Lightening Online

Image via WikipediaI have to admit that I have been suffering from a LOT of denial in regard to our spending habits of late. My budget/spending book is an absolute MESS!

I think denial right now is my way of coping. Particularly with the rapid rise in prices at the supermarket (grocery store).

I’ve been feeling kinda ill doing the grocery shopping of late.

My coping technique is to kind of close my eyes (not physically but mentally) to the final tally at the checkout, hand over a wad of cash and then get out of there as fast as possible.

So it’s not surprising that my enthusiasm for updating the spending book is waning a little.

The problem is that denial is causing me more anxiety that facing up to the truth.

WHAT IS THE TRUTH?

Drought, rising interest rates, rising fuel prices and no doubt other factors ARE having an impact on the prices we are paying at the checkout.

BUT

We need to be careful how we view rising grocery prices. As I’ve said before, news of rising grocery prices can actually cause us to spend MORE than we actually need to.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

1. Dig our heads out of the sand

NOT knowing really is WORSE than knowing. Knowledge gives us power to implement change. Lack of knowledge can result in more stress and going on my experience, stress = more spending.

2. Continue Our Education

If you’ve yet to read my series on “Reducing the Grocery Budget”, the links are in the sidebar. I’m a firm believer in never having enough knowledge. There are ALWAYS new ways we can learn to trim things here and there. Of course, time and interest both factor into this as well. I’m not saying we HAVE to find new ways to cut spending. Just that we CAN if we NEED or WANT to.

3. Celebrate our Successes

One of the great things about being frugal is that you’re already ahead of the game when it comes to spending. Generally costs rise as an overall percentage. 15% of $1000 is a LOT less than 15% of $3000 for example.

I always try to begin my year with some “wiggle room” in my budget. Particularly when it comes to groceries. My growing children are eating more and more as time goes on and prices are nearly always going to increase. I know this increase is a little more than we normally get but I’m grateful I have at least a little “wiggle room” to help absorb the impact.

4. Time For a Reality Check

Just after my “I feel sick at these prices” grocery shop, I picked up our mail. Inside was a letter from one of our sponsored children. How’s that for a timely reality check? Here I am worried about the cost of fruit & veg rising as it might mean I can’t afford to buy CHOCOLATE or my favourite magazine. While so many people in the world don’t even have ACCESS to healthy foods, let alone a way of paying for them.

5. Don’t Give Up

One of the biggest problems with dieting is that slipping up causes people to give up. Rather than accepting a small slip-up and getting back to it, they decide they’re no good at it and forget about trying. Budgeting can be the same. Slip-ups WILL happen (at least to MOST people). The important thing is to get back on track and do the best you can with what you have. I’m in the process of sorting things out with my budget book in an attempt to get back on track. Starting over is also an option.

The main thing here is NOT to GIVE UP. Every small step we take towards a better handle on our budgets brings us closer to our own goals and dreams.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

Anyone else paddling up the river of denial and getting nowhere right now? Pleeeeaaaasssseee tell me I’m not the only one who’s been living in denial.

(Note to my regular readers: I have deviated away from my series on The Complete Tightwad Gazette discussion over the past couple of Fridays. I do intend to come back to them. Please bear with me.)

Image via WikipediaWelcome back to my series on Reducing the Grocery Budget. If you’ve not yet read the earlier posts in this series, you can review them here:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Meat

Fruit & Veg

Given I’ve just begun my own personal financial budgetting year, I thought I’d share a little of my budget and tracking with you in more detail.

I’ve tried to scan a page from my own spending book for you to have a look at but it hasn’t come out very clear.

I’ll try and replicate what it says for you:

GROCERIES: FRUIT & VEG $170/MONTH

GROCERIES: GENERAL $300/MONTH

It doesn’t matter HOW you track your spending, but if you want to get the most out of your grocery dollar, I highly recommend that you DO track it somehow.

I prefer to use an exercise book. It’s not expensive or large and it’s very portable. On the occasions where I don’t get the chance to enter my receipt figures straight away, they can sit in the exercise book and are less likely to get misplaced.

I use this book to track ALL of our personal spending but even if you just start by tracking your grocery spending, it will make a difference.

Once it’s set up, it really only takes a few minutes to enter your figures after each shop.

