My grocery bill is steadily climbing and I am not sure what to do. I make too much for SNAP. Any tips or tricks? It’s just me in my household, so would buying in bulk be worth it?
Edit: I want to thank everyone for their responses. I have a lot to think about.
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Work on learning cooking techniques rather than recipes. There’s plenty of content. I’ll drop this as a starting point as it has a fair amount of content and focuses on moving away from just recipes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srMEoe_5y6g&t=75
Many other resources are available; it’s easy to turn $30 of varied ingredients into many different meals rather than just several portions of one thing.
Aldi and Lidl.
Costco too
Costco really only makes sense with a family or group. Buying in bulk isn’t necessarily better for a single person, especially given that any impulse buys are more expensive at Costco
If it is freezable, it is fine (rotisserie chicken, for example).
I also make them into preservable forms, like I made little jar of scallion oil from a giant bag of scallion and they last years in the fridge. Ginger and garlic works as well.
You can also cook produces and store in the fridge, they will last longer, although not forever. For example, mushrooms, cabbage, etc.
You can coordinate splits with Costco members.
But beware, Aldi’s Greek yogurt (for example) is actually cheaper than Costco’s, $/oz (at least when I last compared). Costco is not always cheaper; if you really wanna save, you have to do the math relative to what local stores are available.
That makes sense
Look for red 50% off stickers at Aldi (US). You can freeze meat and save for later
Going into debt.
I’ve been meal prepping more and getting into tinned fish.
Sardines are nature’s protein bars and are full of healthy fat and cholesterol. Lots of vitamins too plus calcium from their bones, plus they taste good! I quite like smoked sprats or just Deenz in olive oil or tomato sauce.
They also work well as an ingredient. I haven’t tried this recipe yet but it looks fantastic!
I would get dried beans and rice and make that a staple. You can soak the beans overnight, rinse them, and then boil them for 10 minutes with salt and freeze them. Then when you need beans you take a bag out (I freeze mine in flat sheets. Same with soups stews and home made stocks) and either simmer them for 3 hours or you pressure cook them for 20-60 mins (depending on what type of bean)
Mexican and Brazilian recipes use a lot of rice and beans so you can use those as a reference on what to make and which seasonings to use.
$/kcal it’s hard to beat those two.
I’ve found even tinned fish is getting muuch more expensive than I remember it being not that long ago
Yeah I’ve noticed the same… It’s still worth the price for what you get out of it but it’s gone up a lot
Love sardines. Watch out for the bigger tinned fish though, mercury levels can sneak up on you if you consume them regularly.
Organizing
Only buy in bulk what you can and WILL eat before it spoils. Staring into a cupboard that’s empty except for a huge box of something that seemed like a deal but now makes you gag is … a life lesson.
Since it’s just you, buy cooking vegetables frozen in bags, so you can take out one serving and don’t have to hurry to eat up the broccoli wilting in the fridge. Unlike canned, frozen veg keep their nutrients. Which you do need. Being unhealthy isn’t frugal.
Good point about frozen veggies. It’s also easier to portion out what you need compared to the binary state of a can of food.
When it comes to prepping, cans should be reserved for calorie and nutrient dense ingredients that benefit from canning anyways, like canned meats, condensed milk, sardines and shellfish, or ingredients that primarily come in canned form like diced or pureed tomatoes. Like frozen food they’re canned at peak freshness compared to store bought produce which has to be picked early to ripen in transit.
The biggest risk right now is food prices are going up due to inflation (plus corporate greed and food cartels like the meat cartel), but will soon be going up due to a lack of fertillizer globally due to the strait of Hormuz. Next year is going to be worse by far. With a lack of oil you might get rolling blackouts so be careful to not get too much frozen food…
A deep freezer can help though. You can freeze bags of water inside the deep freeze and as long as you don’t open it during a blackout it can last for a day or two (depending on how much water you freeze in there) to keep your stuff from going bad.
do note that fresh vegetables can be cheaper than frozen, depending on the season and where you live
Occasionally you have to throw food that is spoiled. Not buying it in the first place is better. I’m very good at this, my gf is not. She eats half a corn cob, puts the rest in the fridge and two weeks later i have to throw it out after I find it grazing on the lettuce.
