A couple of years ago, I would see random articles that would talk about how much food Americans throw away. The numbers I'd see ranged from 1/3-1/2 our food being thrown away. Even if 1/3 of your groceries go to waste, that's a lot of money being thrown out! If you spend $300 a month on groceries every month and throw away a third of your food, that's going to be about $90 you're throwing away. After seeing some of these numbers, I started paying attention to how much food we were throwing away. Stale boxes of crackers only 3/4 gone, produce we let go bad, stuff stuck in the back of the freezer we forgot about and were full of freezer burn by the time we found it, etc. Once I started putting dollar amounts to the food we were throwing away, I started to freak out about all the stuff we threw away. So, over the last couple of years, we've been working on improving that. We're still working on it, but we've definitely improved. And our wallet thanks us! We spend about the same amount we do per month on groceries, but we're eating better food now! Seafood once a week makes us both really happy! Here are a few of the things we started doing to try and cut back on our food waste.
1. Buy less food
This seems like it would be pretty obvious, but how do you know what food you can go without? We started by not giving in to cravings and buying crackers and other snacky foods (which we'd already decided previously not to buy anymore to try and save money) because we'd eat half or most of it, but then end up throwing away stale crackers or pretzels. So, we practiced self control and quit buying that stuff, even when cravings struck. Now, I found out about a year ago that I have a small heart problem that actually requires more salt in my diet, so we do regularly keep pretzels on hand now so I have a quick, salty snack to keep me from passing out on occasion, but I always eat the whole bag now! Produce was the other thing we threw away a lot, so we decided to start only buying the produce we thought we'd eat in half a week and then if we needed to make another trip to the store for produce, so be it. Turns out we would always overestimate how much produce we'd eat. By buying less produce, we were still eating produce, but we ate all the produce we bought. We still occasionally have berries go bad on us, they're tricky ones, but we've gotten a lot better about not throwing out so much produce.
2. Plan your meals using the same ingredients
Anything really perishable that you buy should be used multiple times in your meals that week. If I want to make one dish that uses cilantro, I plan at least 2 other dishes that will use up some of that cilantro. Or if I buy a bag of potatoes, I'll cook with the potatoes a couple of times that week and then plan to finish off the bag the next week before they go bad.
3. Eat all the produce you buy
Again, pretty obvious, but I was notoriously bad at using all the veggies we would buy. I consistently would throw away half the lettuce we'd bought because I'd also bought broccoli and green beans. This goes sort of in hand with "buy less food" because if you don't buy the broccoli in the first place, you would have no choice but to have salad another night and finish the lettuce.
Thursday, February 1, 2018
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
Eating (Pretty) Well on a Budget: Meatless Monday
My great-grandfather was a cattle rancher. In our religion we have a health code and part of it says to "eat meat sparingly" which is pretty much left up to interpretation. So to my cattle rancher great-grandpa, eating meat two to three times a day every day was sparingly because he would snack on meat too, but that wouldn't be sparingly. So 3 generations later, that's how I grew up. My husband didn't have a cattle rancher grandpa, but he grew up in a meat and potatoes kind of family, so when we got married, that's how we continued to eat. Fast forward a few years and we're doing research on eating healthier and saving money on food. We found going meatless once or more a week can help a lot in both areas. As an added bonus, it's good for the environment to cut back on meat consumption. Not long after, I heard about a movement that started during the Great Depression, called Meatless Monday. So for 2016, one of our resolutions was to have Meatless Monday every week. We did really well with it and have continued with it ever since. We try and have one or two meatless meals over the weekend as well.
I am now a huge believer in Meatless Monday. It challenges me while meal planning to think of delicious, filling meals that aren't centered on meat. I usually feel really healthy after eating a Meatless Monday meal. I say usually because one of my favourite meatless meals is mac & cheese which doesn't usually qualify as healthy... Focusing more on vegetables and less on meat has really expanded my tastes and helped me branch out to more than just carrots, green beans, broccoli and asparagus. I've now branched out to making butternut squash mac & cheese despite hating squash, loving lentils, and I learned there are more beans besides just black and pinto beans. One goal for this year is to try more vegetarian cooking and branch out to meat substitutes (I'm sure my cattle ranching great-grandpa is rolling over in his grave).
