Whether you live on a budget or straight out love to save money, we all look for inexpensive ways to do things. Food shopping and meal planning can be one of those ways to save money, yet eat healthy with good food. There are a few ways to do this, you just need to find ways that suit you and your family. Food shopping on a budget is a subject for a later date, today is an overall on how to save money in the kitchen.
One way to save money in grocery store is by planning your meals ahead of time so there's less trips to the store, unnecessary trips mean being tempted to buy more unnecessary stuff, which only means spending more money. You plan your meals weekly, biweekly or monthly. Double check what your recipes call for and whats already in your pantry/fridge and make a list accordingly and stick by it.
Another way to save money on food is making things homemade instead of always buying those canned food/TV dinners. Example, instead of buying biscuits in a can, you make them fresh the day of or make them and then freeze. Dinners you can make ahead and freeze, so you just have to pop them in the oven for those lazy days and not order out . You're probably looking at your freezer at wondering how you could do all that in that small spot. For a great investment of about $150 or more you can get yourself a freezer chest. Now you're probably thinking you wont make enough or have enough things to freeze to make that type of an investment. Think again. There's a lot more things you can freeze then most people realize. If you're thinking that it would be an eye sore, there's ways to dress them up to make them look like a regular piece of furniture...two purposes in one :). I'm in the midst of making somethings to disguise it, which will be a later date.
There's a little activity out there called Extreme Couponing. I never got into it, maybe I'm a little too lazy to look into the science of it, but it is what the name says EXTREME. Sorry there's is no way I'm going to use 20 bottles of mustard all before their expiration date, let alone finding the space to store all those items. But if you have that space and you will use all those items go right ahead and do the extreme couponing. If your new to Extreme couponing you can learn the basics here
I do ask those who enjoy extreme couponing, to be realistic, realize you might not be able to use all that sits on your shelves. So instead of letting things go bad and then throwing it out, DONATE, there are a lot of hungry families in this country who don't have the capability of buying enough food.
I start squirreling things away for winter during August and September. Starting with fresh produce. Farmers markets are great way to get fresh local produce, it also supports those local growers. The cheaper way is to grow it yourself. Free is even better. Once I saw wild raspberries growing on the side of the road so I jumped out and collected some and made Wild Raspberry Jam with it. Now I'm not saying to sneak into someone's backyard and take some from their garden, but there are some produce you can regrow from scraps, you can find info on it on websites like this one.
There's a lot of people out there, like myself, who do home canning. It's a great way to preserve fresh produce from your garden or farmers markets. Any soups, as long as there's no diary involved, you can preserve. If you're new to Home Canning and thinking of learning, you can read my post regarding Home Canning. My Wild Raspberry Jam has instructions how to preserve it. You can get more instructions and some recipes on Home Canning from Ball website. But as time goes on I will post more recipes with canning instructions.
I'll go into greater detail of each of these ideas as time goes on. I will post more recipes, so stick around.
Thanks for stopping by, Become a Fan and follow My blog for more fun ideas~ Thank you, Carleen
Follow Carleen's Crafty Kitchen on Pinterest
One way to save money in grocery store is by planning your meals ahead of time so there's less trips to the store, unnecessary trips mean being tempted to buy more unnecessary stuff, which only means spending more money. You plan your meals weekly, biweekly or monthly. Double check what your recipes call for and whats already in your pantry/fridge and make a list accordingly and stick by it.
Another way to save money on food is making things homemade instead of always buying those canned food/TV dinners. Example, instead of buying biscuits in a can, you make them fresh the day of or make them and then freeze. Dinners you can make ahead and freeze, so you just have to pop them in the oven for those lazy days and not order out . You're probably looking at your freezer at wondering how you could do all that in that small spot. For a great investment of about $150 or more you can get yourself a freezer chest. Now you're probably thinking you wont make enough or have enough things to freeze to make that type of an investment. Think again. There's a lot more things you can freeze then most people realize. If you're thinking that it would be an eye sore, there's ways to dress them up to make them look like a regular piece of furniture...two purposes in one :). I'm in the midst of making somethings to disguise it, which will be a later date. There's a little activity out there called Extreme Couponing. I never got into it, maybe I'm a little too lazy to look into the science of it, but it is what the name says EXTREME. Sorry there's is no way I'm going to use 20 bottles of mustard all before their expiration date, let alone finding the space to store all those items. But if you have that space and you will use all those items go right ahead and do the extreme couponing. If your new to Extreme couponing you can learn the basics here
I do ask those who enjoy extreme couponing, to be realistic, realize you might not be able to use all that sits on your shelves. So instead of letting things go bad and then throwing it out, DONATE, there are a lot of hungry families in this country who don't have the capability of buying enough food.
I start squirreling things away for winter during August and September. Starting with fresh produce. Farmers markets are great way to get fresh local produce, it also supports those local growers. The cheaper way is to grow it yourself. Free is even better. Once I saw wild raspberries growing on the side of the road so I jumped out and collected some and made Wild Raspberry Jam with it. Now I'm not saying to sneak into someone's backyard and take some from their garden, but there are some produce you can regrow from scraps, you can find info on it on websites like this one.
There's a lot of people out there, like myself, who do home canning. It's a great way to preserve fresh produce from your garden or farmers markets. Any soups, as long as there's no diary involved, you can preserve. If you're new to Home Canning and thinking of learning, you can read my post regarding Home Canning. My Wild Raspberry Jam has instructions how to preserve it. You can get more instructions and some recipes on Home Canning from Ball website. But as time goes on I will post more recipes with canning instructions. I'll go into greater detail of each of these ideas as time goes on. I will post more recipes, so stick around.
Thanks for stopping by, Become a Fan and follow My blog for more fun ideas~ Thank you, Carleen
Follow Carleen's Crafty Kitchen on Pinterest
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