Most meat you can buy in bulk and split into smaller packages freeze If you have the freezer space. Vegetables are usually not cheaper in bulk here outside the occasional buy two for $X deal and they don’t survive the freezer as a rule.
You can tinker with what you eat. But it’s harder to do.
If you can stop eating candy and soft drinks that is probably the first I’d suggest. Zero nutritional value outside the sugar and a non zero cost.
Check what is most protein per $ in your area. Used to be ground beef here, but now it’s frozen chicken filet and the leaner cuts of pork.
I have a farm share (CSA). At the start of the year, you pay up front for a share; in return, you get boxes of veggies during the season. Since the farmer is paid up front, they don’t need to borrow money from the bank and hope for a decent harvest to repay the loan, so there’s less pressure on them: they know their farm will still be around next year. And you get boxes of veggies that were picked within the past 24 hours, so they’re all incredibly fresh. You’ll get some stuff you can find in the grocery store (ex: roma tomatoes, bell peppers) but since all the middlemen have been cut out, they last a long time (I’ve had heads of lettuce last like a month); and you’ll get some that’s either heirloom varieties (too fragile for handling by the supply chain feeding grocery stores) or unusual (ex: pawpaws, ground cherries).
I’m going to say up front that a farm share isn’t for everyone; it takes some adjustment and a bit of work to make it work well, but for me it’s worth it. I’ll note that I’m single (so it all falls on me) and vegetarian (so I can sometimes eat a lot of veggies).
Each farm chooses how to operate, so I can only speak in generalities. To accommodate different family sizes, some farms offer boxes of different sizes/prices; others offer a half-share, so instead of getting a box every week for 20-26 weeks, you get a box for 10-13 weeks (you choose which weeks you want a box). You can also find a friend to split the cost and content of a share, either splitting each box, or alternating pickup weeks.
Some farms will pre-pack the boxes for you; others will put the veggies on a table and let you choose among them; for example, this week’s share might be something like “choose 3 zucchinis/eggplants; choose 2 lbs of a bunch of different types of tomatoes; choose 4 varieties of hot peppers”, etc. Some farms you have to pick up at the farm itself; other farms have distribution points in outlying areas, will let you pick up at local farmers markets, or have home delivery for an additional fee. Some farms have work shares: instead of paying for a share, you can choose to work like 4 hours a week during the season and get a box of veggies each week in return. Most farms have pick-your-own availability for veggies that may not be to everyone’s taste (okra, herbs), where some people may want extras (tomatoes, peppers, beans), or where personal taste is important (flowers).
I’ve been with a bunch of different farms over the years (I’ve moved several times; and sometimes I’ve joined a farm that isn’t a great fit for me). For the past couple years, I’ve been getting my own box instead of splitting a share, and I’ve opted to get a 10-week share (I choose the weeks). One thing I like with the 10-week share is that I’m not facing fresh veggies to work with every week; sometimes a weekly share can seem overwhelming!
Most people make some adaptations to make a CSA work for them. It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally come up with a set a recipes for stuff that I like, that uses the veggies I tend to get, much of which stores well; and I have a pattern of processing that works for me:
Each week, the farm sends out an email ahead of time, letting you know what’s in season and sometimes with a rough idea of how much to expect (“this’ll be the last week for blackberries, but we have lots of tomatoes!”); that helps me plan what to do ahead of time.
On weeks that I have a share, I go to the farm, do the PYO (it’s included in my share, and my starving Irish ancestors would be upset if I didn’t get them!), and choose the veggies for my box. When I get home, I wash everything, then sit in front of the tv, watching my guilty-pleasure shows and processing the veggies - as applicable, I trim, peel, slice, dice, mince, etc. As I finish each veggie, it goes into a sealed bowl or a Ziploc and goes into the fridge. I also have a spare bowl for scraps - ends and peels of onions and carrots, trimmings from peppers and leeks, etc. Those join other scraps in a big Ziploc in the freezer; when I have enough scraps, I use it to make veggie stock. And there’s another bowl for stuff I can’t use, that either goes in the garbage or a compost pile (I’ve stopped composting in recent years).
