tallyho wrote: ↑Fri Mar 27, 2020 12:05 pm
3. Eat less meat, its by far the biggest expense in our groceries. $100
At superstore, in the meat counter where they keep the wieners. 1.5 kilo of beef wieners, 15 bucks. Right beside it, 1.5 kilo chicken wieners, 6 bucks. Cheaper than dog food, I buy them for dog treats, cost far less than what you find for treats in the dog food aisle, and the puppy loves them. Your kids will love them. 39 wieners in that pack. They are great diced and into the macaroni casserole, half the price of hamburger to put some meat in the casserole.
I've always told the kids, keep a big sack of rice in the cupboard. The day will come when money is tight, that 20lb sack of rice will feed you for a month. Learn to be creative making various meals from that bag. Son texted me a photo last nite, fancy rice dish. His comment, not laid off yet, but, getting in practice....
Baking bread is trivially easy once you get the hang of it. A 20 kilo sack of flour from Costco will make a LOT of loaves of bread. We have been baking our own bread for the last 20+ years. I shudder walking by the bread aisle in the store and see a decent loaf of bread costs upwards of 5 bucks, and the run of the mill cheap stuff is still a couple bucks. If you have a kitchen aid stand mixer, learn to use the dough hook. If you dont, well, you need the exercise so knead it by hand. Fresh baked buns at lunch time, fabulous. We buy the 20 kilo sack of Rogers flour at Costco, it rises better than the Robin Hood stuff you see at the regular grocery stores.
If the kids are young, and you are going to be stuck at home spending a lot of time due to 'shelter at home' edicts, bake cookies. You can keep a herd of young kids engaged for an hour or more baking a batch of cookies. They absolutely love to lick the beaters, clean the mixing bowls, watch the cookies bake, then cool, and in the end everybody gets to eat them. Again, for the price of a small bag of store bought cookies, you can bake up a huge batch yourself, especially if you cut the chocolate chip count to 1/4 of what the recipe calls for.