You CAN do a similar thing by keeping your grocery money in a separate envelope or purse. Unfortunately, I find this is too easy to dip into now and then when you need cash in a hurry. I always *think* I’ll remember but it’s amazing what you forget. Doing it this way will hopefully help plug a few leaks. A dollar here or there really DOES add up over time!

At the top of the page, you’ll notice I’ve written the words “GROCERIES:FRUIT & VEG $170/MONTH. This is my budgetted amount. On the first day of each month, I write in a deposit of $170. If I have money left over in this category at the end of the month, I’ll ADD the $170 to whatever that figure is. If I have overspent in that category (minus figures get written in red to make them stand out), I will subtract that red figure from the $170.

Unless there is a MAJOR blow out which requires some budget fine tuning, I will base the whole YEARS spending on that $170 per month. If I finish the year in the red, we re-evaluate the amount budgetted in that category and if need be, allocate MORE the next year.

This works for us because for the most part my categories are in surplus throughout the year. I try to always spend UNDER our allocated amount. This allows for unavoidable purchases that cause 1 or 2 categories to go into the red. I also have a buffer amount sitting in the account just in case. If your budget is very tight, you’ll need to be VERY aware of any categories that go into the RED.

Here is my monthly budget for groceries for the coming 12 months (1st Feb - 31st Jan):

Hospitality $15.00

Fruit & Veg $170.00

General $300.00

Treats $30.00

Non Food $45.00

TOTAL $560.00 per month

If you work that out per week it comes to $129.23. So approximately $130 a week. I tend to shop in larger “stock up” shops with smaller “as we need it” shops in between so the only time I really use a weekly figure is if I’m discussing grocery budgets with others (who are less used to a monthly figure) or when I’m talking averages (eg. my $100 per week challenge is worked on an average spend over whatever time frame I’m talking).

So my BUDGET is around $130 a week and I currently SPEND $100. I’ve heard people say “I spend $xxxx per week” when what they are really talking about is their budget. The forget to include the $30 they were over a fortnight ago or perhaps they don’t even KNOW what they’re really spending.

That was me not that long ago. Our budget was $140 per week so if anyone asked me what I spent on groceries I’d say “$140 a week”. In reality I had NO IDEA what I was actually spending.

Whether you choose to break your groceries up into categories like I do or keep everything lumped in together is entirely up to you.

Once you know what figure you are actually working from, it becomes a LOT easier to set yourself little challenges. For example, I know I can feed our family for $100 a week average (at the moment), so for January and February I have challenged myself to only spend $50 a week. I do have a purpose in this though and that’s to recoup the cost of my 1/2 cow (which I haven’t had to pay for yet). So in essence I *need* to keep things down at that level in order to cover the costs of the cow AND stay within my $100 per week average.

Assuming that I achieve this, I will then have what is left of the cow, to help keep costs down during the coming months. One thing I’ve noticed with the grocery budget is that once you get yourself on a “good cycle” it seems to become easier to keep costs down.

I’m still trying to work out in my own head how this works. I’m not sure if it’s just a case of smaller savings starting to kind of compound or if it’s more a case of having a sense of “enough” because the cupboard and freezer always seem to be full (no matter how much I try to empty them a little LOL).

How is everyone else going with their grocery spending? Do you feel like you’re making headway? Or does it feel like you’re fighting a losing battle?

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Image by Wally Hartshorn via Flickr

This is part of a series I have been writing on how we reduced our grocery spending by around $3000 a year. If you’d like to review the rest of the posts you’ll find links to them in my sidebar under “Reducing the Grocery Budget Series”. I hope you enjoy and find these of some value.

The fruit and vegetable section of the grocery budget is always a tricky one when it comes to reducing the grocery budget. It’s the one category in my budget that I work hard NOT to UNDERspend in.

Now I know that some people like to claim that eating healthier is more EXPENSIVE. Personally, I haven’t found this to be the case but it would depend upon what you were eating/buying before you made the change to healthier eating.

Sometimes fruit and vegetables can SEEM expensive because we EXPECT them to be cheap. If you consider “value for money” fruit and vegetables really rate very highly in the sense of return for $$ spent.

Let’s take for example a snack for a child’s lunchbox. You might spend 25-50c on a packet of chips whereas an apple will cost more like $1.00. To look at it in pure “frugal” terms, it can at times be tempting to cut down on fruit and vegetables. To look at it in the overall scheme of what you’re getting for your money though, shows a different picture. For your 50c you’re getting a bunch of salt, fat and additives as well as a piece of plastic to add to landfill. For your $1 you’re getting fibre, water, a wide variety of vitamins and minerals and an apple core that will biodegrade reasonably quickly (unless your kids eat the core as well! Lol which does happen!). You’re easily getting twice your money’s worth and then some!