On Saturday, I spend a couple hours cooking, usually 2-3 big dishes or 4-5 smaller ones - it depends on my mood and what’s in season. Then half the food gets portion-sized and frozen; the other half gets eaten over the week or so following. While cooking, I may pickle some veggies. Pickling is easy: you put your chosen veggies and spices in a jar, heat up your pickling brine, pour the brine over the veggies, and seal the jar. During a season, I may pickle dilly beans, beets, giardinieri, garlic, onions, cucumbers, etc; I may eat them out of the jar or use them as ingredients in future dishes.
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On Sunday night, I sit in front of the tv, once again watching guilty-pleasure shows, and I use whatever veggies are left over to make salads. Each week I try for a mix of styles so I don’t get bored: for a couple salads I may toss in some nuts and berries or apple pieces to make it a bit sweet, while others I’ll put in extra peppers or onions to give it some zing. Any lettuce goes on top so it doesn’t get soggy over the week; crunchy stuff like croutons goes in a snack Ziploc on the side so it stays crunchy (ziplocs get rinsed and reused every week, and some recycled year to year). Dressing goes in an old pill bottle along the side. I make ten salads: one for each lunch and dinner for the week.
In front of Sunday night’s tv, I’ll also make little veggie snack-packs: veggies in a Ziploc (add a little water to keep them fresh), some of them with an old pill bottle of dressing or dip on the side After I’ve finished, any veggies that haven’t been used cooking, salads or snack-packs, they get frozen to be used in future meals.
Herbs tend to come in small bunches during the season and it can be annoying to process small amounts each time. I’ve settled on cleaning and chopping them up each week (in front of Friday nights tv), then freezing them. At the end of the season, I’ll take them out of the freezer and dry them and add them to my spice cabinet.
Once or twice a year, I’ll spend a couple hours making freezer jam, which is insanely simple: mash the berries, add sugar and pectin, stir, put in containers, leave them on the counter for a day, then move to the freezer. I can use the jam for sandwiches, cake filling, topping for pancakes and waffles, or give them out as stocking stuffers over the holidays.
And once a year during high tomato season, I’ll spend a Saturday afternoon processing tomato: I’ll make and can some salsa, make and freeze some marinara, boil down a bunch of tomatoes into tomato paste (freeze them in ice cube trays, then move them to ziplocs; you can use them as-is or dilute them into soup, sauce or puree).
How much time is all this? I find it helps to reframe things and count them toward other goals or desires. The hour I spend doing PYO on alternate weeks isn’t “farm-share time”, it’s counted toward my weekly exercise goals. Time in front of the tv isn’t counted either, as I’m catching up on guilty-pleasure tv (without the guilt, since I’m actually working, lol). The couple hours batch-cooking on alternate Saturdays, I would likely to have been batch-cooking anyway. That really leaves like 1.5 to 2 Saturdays each year, where I’m making jam, making and canning salsa, etc.
Price-wise, I’m paying $400 a year for a ten-week share, but again I re-frame it: I eat the fresh meals over the summer and fall and the frozen meals over the winter and spring, plus there’s also whatever I’ve pickled, canned, jammed or frozen. For me, it’s really a year-round benefit that works out to about $7.70 per week for farm-fresh (often organic) ingredients and homemade meals spiced to my personal tastes. It provides over half the food I eat each year, which means the rest of my food budget stretches further. And I’m eating healthy foods, not highly-processed stuff.
For me, the key has been coming up with a set of recipes for the ingredients I’ll get, for dishes that I’ll enjoy, and that preserve well - usually frozen. I only have the normal freezer-on-top-of-fridge, but by the end of the season, it’s crammed with lasagna, French onion soup, eggplant Parmesan, scalloped daikon, strawberry pancakes, blueberry muffins, stuffed tomatoes and peppers, zucchini boats, butternut squash bread, seven-layer casserole, chili, etc.
I’ll admit this isn’t for everyone: you need to adjust your habits to what’s in season instead of what you buy from the store, you need to find recipes that work for you, you need to spend time cleaning, processing and cooking the veggies. But for the people who do adjust, it can save money.
Wow thank you for your insights. That sounds great. I realy have to look into that.
I usually struggle with finding new recepies I want to make and end up resorting to my usual rotation. Do you by any chance have a recipe that you find interesting and thats not too hard to make for a single person? Would be greatly appreciated :)
I realy have to look into that.
Try googling CSA and your county (if in the States), or CSA near your town. There’s also local harvest.org, but they don’t list everyone, and some of the ‘too far to consider’ farms will have local drop-offs.
