What foods do you always have on hand and stock up on when they are on sale? I always buy large quantities of noodles, tomato sauces, diced tomatoes, condensed soups, and any other pantry item that I would have a use for. I do not do this so much with freezer foods because they get frost bitten when in the freezer for too long, but pantry food have a long shelf life.
Oats, rice, and split peas are a few things I keep, just off the top of my head. I store them in quart canning jars and they last for months.
We buy rice in bulk because we use it a lot. I also usually have a lot of noodles on hand because they make quick meals. I wish I was better at planning ahead and storing items that can be stored in bulk, but I've never been successful.
I buy as much as possible in bulk since where I shop, that is how you get the best unit price, usually by a LOT. I buy all my dry foods in bulk, such as rice, millet, corn meal, all sorts of beans. Pretty much all the staples of my diet are bulk foods except for cheese of course. I save a lot by buying bulk instead of packaged.
I get through a lot of pasta at home so always bulk buy when it is on offer at the supermarket. Right now, my local store is selling 1kg bags at half priceand I've got four of them in the cupboard right now. I always look for offers on noodles too as they are just so handy to have in the cupboard.
I am usually content as long as I have a pantry full of crushed tomatoes and various pastas. Worst case scenario if money is really tight, I can get by on that for a few days without much trouble at all. Pasta is very filling and spaghetti with tomato sauce is basically comfort food to me anyhow, so I don't really feel like I am starving during the whole ordeal. One item in particular that I no longer stock up on too much though anymore is rice. I never knew that those little bugs can start to grow inside the bags, even if you never opened the bag at all. I am paranoid about accidentally eating them now, so I only buy rice as I need it, and I thoroughly inspect the rice when I am about to cook it. In the past when I had seen those little grey/black flecks, I just assumed some other wild rice had gotten into the bag, and never bothered to look more closely and see that those were in fact bugs. I've also had a couple of bad experiences with canned clams as of late - where I had bought a bunch and the first few cans were fine, but when I tried to use some of the other cans I had bought a few months later, they smelled awful and I had to throw them out instead. Not sure what caused that.
I can't buy bulk food since my family doesn't use them up as quickly as I would like. We ended wasting lot of food, and money buying in bulk. Our house is also lack of storage, so big boxes don't fit in the cupboard at all. If there are storage areas, I would probably stock up on non-perishable food though.
I stock up on pasta and cans of vegetables and soups. Basically I know I will use them and I eat them every week. I also stock up on specials, especially at Lidl when they do the weekend deals as they had 1kg of porridge for 49p so I bought enough for the year as the expiration was well into 2016. When the savings are big, you can find space.
This morning I went to QFC and stocked up on dry noodles and pasta sauce because all of these items were on sale for $1.00 each. The cashier laughed at me and loved my logic going into the store at 6am this morning and making these purchases. I did not go into the store at 6am just to get these, though, we ran out of bread and I had to make school/work lunches this morning. My pantry is now full of pasta products though!
Rice, spam, jam, pasta, and snacks are some of the food that I can buy in bulk. Basically if that food is something that must go into fridge, then it will most likely be expired before I even eat it all. I live alone so I cannot really share food. For example, even if I can store pasta forever, I cannot do the same for spaghetti sauce as spaghetti sauce spoils relatively fast.
