We like to eat. This is a fact!\u00a0 One of the biggest areas of our budget is our groceries and we have been working steadily on reducing our dinning out expenses. I read several different site and have been absorbing any and all information\u00a0 I can about reducing expenses. Some of the tips actually end up cost us more money and others just don’t seem to work for us but I thought I would share a couple that seem to be working.<\/p>\n
\n- One or more meatless meals a week.\u00a0 For the last several weeks we have achieved this for at least one lunch and one family dinner. Last night, I think, we discovered the most unhealthy meatless meal around. Fried squash and zucchini with creamed spinach on chips. It was awesome, especially with the fresh produce we picked up.\u00a0 I usually take my lunch and most days this is a salad, Matt and the kids are eating salad at least once a week as well.<\/li>\n
- Grow your own veggies or join a produce co-op. This encourages us to use a variety of veggies but I admit I gave away the beets.\u00a0 We also are trying to be very conscience and not let any of these go to waste. Even just growing a container garden with tomatoes and cucumbers is easy to start and make some great sandwiches.<\/li>\n
- Stock up on soda when they are on sale. I drink approximately a 2 litter of Diet Coke at least every 2 days. However I refuse to pay more than $1.00 a bottle. So this week, the local store has\u00a0 a sale of 4 for 0.99, I purchased 12. If I see these at a lower cost then I would stock up on more. We also are keeping tea made on a regular basis and kool-aid both of which are cheaper options than soda.<\/li>\n
- Refill water bottles. Guest get a fresh unopened bottle but there are actually studies that show water from the fridge is purer than some of the bottle ones. I buy some for guest and pool use but at home use a cup or refill your bottle.<\/li>\n
- Ground beef can be added to and stretch so that 1# is all that is needed for a meal to feel all 7 of us. Examples are meatloaf, tacos, and Salisbury steak.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Do you have any good suggestions for stretching the grocery budget\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We like to eat. This is a fact!\u00a0 One of the biggest areas of our budget is our groceries and we have been working steadily on reducing our dinning out expenses. I read several different site and have been absorbing … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-budgeting","category-saving-money"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ySyX-k","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}