Need Help! Spending 300 a week on food...

[impatient1]

I am a married mom of 2 and am spending 300 dollars a week or more on food. This includes groceries and eating out. We eat out a lot. I want to cut it back, and eat at home most of the time, but I just feel clueless. I don't cook a lot, b/c I don't really know how to cook a lot of things I like. I find when I do go grocery shopping, it still seems like I have nothing to make for dinner, and I run out of food quick. This is when I spend around 130 at the grocery store. How much should I be spending a week on food, and how? My kids are 6 and 3, and I stay at home full time and go to college part time. Thanks in advance I'm desperate!

[JanH]

You've got a busy schedule so make some menus based on pretty simple meals at first. What has really helped me was to make menus up on Sundays for the week cos I am so bad at thinking right before dinnertime. I keep on hand a list of things we have run out of and add to it the things I need for my menu for the week. And I really try to just stick to that list. I started with simple meals and used the leftovers for lunch or another meal. I plan on adding a new recipe at a time--maybe one every couple of weeks--after I establish a pattern of cooking. I also plan to keep a "diary" of menus so I can pick from what I've already done when I just can't think of what to do for that week. I also have set an amount to spend for that week and try to stick to that. Some use a price book, I haven't gotten that far--but I add up what I am buying so that I know if I am going over.

[impatient1]

How much should I be spending though? What is a reasonable amount of money to be spending for the week for 4 people.

[JanH]

I don't know that one since my kiddoes have left home. I do know that we budget 200 a month for groceries, not including paper goods or cleaning supplies. And we budget about 50 to eat out for the two of us and 50 to eat out when the kids come home. So far, we still haven't been able to not overspend when the kids come home or we go see them. There are many awesome people with families here that will be able to help you more on the cost factor.

[lgslgs]

You'd save a lot if you learned to cook.

One good way to start is by buying one copy of Everyday Food magazine or Taste of Home magazine. You can find then near the checkout in most grocery stores or in their magazine section..

Start your store shopping by picking up the magazine. Have a paper and pen with you and thumb through it and then buy the ingredients for 4 or 5 meals. Most of the recipes have 5 ingredients or less. Everyday Food gives you more help on how to actually do all of the steps if you aren't an experienced cook.

Then go home, spend a few days with your magazine and ingredients and learn to cook a few things. It should be an enjoyable experience and build your confidence. Continue to thumb through the magazine at home and pick out another half dozen recipes, make a grocery list, and get ready for your next store trip.

For real fun, keep track of the actual cost of the ingredients you buy for each recipe. At first you'll find that you end up having to buy a whole bag of flour or a bag of corn meal or something, but calculate the cost of making the recipe the first time and also how much it will cost if you had all of the ingredients on hand.

You'll start to get a feel for what ingredient you need in your fridge and your pantry to let you make a lot of your favorites. Keep a price book that lists those ingredients and start comparison shopping so you know what's a good price for an item and where to buy it. Buy store brand, not name brand ingredients.

If you do this, you could VERY easily cut your food bill from $300 x 4 ($1200) per month to $300 per month - and $300 per month is quite ample to live and eat well IF you can cook your own meals and pack really tasty lunches.

Use your savings to buy a subscription to Everyday Food ($18 per year) and Taste of Home ($14.98)

Oh!

Here's a way to get started really fast and to save even more. Go pick 5 recipes from each of these websites. Then decide what you want to serve when during the week and make your grocery list. Let us know what recipes you pick and post a link to them - I'd be really interested to see what you start with and if you need a bit of cooking help we can all give you some pointers.

here's the web sites:

http://www.marthastewart.com/page.jh...922&rsc=msonav

http://recipes.tasteofhome.com/eRMS/...pmcode=TOHSite

Everyday food also has a TV show on PBS - so you can watch someone cook your recipe before you dive in for yourself http://www.pbs.org/everydayfood/

Our food bill for two adults is usually $120 per month unless we go to the bulk food store and stock up on rice, honey and grains. On those months its $160. So in our most expensive months, it costs us lest than $2.75 per person, per day to eat very, very, very well.

For fun we like to make a meal, and then try to find an online restaurant menu to see how much we'd have had to pay for it if someone else cooked it for us.

Can't wait to hear what you decide to cook first!

