I do majority of the grocery shopping - I'd say about 99% because I'm the one that does the cooking (98%) - SH helps out when needed but for the most part - I do it. Also, I'm currently a stay-at-home mother - so I should be able to fit in grocery shopping into my schedule.
Not that we're stuck in the old times but to be honest, I love cooking and baking and it gives me a slight break from the kids and therefor gives him time to bond and play with them.
So we discovered that we could be saving nearly half my husband's paycheck (my maternity leave pays most of our bills) if we cut back on our grocery store visits.
I was going to the grocery store nearly everyday and spending anywhere from 10€ (a very "light" day of milk and bread, juice and perhaps some eggs) to 50€ a trip!
And if there were holidays coming up (aka store closures) or visitors - well, then some trips were much more than that!
Alright, so we decided to set a goal for ourselves (me) - no more than 150€ per week for groceries. And to top that - only one - maximum two - trips to the grocery store.
We started this last week and I've been to the grocery store for a large amount of food (about 60€ worth) once. The other two trips were for small things like milk and bread and some bananas.
So I am definitely keeping it under 100€ for last week and this week - I don't think I will even have to go do a "large" trip with my huge back pack!!
Just got some toilet paper and laundry soap before sitting down to try and finish this - definitely won't need a big trip this week at all!
Now, know that we're a family of 4.5. Technically 5, yes, but M-Girl has 2 bottom teeth and doesn't eat a full sized portion and can't eat some foods yet either (i.e. dairy, salad, nuts, honey etc.) at the age of 8 months-ish.
We were spending on average over 600€ a month on groceries - EEK! (And 600€ is a rough guess-timate!)
And when you consider the Duggar family - 19 kids + 2 parents + 1 fiancée (22 people and not including visiting family members or friends for dinner!) spend about 2000-3000€ a month and we were nearing 1/3 of that...it really put things into perspective for me that we need to cut back and do it now.
So after our little chit-chat I decided to write a list of things that I could make for dinner that were both easy, fairly quick to make in advance or prepare fresh and financially friendly for us to stick to that 100€/week.
Here's some ideas I wrote down. These are meals that guaranteed three of us will eat and the boys are a bit fussier...:
- Roast chicken dinner
- Left over chicken can go into fried rice! (Eggs, bacon, chicken, Chinese sausage, frozen peas is what I usually put in there.)
- Roast beef (when on sale) dinner
- Roast pork dinner (not a huge fan of pork but anyways!)
- Turkey breast - one huge one is enough to feed all of us and that's assuming the boys even eat it.
- Fajitas/tortillas
- Tortilla lasagna (excellent for using up those leftover tortillas!)
- Meatloaf
- Singapore vermicelli (rice noodles are super fast to cook - pretty much soak in hot water and ta-da!)
- Stir-fry
- Thai curry stir-fry
- Sausages (we ordered about 4kg from Craig Beckley's Sausages in Vantaa area - I soo recommend them and will write a separate review soon!). So the sausages are purchased per kilo and they're 13€/kg. So with about 10 sausages in 1 kilogram it's 1,30€ a sausage per person. REALLY can't beat that!
- Home-made pizza
- Spaghetti
- Fried chicken
- Home-made hamburgers with potato wedges (yep - even the buns were home-made! Here's the recipe for those!)
- Porkchops with bbq sauce - hubby's preference...not mine.
- Ribs are super cheap here - and while they're time consuming to cook (3 hours on low in the oven) - they're worth it.
- Beef stew in the slow cooker.
- Indian-style curry - yep - in the slow cooker.
- Yoghurt and granola with honey (mostly for me - nobody seems to enjoy that...)
- Bacon and eggs
- Sausage and eggs
- French Toast
- Slow-cooker oatmeal with apple slices
- Hashbrown mix (usually contains meat) and I mix in a few eggs and scramble it up.
So far, we've done great with the no more than 2 big trips a week...I went last week for 1 big trip and 1 little trip to the grocery store.
This week I went to the grocery store I think 3 times but it was all for little things, so 20€ or less per trip.
With the exception of today...I bought some Christmas gifts for the V-Man (Finnish band dvds for him).
So thinking tonight I'll make stir-fry, tomorrow I have a roast chicken already marinating in the freezer in a ziploc bag...Saturday could be spaghetti and Sunday we're going to a friend's home for dinner and I have the ingredients already for dessert I'm bringing!
Wahoo!
I'm trying to cook up most of the meat from the freezer (mostly sausages since I last ordered 4kg worth!) and limit myself to once a week for buying all of the meat we need for the week.
Other ways we're trying to save money is by not eating out as much. Sure it's usually something fast-food related because taking V-Man into a fancier restaurant is usually a recipe for disaster. He's impatient and expects food right away and when he's done, he also wants to leave the same way too.
I also don't bring the boys with me grocery shopping anymore.
They're tempted to go for the burger restaurant that's nearby and they know the routes in every shop - it's kind of creepy.
Also, I definitely need to do more baking at home! Muffins, cookies and so on can go a long way for mere pennies!
And finally? I'm allowing myself to go to the second-hand store only once every two weeks.
I plan to go this weekend - hopefully alone...with the strict intention of getting some winter boots for the V-Man.
So let's see how this goes! :)
BIMU
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