Taming grocery prices
I rarely read the OC Register but a friend brought me the Sunday paper recently and I found tips to tame grocery prices by Reuters columnist Linda Stern buried on page 9 of Marketplace. Some of her best ideas:
+Buy frozen fish. Even the "fresh" fish at the meat counter has probably been frozen before. Prices on still-frozen fish in the freezer section are often cheaper.
+Use meat for flavor, not bulk. I've started to cut the meat we eat into smaller portions and use slightly less overall. So far, Hubby has not noticed and he is a carnivore through and through. Cooking with chicken or beef stock will also up the meaty flavor of a dish without requiring the real thing! A serving of meat is roughly the size of a deck of cards.
+Buy containers, then repackage bulk goods on your own. You can do this even if you don't shop at Costco. This works for chips, yogurt, veggies, and lots more.
+Stock up on sales. Stern recommends this for pasta, lightbulbs and toothpaste, and I would add to that list cereal, baking ingredients like flour and brown sugar (if you bake, like me), meat, bread, nuts, vitamins, canned goods (duh!), and anything else that you use regularly and that has a decent shelf life or can be frozen. Bread products freeze particularly well.
Thanks, Scottie!
Comments
I buy day old bread off the discount rack and freeze it. If you make sandwiches with frozen bread, it helps to keep them cool, and once they thaw, the bread will be moist & fresh. Just don't leave the bread in the freezer too long, or it'll taste bad.
Posted by: Melinda Fleck | May 15, 2008 2:02 PM