Money-Saving Tips – Part 2

Before I begin talking about cooking, let me add one thought to the entry from yesterday. When you do comparison shopping at Wal-Mart, you cannot use the “buy one, get one free” items. You have to use price comparisons. That being said, we’ll focus our thoughts today on saving money by the way we cook.

Trying new recipes is a favorite hobby of mine, but sometimes buying all the ingredients for a particular dish can be expensive. Here’s how I cook creatively, as well as keep within a reasonable budget…

We buy nearly all of our meat when it is marked down. The meat isn’t spoiled, it’s just that the date on the package is for today or tomorrow and the Ingles near us wants to get it out of their store before that date. We may go and find chicken breasts on sale for $2 a package, ground chuck for $1.50 and steaks for $4. We’ll load up our cart and stick the meat in the freezer. If what I’m buying is in a package with many servings, I’ll repackage it into usable portions. This meat is what I use to create my meals.

I always plan a menu for the week; this is really a money-saver! If you wait until the afternoon to try to come up with a plan for supper you probably won’t have all the ingredients and will have to make daily runs to the grocery store – this is really costly. I sit down at the beginning of the week and create my menu based on what meat is in the freezer. I also look at the sale papers and see what’s on sale to consider what I’ll fix. Lasagna can be expensive to prepare with the meat and cheeses, but if I already have the beef and I see that Kroger has Kraft cheese for $1.50 a package, I’ll see that this would be a good week to prepare a lasagna. If red peppers are on sale for $1 each I may decide to use the chicken strips in the freezer and make chicken fajitas.

Have you noticed that one of my favorite tools is my freezer? My 17 year-old laughs at me because I’m always suggesting that we stick items in there. Often a recipe will make a huge dish-full and we don’t need all of it since there’s just three of us. Instead of baking the whole thing right then, I’ll assemble it, label it (things don’t look the same once they’re frozen!), then separate it into two dishes, sticking one in the freezer to use on a busy day, or to share with someone else.

When I’m making a single pie crust I’ll go ahead and make two, putting the other one in the freezer after covering it with syran and foil. It’s great to have a crust ready at another time. When I buy shredded cheese on sale I freeze what I don’t need. When we make cookies I’ll stick 2/3 of them in the freezer in a ziploc bag to keep them fresh until they’re needed. I bake small loaves of sour dough bread or sweet breads and keep them in the freezer to give as hostess gifts when we’re invited out. If I’ve made a big layer cake, like I did last Sunday for Easter, I’ll take the leftover cake, slice it into individual slices and put them into ziploc sandwich bags for the freezer. If someone wants a snack they can go pull out just one slice of cake.

If you’re wondering what things freeze well, think about the frozen food aisle at the grocery store. They sell hundreds of items that have been frozen. Look it over the next time you’re there and then use that as your inspiration! You can even buy frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with no crust! If your child is begging you to buy those kinds of prepared foods that hike up your grocery bill in a hurry, be creative and make your own!

Saving money while preparing good food isn’t a gift, it’s a matter of organizing your time to buy ahead, plan ahead and prepare ahead. With all the money you save you could buy yourself a new pair of shoes…on sale, of course!

(Do you have any creative ways you save in the kitchen? Share it with us!)