I have already written about how I love cooking. As the Penzo family chef I am always trying to make sure that our grocery bills stay under control. There are many methods for cutting the grocery bill that go way beyond shopping at discount grocery stores, taking advantage of in-store specials, and using coupons. Specifically, there are several areas that I focus on to keep my grocery costs down. They include:
1. Dinner Menu Planning
2. Shopping Strategies
3. Pantry Management
Today I will focus on the key tips that I use to keep the family grocery bill under control with respect to planning and development of the family dinner menu.
Dinner Menu Strategies
1. Create 14-day dinner plans. I’ve talked about this tip before, but it is worth repeating. This is one of the very best ways I know to control your grocery bill. It requires about 90 minutes of my time twice per month. I create a menu and then build the grocery list based upon the dinners that were selected for the next 14 days. This process has kept us disciplined in eating the great majority of our meals at home and minimizing the temptation to simply go out for pizza or run down to the local fast food joint to avoid cooking. It also virtually eliminated those annoying quick runs to the store to get ingredients for one measly meal. For more info on this topic, check out my earlier post on Planning Your Dinner Menus In Advance to Save Big Money.
2. Don’t be afraid to go vegetarian! I make sure my 2-week dinner menus always include at least two or three meatless dishes. As an added bonus, most vegetarian dishes are quick and easy to prepare. I know for many people mac and cheese is only served as a side dish, but in my house, it is a main dish that we have at least once per month. I’m not talking about the boxed stuff either. I always make it from scratch; it is quick and easy and the kids love it! In fact, it is so easy that my 11 year-old son now makes it for the family whenever it comes up on the menu. Let me know if you want the recipe. There are many other vegetarian choices including pasta with a simple marinara sauce, Chinese stir fry dishes with rice, casseroles, and eggs.
3. Quit being a baby and embrace leftovers! The number of people I know that refuse to eat leftovers is amazing. What a sad waste of food, not to mention money. My family generally has two leftover nights per month — that’s 24 dinners per year. In 2008, it cost me $2.09 per person per meal to feed my family of four at home. Thus, eating leftovers saved me at least $200.64 last year — and the savings would be even more assuming we would have went out for fast food on those days!
4. Leverage previous meals to create follow-on dinners. If you simply refuse to eat leftovers, this tip makes for a great money-saving compromise. Coming from an Italian family, I regularly make a big pot of pasta sauce. I always use the sauce for the original pasta dinner, and then freeze the leftover sauce to make lasagne, chicken parmesan, ravioli or some other pasta dish a week later. I also use left over chicken and beef to make fresh soups and chilis.
The more of these tips you can utilize, the bigger the savings you will realize on your grocery bill. As you can see they are all very easy to implement. All it takes is a little commitment from you to turn these tips into real savings!
Next, I’ll focus on several key shopping strategies I use every month to save big money on my grocery bills.
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