Feeling healthier is a great feeling! But I'm not going to lie, the main reason we stuck with going meatless in the beginning was because of the potential for savings. Aside from Meatless Monday, we also cut meat from one weekend meal, so we went meatless twice a week. If you replace 2 pounds of chicken at $4 with two cans of beans at $1 each, that's half the cost each week. A difference of $2 a week ends up being $100 a year. Of course these numbers are going to be slightly different depending what meal you replace your meat with, but hopefully this at least gives you some idea what your savings could look like.
I am now a huge believer in Meatless Monday. It challenges me while meal planning to think of delicious, filling meals that aren't centered on meat. I usually feel really healthy after eating a Meatless Monday meal. I say usually because one of my favourite meatless meals is mac & cheese which doesn't usually qualify as healthy... Focusing more on vegetables and less on meat has really expanded my tastes and helped me branch out to more than just carrots, green beans, broccoli and asparagus. I've now branched out to making butternut squash mac & cheese despite hating squash, loving lentils, and I learned there are more beans besides just black and pinto beans. One goal for this year is to try more vegetarian cooking and branch out to meat substitutes (I'm sure my cattle ranching great-grandpa is rolling over in his grave).
Feeling healthier is a great feeling! But I'm not going to lie, the main reason we stuck with going meatless in the beginning was because of the potential for savings. Aside from Meatless Monday, we also cut meat from one weekend meal, so we went meatless twice a week. If you replace 2 pounds of chicken at $4 with two cans of beans at $1 each, that's half the cost each week. A difference of $2 a week ends up being $100 a year. Of course these numbers are going to be slightly different depending what meal you replace your meat with, but hopefully this at least gives you some idea what your savings could look like.
Thursday, December 21, 2017
Eating (Pretty) Well on a Budget: Eat Less Food
"Eat less food?? But I love food!" This was my reaction about two years ago when I was looking at eating healthier, not looking at saving money. I read in a few different places about how Americans eat more than recommended portion sizes but don't realize it because no one actually knows what a portion size is. So I was seeing that a good place to start when you want to eat better, is to actually just eat less food. So for Christmas or my birthday that year (they're both in December so it's hard to keep gifts straight), I asked for a kitchen scale. My wonderful husband got one for me and I started measuring out portion sizes. Ok, you guys, I really had no idea what portion sizes were! I measured out pasta and realized we'd been eating like a double portion size, probably 4 ounces per person instead of 2. Oh and one whole chicken breast is actually supposed to be two servings of chicken?
So we were feeling pretty good health wise having cut our huge servings down. It didn't take long for me to figure out that this would help us out financially too. When you eat 4 ounces of chicken as one serving instead of 8, you're cutting the cost of your chicken in half. Basically it's 50 cents per serving instead of $1 per serving. When we first started doing this we were eating chicken breasts about twice a week, so cutting our portion sizes down took us from about $400 a year ($2 per pound at eating 4 pounds per week), to about $200 a year ($2 per pound at eating 2 pounds per week) on chicken. It doesn't seem like much over the course of a year, but it's still a difference of about $16 per month, just by eating an actual portion size, not gorging ourselves at every meal. Of course, that $16/month was just the difference in chicken. When you factor in that we ate pork chops a couple of times a month and saw a drop in price there as well, a small change due to cut backs on pasta servings, it all starts to add up.
Another cut back we made as part of our trying to eat healthier, was on snacks. I am all about the salty snacks, no amount of fruits or veggies can be as satisfying to me as crackers, tortilla chips or pretzels. But we were dedicated to our New Year's resolutions and so we cut the snacky snacks and subbed in carrots, apples, string cheese, etc. Funny thing was I actually just stopped snacking because I don't ever crave carrots or apples and since we didn't have anything else, I just went without. So yay! for my waistline but again, another surprise benefit was to our wallet. It never feels like crackers and the like are very expensive, but it always adds up.
Each week you buy a box of crackers at $2.50 a box and a bag of pretzels for $1. $3.50 a week, that's nothing! But over the course of the month that's $14ish, and over the course of a year, it's $182! If you still need snacks, some of those savings will be cut down because you'll be buying other things. But, a bag of carrots at $1 for two pounds (if you peel and cut them yourselves) could easily be snacked on by two people for a week. That still saves you $2.50 a week.
It's crazy how much Americans eat without even realizing it. When you first start cutting back on food, you won't be used to it and might feel hungry still, but your body will adjust and you'll feel better! We felt much healthier anyway. And just by eating less, you could save hundreds of dollars a year.
