Stretching your food budget is not difficult. There are a wide variety of ways in which to save money on food. No special skill or equipment is necessary. Just get back to basics and give these key money-saving tips a try.

Convenience Can Be Costly
Avoid convenience foods and cook from scratch. Many packaged side dishes contain nothing but inexpensive fillers, such as noodles or rice, and flavouring or sauce mix. Save money by cooking plain noodles or rice and making your own flavourings or sauce from herbs, spices and other simple ingredients already in the kitchen.

Double Duty
Plan meals so that any leftover items will be used as part of another meal or two. For instance, roast a whole chicken and serve with baked potatoes. Shred leftover meat to use in enchiladas and boil the carcass to make the base for chicken noodle soup. Dice leftover potatoes to fry along with eggs for breakfast.

Meatless Meals
Plan a vegetarian meal at least once each week. Meat is usually an expensive source of protein. Combine dried beans and a grain in the same meal to produce a complete protein at less cost. For instance, serve cornbread with vegetarian chili beans or add both beans and rice to vegetable soup.

Home-made is Healthier
Reducing food costs does not mean sacrificing quality or quantity. In addition to being less expensive, home-made dishes are usually healthier. Rely on inexpensive basic ingredients to form the base for a healthy, low cost diet for your family and a little creativity to produce delicious meals.

Tags: Cooking, food budget, Home

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 11:40 am and is filed under Home, Kitchen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.