Comments on: On Groceries and Food Towards Our Financial and Physical Well-Being

By: Anita

Anita — Tue, 22 May 2012 21:10:06 +0000

Sounds wonderful! We eat this way too – but I’ve lately started roasting veggies. (I check the market’s “day old” veggie/fruit section for deals.) I roast 1 or 2 cookie sheets worth at a time w/a little oil and herbs, cool, and pack in the fridge. We use them in roll-ups for lunch w/cheese and greens, with pasta or raviolis & sauce for a meal, or hot or cold in salads. Yummy!

By: Anita

Anita — Tue, 22 May 2012 21:06:46 +0000

Eloisa, it is very unsafe to eat commercial ground beef. If you must eat ground beef, please buy cuts of meat and grind them at home or ask the store to do it for you (it is safer to grind yourself it at home).

In addition, eat more vegetarian meals. Your children do not need all the added hormones in commercial meat. And the antibiotics in meat make those who eat them resistant to antibiotics when you need them to work!!! I can’t imagine the “quality” of Costco meat, but unless it’s locally and organically grown by small farmers…even then, they are at the mercy of commercial cattle food producers. See “Deadly Feasts” by Richard Rhodes and/or “The Mad Cowboy” by Howard F. Lyman for more info (you can buy used copies very cheaply on Amazon), and please read “The China Study” for information on how to live longer and healthier lives – by avoiding animal fats as much as possible!

Please note that recent studies have found that hormones in meat and dairy are now seen to result in girls’ arriving at puberty earlier and boys later (growth hormones are all estrogenic/female). In addition, estrogen is a KNOWN cancer-causing agent. For more info on hormones in our food, google Dr. John Lee and see his website and articles on this issue.

Good luck!

By: janep

janep — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:47:34 +0000

Stock up on canned goods. Those last a long time.

By: Anita

Anita — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 23:07:18 +0000

I cook for the 2 of us perhaps 3 x a week. I try to make meals that we can eat more than once – like soup or casseroles or chili. In this way, we can eat delicious meals that cost $1 – $2/each, and feel free to go out to eat a couple of times a week.
I always check the market’s day-old vegetable/fruit racks for items to use – they are about half the price and often I can’t tell what’s wrong with them. And the biggest thing we’ve done is almost stop eating meat. We have become educated on the perils to health of eating factory farmed meat and so no longer buy it. Americans generally eat too much protein and animal fat clogs arteries and causes heart disease, etc. In addition, we have become aware that the Meat Lobby/Industry has brainwashed Americans to believe that they MUST eat meat at every meal! We are currently late 50′s and early 60′s in age and we take NO medicines and have NO health problems! See the book The China Study, or the film Forks over Knives, for more info.

By: Skaye

Skaye — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:00:43 +0000

I stopped buying cold cereals when I realized that most of them, per pound, are more expensive than steak! I now eat oatmeal or boiled eggs for breakfast.

I grocery shop every week and I only buy meat that is on sale. I plan my next week’s meals based on the meat I bought this week. Sometimes I have to be creative with my purchases. But it’s allowed me to research the internet for some great recipes! I now know how to bake an awesome full salmon fillet with orange juice and mandarin oranges – served with baked sweet potato flavored with some sage.

We always eat left overs, for work lunches. Or sometimes I’ll recreate a different dish with left over meat; pot roast meat makes a great beef / veg / barley soup.

We cook with powdered milk and save the fresh milk for drinking. In most recipes you can’t tell the difference and it’s cheaper to use the powdered. This helps to save some money.

Everyone has great ideas! Love this site.

By: Signe

Signe — Wed, 04 May 2011 17:28:14 +0000

We have a large refrigerator at work. On Mondays I bring a loaf of bread (LaBrea whole grain or locally made whole grain/rye bread), a stick of butter, some fresh mixed greens, a cucumber, tomatoes, sweet red or yellow pepper, a bag of snap peas, and some good cheese (Gruyere, for example) and store it in “my” section of the fridge (a crisper drawer). I make a couple of fresh open-faced sandwiches with these items for both breakfast and lunch every day and still usually have food to take home on Friday. Sometimes I’ll bring in something like hard-boiled eggs, pumpkin seeds I’ve roasted, or potato salad to augment this and usually I’ll have fruit at my desk too along with a bar of dark chocolate that can serve as desert for the week. I figure five breakfasts and five lunches lunches and some snacks each week costs me around $2 a day (the costly cheese being the most expensive item). Every meal is freshly made and tastes great and draws comments of envy from folks eyeing my “gourmet” meals while they wait for their “lean cuisine” (etc) to heat up in the microwave. I think I’m ahead of the game. I set the desk “table” with a colorful placemat and some of my favorite, colorful dishes that makes the whole meal more enjoyable. By having the food at work, I don’t have to worry about bringing lunch every day. It only takes a few minutes to put together a delicious meal.

By: Eloisa

Eloisa — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 18:03:27 +0000

With a family of four to feed, we buy my meats (chicken, beef, and pork) at Costco. Since they come in bulk, I would divide them according to usage and store them in the freezer. (You get more for your money at Costco and the meats are very good quality.)
I tend to buy more ground beef since it’s easier to cook and cheaper per pound. We would use them for spaghetti, ground beef with zucchini and peppers and other veggies. Staple items like rice, milk, eggs, olive oil, rice, pancake mix and pasta are quite cheap there too.

We also buy necessities like toilet paper, paper towel, detergent, fabric softener and other cleaning supplies. (Fortunately, we have storage to accommodate these.)

The only drawback with Costco is that they sell almost everything and you really have to be disciplined to shop and buy only what’s on your list. I would strictly just use cash and leave my ATM card at home.

By: cynthia

cynthia — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 18:00:00 +0000

My husband and I are retired. I shop from a list and plan menus weekly. I write the list as I plan for five to seven days ahead and write the menu on the side of the sheet so I will had a list to remember by.

Also, I save money by deciding once a month to eat out of the freezer and pantry, thereby forcing myself to get creative and use up what I have already paid for.

My husband said his mother had soup once a week, (Friday is a good day) and use up left-0vers to make a vegetable beef soup. I have done this often and it forces me to try new vegetables in the soup that I have not tried before, such as sweet potatoes, navy beans, spinach and so on. Hope this helps.

By: Andrew @ Financial Services

Andrew @ Financial Services — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:37:10 +0000

One who is talented in the kitchen can definitely whip up something good within a budget. A good idea would be to use those budget meal recipes and then substitute some of the ingredients with stuff that are on sale. We have tried this and it really saved us some fast cash, although it will require someone who has a experience in the culinary arts to make this work, not to mention someone who has a bit of time to plan all of these for the whole week.

By: Jimmy @ Wealth Is Boring

Jimmy @ Wealth Is Boring — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 23:31:15 +0000

Like the previous commenter said, keeping and sticking to a grocery shopping list is an excellent way to curb spending at the grocery store.

My girlfriend and I faithfully stick to an “index card system” whereby we write down anything we deplete in the kitchen and ONLY buy those items the next time we have to run to the store. Well, those items plus her $5 Starbucks coffee, but we’re working on that one…