Thrift My Groceries

People grocery shopping at the local neighborhood market, fresh produce, eggs, and Breda the dog, Zona Centro, Guadalajara, Mexico
by Wonderlane

How about that inflation, huh? 

Prices are going up, box sizes are going down, and it's looking like Christmas is going to be a little tighter and smaller this year. 

 I've been trying to brush up on my thrifty grocery shopping skills to compensate. I thought it might be a good idea to share the strategies we use in the interest of getting through this thing together. Let me know your strategies in the comments! 

I think most who read my blog know this, but it bears repeating that the best strategies are going to be those that fit your life and circumstances. No guilt allowed. It sucks energy and impedes creativity. The name of the game is figuring out what resources (and personality traits) are at your disposal and using them as best you are able. 

So with that in mind, here's some ways my family and I have stretched our dollars buying food. 

-Build a Price Book 

This is one I think everyone needs to do. It has pretty much no financial investment, and can make a big difference in a very short amount of time. 

A price book is a record of how much groceries cost at different stores. Most towns have at least two or three different options for grocery shopping, and prices in those stores usually vary on different things. It allows you to keep track of what's cheapest where, and also allows you to discern if something is a good deal in an unfamiliar store or if it's on sale or clearance.

For example, I recently bought a bag of walnuts at a local food salvage store, Ollie's. I compared the price per ounce to walnuts at Sam's Club and found out that I'd wasted money; the nuts at Sam's were a better deal. If I had had that information recorded in my price book, I could have saved money. It's recorded now, so next time I come across something like that, I'll be able to check. 

That's the basic idea. I have a post explaining this in more detail. 

-Always Check Prices per Ounce, not Per Unit. 

"Always buy in bulk" is not good advice. Sometimes the smaller unit is actually cheaper overall. 

Many store tags have the price per unit (the cost you pay for that box of crackers) and then the price per ounce (or lb) in a smaller square. Sometimes, that information isn't presented in a way that's helpful or different units have that price listed as per ounce on one, and per pound on the other in the same store. 

I hate that. 

If you run into one of these price tags, simply divide the price by the number of ounces or pounds in the package to get the real price of whatever it is you want to buy (I'm deeply thankful for my phone's calculator app, I use it a lot for this). 

The other day, I discovered that the store brand 10lb bags of sugar at Sam's Club were actually much cheaper per ounce than the 25lb bags (not usual, usually the larger units are cheaper) using this method. 

- Try Weird Stores 

The cheapest herbs and spices we've found are at a Middle Eastern food market and bodega. 

The best deals on fresh produce and vanilla in our area are at a mom and pop salvage store. 

"Ethnic" grocery stores and stores different from the type you usually shop at may be worth exploring. You may not be able to find anything that make a return worth it, but you might also be pleasantly surprised. 

-Learn to Cook

As a general rule of thumb, the closer a package of food is to being ready to serve, the more expensive it's likely to be. Knowing how to use ingredients in their most basic form is going to save you money. 

The internet can be useful for this, but I highly recommend looking at cookbooks as a general introduction. I have tips for finding helpful ones here. 

-Use What You're Throwing Away 

We have a bag in our freezer for bones. Whenever we have a meal that involves bones, be they chicken, pork, or beef, we save them. When the bag is full, we toss them in the crockpot with a bunch of water and some vinegar and let them simmer for a day or so. 

The resulting broth is a fantastic base for soup, gravy, or mac and cheese sauce (mixed with milk. A friend of mine uses it exclusively, but I haven't made that leap yet). 

I've done something similar with saved carrot peelings, celery ends, and onion skins and ends. 

We also save the fat from trimming or roasting meat to use in frying eggs or veggies, as a base for a roux, and to grease pans. I've even used it in pastry for quiche. 

A friend of mine is saving the inside layer of banana peels to fry because she heard it tastes a bit like bacon...she hadn't gotten back to me on if this is any good yet. 

-Consider Investing in Preservation 

A chest freezer was a significant expense for us when we first got married, but it's one that's paid for itself several times over at this point. Being able to stock up on clearance meat, store garden veggies for the long term, and store certain groceries (butter and cheese) bought in bulk have made a huge difference in our food bill. 

Similarly, the money we've invested in our pressure canner has been well worth it, especially for canning broth. 

This step takes a bit of money to start with, but it may be worth considering for your circumstances. 

-Plan Meals 

There's a couple different philosophies I've heard on this one. 

For me, meal planning is reactionary to what I buy at the store. I have a pretty regular set of pantry items I buy (flour, sugar, canned tomato paste, etc) and then I'll occasionally take advantage of clearance items or sales outside of the stuff I normally buy.  When I plan out my meals for the week, I see what we have a glut or abundance of, and base meals around that. 

For example, we have a glut of spaghetti right now because a ton of it went on clearance a couple weeks ago. Tonight we're having sopa de fideo to use some up. 

Other times, I've had a ton of leftovers or produce in the fridge for one reason or another and I challenge myself to meal plan around that without having to dip into the freezer. 

A close friend does it the other way around and starts with meal planning. She decides what she wants to make in a week and then grocery shops based on that. She says the structure of it helps her avoid spending money on food that ends up wasted. 

I guess this is an area that really depends on your personality. Either way, planning helps avoid waste. 

-Try New Food

If you notice something is cheap but don't know how to cook it, be open to finding out. If you find a recipe that uses inexpensive ingredients that you've never tried before, give it a whirl and see if your family will eat it. 

Being good at thrift is largely being willing to gain new skills and to experiment. That's just as true in the kitchen as anywhere else.

The trick is to follow through instead of leaving the new food to go bad in the fridge or sit neglected on the shelf. 

That's a skill in and of itself. 

-Food Hobbies 

These are things that are food related and often presented as ways to cut your food bill, but may not save you any money. They might be more an expense than a savings, or they might be wildly inconsistent. 

Gardening, keeping chickens, and foraging all fall under this category. They might still be worth pursuing, but don't do them if you don't enjoy them. Gardening can trim your food bill (it makes a big difference in ours during the spring and early summer), but learning to do it on the cheap so that it's actually better than buying at the store is its own set of skills and there will be some failures. 

In a similar vein, it's possible to spend hundreds of dollars on a flock of chickens and never see a single egg (or end up with eggs that rival the cost of the all-organic-grass-fed-free-range ones at that one store that smells like patchouli). They might be worthwhile to have, and they might help earn their keep, but they should be seen as a hobby rather than as a money saving venture. 

That said, if you're the type of person who enjoys that sort of thing, they may be well worth exploring. They are cheaper than a lot of other hobbies, and you get a useable return for them (which isn't something you can say about building model trains or bird watching). And the food you get can often be better quality than the average grocery store fare. 

Just be aware that they're a hobby, something that may be well worth doing (they are for us), but shouldn't be seen as a purely practical investment. 

And...that's how we shop. Hopefully something here sparks some ideas for you. 

What strategies or tips do you use that I missed? 

Bonus: I highly recommend looking for this book at your local library. This one isn't too bad either.