My most recent discoveries are scalloped diakon and butternut squash bread [not entirely sure that’s the recipe I used, but I’m at work, lol].
I found butternut squash bread because last year’s harvest brought me no less than ten butternut squashes and I didn’t want to eat all of them broiled or in soup. The bread is great - it’s like zucchini bread or banana bread - light, mild, good with a bit of butter or cream cheese on top. I cooked down the squashes and froze the cooked innards, then made the bread over the winter, when I had more time (and partially because I couldn’t have fitted all the fully cooked loaves into the freezer, lol). It’s good and simple.
The second one’s a little more complicated to cook but I’m actually delighted with the scalloped diakon because I’ve been trying to find a decent daikon recipe for years and everything either makes it too noticable (I don’t actually like diakon, but I refuse to waste food) or it makes the dish bland and unappetizing. That scalloped daikon recipe makes them mild and tasty and just right for me. Daikon saves well, so my plan for diakon season this year is to just save them all up and make one large batch of scalloped daikon all at once.
I also made a really nice ground cherry tart once, but I’ve been struggling to re-find the recipe :( There are also fairly easy recipes for using display pumpkins to make pumpkin pie, which I often do: I’ll process the pumpkin and make pie filling, freeze the filling flat in a Ziploc, them unfreeze it and stick it in a pie shell for Thanksgiving or Christmas. If I’m eating with someone, I can legitimately claim it’s a pie made literally from scratch.
If anyone has questions, I’m happy to answer!
CSA is great and ethical consumption, and I am thinking about getting one from my local community farm. The only obstacle is that I need to drive there and that is annoying.
That being said, from my personal experience, CSA will be more expensive than big box stores.
CSA will be more expensive than big box stores.
Probably, yeah, and I don’t want to minimize that. However, chances are also that the food is either more unique (heirloom varieties that taste better but either don’t travel well or “looked ugly”), or it’s fresher and will last longer (because they’re not being sent to a sort-and-pack facility, put in a warehouse, sent to a regional warehouse, a local warehouse, and then the back of a store).
I also like that it forces me to eat more vegetables than I would in my ‘normal’ diet.
Food pantry. It’ll be full of stuff that’s grocery overstock or about to expire. You’ll have to toss some fresh fruit and veg that’s gone off, and the breads will mold in a day or two, but otherwise it’s the same stuff that’s on the shelves at the store, just a more limited selection.
Not really financially constrained, but I also don’t spend a lot on groceries as I just don’t like wastefulness. Some tips:
- No alcohol.
- No tobacco.
- No branded products.
- No soda. I drink mostly tap water, though considering you’re American that might not be a viable option.
- I eat quite a lot of bread, though again it might be difficult for you to get edible bread.
- Frozen vegetables are good, decently healthy and easy to buy in bulk.
- Rice and dried pasta are cheap and easy to combine with the above.
- Modest amounts of animal protein, if any. Cheap alternatives include tofu and peanuts.
- Since you’re alone, you can cook for two or three days and save some time and money. One option is to cook for two servings but alternate, so that you eat the second serving 2 days after. That way you don’t have to eat the same thing twice in a row.
It is true that, if you remove any joy from life, it becomes a lot cheaper.
I drink mostly tap water, though considering you’re American that might not be a viable option. it might be difficult for you to get edible bread.
Stereotypes about America get weird.
I base that assessment on my experiences visiting the USA, and what I heard from colleagues who lived there.
When I visited (Aspen, CO) the tap water tasted like dirty pool water. I guess it can be better in other areas. The bread was terrible as well, easily the worst I had in any hotel breakfast in any country I’ve visited. From what I understand, Whole Foods has some decent options, but is expensive. You can make your own bread of course, but that’s a more time-consuming option.
You based your impression on a hotel breakfast buffet. That’s bread designed to be shelf-stable, not delicious. Let me assure you right now, we have bakeries here, and not just in supermarkets.
If you think it’s normal that a hotel breakfast buffet (in a very expensive hotel at that) doesn’t serve good bread, I think it underscores my point.
Your point was that good bread (well, “edible”) is hard to find in the US. It’s not, though. Yes, we have bad bread too, and maybe you don’t where you live, and that’s great. But the existence of bad bread does not mean good bread is unavailable.