For this reason, I prefer to look at a nutritional return on my $$ spent rather than a “fill up tummies” return. I’m not saying we don’t buy ever buy junk food. But I wouldn’t look at the difference between the cost of an apple and a packet of chips and decide that they chips are better value for money. I doubt you would either! But I wanted to point that out because some people are very quick to dismiss those who have lower grocery budgets by saying that they must just feed their family junk.

In our family the opposite has been true. As we’ve worked to improve our health and increase the amount of fruit and vegetables consumed, our budget has actually dropped overall.

Health is one of the reasons I keep my fruit and vegetable spending separate from my general grocery spending. I want to make sure I’m NOT saving money by spending less in this area. Or if I am spending less, I want to KNOW about it so I can look at the “why”.

While I have broken down my grocery budget into a number of categories, you still need to take into account the overall effect across all categories. From a health point of view, reducing meat, adding beans and lentils and switching to wholegrains will all help to reduce your overall grocery spend. It is even possible that your fruit and vegetable section of the budget will go UP rather than down. As long as your overall spending is still coming down, this isn’t something you need to get worried about.

Having said all of that, there are many things that can be done to help reduce the cost of fruit and vegetables:

BUY IN SEASON

While this will seem rather obvious to some people, it surprises me how many people still *insist* on eating the same fruits and vegetables all year round. In doing so they can end up paying premium price for a product that is possibly inferior in both quality and taste.

FRESH ISN’T ALWAYS BEST

Research has shown that frozen vegetables can be as good and sometimes healthier for you than some fresh vegetables. Make sure you know your prices as it can sometimes happen that frozen works out cheaper than fresh.

One of the advantages of buying frozen or canned goods is that you can have a big buy up when you see a good special. I did this just this week with canned two fruits. Our children are big fans of these. I find that some weeks there are virtually NO specials on fruit and veg and everything seems expensive. In those weeks I will buy less fresh fruit and veg and resort to using what I have already on hand (you can be sure that those weeks the frozen and canned products will be full price as well so take advantage of sales when you see them).

GROW SOMETHING

It’s really not as hard as it sounds. Take it from me – the resident brown thumb. Gardening is about having a go and seeing what you can produce.

Renting? No excuse!!!! Just start small. Plant something in a pot. A couple of years ago I was given a pot with annual flowers in it. It sat empty (other than our kittens curling up in there) for some time. Now I have parsley growing in it. I’m kicking myself that I didn’t plant it back when the pot was first empty. I paid $1.10 for a packet of seeds from a Cheap as Chips store and they’re growing great. I’ve even “trained” my kids to empty their water bottles into the pot at the end of the day so I don’t even have to water it! Just go and pick as needed. You could do the same with something like chives and use them instead of onion in recipes.

Personally I love plants where you take a bit and the plant then grows more. Parsley and chives or shallots are like this. I have also had good success with mignonette lettuces (again, $1.10 packet of seeds) and silverbeet.

If you’d like some fruit in a pot, try some strawberries. I think you can even buy strawberries in a bag now.

It is amazing what can be done with just a few pots and a small investment! Don’t get put off by thinking you could never grow enough to feed your family! It doesn’t matter. ANYTHING that you can grow will help the budget a little. And little bits add up when it comes to grocery budgets.

BUY IN BULK

Being a part of a co-op or sharing bulk buys with a friend are great ways to reduce the costs of fruit and vegetables and take advantage of larger buying power. If you can access something like this, grab it! If you can’t, you can still take advantage of bulk buying on some items.

Get to know what fruits and vegetables keep well or freeze well. I’ll mention a few that I will tend to buy up on:

• Apples. I know that my local supermarket doesn’t get fresh apples in every week. So if there is a good special on, I will buy up quite a few. They may as well be sitting in my fridge and saving me a few dollars as sitting in their coolroom waiting for me to pay more for them the following week. I also tend to buy my apples in those prepacked 2kg bags (watch out – I noticed that Coles are often only 1.5kg bags). My main reason for this is that my children are young and they’re often a more suitable size for them. I get more apples per kg AND pay a lower price per kg. You sometimes get not so nice apples in these bags but on the whole I have found them to be pretty good.

