Shift of Tow

I can’t come up with a way of cutting grocery bills any further. I make lists based on meal plans, eat very little processed foods and snacks, and often eat vegetarian. Planting a garden is sadly not an option. Any thoughts?

I’m a little obsessed with saving money on groceries, so I’m glad you asked. Here are a few ideas that might be useful:

• Cook from scratch as much as possible. It’s cheaper to make granola and biscuits and tortillas than it is to buy them already made. With some things the difference in cost is so small that it’s almost negligible, especially if you don’t like to cook, but it’s up to you to figure out where it’s worthwhile. Remember that your time and happiness are just as important as your money, though.
• Eat a lot of beans. Beans are cheap, tasty, and filling. Dry beans are cheaper than canned beans; they’re a great example of how spending a little more time cooking can save you a little money.
• If you eat the same thing several times a week, you can save. Do this either because you make a big pot of soup and are eating leftovers for two days, or because it’s cheaper to make pizza dough and have pizza three times in a row than it is to have ingredients on hand for three different meals.
• Buy in bulk! The initial expense is higher, but I read somewhere that buying in bulk is one of the best investments you can make. If you know you’re going to use it all and have the money, buy the biggest size of whatever you need.
• Related to that, stock up on the things you buy regularly when there’s a sale.
• You mention that you often eat vegetarian; try doing it all the time! We don’t eat meat at home and that’s cut down on our grocery bill a lot.
• It might help to figure out what you’re spending the most money on, and ask yourself whether you can substitute something else, go generic, make it at home, or cut it out. That’s how I ended up making granola at home, for instance—we eat a lot of the stuff and a box from Trader Joe’s that will last a week costs $3. If I make it, I buy the ingredients for around $10 and they last several weeks and also get used for other things. Hang on to your grocery receipts for a few weeks and see where the most money is going.
• I haven’t managed to do this myself, but going vegan could save even more money. Dairy products are the highest part of our grocery bill.
• And speaking of vegetables, you can often find bargains at your local farmer’s market. If you buy in season, you spend less. That goes for buying fruits and vegetables at the grocery store, too.
• You could also try coupon clipping. I don’t do that myself, but there’s a ton of advice on the web about how to do it best.

I hope that helped a little. If all else fails and you’re really broke, the all beans and rice diet all the time is not that bad.

I have started using the compost for the appropriate household waste. I am awash in virtue. My next target in my ongoing attempt to waste less money and send less stuff to the landfill is to not let food go to waste in our house. We have let a shameful amount of farm share greens end up in the trash this year, and I am on a mission to keep that from happening again*. To that end, I looked up “storing cabbage,” since cabbage was what we had the most of in the fridge.

It’s embarrassingly easy to store greens these days, it turns out. You cut them up, you blanch them:

Then you freeze them. So that’s what I did.

I also froze some pesto this week, since I made a huge batch from the basil we got last week.

I won’t show you the banana bread I made to use up the bananas that were going bad, though. You would think that after making quick bread as many times as I have I wouldn’t do something like overfill the pan and have it spill all over the bottom of the oven. And that would be awfully generous of you. I will say no more.

*It’s a whole lot easier now that we’re getting less greens, though, let me be honest.