Cooking at Home Can Be Expensive, Here's How to Avoid the Expense

A while back someone had commented in my blog that she had a whopping failure cooking soup at home and my response was to direct them to another web site. Not cool of me. It was a flip answer in hindsight.

For people who are having to forgo eating out and eating in, they may not have the skills to cook at home. Like many things, cooking is a skill learned. Most people are not born being great chefs or cooks. Plus, unless you are used to cooking at home, it can be expensive to start out. The key to making low cost meals is not to use the cheapest ingredients, but to make sure you have a stocked kitchen with the items that you need to make your meals.

I strongly suggest that if you are trying to give up eating out, buying take out or ready made meals that you don't go all Martha Stewart and try to cook fabulous complicated meals unless you are a practiced cook. Start with the basics.

When my ex BF and broke up, I moved into my own apartment and spent a small freaking fortune on stocking up my kitchen. Butter, flour, pasta, cooking oils, vinegars, spices, canned beans, dried beans, mustard, ketchup, BBQ sauce, sugar, honey, etc. You get the picture. I had to start from scratch. I knew what items I used on a regular basis so I wrote out my list and did my shopping. I will admit, it did take two or three shops to stock up the cupboard. I'd forget that I needed soy sauce and tamari sauce for when I'd do a stir fry. That I really did need curry powder for my homemade curries and that having a couple boxed of Kraft Mac and Cheese is really a good thing.

To ease yourself into cooking at home, you need to do the following things:

1) Get a couple basic cookbooks- I highly recommend the Joy of Cooking, it is my bible for anything and everything kitchen related. It has answers for almost all your cooking questions.

2) Find a good food blog: I highly recommend A Year Of Crockpotting. Yes, it's all about the crock pot, but there is an amazing variety of recipes and lets face it, the crock pot does the cooking! I use my crock pot a least once a week in the winter. I've never had a bad recipe from AYOC.

3) Think about the foods you and your family like to eat, Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Meat and Potatoes, etc. Learn to cook some of those foods.

4) Become proficient at a couple basic items. A roast chicken is one of my favorite meals. I roast the chicken and have that with a couple sides for dinner. I use the leftover meat for sandwiches and I save the carcass and make stock with it. The stock gets frozen and stored in my freezer and use the stock as a base for soups. I make a lot of basic soups. That $7-$9 chicken makes at least 4 meals for one.

I happen to like rice and beans and I frequently make black beans and rice. My recipe for that comes straight off of the can of Goya black beans. Over the years, I've modified the recipe a bit to suit my tastes. I also use this recipe for any kind of beans and rice.

Since I'm not a huge fan of eating the same food day in and day out, if I go overboard and make too much of the black beans and rice, I'll take the leftovers and make burritos, or mash up the beans with some stock and make black bean soup. if I go overboard on the lentil soup, I'll add in pasta or wild rice or some cut up sausages to change it up a bit.

I make a pretty decent tomato sauce (gravy if you are from the NYC area). I eat a lot of pasta. I keep a variety of pasta shapes in my cupboard, spaghetti, ziti, fettuccine, shells, rotini. Sometimes I add in olives, hot pepper flakes capers to my basic red tomato sauce for a little extra zing, that sauce is known as Puttanesca sauce (less the anchovies). I learned how to make pesto and usually make a couple jars to freeze each summer.

I was lucky, I grew up around people who liked to eat and liked to cook. Cooking was a pleasure, not a chore. This is not to say that I have not had some spectacular failures. I've made things that are just plain horrible and a few items that ended up being inedible. It's part of the learning process. I've been making soup since I was 12. I wanted to learn how to make soup and I did.

Again, start small, start with the easy stuff and work your way up. There is no shame in using pre- prepared items. I don't cook beans well, so I use a lot of canned beans. My freezer is small, and if I run out of room or don't have any stock, I pick up a container of stock at the grocery store. I've tried a couple brands and found the ones that I like and when they are on sale, I pick up a couple containers to keep in the cupboard. Trader Joe's makes a dammed fine Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato soup. For $1.89 a quart it's cheaper and easier for me to buy that than to make the soup if I feel like a treat. I use frozen veg as well as fresh. I have on more than one occasion, made Rice A Roni as a side dish. I've even used the ramen noodles from cup o noodles as a base for a noodle and veg stir fry (I omitted the tasteless broth).

