How We’re Saving a TON on Groceries
While eating more whole foods than ever before
In mid-November I read Becca Bycott’s piece on ways to save $$$ on groceries:
Our 20yr old moved out almost two months ago now. At about the same time my husband decided to be a vegetarian. Hospital and car repair bills have caught up with us in a painful way. I have been in a major pain/fatigue flair for about a month.
“wow, if I see this as a creativity challenge, this could be fun!”
All of these things coalesced into my returning to some of my old, whole food ways while getting creative and embracing a meat free household again after many, many years of ‘compromising’.
I decided to view this as an opportunity to reconnect with the ‘me’ I was wanting to be in my mid-20’s (before a narcissistic spouse stole everything, including myself, from me). I also thought, ‘wow, if I see this as a creativity challenge, this could be fun!”
And that is exactly what I’ve done.
Thanks to Becca’s inspiration I’ve been baking a sheet pan full of diced sweet potatoes weekly. On top of that I cook a crock pot full of beans, a LARGE pan of baked potatoes half-mashed for whatever we want to use them for, and a big old pot of brown rice.
Those have been our staples this past month and we’re eating better than maybe ever before.
One way I’m making this work for us is to keep flavors neutral so items can be combined in different ways, with different seasonings. So, that big pot of red beans has zero added seasonings — it’s easy to add some Trader Joe’s taco seasoning to it while heating it up with some of the rice for an easy beans & rice bowl dinner.
The brown rice, however, does have some additions: pre-shredded coleslaw mix ($1.39 a bag) and Trader Joe’s pre-shredded carrots ($.99 a bag). Simply acknowledging and accepting my health as it is right now and buying these items already shredded has saved me a ton of money and guilt — no more throwing away things I can’t gather up the extra spoons to prep. For every two cups of brown rice I add a cup of coleslaw mix and a cup of carrots — the flavor of the rice turns out much richer, fuller, heartier AND now has carrots and cabbage added in. This is well worth the added $2.38 a week to me!
I shopped around to see who had the lowest prices on these staples:
Haggen charges $1.49 a pound for conventionally grown sweet potatoes, while Walmart charges $.48 a pound. Mostly I’m finding myself shopping at Walmart and Trader Joe’s these days. I’m grateful to be able to save $ while feeding us whole foods.
And, let’s please spend a moment acknowledging the awesome opportunity to save AND find new yummies if you shop at Grocery Outlet.
Recent finds there have been this gluten free rosemary & thyme focaccia bread for $1.99…
I kid you not.
$1.99…
We have eight of them in our freezer right now after sampling one and finding it a roaring success when dipped in spaghetti sauce.
At Grocery Outlet I can find teeny tiny Twilight tomatoes that are so crisp and ripe and wonderful to bite into … for only $1.99
Take those tomatoes and quarter them, add some of the Trader Joe’s shredded carrots, and some of the delicious Feta cheese I found as well on that trip. Toss with some olive oil and rice vinegar, salt & pepper and HOLY COW you have got a great little salad there. We paired this with the toasted focaccia and spaghetti sauce — enjoyed a delightful dinner and went to bed satisfied.
Then there was the Instant Pot soup I made two weeks ago that lasted for NINE SERVINGS and cost a total of $7 and 20 minutes to make! I tossed in a bunch of canned foods, some water and Italian seasoning mix and it was soooooo good and thick and just heaven in a bowl. Canned foods were:
- Green beans
- tomatoes
- white beans
- red beans
- corn — this was actually frozen corn
That was it and oh were we ever pleased with how it turned out!
And, while looking for pictures for this post, I found this image:
I’m so gonna make a version of this asap.
I’m envisioning red beans slow cooked overnight, a slice of Trader Joe’s gluten free toast, with an egg over easy… oh man, this is making me hungry.
So, yeah, thank you so much Becca Bycott for inspiring me to turn out money ‘crisis’ into a creative food experiment. It’s been super cheap, and super duper yummy!
Thank you for reading.❤
Wanna read more stories like this? Join Medium today and unlimited access to all my articles and thousands of other writers. If you sign up using my link, I’ll earn a small commission which I truly appreciate.