• Oranges. These are definitely the nicest when bought in season and can work out quite cheaply on a per piece costing. I find they keep easily for a month or more in the fridge without showing any signs of aging. The hardest thing I do find with buying up on oranges when on special is taking the risk as to whether they’ll be nice or not. This can vary quite a lot.

• Potatoes will last 2-4 weeks if you keep them properly. Newspaper is a great way to keep them fresh as it insulates from the warmth as well as keeping light out. You can apparently freeze mashed potato and reuse but I’ve never succeeded in doing this to my satisfaction. If I wanted to freeze potato I would cut into chunks, cook a little and then freeze and use in soups or other cooking.

• Carrots. As I’ve mentioned before, I often buy juicing carrots in a 5kg bag (last time it was a 20kg bag!) You get a few odd shaped carrots and often many broken ones but they taste great (just avoid them if they look a little on the pale side). With the 20kg I bought, I grated quite a few of them and froze to use in cooking.

• Onions are a great one to stock up on when they’re at a good price and then freeze. You can dice them before freezing although most of the time I simply cut them in half (skins still on) and throw them in a bag in the freezer. You just need to cut them up before they’ve fully defrosted when you go to use them. The good thing about this is that frozen onions don’t make you cry (you do need to let them defrost a little before cutting as they’re rather hard fully frozen).

• I do the same thing with capsicums. I’ll buy a bag of mixed colour capsicums for around $2.00 and chop them up and freeze ready to use. They won’t be so great for using in salads but for adding to pizzas or spaghetti Bolognese sauce etc it works really well.

How you store your fruit and vegetables can make quite a difference to how long they last. I LOVE my Tupperware containers for keeping things fresher longer. Wrapping in newspaper is also a good way for many items. There are many great tips all over the internet for storing fruit and vegetables to get maximum life from them.

GET AS CLOSE TO THE SOURCE AS POSSIBLE

Sometimes this is easier said than done, I know.

Markets are a great source of cheap and fresh fruit and vegetables. If you can get to one, it’s worthwhile. If you don’t live near a market, keep your eyes open when you’re in other areas as you may pass one occasionally. We live 500km from our nearest capital city and go there 2-3 times a year and I always take the opportunity to stop at either a market or a road-side type stall and stock up. I may not be able to get cheap fruit and veg all of the time but I’m sure going to get it when I can. Not to mention how much fresher it is!

Is there someone nearby that is an avid gardener? Perhaps they would be willing to trade excess produce or sell it to you for a bargain basement price!!! Who do you know with fruit trees in their backyard? Perhaps they’d be willing to pass on some fruit in return for a jar of jam made from some of it? How do you find these people or bring up such an arrangement? Start by giving and you’ll be amazed at what can happen. Maybe you don’t have fresh produce to offer someone but what do you have? Kids clothing? Some babysitting time? A freshly made cake?

THINK OUTSIDE THE SQUARE

The most effective way to save money in any area is to think creatively. Some people think that they’re not creative but I think in part it comes with practice. When you’re in the habit of thinking “outside the square” it seems to become easier to do so.

When banana prices shot through the roof in Australia, some people decided that they were going to buy bananas regardless because they are so good for you. Fair enough. What I did was research the health benefits of bananas and then look for other foods that would replace the nutrition that bananas were providing. We didn’t “go without” bananas altogether though. I bought a few every now and then. Smaller bananas mean you get more per kg. Or you can buy larger bananas and cut them in half.

Another thing I do to allow us the occasional treat without overspending the budget, is to buy some items of fruit through our “treats” budget. For instance, when bananas were REALLY expensive, I’d sometimes buy a couple and take it out of the treats budget. At the time they really were treats and just as exciting as buying a block of chocolate or similar. I’ve done the same at times with punnets of strawberries. We enjoy them as much as other sweet treats, so why not purchase them from the treats budget?

Are there fruits and vegetables that you haven’t tried yet? Perhaps there is something out there just waiting to be discovered? What about changing the way you cook things? I’ve finally started cooking my pumpkin with the skin on. Not only does it make less work for me but we waste less of the pumpkin flesh this way. Feel like salad at a time when salad vegies are expensive? What vegies are in season that might taste good raw? What about a tin of chickpeas or butter beans added to your salad? Cheap, filling and nutritious. The possibilities are endless. What it takes is stepping back and looking at things with a fresh view.

