My wife and I live on a budget so we make food stretch. She makes a big batch of spaghetti and makes it last for 2 or 3 meals and she does the same with tacos and other meals. ANd if she didn't we would probably starve to death because the price of food in the USA is so much that groceries for 2 people are around $140~$170 a week. And if you want to eat healthy its a lot more than that. Do you make food stretch to save money?
When it comes to cooking and ordering pizza I try to make it last as long as possible, to save a little bit extra money. To me, I think it is an effective way to save a couple of dollars, especially when you have a couple of small snacks laying around the house to help feel you up.
Food is the primary expense at home. I am the manager in the kitchen and I am also doing the marketing most of the time. I have noticed that one type of fish here is as expensive as beef. Hmm, that got me thinking. Another is the vegetables particularly cauliflower. Why would I buy such expensive food when I can buy pork instead of that expensive fish, how about the cheaper broccoli instead of cauliflower? As much as possible, our dishes contains vegetables. That’s for health and also for savings.
That's quite expensive. I think if you would just make the switch to just eating sardines and other canned goods, then you would spend a lot less than $140 per week. Try it, I buy canned goods all the time and I save money doing it.
This is really the one area where I feel a lot of control over my budget, and yet I do try to do as well as I can to make food last and not waste any. You have to have variety though and I try to be a little spontaneous, but more often than not it is routine.
I don't feel it necessary to stretch food in order to save money. Stretching food in this sense means cooking food in bulk quantities for consumption in several batches. I think you can only save cooking time and effort and some money on gas or electricity when you do that but not quite on the cost of food itself because you'll probably be eating the same amount of food each meal. You'll spend more electricity for storage and heating though and the food quality may not be the same as those of freshly-cooked meals. We usually prepare moderately priced yet nutritious dishes and there are no leftovers that require storage and reheating later. Vegetables dishes are inexpensive and quick to prepare so eating vegetables frequently can be good for the health and the pocket at the same time. We can also save on some meaty dishes by opting for less expensive meat types or using substitutes like tofu. When preparing homemade burger patties, for instance, we add carrots or turnips to ground meat to produce more patties.
I definitely stretch food to save money (and loose weight). I watch for ads like CVS and Walgreens has weekly ads so you save a lot. I got a pound of spaghetti noodles for just .99 which is cheaper than Walmart's pound of spaghetti which is now 1.24. The ads are online so you can get to them from Sunday to Sat. They give rainchecks on most sold out items too. Supermarkets like Safeway.com is online and have weekly ads too. Hope you got your free Safeway card and you can get extra savings every week with your Safeway card. The account is free and locally we have Safeway ads running from Wed. till Tues. All these ads add up to savings and you get a good meal too. Our island loves poki or raw fish marinades and it's regional, so I believe each region Safeway is in has their own regional foods on sale from time to time too.
