This post is part of my continuing series, “A Family Guide to Living on Less”. If you’ve missed any of the previous posts, you can catch up here:
- How Deep is the Hole You’re In?
- Luxuries and Necessities
- Creating a Budget
- Credit Cards are for Emergencies
- Not by Bread Alone
- How to Cut Back on Discretionary Spending
- 25 Free or Low-Cost Entertainment Ideas
After luxuries, the food budget may very well be the area in which you can make the greatest change in the shortest amount of time. Depending on how you generally shop and cook, you could potentially reduce your food budget to a third or a quarter of what you spent in the past. This can mean a savings of hundreds of dollars each month.
The typical American cook takes advantage of the many timesaving conveniences built into products throughout the grocery store. Anything that saves you time in the kitchen adds a cost to the product; the greater the time savings, the higher the additional cost.
Food manufacturers are well aware of the fact that our lifestyles are so busy that food preparation is simply not a high priority. Most of us are more than willing to spend enormous amounts of money to purchase these convenient, timesaving products. If this is how you’ve always cooked-if you have considered the four food groups to be freeze-dried, microwavable, take-out, and delivery-then you may have never considered the alternatives, or at least considered them seriously.
Of course, I’m getting to the idea of making many or most of your foods “from scratch”. Now, before you leave my blog in frustration, please read on a bit further.
You can prepare dishes “from scratch” and save an enormous amount of money. You will also be feeding your children food with no extra salt, food that is completely free of preservatives, nitrates, and other additives. Your meals will be full of vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Your children will be eating the freshest, healthiest food you could possibly give them. It’s not really such a bad trade-off for a little more time and effort. You will all find the food tastier, healthier, and definitely cheaper.
Meal Objectives
You need to save money by reducing the food budget, but you still have certain important objectives that must be met. Meals should be nutritious and filling, offer interesting variety, be acceptable to the family, and hopefully be quick to prepare and clean up.
Nutritious and Filling
Remember your Health class back in junior high? Where you learned about the Basic Food Groups? Nowadays, there is the Food Guide Pyramid, it’s helpful in showing the relative proportions of the different foods we should consume.
The Food Pyramid is particularly helpful in showing us that fats should comprise the smallest part of our 
intake of daily calories while the foods in the bread group should comprise the most. We really don’t need to consume very much meat, but the healthy consumption of fruits and vegetables may seem enormous to the average American family. It’s important to keep these facts in mind as you plan your meals.
Fortunately, for the budget-conscious, the foods at the bottom of the Food Pyramid are generally the least expensive ones. In your efforts to cut back on the food budget, you still must make it a top priority to make nutritionally balanced meals for your family. When you do, these meals will be “filling”. Imagine a meal with a tossed green salad, turkey and gravy over potatoes, broccoli, and a sliced apple. After consuming that, you will probably feel “satisfied” because you have eaten everthing your body is craving.
Variety is the Spice of Life
No one wants to eat turkey six meals in a row. It’s boring, and it’s also not healthy.
As I’ve explained, balanced meals are important, and changing the different members of the food groups is also very important. Providing lots of variety increases the chances you will eat the great number of nutrients your body requires, including the trace elements, such as iron, zinc, potassium, and iodine.
Be creative, persistent, and set a good example for your kids. Then be content with what you can get them to eat. Even if it’s a small group of fruits and vegetables that will be eaten, mix them up and provide as much variety as possible on a weekly basis. Different herbs and spices can add a variety of flavors to the fruits and vegetables that you use.
Quick Preparation
In the winter, meat-eaters can rely primarily on cooking roasts on the weekends. Cooking a big turkey, ham, beef roast, or roasting chicken each week provides an enormous amount of meat in the most economic way possible. When the meal is over, you simply take 15-30 minutes to cut the meat off the bones, divide it into meal-size portions, wrap these individually, and put them in the freezer. You may want to leave a small amount of meat in the refrigerator to slice for lunch sandwiches.
By alternating the types of roasts you cook, you will end up with a variety of meats and poultry in your freezer, ready to be used for last-minute meal preparation. Thaw in the refrigerator or microwave, and you have pork to add to a Chinese stir-fry, strips of beef for tacos or fajitas, or chicken to add to a sauce and pour over pasta. Preparation time is actually quite reasonable.
Of course, many dishes don’t lend themselves to quick fixings. The cheapest pieces of beef often need marinating overnight or long, slow cooking to be tender enough to enjoy. Planning ahead for marinades is
necessary. A Crock-Pot or slow cooker can be used for less tender meats, bean dishes, and stews. Even though the time for cooking is long, you can arrive home after work with the main part of the meal done.
What may seem very time-consuming to you initially is cutting up fresh vegetables. Speed comes with practice and finding a knife with which you feel comfortable. You might love to be able to wield a huge knife like the chefs on TV cooking shows, but be careful. Using a small knife you can control may take more time but save you from cut fingers. Be sure your knives are sharp. It is easier to cut yourself on a dull knife because you are leaning on it and lose control of it.
Conclusion
In this post I have tried to convince you that buying the basic ingredients and really cooking can save you a lot of money and will provide healthier and tastier meals. Hopefully, I’ve also shown you that it doesn’t have to be so time-intensive as to make it impractical.
**Next time, The Food Budget: Strategies for Cutting Back.**
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Early Retirement Extreme
10.02.08 at 4:23 pm
You can cut costs further by reducing meat to an add-on rather than the main part of the meal.
BTW As long as there is balance in the meals, they don’t need to be varied. Variation is basically to meal planning what index funds are to investing. It’s a way to keep exclude malnutrition for the clueless.
Anna
10.18.08 at 7:52 pm
Early Retirement~I agree, reducing meat definitely saves on cost.
I happen to like a variety of foods, that’s why I included it. But, you’re right, as long as there is balance that’s really all that matters!
esgie
05.31.09 at 2:39 am
Here in Asia where rice is the staple food, we certainly follow that food pyramid where the carbohydrates food group should come first. What I can’t follow is that the sweets are on the top! Haha. A measly serving of a dessert is not enought to satisfy the relentless sweet cravings of my taste buds but I’m afraid that’s the right thing to do to keep our health in check.
esgies last blog post..Been there done it wore the t-shirt