I pick up almost all my herbs and spices from the local health food store. They have a bulk section and I am an avid collector of jars. This has several advantages, 1) I can pick and choose the spices I want in the quantities I want. 2) Bulk spices tend to be so much less expensive than the jars you get at the grocery store. I tend to use a lot of specific spices and I buy larger quantities of those and the spices I use infrequently, I keep in the smaller jars. Baby food jars are great, I reuse old spice jars, I use old mustard and jelly jars. My spice shell is an eclectic mix of herbs and spices in jars. None of it matches and I really don't care! I paid $1.10 for a bunch of dried rosemary at the health food store. One of those small spice jars at the grocery store would have run me almost $5. The other advantage to getting my spices at the health food store is at least once a year I just dump them all. Dried herbs and spices have a finite shelf life. I paid around $12 to restock my spice collection two weeks ago. $12 would have gotten me, what two, maybe three jars at the grocery store? I keep a selection of various condiments in the fridge, curry pastes, Chinese sauces, etc for when the mood strikes that I might want a curry or a fancier stir fry.

Maybe you don't have the time or the skill to make your own home made pizza dough, but you can pick up a pre-made shell, a jar of tomato sauce and some cheese, and I know some stores carry fresh dough in the dairy section. I've even picked up a basic frozen cheese pizza and added my own toppings. Still less expensive than take out and not as labor intensive as making the sauce, dough, slice and dice the cheese and other stuff.

Getting out of the habit of eating out or getting take out takes time. I also suggest that you plan a couple meals a week that are quick and easy to make. Use the weekends to fiddle in the kitchen. Don't get too upset if the first few times the dish does not turn out well. This is cooking, not brain surgery. When I started to make meatloaf, each loaf tasted horrible. I used a friends recipe, watched her make the meatloaf and the first few I made were awful. All of sudden, I got the knack for making a decent meat loaf. The same with scalloped potatoes. I used the wrong type of potatoes, I under cooked or over cooked the potatoes, now I "get" how to make the perfect blend of potatoes, milk, onions and flour. I make really good scalloped potatoes. It took time!

I now have a list of dishes I can make and make well, I keep my pantry stocked with items for those dishes, I shop the specials to stick up on those pantry staples and I'm not afraid to branch out (I've been doing a lot of Indian cooking this year). Mistakes happen, food burns or is undercooked (Invest in a good kitchen timer!).

Hopefully, these few tips are of good use for you! As Jacque Pepin would say Happy cooking!

How Far Can $10 Go?

I cashed my $10 check and went traipsing off to the grocery store last night. I spent $3.13 on one bottle of tonic water, one bottle of ginger ale and a bottle of grated horseradish sauce. I have $6.87 left to spend on food between now and Monday morning.

My biggest complaint about my local grocery store is it is next to impossible to purchase things like onions, all purpose potatoes and some other basic veg unless they are pre-packaged in bags of 3,5 and 10 pounds or four to five peppers to a shrink wrapped carton.  This seriously irks me. I'm trying to be a good, thrifty person and all I needed was two very small onions. I could buy a 3lb bag of onions for $2.69 or a big sweet onion for 99c per pound. I've blogged about this before. I like selecting my own produce, I like getting the tactile sensation of going through a pile of peppers to find the "right ones". I really wish my local grocery store would have more bulk bins. I left the grocery store without the onions, knowing I had one big one at home I was planning on bringing with me this weekend but decided to use it up instead.
I switched up my meal planning for the week. I had my veggie burgers and fries last night and made a pasta sauce for tonight’s dinner. The purpose of this meal planning is to clean out my cupboards of the odds and ends that are sitting in there that are perfectly edible and not to spend money at the grocery store because I'm to flipping lazy to use my brain to cook out of the cupboard. A couple months ago, I bought some whole wheat pasta. I really don't like it, could be the brand, could be that my palate just does not like whole wheat pasta, but I still have 4 pounds sitting in my pantry (I bought  8 boxes of Barilla Whole Wheat Pasta at Costco thinking it would be "good for me and my diet"-WRONG).  I'll cook it up tonight and have that as my dinner.
The upside to all this meal planning from the pantry is that I am using up food in the pantry and not spending money at the store. I'm trying to see what I can make with the variety of interesting and odd canned and dried goods I have in my cupboard if I decide to swap out my meal plan for the week.

Meal Planning and Shopping When You Are Not Home

One thing I am struggling with this month is meal planning and shopping since I am not at home three weekends (if not more) out of the five weekends that are December.