Food for Life sells exceptional bread. It’s found in the frozen section. It’s pretty expensive, but you get what you pay for.
Luckily, I live in one of the 10 best states for tap water. I’m not a big bread eater, so isn’t really an issue.
Living abroad is very comfortable and means an instant, massive reduction in cost of living. if prices get too crazy or you’re interested in the idea of living abroad, feel free to reach out or head over to Travel.
Loss of appetite do to depression
Rice and beans are useful low cost calories. Canned tuna is an affordable protein source. There are often food kitchens you can access even if you don’t qualify for SNAP
I volunteer at a food pantry and a soup kitchen, and neither of them does any means testing at all. No paperwork, no questions other than the food pantry asking how many people are in your family so they know how many boxes to give you. Each box is ~30lbs of food. We give out rice, beans, canned veg, canned meat, and in the summer, some fresh fruit and veg grown on some land the church owns. We used to give out a lot of potatoes, but then the guy we were getting them from decided that selling them to the pig farm was a better idea then giving them to humans in need.
yeah, all the rich kids i knew in my 20s would go to food pantries, and then spend their grocery bill money on booze and going out. they’d ‘dress up’ in ‘poor people’ clothes to do this too. as in, they’d wear stuff from TJ maxx or something.
they really should means test. lots of people exploit the food pantry system who don’t need it.
No, they shouldn’t means test. The rich kids you knew in your 20s are the exception, not the norm. Don’t project your subjective experience as an actual widespread issue with no data backing it up. We should not make it more difficult for people in need to get food.
lots of people abuse social welfare systems. you are just naive if you think they don’t. because it goes against your belief that people are inherently good, no doubt.
the rich kids i knew thought they were poor, btw. lots of people I meet, who make a lots of money, also, think they are poor.
Those are a lot of claims with absolutely no sources to back them up.
Not sure if it’ll help, but I don’t think soylent prices have gone up. At least not in Canada.
I usually only have it for breakfast and lunch especially to avoid those shitty factory burritos.
Without govt assistance your best bet is to shop smart. Get the 3 lb package of chicken breasts, when you get home pack a breast in a zip lock and leave one in fridge to get cooked rest go in freezer and thaw/cook as needed. Buy rice in the big bulk bags, same with beans. Don’t forget to eat vegetables (carrots and potatoes go well with lots of other food items and are reasonably priced). Buying the big bulk bags like this has allowed me to get my meal cost somewhere in the 3$ range. Always pack up leftovers for work. You have to look at what your spending on groceries and determine what you can go without, what has a cheaper alternative, and what can be had cheaper in bulk. It sucks man year and change ago my weekly groceries were both 100 and change for my SO and I now it’s closer to 200 a week pretty consistently
I actually do get the rice and beans and I add some frozen vegetables. I just get tired of that all the time. It really does suck. Pasta with meat sauce used to be a cheap meal but even ground turkey is getting too expensive and the store brand sauce has gone up by a third here. Has anyone tried lentils in their sauce as a ground meat substitute?
Yes, lentils are a decent substitute and quite healthy. I also tried soy chunks that you soak in broth for some time before adding to the sauce. These will benefit from a lot of time in the sauce and then are quite nice and a bit chunkier than lentils.
Neither will be as good as the original ground pork/beef that goes in a proper Italian bolognese. But I do like both versions enough to make a meat free version 8/10 times
I can’t speak to using lentils as a meat replacement but lentils go hard with rice. Another good way to add nutrients to a rice bowl is to throw in some quinoa and cook it with the rice. I basically have a carb, meat, and preferably fresh veg but yea it can get repetitive. I’ve found you can make the same meal but make it taste incredibly different by playing with seasonings and salt. Make a sweet and sour chicken one night and spicy next for example. My local grocer has some really cheap meat sometimes that’s like about to go bad so sometimes that’s a good buy. Unfortunately meat prices are on the rise, try tofu some time. if you dry it out properly and use some gochujang sauce and fry it up in some corn starch it will crisp up nicely and goes HARD in a rice bowl. You can cut meat out of a few meals to save some dough and use protein rich beans and/or nutritional yeast (has all the proteins we need so if your worried about missing something from the meat it’s a good additive)
