With skyrocketing food prices, it is not easy to keep your grocery bill under control. But there are ways you can plan nutritious, yet inexpensive, meals for your family.
Don’t Menu-Plan Until You Know What's on Sale
Most meal planning involves picking your family’s favorite meals, making a list of the ingredients, then buying everything so you have all the accoutrements for the dinner.
This is an expensive way to go about meal planning – just because you feel like eating chicken pot pie this week doesn’t mean that chicken will be on sale. You may be paying top dollar for the pleasure of eating pot pie!
Instead, before you even step into the grocery store, take a look at your supermarket circular. If there are two supermarkets in your area, you may want to look at both circulars to see what’s on sale.
For online versions of what’s on sale in your local grocery and other stores visit: Sunday Saver.
Plan Your Meals According to What’s on Sale
Let's say onions are on sale for buy-one-get-one-free and you buy two bags. You may wonder what on earth you will do with all those onions. Same goes for all those carrots, potatoes or chicken breasts you bought on sale. Not to worry if you have a well stocked pantry with the basics (spices, oils, flour, stocks, sweeteners, tomato paste, etc.) and you think of meals in terms of categories such as:
- Soups and Stews
- Salads/Pastas
- Egg Dishes
- Casseroles
- Stir Fry/Grilled
- Pies
With the onions, chicken and carrots you got on sale you can make a variety of meals: chicken stew; a salad using sautéed chicken; chicken casserole; a stir fry, and, yes, even a chicken pot pie. Then don’t forget vegetarian meals such as onion or carrot soup. That’s enough meals for an entire week, with leftovers for lunch.
Of course, you may not want to eat chicken or soup every night. But say you also purchased pasta, green peppers and canned tomatoes on sale on the same shopping trip. You can mix up the week’s menu with grilled peppers drizzled with tomato sauce on a bed of pasta, or an omelet filled with grilled peppers and onions with cheese …soon you have a varied menu that is both delicious and nutritious.
Don’t be Afraid to Experiment
Cooking is not like baking – more often than not, “experiments” are often edible and even yummy (rather than a flop). Use your cookbooks to get ideas and understand how on how good meals are created – not just to follow recipes rigidly down to the last grain of salt.
Once you have the basics down, of, say making soup or stew, you can branch off and use any ingredient that you find on sale at the moment. You’ll learn the art of cooking and the satisfaction of eating well on a budget.
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