[LuxLiving]

I've been food price concsious for a long time and bargain & bulk shop...but I've been trying to 'Do The Math' a little more consistently, checking price per ounce.

Even doing the bag weighing in the produce aisle. A '10 lb. bag' of potatoes can vary in weight you know. So I'll weigh just a few and get the heaviest of the three. I value my time enough not to stand there and weigh every bag in the store.

Something I do when times are particularly tight is when making the menu plans I start by labeling the days vaguely w/cheaper ingredients before getting specific:

M-pasta
T-rice
W-beans
Th-eggs
F-leftovers or pizza
S-sandwich
S-meat

This strategy can keep me down in the spending. This doesn't mean that we only eat meat on Sunday, but that's the day I will usually focus the entire meal around a major meat dish such as fried chicken, or a roast, something of that sort. Pasta night might be spaghetti w/meat sauce, but the major portion of these meals is made w/the cheaper ingredient in the spotlight.

Thriftorama, be careful if you are planting apple trees to keep them away from cedars...(can't recall the exact problem, but think it has to do w/some kind of rust-disease they can cause the apple trees.) Even if they are in neighbors yards!