Lynda

[LuxLiving]

Try here:

http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/index.htm

[impatient1]

Originally Posted by lgslgs

You'd save a lot if you learned to cook.

One good way to start is by buying one copy of Everyday Food magazine or Taste of Home magazine. You can find then near the checkout in most grocery stores or in their magazine section..

Start your store shopping by picking up the magazine. Have a paper and pen with you and thumb through it and then buy the ingredients for 4 or 5 meals. Most of the recipes have 5 ingredients or less. Everyday Food gives you more help on how to actually do all of the steps if you aren't an experienced cook.

Then go home, spend a few days with your magazine and ingredients and learn to cook a few things. It should be an enjoyable experience and build your confidence. Continue to thumb through the magazine at home and pick out another half dozen recipes, make a grocery list, and get ready for your next store trip.

For real fun, keep track of the actual cost of the ingredients you buy for each recipe. At first you'll find that you end up having to buy a whole bag of flour or a bag of corn meal or something, but calculate the cost of making the recipe the first time and also how much it will cost if you had all of the ingredients on hand.

You'll start to get a feel for what ingredient you need in your fridge and your pantry to let you make a lot of your favorites. Keep a price book that lists those ingredients and start comparison shopping so you know what's a good price for an item and where to buy it. Buy store brand, not name brand ingredients.

If you do this, you could VERY easily cut your food bill from $300 x 4 ($1200) per month to $300 per month - and $300 per month is quite ample to live and eat well IF you can cook your own meals and pack really tasty lunches.

Use your savings to buy a subscription to Everyday Food ($18 per year) and Taste of Home ($14.98)

Oh!

Here's a way to get started really fast and to save even more. Go pick 5 recipes from each of these websites. Then decide what you want to serve when during the week and make your grocery list. Let us know what recipes you pick and post a link to them - I'd be really interested to see what you start with and if you need a bit of cooking help we can all give you some pointers.

here's the web sites:

http://www.marthastewart.com/page.jh...922&rsc=msonav

http://recipes.tasteofhome.com/eRMS/...pmcode=TOHSite

Everyday food also has a TV show on PBS - so you can watch someone cook your recipe before you dive in for yourself http://www.pbs.org/everydayfood/

Our food bill for two adults is usually $120 per month unless we go to the bulk food store and stock up on rice, honey and grains. On those months its $160. So in our most expensive months, it costs us lest than $2.75 per person, per day to eat very, very, very well.

For fun we like to make a meal, and then try to find an online restaurant menu to see how much we'd have had to pay for it if someone else cooked it for us.

Can't wait to hear what you decide to cook first!

Lynda

Wow, I couldn't imagine saving that much. And I really NEED to! Just thinking about all the other things I would have money for is really a motivator. I tend to procrastinate, put things off, I hate organization and all that, which makes being a mother very difficult of course. I'm sort of ADD, so this kind of stuff just doesn't come natural, but I'm prepared to really make it a priority. I can cook a few meals that turn out good, like spaghetti of course, who cant? And I can cook basic side items, it's just that I get a taste for meals say from Outback, or restaurants like that and I'm sort of spoiled to eating whatever I'm craving at the time. Which is really selfish and lazy I know. Or being out running errands and thinking, I'll just stop at IHOP and have lunch with the kids. That sort of thing. I have such a random lifestyle when it comes to food, I'm so adverse to planning anything. I don't think about the meal until 5 minutes before I eat. I do keep some foods at home like sandwich stuff, lean cuisines, breakfast food. I do cook pancakes, eggs, bacon. Even though I don't cook a lot at home I still spend over a hundred a week on groceries, just for breakfast, lunches, and snacks basically. What it all boils down too is me being lazy, disorganized, unprepared, and picky! I'll let you know my progress, and thanks so much for your response.

[Staceyy]

Always carry snacks and water in the car so you are not tempted to stop at restaurants. It also sounds like you need a stocked pantry so you are never caught short of ingredients to cook basic meals. The best way to stock your pantry is to buy in bulk when things are on sale. It also helps to use coupons.