So we were feeling pretty good health wise having cut our huge servings down. It didn't take long for me to figure out that this would help us out financially too. When you eat 4 ounces of chicken as one serving instead of 8, you're cutting the cost of your chicken in half. Basically it's 50 cents per serving instead of $1 per serving. When we first started doing this we were eating chicken breasts about twice a week, so cutting our portion sizes down took us from about $400 a year ($2 per pound at eating 4 pounds per week), to about $200 a year ($2 per pound at eating 2 pounds per week) on chicken. It doesn't seem like much over the course of a year, but it's still a difference of about $16 per month, just by eating an actual portion size, not gorging ourselves at every meal. Of course, that $16/month was just the difference in chicken. When you factor in that we ate pork chops a couple of times a month and saw a drop in price there as well, a small change due to cut backs on pasta servings, it all starts to add up.
Another cut back we made as part of our trying to eat healthier, was on snacks. I am all about the salty snacks, no amount of fruits or veggies can be as satisfying to me as crackers, tortilla chips or pretzels. But we were dedicated to our New Year's resolutions and so we cut the snacky snacks and subbed in carrots, apples, string cheese, etc. Funny thing was I actually just stopped snacking because I don't ever crave carrots or apples and since we didn't have anything else, I just went without. So yay! for my waistline but again, another surprise benefit was to our wallet. It never feels like crackers and the like are very expensive, but it always adds up.
Each week you buy a box of crackers at $2.50 a box and a bag of pretzels for $1. $3.50 a week, that's nothing! But over the course of the month that's $14ish, and over the course of a year, it's $182! If you still need snacks, some of those savings will be cut down because you'll be buying other things. But, a bag of carrots at $1 for two pounds (if you peel and cut them yourselves) could easily be snacked on by two people for a week. That still saves you $2.50 a week.
It's crazy how much Americans eat without even realizing it. When you first start cutting back on food, you won't be used to it and might feel hungry still, but your body will adjust and you'll feel better! We felt much healthier anyway. And just by eating less, you could save hundreds of dollars a year.
Eating (Pretty) Well on a Budget: Breakfast
I grew up almost always eating cereal for breakfast. My mom was
pretty strict about sugar when we were growing up, so it was Cheerios or
Corn Flakes or Shredded Wheat, but it was easy, relatively filling and
something that we could get for ourselves. When Greg and I first got
married, cereal was our staple breakfast. Occasionally we'd have bread
for toast and the weekends was usually pancakes or waffles or the like.
It didn't take that long for us to realize how expensive cereal actually
is for breakfast compared to toast, oatmeal or eggs.
We've started making our own bread now that costs about 40 cents a loaf to make. A loaf of bread lasts us about a week and we usually have eggs with our toast so it's more filling and satisfying. We try and stock up on eggs when they're 99 cents for a dozen which ends up being about 12 cents an egg. If we have toast and eggs every morning, it costs less than $2 to feed us both every week.
Let's say a 21 ounce box of Cheerios has 21 cups of cereal in it (general internet consensus is that 1 oz=1 cup) and costs $3.64 for the box. That's about 17 cents per cup of cereal. To feel as full as I am after toast and eggs, I need at least a cup and a half of cereal. That's a little more than 25 cents a serving, not including the cost of the milk used, but I won't get that picky. So we'll go with 25 cents a serving. For two of us to eat that every morning, it would cost $3.50 a week. Over the course of a year, that ends up being a difference of $78 and we're not even factoring in the cost of milk used for the cereal.
Even if you don't want to make eggs every morning, you could have yogurt or milk to get some protein and it would still be cheaper than cereal. Other cheap breakfast ideas include oatmeal, smoothies (buy fresh fruit in season in bulk and freeze, or buy frozen fruit from Costco, and add spinach or kale to get a serving of veggies), pancakes or waffles made from scratch or a mix, or eggs and hash browns.
We've started making our own bread now that costs about 40 cents a loaf to make. A loaf of bread lasts us about a week and we usually have eggs with our toast so it's more filling and satisfying. We try and stock up on eggs when they're 99 cents for a dozen which ends up being about 12 cents an egg. If we have toast and eggs every morning, it costs less than $2 to feed us both every week.
