Cooking magazines, websites and blogs everywhere are giving tips and tricks for saving money on groceries. From ingredients to cooking methods, these are the best of today's tips for pinching pennies at the market.
Save Your Budget: Simple Suppers
Inexpensive meals can be made by keeping food simple, yet nutritious. This can mean stretching more expensive ingredients, like meat or seafood, by making a stir fry with plenty of vegetables and rice. Instead of creating a three-course meal that includes a starch, meat and vegetable, simplify your meal by pairing a meat with a vegetable, or veggies and starch, such as a meatless pasta.
Looking for ideas? Check out the Everyday with Rachel Ray magazine column called the "$10 Spot," which features recipes for inexpensive meals that cost $10.00 or less. The meals range from soups to pasta to sandwiches, and each recipe calculates the grocery ingredient costs.
Healthy Food Is Less Expensive Food
Increasing the amount of vegetables and fruits in one's diet is not only nutritionally sound, but a great way to reduce grocery bills. For fruits and vegetables, experts recommend buying in season and from local farmer markets, which often feature great food bargains.
Another alternative to increasing healthy and inexpensive meals into the family rotation by planting a garden of herbs and vegetables, which provide a plentiful crop and can be grown organically, without the organic food price tag.
Go Vegetarian
Many magazines and online cooking resources are offering up the vegetarian line for saving money on groceries. Meat accounts for a large portion of weekly grocery bills, and replacing meat with beans and legumes adds fiber and nutrients, and are great food bargains.
This tip is showing a viable trend, a June 2009 article from Gourmet magazine sites American Meat Institute news that the average family only prepares 3.9 weekly dinners that include meat, compared to last year number of 4.2 meat-filled meals.
Stick to the List With Meal Planning
Organization is the key to curb overspending on groceries, and planning meals weekly can increase the variety of meals and help with overlapping ingredients. "The idea may sound simple, but it requires forethought, diligence, and willpower," says Ann Taylor Pittman in "How I Stretch My Food Budget" from the July 2009 issue of Cooking Light.
Pittman recommends planning meals once a week, making a grocery list and then sticking to buying only those items. Ultimately, this can save time in the kitchen and ensure tasty, nutritious and inexpensive meals.
Make saving money on groceries easier by planning weekly meals, sticking to healthy groceries and trying to increase the number of vegetarian dishes in one's diet. These quick and easy tips are a sure way to reduce grocery bills and increase family time at the dinner table.
Lisa Ann Schleipfer - I am a creative writer from the Great Lakes area, now residing in the sticky state of Florida. I penned my first poem when I was eight, ...