When I work as a groom, we eat out at restaurants or get take out. Nothing fancy, we don't eat at expensive restaurants~ I'm not bothered about food, it's taken care of as part of the job. The barn sitting is a different story. I am stationary in one place and food is not provided. I have access to a full kitchen and shelf space to leave groceries. I still have to shop. Last weekend I brought some leftovers, bought some food and pre-made a couple items to cook. This is sort of working out. I loaded up a cooler with food and a grocery bag with items I needed. The biggest problem is the kitchen is not very well stocked with spices, condiments, oil, vinegar, etc. The other sitter said she just eats out most of her meals when she is there. I needed to saute an onion and there was no oil of any sort in the house. I ended up using a tiny dab of butter, but some olive oil is what I really needed. I did an inventory of the common items and for this weekend, I'm meal planning based on what I have in my cupboard that I can bring to cook and based on what is at the house. I have a "lunch date" planned with a friend, so at least one meal does not have to be accounted for.

My meal planning has been all over the place. I did an inventory of my food cupboards in preparation for next week's food shop and to see what I needed for my meals and take into account that this upcoming weekend I will be gone from my home from Thursday night until Sunday night. I'm also using up what has been sitting in my fridge and freezer. I just feel like I'm shopping twice as much to cover my food needs and I feel like I still need to shop more!

Monday Dinner: Boneless pork ribs baked in the oven in the remains of leftover jar of ginger/teriyaki marinade, egg noodles and peas (I have opened bags of noodles and peas that need to be used up).

Tuesday Lunch: Left over curry from weekend on the last of the egg noodles from last night.

Tuesday Dinner: Pasta with tomato sauce-must make the tomato sauce when I get home from work.

Wednesday Lunch: Left over ribs and brown rice.

Wednesday Dinner: Veggie burgers and the last of the frozen french fries.

Thursday Lunch: Leftover pasta.

Thursday dinner and Friday lunch ?

Friday dinner: Beef curry or beef stew-depends on what mood I'm in when it's time to prepare the beef. Some sort of veg or salad (I miss my salads!)

I have nary a clue for Saturday and Sunday in terms of meal planning ......

The good thing about the barn sitting is it's in a small town that does not have a ton of restaurants so I am not tempted to go out buy prepared. So far I've resisted the 5 pizza/grinder shops. The local diner did get my business one weekend and that food was enough to keep me full and happy well past dinner time. I may sneak out for a late breakfast on Sunday so it can suffice for breakfast and lunch...may....

I'll find out this weekend if I need to work the weekend of the 20th and I can base my food shopping and meal planning for next week on that.

Pay Day So Bills Got Paid

Payday was today, I get paid on the 15th and the 30/31st of each month. I paid the car note, the student loan note, the telephone bills (land and mobile), paid back the last money owed to a friend for some real estate fees (yeah!), gassed up the car (gas is $3.55/gal in my area), I transferred money to my HSA and I will pay my health insurance tomorrow. The middle of the month I usually pay my mortgage, my car insurance and my electric bill. I may pay it this week to get it out of the way. I just want to see my bill in-basket more on the empty side rather than the full side.

I'm working my second job this weekend, so I won't be food shopping for a lot of food (my meals will be covered). I do have a food shopping expedition planned for next week. Time to load up on various pantry staples that I am getting low on. That will help me with my meal planning that has gone to the wayside this past month. Not having various pantry staples makes me want to NOT cook or be a creative cook. Uninspired pasta and rice dishes very rarely satisfy the palate, don't make for good lunchovers, which leads to buying over priced food at our local (and only) deli/market close to work. A pint of soup costs $4. I can make 8 quarts of chicken soup for $6.

I will say, it does feel good to have the bills paid early!

Better on a Plan

I am just on a roll. Last night was a gym night off and I got a bunch of little things down around the house. I mowed the lawn, re-organized the small garden shed, did some weeding, swept the patio, swept and mopped my kitchen floor, started organizing the laundry for the massive trip to the laundromat on Saturday, made dinner and worked on my to do list for the weekend so I can plan for some ME time.

I've been very lazy about meal planning and working on my shopping list took some time and effort (I had to actually check what was in the food cupboards), but will be worth it. I've gotten back into the bad habit of shopping without a list and making some stupid purchases at the store. I've not been paying attention to my cupboards and subsequently I have 6 pounds of whole grain pasta,which I'm not sure I really like as a "base pasta" and almost no fresh, frozen or canned veg. My meals have been a little unbalanced in terms of the food pyramid. Planning out what I want for dinner that can carry over to lunchovers does take some planning.

Having a plan is a good thing. I'm shopping smarter, using up what is in my food cupboard so I don't end up with really old canned and dried goods, and I'm not tempted to just order that $6 mediocre pizza from the local takeaway. I'm feeling less scattered and more in control of what I am doing, which is a really good thing!

I'm Dreaming of Food Shopping..

