Almost nine years…..

I have been writing blogs on food almost nine years. It will be nine years in June, In nine years we have been continually growing and finding new ways to save in your food budget. Tweeting and adding a new skill set. The most read blogs have been one where a did a rant about changing attitudes about food and one where I did “ two people, two weeks, sixty dollars or .73 a meal.

How!

1. Stick to basics
2. avoid ready made foods….less money, less preservatives and chemicals
3. efficiently scratch cook
4. never pay full price. Seek the stores with the best prices. Here it is Fred Meyers and Winco. Remember you are going to the store to buy food, not to look at the displays or for your social hour. Go for the prices. If a store is crowded it just means that it is popular for a reason. Cleanliness would be an issue with me. A dirty store would be a deal breaker.
5. Avoid junk food : buy better food for lowest prices
6. Don’t buy fake food. Economy isn’t sustainable if you are feeling deprived and besides, real maple syrup just tastes better.
7. simplify. Less ingredients make it more manageable to buy in bulk and save money. Buying diced tomatoes instead of three different kinds of canned tomatoes is less work and you can manipulate them to work in just about any recipe
8. Take advantage of any coupons, yearly sales, and basket coupons to stretch your food dollars. Buy carefully so you don’t overbuy, but cover your needs before things can go bad
9. buy fresh in season. The food will taste better and be less expensive.
10. Buying things the closer to natural is better because it is usually cheaper and the less a product is handled, the less chance you have of contamination.
11. batch cooking and making your own mixes saves time and money
12. things like ibotta only work of the company gives you your rebates and they answer your e mails
13. invest in countertop appliances that will save you time and money when you can. You buy them once and they save you money often. A hot dog maker is probably not a good investment, but a food processor or insta pot might be, you have to make a point to change your habits and embrace them, or they would be a waste of money. Besides the toaster and coffee pot, I use my insta pot, food processor and electric griddle more than any other appliance. My husband uses the microwave daily.
14. know your prices. Not on everything, but rather, in the things you buy on a regular basis, my mother used to say, sime people could have a bargain get home and bite them in the bit and they wouldn’t see it. Don’t be that person.
15. buy on bulk anything you use in a regular basis, most people have a list of about 15 things. Buy enough to get you to the next sale, most of the time that would be about four to six weeks. In other words, if you eat spaghetti once a week, you probably need to buy four to six jars of sauce. Most of the time I can get Classico for 1.50 on a buy 5. I like Classico because we use jars for storage and if you deduct the dollar a canning jar costs, the sauce is inexpensive. Or, better said, it is a win, win. Don’t overbuy. The best example of this is a extreme coupon episode where a lady bought a coat closet full of sprite because her daughter in law drank it. No matter how cheap she got it. It would go bad before it was used up.