Sunday, August 22, 2010

Shop the pantry

Today’s post is partly from that tome I mentioned I wrote about the things that Kent and I have learned in the last 32 months.

This afternoon we’re heading to a barbeque with some friends. In the past, I’d have made a shopping list and gone to the store to get stuff to make whatever was on my list. We don’t do menu planning that way anymore, and that’s a direct result of the 32 months of living on a single income. Here’s what we do now:

We completely changed our approach to menu planning and grocery shopping. I’ve always been a good menu planner so I didn’t need to learn to plan our meals. But I would shop for the week and plan menus around that week’s sale items or I'd buy things that weren't on sale because that's what was on my menu list. That’s not a horrible approach but I read about a different way to go and it’s saved us a lot.

We stock our pantry with sale items we know we always use—for example we have about a dozen cans of black or pinto beans in our cabinets right now because they were 2 cans for $1 which is a great price. Previously I’d have bought the one or two cans I needed and missed out on future savings. Now my pantry is stocked with beans within our space limitations and I won’t need to stock up again until the next sale. I’ve read in various other frugal blogs that the sales seem to be on a 10 to 12 week rotation, so I try to get about a three month supply of the sale item if we have the room to store that much of it.

Now we shop the pantry for our menu planning. What that means for today’s get-together is that I looked at the ingredients I already have on hand (which were all pretty much on sale when we bought them) to plan what to bring to the barbeque. As it turns out, we’ll bring a pasta-mushroom dish from Nigela Lawson that I love, plus I had everything I needed to make my amazing brownies (not bragging, they would rock your socks off).

For fresh produce and fruit, we do still shop the sales because clearly those won’t keep for months and months. Buying produce in season helps to keep costs, too, although I'm not the best at that. I flat out don't like a lot of the New England seasonal vegetables that can be gotten for practically nothing (Brussel sprouts for example). But I get the ones we do like and we eat a lot of salads. Salad fixings tend to be inexpensive if you aren't going for the more extravagant items like avocado.

We also keep a price book in our heads. Some people actually create soft copies of this but I’m pretty anal about numbers so I haven’t taken that step. We know the normal prices for our regular items so when something is on sale or says it’s on sale, we know if it’s a good deal. For example, last week Kent passed on “sale” tuna at Costco because we can get it cheaper at a regular grocery store.

If you'd like to see the average cost of food as reported by the government, go here. Then you can select the month you want to see (the actual reports are PDF documents). It makes for interesting reading and also a good place to start figuring out where you are, and where you'd like to be with your grocery bill.

6 comments:

Jeanne said...

I could try to do some of that. One of the clerks at the one grocery store in town laughs at me when I make two trips to the store in the same week--or the same day. I haven't been all about planning, but with more underemployment comes more time to plan.

edj3 said...

I'd bet you have more storage to stock up on stuff :-)

Just today Kent came back from the store with eight huge cans of tomatoes--they were $1/can so now we are rolling in beans and tomatoes!

Kent J said...

We were just laughing at how giddy we are about a pantry full of tomatoes and beans and pasta. Man we're old.

In fact, I was pretty excited today when I realized that half of the stuff I was buying wasn't going to be eaten this week but was to stock up. We saved about $20 today that will pay us back over the next month or longer.

Unknown said...

We like to do this too. We always need chicken and ground turkey, and we have freezer space. Price Chopper will run insane meat deals, a few months ago I got 20lbs of ground turkey for $20, and we're just now running out. Same with some canned items, as you said. I'd say we shop from the pantry AND plan menus around sale items.

edj3 said...

I am crazy jealous over the price you got that turkey for.

Unknown said...

You may feel old about being giddy over a full pantry, but I feel old for saying that I got to the grocery store at 6am to get that turkey...and that I didn't have to set the alarm to do so.

Price Chopper seems to have that sale 2-3x a year. I really wish I could stock up more than I do...