Prep your foods ahead of time so it only takes a short amount of time to throw together a meal. Lots of meals can be put together with your prepped ingredients.When you come from the grocery store, boil up a bunch of eggs and store them in the refrigerator, do the same with potatoes and rice. Chop onions, celery and green peppers and store them in plastic containers or ziploc bags in the fridge or freezer. Pancakes and waffles can be made ahead and stored in plastic bags in the freezer. You can cook a big pot of oatmeal, store in the fridge and reheat a bowl each morning in the microwave. Ground beef can be cooked ahead and frozen, you can even add your chopped celery, onions and green peppers. I bake muffins, cookies and cupcakes and always have a supply in the freezer. I boil chicken breasts and freeze and use them in chicken salad, casseroles and chicken and noodles. Crockpots are a lifesaver, you can throw your ingredients in in the morning and dinner is ready when you come home in the evening. Casseroles are easy to fix and generally inexpensive.

[lgslgs]

We always keep pancakes and corn muffins in the freezer, like Staceyy.

It's also handy to bake a big lasagna or two, and just cut it into individual portions and then freeze them individually on a cookie sheet. Stick the frozen blocks in a big ziplock bag when they are solid. Takes about 5 minutes from frozen like a rock to warm them up in the microwave.

Lots of casseroles freeze that way. With a few weekends work, you can quickly get to the point where you have more food choices frozen away than you know what to do with. It's a nicer problem than coming home and having no choices.

The trick to getting your home stuff to taste as good as restaurant stuff is to have it well seasoned. Makes A WORLD of difference in how satisfying it is. As you start with easy, tasty no-fail recipes form those magazines, make yourself some little note card that just list flavor combinations that you like. Like "mustard, honey, dash of hot pepper", "celery, onion, apple". If you can get a good flavor in your head, you can do a lot with it - like broiled chicken sandwiches with honey, mustard dressing, or pork roasted with celery, onion and apples.

It really gets easy and fast the more you do it. Just takes a little while to get some experience and practice.

Not sure how old your kids are, but this could be quite fun for them as well. Their ideas for peanut butter, coconut, raisins and chocolate mushed together might make be interesting and tasty when served as a sandwich between a pair of pancakes!

Lynda

[JanH]

I think part of the thing might be how easy it is to eat out. That was our problem. We were very busy it seemed and we found it easier to eat out. But now that we are eating in more, we actually like it. I often have one cook day and store everything like the others said. We also create things similar to what we like out and find we enjoy it just as much. And believe me, we're no cooks. Just trial and error and practice. Some things work and some don't. In time, you will enjoy eating at home. Especially when, like the others said, add up the money you are keeping!

[budgetmom]

Here's a challange that you might be able to accomplish. Try only going out to eat twice a week at first. Also, check out the site that LuxLiving posted. It has pretty good food to make and the things are pretty easy to prepare. It may be a little time consuming at first, but it will get faster with practice.
I do a lot of cooking on Sunday and freeze it (like many others), so I don't have to cook so much during the week. If you have that stuff in the freezer, you can just pop it in the microwave to defrost it, for those days that you just don't think about cooking.
Also, what kind of items are you buying from the grocery store? Is it a lot of convinence food. That eats up a lot of money. Are you buying a lot of name brand items? The store brands are just as good in almost every item, I promise.
I was a little like you when I first got married, I really didn't know how to cook that well and I spent an arm and a leg on items that I could cook. We are a family of 4 now and my grocery budget is at $240 a month. And this month it is actually running almost sixty dollars less (so far, keep my fingers crossed!).

[getforfree]

We spend about $250/month on groceries including diapers for one kid. It is for 3 adults and 2 toddlers.

I just buy whatever is a good price, and not too much, so it wouldn't spoil. Then I check what we have and cook from that.

I don't run to the store just to get an extra item or two because I need it in that recipe. I substitute it with something. My favorites are "whatever you have, soup" and the "whatever you have, salad".

And I would say, soups are big money saving meals. Half of it is water (free), and it fills you up. And it's also healthy because it has lots of vegetables and not too much meat in it.

Drinks cost a lot if you buy lots of soda, milk and juice. I buy juice and milk only for kids. I try to drink water mostly.

[rduell]

Wow! That website looks GREAT! Thanks Lux!

[Armywife]

Hi Impatient,

Do you own a slow cooker? They are a great help because you just add the ingredients and forget about it until it's done. I often set mine in the mornings so I can have a meal ready by dinnertime. Hubby and I do the takeout thing once a week as a splurge and it's usually under $30 for the four of us.

