When my husband and I got our first home and before we had really gotten into homesteading and preserving our food, we, like everyone else, went grocery shopping. Now we are be no means completely without going to the store, but what we shop for and how often has drastically changed.
In those early years of adult and married life, I felt like I constantly needed to be going to the grocery store and I dreaded having to go. I think we probably bought what most everyone else buys, paper products, frozen food and snacks. I never meal planned and even when I did I 1. Wasn’t great at it 2. Didn’t do it consistently and 3. Never did very far out. Fast forward six years and my grocery shopping has completely changed from what I shop for to how often I need to go.
Nothing changes over night and it has taken a while for me to be able to go two months in between grocery trips. It first started with what I was buying. I’m a pretty good cook and for the most part don’t mind cooking. I was never one who bought frozen meals like banquet or Stouffer’s but I would buy frozen pizzas, hot pockets, pizza rolls things of that nature. Those types of things we would eat for lunches or quick easy things when we didn’t feel like cooking. I like most, like a sweet treat so tack those on to the grocery bill and then the paper plate and towels too. What came first was cutting out the paper product. Now we hardly ever have paper towels except when my mom comes and brings them because that what she wants. I on the other hand don’t mind using dish clothes for everything, I only miss paper towels when I cook bacon. Paper plates went next and that was a change I didn’t enjoy as much because our old house didn’t have a dishwasher and I hate doing the dishes. We now only get paper plates if we are having a lot of people over. To me cutting those things were pretty easy and it wasn’t a big change.
When we really started changing what we eat was when there was a significant change of what I bought. It is hard to get away from buying those easy convenient food items but once you take a look at what they are made of and then find how you can make them at home it becomes a lot easier. My husband started and still is big on not eating anything that has corn syrup in it. Now I agree completely but man oh man is that in everything. Pretty much all I have to do to know if my husband is going to eat something is check if there is corn syrup in it. That right there cut out a significant number of items I use to buy. Gone are the days where I bring home bags of chips or a box of little Debbie’s for late night snacks. What my grocery bill consist of now is a lot of food for making meals at home. Its is also a lot simpler of a menu. I have frozen veggies and lots of meat in our freezer and the frozen meals I like to make for busy nights. We use a lot of flour, sugar and oats, so much so we have 5-gallon buckets to store it in. If we want a sweet treat, we usually make it at home instead of buying the prepackaged stuff. In our fridge we have a lot of cheeses, eggs and opened jars of things I’ve canned.
When you make more of your food at home and meal plan then it is a lot easier to shop less at the grocery store. For our meal planning I created a menu board for the month that has magnetic meals I can just plug into each day and then I know what to make for the whole month. For breakfast and lunches, it is a lot of the same thing. Eggs and sausage, peanut butter & jellies, and oatmeal are probably our top three breakfast and lunch options. To menu plan I look at what I still have in my freezers and try to use a lot of that stuff first. My father-in-law has raised cows for us the past couple of years so I have had a freezer full of beef. He then also got us a quarter of a pig so I also have had a lot of pork in my freezer. I try to buy chicken when it is on sale and always stock up on it so I have it in my freezer. From my menu I find what I have and then make a list of things I need. After I have my menu list of ingredients, I need I will then find what household items I need. toilet paper toothpaste dish detergent things of that nature. After that I look at what items I’m low on which are items like, seasonings, baking items, oils. Then of course there are just staples that I always get like, cheeses, peanut butter, and fruit snacks. Once I have those list, I look at the sales flyers of all the stores I will be going to being, Costco, Meijer, Aldis and our local meat market. I also order certain items in bulk online from Azure Standard like our flour, sugar and oats.
Once I get everything for the first month it is pretty easy to just keep a similar menu into the second month because most likely I will have enough of the ingredients to make more than one meal of something. It is usually a pretty expensive grocery bill but I actually end up saving money because one I can stick to my list and two, I don’t go to the store that often. I don’t usually buy a lot of fresh produce; it is just either frozen or canned or the fresh stuff I get at the beginning. My husband drinks a lot of milk so that is something I will stop for on my way home from work on a weekly basis but I get that when I get gas at a gas stion.
As of writing this the average grocery cost for a family of four per month is between $1100 to $1600, I usually spend that when I’m shopping for two months at a time. Now when we get our cow butchered that cost is still figured in and I can usually just make it work with what we already have. But since I don’t have to go shopping every week I enjoy going when I do and have come to like my routine of making my list and looking at the sale flyers.