How can you save money on family meals?

Question

Know any great shopping tips or inexpensive meals?

Answer 1

Reduce your meat intake. Most people are satisfied with a pound of meat, used primarily as a seasoning, per week.

Make 70 per cent hamburger a staple. To determine the real price of the meat, divide the price by the percentage of meat. E.g., 70 per cent hamburger at 1.50/pound equals $2.14/pound of meat. If you drain it carefully, you have 85 per cent hamburger. 85 per cent hamburger for 1.90 per pound equals 2.23/pound.

Eggs are an excellent source of cheap protein. Large eggs are defined as weighing 2 oz each. 8 large eggs are one pound of very high protein. At $1.50 per dozen, you are paying $1/pound.

Don't introduce a bunch of new recipes all at once. You'll prob end up throwing a bunch of good food away.

Learn to use dried beans. Beans and other legumes combined with wheat, rice or corn in a ration of about 6 other to 1 pound beans yields a protein as good as that found in meat or eggs.

Establish a larder. I try to keep at least 3 months of food on hand at all times. That lets me stock up on sale items. E.g., I buy most canned vegetables at 3 or 4 cans per dollar.

I rarely buy hamburger helper and other prepared foods. I can do as good from scratch and cheaper. But I do keep a few on hand, purchased at half price or less.

Make soda and things like chips an occaissonal treat, not a regular item. They do fill you up, but they are a major cause of obesity, which you'll pay for later as medical bills.

Keep a record of what you pay for what and where. That way you'll know when something is really on sale.

Shop the ads. If something is cheap enough, figure out a way your family will eat it.

Answer 2

Buy in bulk at the "Big Box" stores (Costco, Sam's Club,etc.), buy a lot what's on sale and freeze what you aren't using right away and don't be afraid to use coupons. The best invest you can make in order to save money is to buy a chest freezer, they make apartment size models if you don't have the space. This will allow you to buy more meat and perishable items that can be frozen when they are on sale, saving you money in the long run.

There are a lot of websites where you can get coupons for many everyday items. Just do a Yahoo or Google search for "coupons" and the "country you live in". Some sites print them up and send them to you while others allow you to print them right of their site.

Good Luck and bon appetite!!

Answer 3

Shop in bulk. The most you pay for a box of cereal, you can get 3.

Spaghetti is a low cost meal. Rice and beans are cheap also. They're good side dishes for chicken. Bake chicken instead of fry. It's healthier and most likely to have leftovers than fried chicken.

If you don't want to cook for a week, bake a turkey and dissect it. That's meals and lunches for the week: turkey sandwiches, turkey salad, fried rice w/ turkey, etc.

Be creative with what you have. You don't need alot of ingredients for a good meal.

Answer 4

Look up Kraft Foods, they have a super recipe website that you can find fast, great meals that don't need alot of ingredients and you can keep your favorite recipes in your own recipe box. Another highlight is that it prints up a shopping list of any of the recipes you decide to make. Very cool. Also you can sign up for their free food magazine, their is about five issues a year and it has a ton of great family recipes.

Answer 5

Use coupons, take advantage of in store discounts (like those swiper cards all the supermarkets seem to have these days).
If you make large meals, freeze the leftovers for a second meal in the future.
Try meals.com; see if Taste of Home has a website.

Answer 6

If you are like most of us, you are wanting to stretch your food dollars in your budget as far as you can go, while still feeding your family yummy stuff!

I can share some of the things my mother taught me, which always seemed to help me out. (We had a family of 9 when I was growing up) Some of this is pretty basic, so if it sounds remedial, I apologize ahead of time.

If you have a deep freeze or can find a cheap one at a yard sale, get one. Sometimes when you buy in bulk from a meat locker or a wholesale chain, your $ stretches really far.

When shopping for meats, look at whats on sale. Learn when your grocer marks down meats ( it doesn't mean it's bad, just near the sell by date and if frozen can last for a month or so in your freezer) and buy all that you can and freeze it right away. A ham for about 10.00 can get you several meals. One night baked ham, another homemade potato soup, ham and beans, scalloped potatoes, ham salad, ham omlets.... Of course you don't eat ham all week, you freeze portions for use later in other recipies. You can also ask your local grocer/butcher to cut you a ham on sale for 1.49 a pound into ham steaks and use whats left as a small baking ham, etc.. that makes the ham steaks cheap instead of 6.99 a pound.
A roast does the same thing. Cut a chunk off it and freeze it to make beef stroganoff or stir fry.
A whole pork loin on sale is about 14.00. (instead of 25.00) You can cut it yourself and make butterflied pork chops for about 2.99 a pound instead of 8.99 a pound. You can get a good roast, and about 5/6 other meals from it, like stir fried rice or something.

Like other people have said, watch the fliers at stores, use coupons when you can, buy in bulk items you use a lot of. Generics are just as good as name brands in most cases.Keep a well stocked pantry, full of the things you use on a regular basis. Always watch the buy one get one free deals. I like to make shrimp scampi, but instead of buying the shrimp fresh, buy it when the frozen jumbo shrimp is buy one get one free.

My family hates to heat up leftovers.. I have no idea why, so I started making smaller portions of things, and freezing half of my spaghetti sauce (next week or so it becomes lasagna or stuffed shells)
When peppers or corn or something like that is on sale, I buy a lot of them and clean them, ( blanch and cut from cob the corn) and freeze it. It makes a difference when peppers change from 4 for $1 to 1.99 a piece sometimes. I do the same with mushrooms.. I saute them slightly in some olive oil and freeze them in small pouches to add to meals.
I also plan my meals for the week before I go shopping and take inventory of what I have and what I will need to get.

I don't know if any of these ideas help and I'm sure they are ones you have thought of anyway, but happy shopping and cooking.

I know I lost my train of shopping at one point when I thougth I was too busy to shop and cook the way I did and my grocery bill soared from about 100.00 a week for a family of 4 to over 225.00. So much ended up in the garbage when I would come home with the car full of groceries, I'd throw out more just to get it to fit.
One of those vaccuum sealers is an awesome thing to have, too.

Answer 7

yes i would have to say coupons are a life saver and hamburger helper is cheap and easy also

Answer 8

buy whats on sale buy genereic brands