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It is possible to save money on family meals by stretching your meals a few nights a week. We have four kids (three boys & a daughter). We go through a lot of food, as you can imagine, so we have gotten quite creative in our meal planning to stretch our meals.
Here are a few tips that have worked well for us:
- Replace meat with beans. I will puree beans and add them to our meat (tacos are a great example. You could never taste the pureed can of beans with the taco seasoning. Here is a taco seasoning recipe.
~80 cents for a can of beans has saved us around $5.00 for a pound of lean beef.
- Add bread. Yes, they say that having bread with meals is not the best idea, because it just isn’t as healthy. I understand and appreciate that. However, our kids love rolls and bread (as do I!) so I do add bread to most of our meals.
An example would be French Dip sandwiches (made in the crock pot): I can put the meat on each child’s plate (served with a fork), with veggies. They will eat it and ask for a snack the second that they are done… or I can put it on a bun. They will eat most of it, eat their vegetables and then they are full- no snacking needed.
~$1.00 package of buns has saved us about $3.00 in snacks (every night)
- If you cut the crust off of your child’s sandwiches, save the crust. I keep a freezer bag ready to go, in the freezer, and when I cut the crust off of three sandwiches for lunch, I save that crust, put it into my freezer bag and save it. The next time that I need bread crumbs, I take out my bag, add seasoning and put it into my Magic Bullet. I have just created breadcrumbs for only a few cents. (See how I pack the kid’s lunches one time for the whole week)
~$0 (throw-away crust) just saved us $3.00 for breadcrumbs
- Our kids love oatmeal – the packages of fruit flavored oatmeal. We buy them, but since our oldest child will eat 2-3 packs at once, we have started putting ONE pack in a bowl, and then adding the off-brand rolled oats to that bowl. We add milk or water and microwave. It cuts down on the sugar & the price.
~50 cents saves us $1.00 for two more packs.
If you want a few more ideas, see my favorite recipes where I put this practice into play:
Crockpot chicken with Salsa
French Dip Sandwiches
ps- How to save money at the grocery stores without using coupons
I do the same thing with my bread ends. Haven’t bought breadcrumbs in years! Sometimes I cube them up, drizzle with a little melted butter and sprinkle with Italian seasonings and bake them when I need croutons for soups or salads.
Yum!
I save the bread ends to make Christmas Puddings with 😉
My brothers’ boss just asked If I could mail him one this coming year since he tasted 1 I had sent to my older Brother. I place them in shaped pans, my older brother I had sent a house shaped one with nuts, my younger brother got a star with No nuts since he is allergic though I sent some mini ones with nuts for his wife and son, my sister got a teddy bear that had nuts. His boss, who is a family friend would like a teddy bear Christmas pudding this year. Seems to go over rather well.
Love that idea!!
I recently started serving 1 type of meat each week in an effort to save money. My family of four can easily stretch a roast chicken over 3-4 meals, same for a turkey breast. Ham is also easily stretched over a week. Beef is tough, we don’t eat many “meat centric” meals with beef; no hamburgers or tacos. Instead we stretch 1 pound of beef by incorporating it into casseroles, pasta dishes and salads.
By eating leftovers 1-2 days a week, having a weekly breakfast night (I alternate sweet and savory) and doing meatless mondays, we are saving quite a bit on our grocery bill. It is a little challenging to make sure we don’t get bored, but I’m not wasting pounds and pounds of leftovers every week!
Great tip! Our kids LOVE breakfast nights. 🙂