Amid rising food costs, a 36-year-old home cook shares her well-developed strategy for saving money and time on her weekly grocery runs. Read on to discover her secrets for meal planning, couponing, and creating budget-friendly meals that nourish her body and soul.
Even though inflation is out of your control, you can still cut down on your grocery spending by making some simple changes to your shopping habits. By planning your meals, checking your fridge before you go shopping, and buying in bulk whenever possible, you can save a significant amount of money on food without sacrificing your favorite meals. And if you’re really struggling to make ends meet, there are plenty of resources available to help you get the food you need.
Cooking at home is already considered a way to save money more than spending it on eating out, but there are still some ways to cut back even further. BuzzFeed Community members shared some of their best tips for saving money while cooking, including buying pre-made items and combining them to create quick dinners, using veggie scraps to make stock, always having an emergency frozen snack available, growing their own herbs and vegetables, using a bread machine to make fresh bread for cheap, using an app to clip coupons and track sales, making pasta sauce from scratch using canned tomatoes and leftover pasta water, buying frozen pizza dough and making pizza at home, planning meals ahead of time to avoid food waste, playing a game with leftovers to make new meals, heading to areas in the grocery store where food is marked down, choosing off-brand items instead of name brands, shopping for only a couple of days at a time instead of a week to avoid food waste, using a food sealer to freeze and preserve meat and other foods, prepping cheap meal building blocks like rice and beans, turning vegetables on sale into pasta sauce and freezing them, planning a menu that reuses ingredients from previous meals, and choosing a credit card that gives points towards free groceries.
Navigating the realm of home cooking can be challenging, especially when faced with the rising cost of groceries. However, clever home cooks have devised ingenious ways to save money while still whipping up delicious and nutritious meals. From planting herb gardens to creating homemade stock, these small changes can make a significant impact on your grocery budget.
