What to Eat? Part 2

When you need to keep your food costs down, the best thing you can do is take advantage of the fact that you have way more time than money. Prepared foods came about because people had less time and more money. But before prepared foods became popular, people cooked for themselves.

It’s ironic that televised cooking shows became popular in an era when people weren’t doing much cooking for themselves. What most were doing could more accurately be called hobby cooking. Cooking aficionados go to the store and buy what they need for a given recipe, no matter the cost, and put a lot of time into one meal. But most days, they don’t cook for themselves.

When you have way more time than money, taking time to cook for yourself is a great use of your time. Not only will your meals cost less, they’ll also be healthier. You’ll know what went into the food because you made it. You’ll be able to adjust the salt, fat and sugar in order to make your meal healthier while still tasting good.

Cooking for yourself takes time, but you have plenty of that. Let’s look at some activities in cooking that take time and save money:

Roasting

Small, precut pieces of meat that cook quickly cost more per pound than big cuts of meat that must be roasted over several hours. But once cooked, the big roast can be divided into smaller sections and frozen. Now you have cooked meat waiting in your freezer for future meals. Buy your roasts on sale and you’ll come out even further ahead.

Stewing

This uses the same money-saving principle as roasting, but adds the element of assembling full meals. Stew a whole chicken in a pot of water, remove it from the water (which is now broth), strip it and return the meat to the pot, add some vegetables, dumplings or noodles, and after a little while you have a complete meal. Leftovers can, of course, be frozen for future meals. The ingredients of a stew, added together, will always come out cheaper per serving than the microwaveable equivalent in your grocer’s freezer.

Frying

Buying the economy size of fresh ground beef, frying it all and then packaging and freezing it in smaller quantities takes time, but will result in several future meals that only require reheating in another recipe. Add frozen cooked hamburger to pasta dishes or pizza for quick, money-saving dinners.

Baking

Baked goods are expensive, and baking mixes don’t save you much money. But baking from scratch saves plenty of money. Bake in big batches and freeze the results. Making the dough for ten dozen cookies takes only a little longer than doing so for three dozen (a standard recipe). It will take longer to bake all those cookies, but you won’t have any extra dishes to do than you would have had for three dozen cookies, and you’ll end up with lots of cookies for far less per cookie than those found in bakeries or grocery stores.

These are basic skills that you can learn without taking classes. Go to the public library and get yourself a good basic cookbook or a cooking show on DVD. Invest a little time in learning these skills and you’ll be on your way to saving money on food every day.

Finding Food

After you become a good cook, you’ll have to learn to become a good shopper. Learning to get the best deals on food, using coupons, and shopping multiple grocery stores for their sale items are all ways to eat well while saving money. Learning your prices is also a very valuable skill.

Some people have had enough practice in these areas that shopping this way not only become second nature to them, but also a fun challenge: as they prepare their shopping lists, they think, “What kind of deals can I score today?”

Instead of feeling sorry for themselves for having to shop for the best deals, they realize that having the time to find the best, most inexpensive ways to eat well is very satisfying and a wise use of their time.