YOU’VE PAID FOR IT – USE IT!

I find the highest amount of food wastage in our household is fresh fruit and vegetables. I guess this is made more complicated for me due to my proximity to shops. The good thing about not being close to shops is that if all the bananas get eaten in the first two days, it’s too bad. Instead of running out and buying more bananas, we all have to be content to eat apples or oranges. The hardest part about it is that I can’t always predict how much of an item we’ll need and will at times overbuy and things get wasted.

Menu planning is one way to help reduce wastage. By planning based on what you have, there are less likely to be as many foods go bad before they’re used. It also forces you to think about (and look at) what you already have. I know I always think I’m going to remember what is in the fridge – but gosh it’s amazing what can be hiding at the back of the shelf! LOL.

What about parts of the fruits and vegetables that get thrown away? Are there parts that could be used for another purpose? I keep a container in the freezer and chop up things like broccoli and cauliflower stems and pop them in there to be added to soup or Bolognese sauce etc. My family aren’t big fans of the stems so this is a way I use them up.

At the moment I’ve been saving and freezing pumpkin seeds. I’ve been buying these from the shops so I’m hoping to be able to cook and shell them. It’s an experiment in progress at the moment so I can’t comment on how it’ll turn out yet.

Freeze leftover vegetables and use in soups etc rather than simply throwing them out. Chop up bits of fruit that have spots on them and add to muffins or cakes. I’m sure there are 1000s of other little suggestions out there for how to make use of food to save it from the rubbish bin. So, take a fresh look at what you have and how you’re using it and consider if there are changes that could be made.

What about peelings and other scraps? You could keep chooks or begin a compost heap and turn those scraps into something useful. That’s something I really LOVE about fruit and veg – every part of most fruits and vegetables can be used somehow in some way.

Before I wrap this up (it’s rather long isn’t it?) I want to say this. You’re not wonderwoman (or superman). Sometimes things will happen and stuff will get chucked out. Do NOT waste your time and energy beating yourself up about it. Just keep working on those small changes, one step at a time. What you don’t want to do is turn this whole thing into such a drag that you never want to think about cutting costs with groceries ever again.

Goodness this has been a long post!!!! Nearly 3000 words!!! Is it any wonder I managed to churn out 50000 in a month when I can spit out 3000 in a sitting! If you’re still reading, THANK YOU! I did consider splitting this into 2 posts but it was difficult to figure out which to put in each part.

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Image via WikipediaMy DH is a man who likes his meat. I’m sure that’s a scenario many of you are familiar with. If truth be told, I quite like my meat too. Although, as a teenager I *hated* meat. If my parents had let me eat vegetarian, I would have. The problem was (and still is) that I NEED to eat a reasonably high protein and high iron diet. For a long time, these were the excuses I used to not even contemplate changing the amount I was spending on meat.If you’re faced with family members who are not 100% behind your efforts to reduce the grocery budget, please move SLOWLY with this. I know I’ve said it before but it’s really important to have a long term view when it comes to reducing your grocery spending. Those tiny baby steps, if you keep at it, will start to yield results.

Now the first thing I did when I wanted to reduce our meat consumption was to very gradually increase the number of vegetables we were consuming with our evening meal. Again, I had to do this carefully and slowly to avoid being faced with a revolt (led my DH of course lol) at the dinner table.

I’ve always been someone who enjoys eating vegetables but when I met my DH his repertoire of vegetables he would eat willingly included potato, carrot, peas and corn. Full stop! He is a LOT better now and I think it helps that I don’t boil the bejeebiz out of anything I cook.

I’m telling you all of this simply to say that I know change isn’t easy to achieve - which is why it’s important to make any changes you want to make very slowly. Over time I gradually increased the portions of vegetables on the plate and reduced the portion of meat. This was as much to benefit our health as our bank balance but it was nice that the two things went hand in hand.

One thing DH and I noticed over time was that as we ate less meat (and consequently ate more vegetables) we weren’t looking to eat as much meat. It was like the more we ate, the more we wanted but as our bodies adjusted to a slightly healthier diet, it no longer was looking for the larger portions of meat.

I now work on 2 green and 2 orange/yellow vegetables per meal and we’re slowly getting around to adding a purple/red variety (which will usually replace one of the other coloured vegetables). Including potato, the “norm” in our house is a variety of 5 different vegetables per meal.

