Do you buy most of your food already prepared? I have started making everything from scratch (my motivation was to avoid GMO's) And I am also buying only organic, non GMO foods. I expected 2 things: 1.)That my grocery bill would go up drastically buying organic 2.)That I'd spend all my time in the kitchen. I have found both to be false! Buying individual ingredients instead of frozen entrees, canned foods, boxed mixes, etc, makes eating much less expensive. And as far as time goes, once you get used to the recipes, don't have to run to the book and look them up, Things usually go together pretty fast, and things I use often I make in batches and store the extra. With prices going up even higher,(gas prices increase so moving food costs more, and severe draught in CA) how are you going to keep your food bill under control? Have you started making things from scratch that you used to buy already made, or do you plan to continue to just accept that groceries will consume a larger part of your budget? My favorite money savers are homemade pasta and crackers (both surprising quick to make if you have a pasta machine) and homemade bread, which is faster than most people would imagine. What are yours?
Buying cereals and some ready to eat from the grocery isn't what we do today because its also costly. .Since the time I have a kid, I now have to buy fresh veges and have to cook food myself just to make sure what we are eating are safe. This is because a nutritionist friend of mine kept reminding me of the kids food for my kid is allergic to some ingredients. The only thing we buy on groceries are milk and eggs.
We can not afford to do anything but cook from scratch. I have 3 kids and my boyfriend has 3 kids. We did discover making food from scratch was much cheaper. On the bright side it is healthier too. We paid $6 bucks for crab Rangoon ingredients and it made 3 meals! Stuff like that makes a huge difference when you have a big family.
$6 would get you 4 to 6 crab rangoon from a Chinese restaurant! 60 years ago most things were made from scratch, and then came T.V. dinners and fast food and every week there are new frozen, ready made foods. I also have a garden which really helps a lot. IF we could just get spring started here. I have most of my seedlings up and growing, and lettuce growing on a windowsill that will be a salad in a few more days. Longevity rates are declining, too. I'm convinced it's our food sources. First all the pesticides, now GMO's and an extra dose of round up.
Exactly! Items like that can be made soooo much cheaper. I think lasagna is another example of a dish that feels like it's relatively cheap to buy a frozen option of, but when you use that same money to buy the real, fresh ingredients, you can make 2-3 times as much! Freeze the extra lasagna and you'll always have an easy meal in the fridge, too.
I don't have the hatred for GMO's that some people do. If anything most of them are good things. I've seen far too many 'organically grown' bits of produce turn out to be 'organically grown... from GMO seed stock, but no pesticides.' So, keep that in mind. As far as cooking, I tend to make meals instead of buy pre-packaged stuff as well. I can feed 3 people on $200-$300 a month with no problems at all, when I buy loose ingredients and make meals. Every pre-packaged thing really ramps up the prices.
I always say that buying bulk organic ingredients, such as grains, nuts, beans and oils will save you a lot of money and worries about GMO's and other nasties. The only problem I have is to find decently priced organic vegetables in a shop. I primarily go to Farmer's markets on weekends whenever I can. I don't like greengrocers who specialise in organic vegetables and fruit as their prices are ridiculous. When they tell me that they can't get it any cheaper from their suppliers, I always say that they should perhaps start looking into what the local people have to offer. Even if it's not certified organic, I still believe local growers when they tell me that they use only natural growing methods.
I make some things from scratch but not everything. If I want to buy a couple of boxes of Velveeta shells and cheese, I'll just wait for a sale and use a coupon. There are certain things like soup and biscuits, and cookies that I make from scratch. Although you have to lay out a lot of money at first for baking ingredients, you can get more batches of baked goods out of those ingredients. I'm not a good enough cook to make everything from scratch. I also save money by buying the slightly flawed fruit at the farmer's market because you can't tell if a fruit is bruised when you use it to cook with.
If something is truly organic, it is not GMO but I always do make sure it is both grown from GMO free seed, and organically. I have a big problem with GMO's. For some reason, when lab animals ate food from GMO's and they couldn't reproduce after 3 generations, that bothered me, and also when the lab animals grew massive tumors. It bothered me when I found out that in 2013 the corn seed was changed since the one they had been selling no longer worked against the bugs. They inserted something new into the corn DNA. An ingredient from Agent Orange! I buy from several local growers who are not certified organic, they are too small to shell out the high price to get certified, but I've been on the farm, I know what seed they use, and the practices they use in the farming. I have also done something that most people would think of as crazy, and I did it more for fun and to see if I could than to save money, but OH did I ever save money. I grew a patch of wheat. Learned to thresh it and winnow it by hand. I bought a hand crank grain mill. I can make my own flour now, and I save some of the wheat berries each year to grow more wheat. I know it's a bit extreme for most people, but I found it fun to learn to do it (it was easy) and I like the feeling of being more self sufficient. I grow as much as I can on my own land, which is nothing more than a small lot in town.
