Sustainable Tips to Save Money on Groceries

[Hinotori]

I follow the ad cycles for laundry detergent, shampoo, soap, deodorant. Usually I can get some of that with a coupon as well as the ad because I have a store card.

Everything goes in buckets with Gamma lids here if it's dry goods. We do have a freezer. I do stuff as I was taught growing up. Why we have stuff during shortages when my brothers dont.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

I also follow the ads. Krogers has a digital coupon promotion every week. I try to catch that if there's something I need on sale. It's generally pretty good savings. Butter is generally at least 4.99lb lately and with the digital coupon it was $1.99lb last week. There's 10 lbs living in my freezer right now. I hope they put it on sale again around Christmas.

 

[Phaedra]

I also did all the items on the list. One more helpful thing - do the grocery after a good meal - this helps to eliminate unnecessary spending on heavily processed food.

 

[tortoise]

We could add moredetail to meal planning. You can save the most money by mastering "piggybacking," or rolling leftovers onto a new meal.

@baymule shared an example in an earlier comment!

Experienced frugal cooks often start with a bone-in roast (or a rotisserie chicken, which might cost even less!).

Eat the choice meat the first day, and pick the rest of the meat off the bone. Save the picked meat. You can usually get 2 meals out of it. You can mix with rice or another grain to stretch it for tacos or sloppy joes. (Save the bones and all your veggie scraps, like onion peels)

Put the bones in a big pot of water and boil them all day or night. (Crockpot or instant pot if you're not home to supervise). Ladle off the broth. You can make soup, keep it in the fridge up to 5 days, add salt and drink it, freeze it, or pressure can it. Refill your pot with water and repeat. You can keep making broth from bones until you can smash them between your fingers. If you can't use or preserve that much broth, freeze the bones and make more broth later.

You can also piggyback in less obvious ways. I cook chili 3 to 5 days after spaghetti. Why? I can toss any leftover marinara into the chili. Adds bulk and you'll never taste the difference. Nothing wasted! Then in a few days when my family is tired of chili, I make mac n cheese and mix it in with the chili for an easy goulash.

Little bits of leftovers can be reincarnated as quesadillas or grilled cheese.

Leftover oatmeal can hide in sloppy joes or meatloaf (if its not too sweet), or in bread, muffins, or cookies.

So many ways to piggyback!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Great suggestions @tortoise!

 

[murphysranch]

Mooch off of friends and family.

DD is soooo wasteful. She always tosses the turkey carcass. I got it simmered yesterday.
She always throws out the giblets. Not anymore. I'll take them.
She throws away alot of food. Lots of rice. I bought her a large round foodservice bucket with lid from the Chefs Store and now anything that she wants to throw away goes in there, and placed in the extra fridge in the garage.. Purportedly for the 12 chickens, but sometimes I find things for us. (like half a cabbage yesterday).

Elderly neighbors below us let me glean their garden a few times. In exchange, I passed on some Harry & David gourmet items I had picked up from their Medford OR giveaways.

Another neighbor has a large apple tree. All the apples fell off. I asked and then got permission to pick up the fallen ones and so I made applesauce.

 

[tortoise]

Mooch off of friends and family.

DD is soooo wasteful. She always tosses the turkey carcass. I got it simmered yesterday.
She always throws out the giblets. Not anymore. I'll take them.
She throws away alot of food. Lots of rice. I bought her a large round foodservice bucket with lid from the Chefs Store and now anything that she wants to throw away goes in there, and placed in the extra fridge in the garage.. Purportedly for the 12 chickens, but sometimes I find things for us. (like half a cabbage yesterday).

Elderly neighbors below us let me glean their garden a few times. In exchange, I passed on some Harry & David gourmet items I had picked up from their Medford OR giveaways.

Another neighbor has a large apple tree. All the apples fell off. I asked and then got permission to pick up the fallen ones and so I made applesauce.

Love it!

 

[flowerbug]

wasting food is one of my pet peeves so i try to do as little of that as possible. i was appalled at the amount of food waste that happens in our country, it's a huge waste of energy, fertilizer, land, water, etc.

 

[Phaedra]

Mooch off of friends and family.

DD is soooo wasteful. She always tosses the turkey carcass. I got it simmered yesterday.
She always throws out the giblets. Not anymore. I'll take them.
She throws away alot of food. Lots of rice. I bought her a large round foodservice bucket with lid from the Chefs Store and now anything that she wants to throw away goes in there, and placed in the extra fridge in the garage.. Purportedly for the 12 chickens, but sometimes I find things for us. (like half a cabbage yesterday).

Elderly neighbors below us let me glean their garden a few times. In exchange, I passed on some Harry & David gourmet items I had picked up from their Medford OR giveaways.

Another neighbor has a large apple tree. All the apples fell off. I asked and then got permission to pick up the fallen ones and so I made applesauce.

Love it, too!
Carcasses and giblets are all beloved items here - they all came from lives sacrificed for us so I always try my best to make the maximum use from them.

 

[Phaedra]

We could add moredetail to meal planning. You can save the most money by mastering "piggybacking," or rolling leftovers onto a new meal.

@baymule shared an example in an earlier comment!

Experienced frugal cooks often start with a bone-in roast (or a rotisserie chicken, which might cost even less!).

Eat the choice meat the first day, and pick the rest of the meat off the bone. Save the picked meat. You can usually get 2 meals out of it. You can mix with rice or another grain to stretch it for tacos or sloppy joes. (Save the bones and all your veggie scraps, like onion peels)

Put the bones in a big pot of water and boil them all day or night. (Crockpot or instant pot if you're not home to supervise). Ladle off the broth. You can make soup, keep it in the fridge up to 5 days, add salt and drink it, freeze it, or pressure can it. Refill your pot with water and repeat. You can keep making broth from bones until you can smash them between your fingers. If you can't use or preserve that much broth, freeze the bones and make more broth later.

You can also piggyback in less obvious ways. I cook chili 3 to 5 days after spaghetti. Why? I can toss any leftover marinara into the chili. Adds bulk and you'll never taste the difference. Nothing wasted! Then in a few days when my family is tired of chili, I make mac n cheese and mix it in with the chili for an easy goulash.

Little bits of leftovers can be reincarnated as quesadillas or grilled cheese.

Leftover oatmeal can hide in sloppy joes or meatloaf (if its not too sweet), or in bread, muffins, or cookies.

So many ways to piggyback!

I love piggyback cooking! Especially we share most of our ingredients with dogs/cats/chickens/quails - very limited things go straight to the compost heaps.