Another thing I did during this stage of attempting to reduce our grocery budget was to set myself a “limit” for our meat. I started with $5 per meal. This was supposed to be an average figure and therefore allowed me to spend around $35 per week or around $150 per month on meat. The good thing about having a figure like this is that it gives you a guage. So for instance, if you buy a roast that costs you $10 then you *know* you need to get 2 meals out of that roast in order to make it fit within your budget.

Initially, as I said, I was working on an “average” figure of $5 so spending slightly more than $5 on a meal of meat sometimes wasn’t really a problem. I did however, challenge myself to spend under that $5 limit as often as possible. Once I began to do that, any meals which cost me under the $5 started to actually save us money.

Once I had a handle on that (remember, still taking one small step at a time here), the challenge became to see if I could get us the occasional “free” meal. For instance, could I make $10 worth of chicken breasts do us 3 meals instead of 2? Every time I managed to get us 3 meals for $10, we were essentially eating “free” for 1 meal. I found these kinds of challenges quite fun. If you can tackle the grocery budget from a “fun” angle, you’re much more likely to be successful over the long term.

I think it comes back a bit to the “game” mentality. Setting small challenges and seeing what you’re actually capable of. You might start off by only knocking $1 per week off your meat spending but if you play that game 10 times, you’ve suddenly knocked $10 per week off your budget/spending.

Another thing I did was start to buy 2.5 times the amount of meat I would usually use for a meal and make that stretch for 3 meals. This is one of the ways where buying meat in bulk amounts can really help. Say chicken breasts are on special, you buy up a number of packs and then sort them all at once. By shaving just a small amount from what you’d usually use per meal, you can end up with a couple of free meals without hardly noticing it. You’ve taken advantage of a good price but you’ve also taken advantage of being able to take lots of small “bits” and turn them into enough for an extra meal. When you buy only one meals worth at a time, it’s harder to do this (doable but harder).

MENU PLANNING

When I first began menu planning I found it hard to get my head around WHY it seemed to reduce my grocery spending. I couldn’t deny the fact that it did but I didn’t understand HOW it did. Spending on meat is one category that can really benefit from menu planning. You do need to be a little bit deliberate about what you’re doing when you menu plan though.

If your family has a favourite meal that is rather expensive, you don’t have to strike it from the menu. But what about spreading out how often you have it. If you tend to have 1 expensive meat meal per week, can you stretch it so that you’re only having 1 a fortnight. OR, if you really want to have that more expensive meal once a week, what can you do on another night to compensate for the extra cost? By having a plan you can really see what you’re doing and look to change the patterns a little.

I’ll give you an example here. We decided that for the sake of our health we really needed to make eating more fish a higher priority. This is a real challenge for the budget conscious as fish is one of the most expensive meats to buy. How I compensate for this is to alternate our fresh fish with canned tuna and also generic brand “cardboard” frozen fish. I get 3 meals of fish for under $3 and I know then I’m able to spend the extra few $$ on a meal of fresh fish once every 4 weeks. By looking at the overall picture, you can balance the scales a little.

Another thing I do with our menu plan is to plan at LEAST 1 frugal meal per week. We actually tend to have 2 frugal meals per week because Sunday nights is a fairly easy meal and tends to naturally fall under the “frugal” category (toasted sandwhiches, pancakes etc). Thursdays I try to plan a “low meat” meal. To begin with, I was trying several vegetarian recipes in an effort to reduce our meat consumption. One of the things I tried was vegetable lentil loaf . In the end DH decided that it would be much better if it had meat in it. LOL.

So I don’t even attempt to make vegetarian meals anymore. I perservered for quite some time with various recipes but it just wasn’t working out well for us. I decided that it was more important that we enjoy eating than achieve “vegetarian meal” status. Instead, I worked on having more “low meat” meals. If we eat 2 “low meat” meals instead of 1 regular meat serve and 1 “no meat” serve, the overall effect is the same really.

BACON is one of my best friends. I can add $1 or less of bacon pieces to a meal and that qualifies it as “having meat”. LOL. Approximately every 6-8 weeks I purchase 1kg of bacon pieces and that will usually do us 6 or more meals. It’s really a great stretcher in that you can get quite a reasonable amount of flavour from a very small amount. Sure, it’s not the healthiest of meats, but I think I balance that out okay by not using very much.

