How much do you spend on Food?

[sr82]

I am a single guy who doesn't cook at all at home. I eat out all the time, and end up spending about $400-$500 on food + groceries a month.

I would love to cut this down by a couple hundred. Anyone care to share stories on how you economize on food?

[rabidpotatochip]

Buy whole chickens and use the bones/leftovers for soup. Have oatmeal for breakfast. Bake your own bread. If you're feeling particularly adventurous, make sourdough bread from scratch. Mix equal parts non-chlorinated water and unbleached flour, discard half and replace it with equal amounts non-chlorinated water and unbleached flour till it's bubbly, which means you have yeast living in there. Ah, just look up sourdough starter on Google for better instructions.

One economical recipe that helped a lot during my student days involved about a pound of ground beef, a pack of frozen spinach, some cooked rice and a bit of soy sauce mixed together. Brown the beef, then add the spinach (it can still be frozen), mix in the rice and add soy sauce to taste. It's a healthy, cheap meal if you buy the meat on sale.

Last tip, don't eat out so much. Learn to cook, it will help with being single too.

[jdp]

If you must eat out use restaurant.com and look for the super deals or look for local discount coupon books (my son's school is selling one at the moment).

If you don't cook and eat in because cooking for yourself seems like such a waste, do what we do (I was so blah about cooking for just ds and I - he barely eats lol) - make a "normal" sized recipe of something that freezes well. Have some for dinner, pack some for lunches but for the rest of it freeze it in meal sized portions for future dinners.

That way you are cooking more at home (saving money) but not having to cook every day.

[Julie Rains]

I wrote a post a while back on the topic of making the transition from eating out to eating in, which may be of interest. I think you could save a couple of hundred dollars a month but you might want to start out saving $50 the first month, and adding to your savings over a few months. Cooking every night after nearly always eating out can be quite a change.

Easy meals for me are spaghetti with meat sauce (I brown the meat, add 2 cans of the Hunt's Traditional Sauce, simmer a while, make noodles, and serve with parmesan cheese; tacos (I buy the store brand taco dinners, serve with sour cream, tomatoes, and black beans); and scrambled eggs (served with toast, sometimes sausage or bacon).

Back at the WB blog, Myscha, Linsey, and Philip (in order of frequency that I can recall) also write about easy, inexpensive recipes.

[mandarin.mint]

Yeah, I think my boyfriend and I spend a fortune on eating out. . .it's hard because eating out at a restaurant is so convenient, "cheap" (until you realize how much you spent in a month) . . .and well, no prep work and dishes to deal with before and after!!!

But lately we've been trying to cook more at home. I find it very satisfying because we can control what we put in our foods (less oil, salt, butter, sugar, fats, etcetc). . .we usually make a big batch of food and freeze it or put it in the fridge and eat the food we make during the work week. We try to switch up what to make each week so we don't get tired of eating the same thing all the time.

[Designgal34]

If you don't cook at home, and aren't really in the mood to start, my suggestion would be to begin by looking for restaurants in your area that offer weekly deals.

For example, there's a place in my city that offers dollar burgers every Monday night, $2 if you want cheese. The deal is so good that you can wait up to an hour to get a table, and the place is huge. Other restaurants in town offer prie fix meals certain nights, and there's almost always enough food leftover to bring home and eat for lunch the next day.

Another thing you can do is ALWAYS ask your server (or the cashier, etc) what specials they're offering. Not everything is always published.

Finally, lots of places offer the same great food during lunch but for 1/2 the price and slightly smaller portions. Whenever I eat out with co-workers/clients, I usually have enough leftover to bring home and eat for dinner.

[buymichigan]

As a fella who lives on his own as well, I've found that saving money on food generally follows 4 stages:

1) Shifting money from eating out to eating in, even if that means buying packaged foods. SAVINGS: gas, tips, overpriced sodas/drinks

2) Saving money on food you already buy (such as the packaged food in stage #1) - couponing, sales, buying in bulk, warehouse stores

3) Substitution - going for generic or off-brand items (such as the packaged food in stage #1)

-and this is a big jump-

4) Scratch cooking - making your meals (such as the packaged food in stage #1) at home. This requires investing in quality ingredients (spices, oils, herbs, etc), and investing a good amount of time (planning, managing recipes, managing your pantry), but you could likely cut your monthly food bill by over half. By using the web, you can find just about any recipes you'd ever need. Plus, you eat much better.

I've gotten my monthly grocery bill down to about $200, and it's still shrinking - and I buy organic bulk herbs & spices, local grass-fed beef, Amish chicken, local food products (pitas, jams, breads), etc - and NO MORE packaged foods/meals. Good riddance.

A whole lot of money gets spent on bottled dressings, marinades, sauces, spice mixes - learn to make your own, and learn what goes into, say, taco mix or Italian dressing. A $3 bottle of dressing or marinade can be made at home for maybe 50 cents. Buying spices in bulk, filling what was a $3.50 bottle of "Italian Seasonings" cost me 35 cents - and that's organic. BBQ sauce is another good one, because you can make it just how you like - and is really only: ketchup, some mustard, apple cider vinegar, honey/maple syrup and spices. Maybe $1 tops.

If I can offer one last comment: when you make most of your food yourself, you are MUCH less likely to throw any away, and more likely to find creative ways to use it up (hence spending even less money).

Also, buy local products when you can.

[purplefdu]

Shop to the sales to stores. Plenty of popular frozen foods can be purchased for cheap and there are lots of nice one pan recipes out there.

I know we eat out once a week (on laundry day) and always use a coupon or giftcard we earned elsewhere. We do have a habit of getting poor service and paying half or nothing because of getting comped, but we're not overly picky and we tip well so we don't feel too bad. We earn giftcards on survey sites, grocery store promotions and using rebates from beer companies.

[Philip Brewer]

It isn't hard to learn to cook.

Start by following recipes.

Once you're reasonably comfortable that you can succeed by closely following a recipe, start modifying the recipe slightly. With the exception of things like cakes and candies, you can adjust relative amounts of almost anything in a recipe (so it's easy to make it more or less salty or spicy or whatever).

Once you've had a little experience adjusting recipes to your taste, the next step (and the big money savings) come from looking for what's on sale at the grocery store and then cooking that--whatever it is. You can fit almost any main ingredient into almost any recipe, once you understand how recipes work. I described the procedure in a post a few months ago:

http://www.wisebread.com/frugalize-any-recipe

[olena99]

What is your tip/budget @ Christmas Time?