Let's say a 21 ounce box of Cheerios has 21 cups of cereal in it (general internet consensus is that 1 oz=1 cup) and costs $3.64 for the box. That's about 17 cents per cup of cereal. To feel as full as I am after toast and eggs, I need at least a cup and a half of cereal. That's a little more than 25 cents a serving, not including the cost of the milk used, but I won't get that picky. So we'll go with 25 cents a serving. For two of us to eat that every morning, it would cost $3.50 a week. Over the course of a year, that ends up being a difference of $78 and we're not even factoring in the cost of milk used for the cereal.
Even if you don't want to make eggs every morning, you could have yogurt or milk to get some protein and it would still be cheaper than cereal. Other cheap breakfast ideas include oatmeal, smoothies (buy fresh fruit in season in bulk and freeze, or buy frozen fruit from Costco, and add spinach or kale to get a serving of veggies), pancakes or waffles made from scratch or a mix, or eggs and hash browns.
Eating (Pretty) Well on a Budget: Know the Price of Food & Meal Plan
If you want to save money on food, the best thing you can do to cut
costs, is to know what food should cost. If you're looking through your
grocery ads and you see chicken breasts in there at $2.99 a pound you
may think that's a good price since it's in the ad. But, once you start
paying attention to the ads, you'll realize that chicken breasts will
pretty regularly go on sale for $1.99 a pound or even cheaper once in a
while. If you buy 6 pounds of chicken in one go to last you for the
month, right there you could save $6 by waiting to buy it when it goes
on sale.
Start looking through those grocery ads that come in the mail. Or go online and check the ad for your grocery store each week if you don't get it in the mail. Specifically pay attention to the costs of meat, seafood and dairy. After a few months, you'll start noticing what the good and great prices on certain items are. That's when you should be stocking up on those things. Meat and seafood freeze really well so if ground turkey is on sale for $2.99 a package, which is a good price, buy 3 or 4 packages to last you a month or two. After a year or so of doing this, I decided that aside from seafood or the occasional steak (like once or twice a year), I wasn't going to spend more than $2.99/pound for meat. Pork chops and roasts and beef roasts are usually more than that per pound, so I really only buy those things when they're at or under $2.99/pound. While meat, seafood and dairy are generally the most expensive things you buy, it's also good to know good prices on pasta, canned tuna, produce, etc. Like one of my fast go to meals is baked beans, so when canned baked beans go on sale, I buy 2 or 3 cans so I hopefully won't have to pay full price for them.
Once you know what the good prices are, you can start meal planning based on what is on sale that week. Meal planning is another great way to save money. If you have something planned for dinner every night and everything on hand to make it, you'll be much less likely to eat out. When you look at the ads each week, check what is on sale and base your meals around what's on sale. If drumsticks are on sale for 79 cents a pound plan one or maybe two meals that week using drumsticks. While you're at the store, pick up an extra package of drumsticks to keep in the freezer to use in the future. If you see a good price on shredded mozzarella, plan to do pizza one night. There are lots of different tips out there for meal planning. After a few years of trying some different things, I found my favourite way to meal plan that works best for me.
I set each day of the week as a certain protein and plan a meal for that.
Sunday: beef or pork
Monday: meatless
Tuesday: ground turkey or sausage
Wednesday: seafood
Thursday: chicken
Friday: easy (canned beans, etc.)
Saturday: sandwiches, quesadillas, other easy meals
Once a week I sit down to do my meal planning for the following week. Using the above format I can check what's in my freezer and what's on sale. If pork chops or a beef roast is on sale that week that's the first thing I plan for the week. If neither are on sale I go to my freezer. When I first started doing this I didn't always have something in my freezer, so I'd do another chicken meal to cover that week because chicken is much more affordable than the other proteins so it's always something I have always had in my freezer. From there I can plan the rest of my meals for the week.
Start looking through those grocery ads that come in the mail. Or go online and check the ad for your grocery store each week if you don't get it in the mail. Specifically pay attention to the costs of meat, seafood and dairy. After a few months, you'll start noticing what the good and great prices on certain items are. That's when you should be stocking up on those things. Meat and seafood freeze really well so if ground turkey is on sale for $2.99 a package, which is a good price, buy 3 or 4 packages to last you a month or two. After a year or so of doing this, I decided that aside from seafood or the occasional steak (like once or twice a year), I wasn't going to spend more than $2.99/pound for meat. Pork chops and roasts and beef roasts are usually more than that per pound, so I really only buy those things when they're at or under $2.99/pound. While meat, seafood and dairy are generally the most expensive things you buy, it's also good to know good prices on pasta, canned tuna, produce, etc. Like one of my fast go to meals is baked beans, so when canned baked beans go on sale, I buy 2 or 3 cans so I hopefully won't have to pay full price for them.