WHAT ABOUT HEALTH CONSIDERATIONS?

This is a tricky one. Healthier cuts of meat do tend to cost more. Eating less meat per meal is definitely a healthy alternative so that’s one solution.

Healthier mince (I think that’s ground beef in the US?) is one product that many people will insist on paying more for. I hate buying mince because it is so hard to really tell what you’re paying for. How do you really know that they “heart smart” mince is really any better than the “budget” mince? I prefer to make my own. If you have a food processor, it really is quite easy. I purchase budget roast beef when it’s on sale for $5.99 per kg then dice it up and throw it into the food processor. That way I know exactly what is in what we’re eating and it’s reasonably low fat (I trim the small amount of fat from the outside of the roast first). Even with having to trim off a bit of fat, it’s still costing me quite a lot LESS than the $12+ per kg charged for the “leaner” types of meat.

I also prefer to add my own additives to meat rather than buying things where they’ve been already added. Make up your own chicken or beef patties. It does take a little bit of trial and error to work out how your family like them but it’s so worth it. Unfortunately I’m a “fly by the seat of my pants” type cook so it’s hard for me to share with you what I do. One thing I do know is that over time I’ve been adding more and more vegetables to my meat patties and I think we like them more that way than when they were mostly meat.

Get aquainted (if you’re not already) with beans and lentils. It’s amazing what these can be added to. They’re a fantastic source of protein and soooo cheap. I have sourced a place where they are almost half the price of what supermarkets charge so keep your eyes open (or do a search) for wholesalers, health food shops etc that might sell these types of things in larger quantities for a similar price to what supermarkets charge for a small bag. Dried is HEAPS cheaper than the tinned varieties. I simply soak a whole lot at once and then freeze them. All I need to do then is throw them in the slow cooker when I’m ready to use (don’t forget though that kidney beans MUST be boiled to destroy something in them that our bodies react to). I do, however, keep some tins on hand as I figure it’s still cheaper to use the tinned variety when necessary than to not use them at all.

I use beans and lentils in soups, casseroles, pie fillings, spaghetti bolognese, meat loaf/lentil loaf, patties, salads, on pizza…..they’re pretty versatile really and it’s just a matter of experimenting with the many ways they can be used. You’re only limited by your own imagination! Just try not to get too carried away and add HEAPS the first time. I’ve found it’s better to go slowly, slowly, adding more each time so the family gets used to the texture and their presence.

SPAGHETTI BOLOGNESE

I hope you’ve gotten the message by now that I think the best way to tackle any aspect of your grocery budget is to make the changes very gradual. If not, I’ll repeat myself. Take it very slowly. What’s the saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day?” LOL.

I’m going to use my spaghetti bolognese “recipe” (sorry, don’t get excited cos there is no recipe) to show you what I mean here.

How did I used to make spaghetti bolognese? 500g of mince (let’s use an average figure of $4) and a bottle of pasta sauce ($3). Total cost per meal for the sauce part of $7 per meal.

Let’s assume I buy the mince on sale ($3) and the pasta sauce either generic brand or on sale ($2). My sauce has now cost me $5 and I have an extra $2 in my pocket.

Now I learnt from my friend that spaghetti bolognese tastes nicer with a “fresher” taste of tomato so instead of using the sauce I now use a large tin of tomatoes (85c) plus add a grated carrot and a few onion flakes (15c). Sauce has now cost me $4 and I have $3 in my pocket.

Playing around and experimenting, I figure out that if I add a few red lentils (20c), plus a few extra vegetables (50c) I can actually stretch my 500g of mince over 2 meals. So I spend $4 (from last figures) and add 70c to that so $4.70 for 2 meals or $2.35 per meal. I now have $4.65 per meal in my pocket.

Gradually going through the process of adding bits and pieces like lentils, beans, more vegies and so on and I eventually stretched that 500g of mince to 3 meals. Because of the beans and lentils, the protein value is still there, the fat level is lower, the nutritional level is higher and the cost is lower. It’s a win-win situation all round.

Last night I made up a batch of bolognese sauce in the slow cooker. I’m guestimating that I ended up with at least 4 litres by the time I had finished. That will do us 4-5 meals. I use it for spaghetti bolognese, lasagne and tacos mainly.

