Combating Rising Food Costs

Michele over at Mama Central had a post on rising food costs and wondered what we were doing to keep food costs down. I thought that would make a good blog entry, so here is what we are doing.

• Making our own bread. A store bought loaf last time I looked was around $1.25 for a 1lb loaf. I can make mine for roughly $0.60 cents. I believe my loaf is about a pound and a half. We go through one or two loaves a week. Plus I feel that it's beneficial knowing exactly what is in the bread and not having all of the crap that is in processed food in there.
• Buy items on sale and try to match with a coupon if possible. Stock up on what your family needs when it goes on sale for a rock bottom price. I have found that with the rising prices what used to be a rock bottom price doesn't happen. I've found that it's typically anywhere from 5 cents to 50 cents more than what it used to be say a year ago.
• Know your prices. This is so very important. Sometimes it cheaper to buy in bulk, other times it's not. Lately I've found that especially with personal care items, it's not cheaper at all to buy in bulk at say Sam's Club. It's cheaper to go buy the item on sale at say Target and use a coupon. A price book might help you with this. I do that
• Use coupons!!! I can't stress this enough. My husband and I don't each much processed, boxed, or frozen food anymore. We prefer to make it ourself, but I still find coupons for what we do buy! Personal Care items especially, I get get them for free or less than a dollar. Veggies and Fruit, especially using the Target coupons can be a steal as well! I get the Sunday paper and sometimes buy a second one, and I cut out all of the coupons I *MIGHT* use. Yes, there are a ton of expired ones I throw away, but if an item is on sale or clearance and I have a coupon I can get it for free or even get paid to take it. I also follow a few couponing blogs to find printable coupons and deals.
• When using coupons you can use a STORE COUPON (such as Target) AND a MANUFACTURE COUPON such as one from the Sunday Inserts on the same item. This makes is easier to get cheap or free items.
• For milk we buy Silk Soy Milk for drinking because after coupons I can get it for $0.89 cents or less for half a gallon. We do buy normal milk at Kwik Trip, our gas station, because it's cheaper than in the store.
• Go shopping early in the morning if at all possible. Look for mark downs on meats especially. Target has $1, $2, and $3 off coupons on meat that needs to go, depending on the cost. We recently paid less than $2 for 2.5 pound Angus Beef Roast. We've gotten steaks the same way for about $1 for two steaks. Hy-Vee does the same thing, but they only have $1 off coupons on the meat. But depending on the cost, that can still be an awesome deal.
• This year we have started our own garden. I haven't put that much money into it at all, mostly time, and so far we haven't bought lettuce for almost two months now. I have all sorts of green tomatoes on my tomato plants. I picked some peas last night and boy are they good! My little green onions are almost ready to be picked, and I'm not sure how big my carrots are. The only thing that isn't doing too well are peppers and broccoli. Oh and I've been enjoying my chives and cilantro as well. This has saved us money and next year we are planning on expanding our garden. I hope to be able to can lots next year.

Some of my price limits:

• Hormel, Boneless Thick Cut All Natural Pork Chops they go down to about $1.88 a pound.
• My husband and I love cereal especially in the summer mornings. I won't pay more than $1 a box. With all of the $2 and $3 off coupons, we have a TON of cereal, many different varieties, most of them we got for free or for a few cents. We will not cereal until next year.
• We don't use ground beef often at all. First I can't find a good price on it and I can get the 97% fat free ground turkey for about $1-$1.50 a pound before coupons. (You can request coupons for them here: http://www.honeysucklewhite.com/contact.do just fill out the form to request "Money Saving Coupons" plus you can do that once every three months. :)) When it goes on sale for that low, I stock up. Last time I bought 30 pounds of it and 15 pounds of breakfast sausage and we still have some left! That was last fall I believe.
• Beef Roasts anything less than $3 a pound is a good price here.
• Pork Roasts we can get them typically for $1 a pound.
• When ham and turkey go on sale for the holiday's I always pick up extras.
• Chicken, we buy the boneless skinless chicken breasts (yes, I'm spoiled!) for about $1.99 a pound. I do buy the whole chickens when they go down to 59 cents a pound.

So far with the rising food costs, we haven't really changed how we eat. We are still managing on about $200 a month or a little more for the two of us, plus picking up extras. That includes all health and beauty things as well. We portion all of our food out to the recommended serving and eat that. We also use our leftovers for lunches and dinners. For instance, if I make homemade pizza or chicken enchiladas (we like the chicken ones better than the turkey or beef ones!) we have enough for 2-4 additional meals for the two of us. We use a TON of leftovers. We also LOVE having breakfast for supper. Breakfast foods are cheap, yummy, and filling. Nothing better than that. I am a firm believer that homemade food is the way to go, both healthier and cheaper.

Now leave a comment here or a link to your blog with how you are combating rising food costs.