[tinapbeana]

unless you have to start saving a large portion of money immediately, you might want to 'wean' yourself off of restaurants over a couple of weeks; it might make it less likely you'll get frustrated and give up.

decide you'll cook dinner at home 1-2 nights this week. that's it, just 1 or 2. next week move it up to 2-3, week after 3-4, and so on. you may find that you enjoy cooking, or you might find out you have a limit like 4-5 times a week (i did!).

also, cook things that you know make great left-overs (like spaghetti sauce, always better the 2nd or 3rd time around!). and think of things that are multi-purpose. for instance, your spaghetti sauce, minus italian seasonings, plus beans cumin & chili powder makes INSTANT chili. so maybe start making the sauce in big batches with everything but seasonings and freeze meal-size amounts. whether you want chili or spaghetti, just add the right extras and you're good to go!

plus, that takes care of 2 meals a week!

[boefixepa]

If your goal is really to save money $50 a person per month so $200 is doable, but if you want some treats I'd shoot for $300, which is still much better than your current amount. It is also wise what others are saying to make the transition over time so that you don't feel like you are 'deprived' and jump ship before the new habits are established. That is really what you are dealing with here, habits.

My favorite site is the one Lux posted. It's great. Hillbillhousewife.com has great info, recipies, and shows you how to do with as little money as possible. You might also check out this site.

http://snider.mardox.com/index.html

It's Libby's page and she has great recipies and 'a cook lots at a time and throw it into the freeze for quick meals later' way of doing things. Her web site gave me many great ideas.

So just pick a few simple things at a time and integrate them into how you cook and shop. A plan is almost a must if you are really busy....it will tell you were to go when you are too rushed to think about it. Try it, you will see.

[Ima saver]

I would think you could eat very well for $100 a week. I like the idea of the slow cooker. You can make a pretty good tasting roast and have left overs. spagetti is good, I could eat that several times a week. We use to grill out a lot, hamburgers, pork chops, steaks, etc. Does your husband like to cook on the grill?

[tinapbeana]

Originally Posted by Ima saver

I would think you could eat very well for $100 a week. I like the idea of the slow cooker. You can make a pretty good tasting roast and have left overs. spagetti is good, I could eat that several times a week. We use to grill out a lot, hamburgers, pork chops, steaks, etc. Does your husband like to cook on the grill?

ima is right, grills make cooking at home pretty easy (IMO). there so much room on a grill, it's easy to cook more than you need for your meal and freeze extras for later. last night i grilled enough fish for 3 adults, and also grilled some chicken breasts i had on hand. cut those up & put them cooked & cut in the freezer: instant grilled chicken for salads or pasta.

also, when you buy, say, chicken breasts in a big pack, put them in freezer bags 2 per bag. add marianade and squish it around the chicken then pop the bags in the freezer. when you take the meat out and let it thaw in the fridge, it's marinating at the same time. grill it or bake it or sautee it, it should be tasting b/c of the long term marianade.

[impatient1]

Wow, all these replies are so helpful, thanks so much. The ideas about doing it slowly are really good, and what I was thinking, b/c I feel overwhelmed with such a huge immediate change. The thing about spending so much on what I do know how to cook is so true too! Sometimes I spend just as much cooking one meal as I would on going out to eat, or even more. I'll definitely go through the sites you guys listed and get some recipes. Also freezing food is a good idea, I always throw out a lot of leftovers. How long can you keep it when you freeze it? And does it still taste good?

[scfr]

Think SOUP (the homemade kind). For a beginning cook, it is great because it is pretty hard to screw it up and there are so many delicious soup recipes out there. And you can make a huge pot, keep out half for dinner and lunch with the kids the next day, and freeze the second half. The timing on most broth-based soups is pretty forgiving, so if you get distracted while the soup is simmering waiting for the next ingredient, it's not a big deal.

Bean-based soups (made with dried beans) can be REALLY inexpensive, and nutrious too. The trick is that you have to think ahead and soak the beans overnight the day before.

Also, invest in a bottle of "Mrs. Dash" all-purpose seasoning. It makes everything taste better!

Good luck and don't get discouraged. [Let your husband know you are trying to cook at home more to save the family money. Let him know that getting lots of positive feedback from him about your efforts would be appreciated!]