500g premium homemade mince ($3)
soaked beans from freezer (30c)
red lentils (20c)
800g generic tomatoes (85c)
bottle passatta (90c)
few blobs tomato paste (20c)
couple handfuls oats to thicken (10c)
minced garlic (10c)
chopped shallots (garden - negligable cost)
parsley (garden - negligable cost)
bag frozen spinach (garden - negligable cost)
bag grated carrot (would have gone to waste if I hadn’t grated and frozen from a bulk lot so really negligable cost but let’s say 10c)
bag grated zucchini (given to me during summer - free)
diced frozen capsicum (10c)

I think I’ve remembered everything. Total cost $5.85 divided over 5 meals $1.17 per meal. I now have in my pocket $5.83 per meal for the sauce portion. Even if I only manage to get 4 meals from it, the cost per meal works out to $1.46 - a great improvement on $7.00!

Had I gone directly from the meat plus bottled sauce version - I don’t think anybody would have liked it and I suspect the dog would have had a feast. By making the changes slowly, we’ve had much more success. Admittedly my DS made a comment last night about how ours is different from everyone else’s because we don’t have big lumps of meat. I was able to point out to him several pieces of meat at least. LOL. It didn’t stop him eating it. In fact, there wasn’t a scrap wasted and the kids ate in record time. DH commented how that it was the best I’d made so far.

BULK BUYING

I could list off a heap of tips here about bulk buying, buying marked down meat etc but it’s hard because everyone’s situation is different and the resources you have around you will be different. I very rarely get to purchase marked down meat because we don’t live near large supermarkets and our local supermarket doesn’t do a lot of mark downs. Also, I’d need to do an extra trip into town on a Saturday to have any chance of finding any so the petrol costs would outweigh the benefits. Some of you may be able to take advantage of that as a way of saving costs.

Bulk buying can be a good way to purchase meat cheaper but it is important that you’re clear on what you’re getting for your money. For instance, when I purchase a 1/2 cow direct from the butcher, his quoted price per kilo is for before the beast is cut up. So I pay for around 90kg at that rate but only end up with 60kg. My $4.50 per kg is really the equivalent of $6.75 from the supermarket shelf. So it’s important to be clear on what the quoted price is for.

I have purchased a 1/2 cow a couple of times and split it with a friend so we take 1/4 each. Just be aware that even 1/4 of a cow is a LOT of meat. One of the temptations when you have a large amount of meat like that on hand is to eat MORE meat and discount any savings. I guess it’s a matter of coming up with a method that’s going to work for you.

If you use a butcher, it might be worth asking what they can do for you. They might do up bulk packs with a variety of items in them as a deal for you. It certainly doesn’t cost anything to ask. It is important though to know your figures as a lot of those packs use a combination of cheaper items like sausages and rissoles with fillers in them to make the pack look more attractive.

APPEARANCES ARE EVERYTHING

One of the great ways to reduce the actual serving size of meat is to consider how it appears on the plate. Fill the plate with a variety of different coloured vegetables and smaller meat portions don’t look quite so obvious.

You might have guessed that we tend to be a “meat and veg” type family. We do eat a few “all in together” type meals but they are a smaller proportion of what we have. Those of you who do a lot of stir frys and casseroles or curries and that type of thing will possibly already consume much smaller amounts of meat. They are a great way to stretch the meat portion of a meal without it looking too obvious.

The hardest thing I think I find about all the tips and ideas out there is wading through to find the ones that will work for my family.

But regardless of what you eat, considering how a plate or bowl looks can go a long way toward how satisfied everyone will feel with what you’re serving.

There are many other ways that make meat look like more than it is. My favourite is to add sauces. This is particularly good for leftover roasts and corned beef. My kids love to have leftovers cut up and served in a sauce or gravy and I find we need less meat for a meal of this style. Sauces can make a small amout of meat look like quite a generous serving.

Sometimes meat on the bone can work out cheaper than meat without bones if you’re looking at a “per meal” basis. From what I can work out, the value for money in terms of actual meat you get may not actually be there. But by serving the meat still on the bone, it takes up more room on the plate and therefore can give the “appearance” of more meat.

Like I said before, the list of ideas can be endless and it really does depend greatly on your own personal situation as to what will and won’t work well for you. I hope this has given you at least a bit of a glimpse into what I’ve done. I know these few ideas have made quite a substantial difference to our grocery bill over time.

What sort of things do you do to reduce the amount you spend on meat? Perhaps you’d like to share them with everyone in the comments section.

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