be mushy and mealy or hard as rocks. Not worth it at all! We eat peaches like crazy from August-September, and then not again until the next year.
Absolutely agree to this. Once I finally forced myself to start meal planning, I started using the sale notices (online) to plan the menus.
Things I look forward to, but buy very little the rest of the year (as it applies to Florida) -- apples (from further north) in the fall, watermelon in the summer (not the uber-expensive ones in late spring and just before the fourth of July), citrus in the winter, strawberries in spring (Plant City, FL grows huge amounts of them), blueberries in June, figs in late spring, corn in spring, summer squash in May and June, etc.
It has helped me keep a lid on the costs. I also finally joined Costco, so I'll be watching their sales, but I need to remember that they sell many things in big portions, so I have to have a plan to use ALL of it.
This is off subject of this post, but I've been wondering if you still do the Goody boxes from ThredUp? The Stitch Fix posts are my favorite and I've signed up for a few Stitch fixes myself. I've only done one Goody box with poor results but I've thought about giving it a second chance.
I have found that if I don't buy the cheapest bread and lunch meat possible, I'm more likely to eat budget friendly and convenient to make sandwiches. If I want to avoid getting take out too much, then I need to make sure I have a couple items that are convenient (like chicken nuggets because children) options when plans change or didn't get made. It's a win-win when the 'convenience' item is something I already made and froze.
This is why I don't meal plan... well that and because I'm generally only cooking for one. My strategy is to go to the store in the morning, Tuesdays and Fridays are best for my store, and pick up whatever produce is in the discount bin (well, whatever I can reasonably use.) Then I go see what's on markdown in the meat aisle, and I plan my meals around that. Discount meat can be easily frozen, discount veggies have to be eaten quickly - but I consider that to be one of my health challenges - eating all those veggies before they go bad!
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!
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?!
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.
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.
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