Once you know what the good prices are, you can start meal planning based on what is on sale that week. Meal planning is another great way to save money. If you have something planned for dinner every night and everything on hand to make it, you'll be much less likely to eat out. When you look at the ads each week, check what is on sale and base your meals around what's on sale. If drumsticks are on sale for 79 cents a pound plan one or maybe two meals that week using drumsticks. While you're at the store, pick up an extra package of drumsticks to keep in the freezer to use in the future. If you see a good price on shredded mozzarella, plan to do pizza one night. There are lots of different tips out there for meal planning. After a few years of trying some different things, I found my favourite way to meal plan that works best for me.
I set each day of the week as a certain protein and plan a meal for that.
Sunday: beef or pork
Monday: meatless
Tuesday: ground turkey or sausage
Wednesday: seafood
Thursday: chicken
Friday: easy (canned beans, etc.)
Saturday: sandwiches, quesadillas, other easy meals
Once a week I sit down to do my meal planning for the following week. Using the above format I can check what's in my freezer and what's on sale. If pork chops or a beef roast is on sale that week that's the first thing I plan for the week. If neither are on sale I go to my freezer. When I first started doing this I didn't always have something in my freezer, so I'd do another chicken meal to cover that week because chicken is much more affordable than the other proteins so it's always something I have always had in my freezer. From there I can plan the rest of my meals for the week.
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| I got the free background for this meal plan from Photo by Lukas from Pexels https://www.pexels.com/photo/board-bunch-cooking-food-349609/ |
Eating (Pretty) Well on a Budget
After a discussion was opened on social media by a friend about food
spending, I realized a lot of people like Greg and me, couples with no
kids, spend a lot more on groceries than we do, like $100 or more a
month. And that doesn't even count the costs spent on eating out. After
seeing this discussion, I was curious about national averages. I found this breakdown
from the USDA about food costs. Including all our food costs, even
eating out, we are about $80 under the low-cost average for a family
like us. Looking just at grocery costs, our average monthly grocery cost
is about $90 less than the thrifty plan on the breakdown. Obviously,
every person's situation is different and not everyone has the time or
desire to make things from scratch to save money, but if you want to see
about saving a little bit of money on food without couponing, I thought
I'd share some of the things we do to keep our food costs down. I'm no
accountant or chef and I don't claim to be an expert on budgets, but
given that we eat our fruits and veggies, meat and even seafood a few
times a month, and spend much less than the national average, I thought
I'd share the things we do to keep costs down.
Wednesday, December 6, 2017
Roasted Red Pepper Feta Pasta
Greg and I have been sick off and on, but mostly on, since early September. We're coming up on our trip to London soon and I was desperate to get feeling better. I've made a similar pasta sauce to this one before, but this has been my favourite version of it. It has roasted red peppers for vitamin C, oregano for some antibacterial action, and garlic and pepper to help clear out sinuses hopefully.
Ingredients:
6 oz pasta
1 T olive oil
2 cloves minced garlic
1 large roasted red pepper, patted dry and finely minced
3/4 c cream
2 oz crumbled feta
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 tsp dried oregano or more to taste
Cook pasta according to package directions. Meanwhile heat oil over medium heat in a skillet. Add garlic and peppers and cook for about 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Slowly pour in the cream. Add feta and bring to a boil. Lower to a simmer and let cook for about 5 minutes. Season to taste with salt, pepper and oregano. Add drained pasta and toss to combine.
Ingredients:
6 oz pasta
1 T olive oil
2 cloves minced garlic
1 large roasted red pepper, patted dry and finely minced
3/4 c cream
2 oz crumbled feta
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 tsp dried oregano or more to taste
Cook pasta according to package directions. Meanwhile heat oil over medium heat in a skillet. Add garlic and peppers and cook for about 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Slowly pour in the cream. Add feta and bring to a boil. Lower to a simmer and let cook for about 5 minutes. Season to taste with salt, pepper and oregano. Add drained pasta and toss to combine.
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