True to my word, for this month, I've been doing most of my meal planning from what I have in the cupboards and in the fridge, with very few visits to the grocery store, except for some fresh veg and fruit. Yesterday I made a refried bean soup I got off of a year of crockpotting blog. I made the recipe before and liked it and decided to make it again. I used up 5 cans from my cupboard (beans, refried beans, tomato chunks, broth, and canned corn) and I had all the spices. The soup is yummy, I spiced it up with some extra dried hot peppers and I also made some tortilla strips from left over corn tortillas. I have enough left over for one more lunch and one dinner.

BUT I am craving a food shop. I've been making lists, I am getting low on staple items, I am losing some of my creativity, I am down to one onion and three cloves of garlic. I have 1/2 pound of angle hair pasta and 1 pound of elbow macaroni, I still have pounds of rice (I bought a 10 pound bag a in late April), I've used up the frozen meat, most of the frozen veg and the most of the canned items. I even went a little OCD and washed the cupboard shelves since the larder is getting bare.

Things I've used up, pesto made last year from my garden, 4 chicken thighs, 4 boneless chicken breast, 2 small steaks, 1 quart of chicken stock, I replaced the stock by boiling up a carcass I had from the last time I roasted a chicken, lots of pasta, two hunks of frozen mozzarella I forgot I had, ate one full package of Hebrew National Hot Dogs, finished off a bag of frozen tater tots, various grains, dried beans, canned tomatoes, canned beans, onions, peppers, various and assorted jars of condiments and sauces (Indian, Oriental and some salad dressing) used up the onions, potatoes, garlic and ginger root, sour cream, yogurt, salsa, a lot of pasta and bag of noodles called Singapore noodles (A type of egg noodle from Singapore), you get the picture. I don't think I can really make a meal out of brown sugar, baking soda and malt vinegar, but I did replace the old boxes of baking soda in the fridge and freezer and poured one box down the kitchen drain (followed by a hefty dose of white vinegar) and used the other box on the tub instead of using Ajax cleanser. That also kept me in line with my goal for being as green as I can and not using toxic chemicals and cleaners.

I'll be at my second job for the upcoming holiday and my meals will be taken care of, so there is no reason for me to do a serious food shop until at least next Tuesday. I'll be a "big girl" do some meal planning and then plan my shop around the menu. But between now and then, I can betcha I'll be dreaming of wandering up and down the food aisles at Trader Joes,Aldi and Costco.

Actually Sticking to The Plan

Part of my plan for this month was to spend as little money as possible in the grocery store and plan my meals from whats in my cupboard. I've been pretty good about it. I've been thawing food to eat, making bread, cooking pasta, making soup, soaking beans~pretty much making an in roads to the food and staples I have in my pantry. I used up a bunch of chicken, a packet of hot dogs, some chicken stock, two bags of frozen veg, miscellaneous half boxes of pasta, bits and pieces of cheese for a casserole...you know, making due and improvising for my meals. I'm trying to stay OUT of the grocery store unless there is something I really really need. I was buying food products for the heck of it. I have this bad habit of checking out the dented can section and buying cans I did not necessarily need, but got them because they were there. How many cans of refried beans does ONE person need in their house.

I also put myself on a new shopping routine. I don't use a cart unless it's for a big shop. I get a hand basket so I am less likely to toss things in my basket (too heavy too carry) and I don't over shop. Seems to be working for me. I'm buying only what I need. I'm tempted sometimes by something I see (eggplants on sale, four kinds of mushrooms in the reduced produce bin would make a great mushroom soup, a beef shin bone, perfect for making beef stock for onion soup) but my plan for this month is to use UP what I have and not become Julia Child. I do have to figure out what to do with what is either Couscous or very fine baby pastina in a jar.

I've also been really good about not buying beer or wine this month. I did have a couple beers over the weekend, I went out for pizza and had a couple drinks. I'm getting old, I got home and crashed after dinner. Maybe it was not the beer and the 90 degree plus heat?

As I had stated in an earlier post, I do much better with a plan, weather it's monetary or food planning!

This Weeks Meal Plan and Meal Planning in General

Since I made little to no progress in sticking to last weeks Meal Plans, I'm giving it another go this week. Most of my lunches this week will be leftovers based on what I'm planning to cook.
I made this amazing pork roast in my crock pot yesterday and will be using that this week.

Part of my "problem" is I go to the grocery store to pick up a container of milk or some other mundane staple. I see something that gives me inspiration and my meal planning goes out the door. Saturday was a perfect example. I went to the grocery store looking for chicken (my local market will do a selection of chicken pieces, usually on special, perfect for the grill or as I had planned as a baked rice and chicken dish). No chicken to be had, but I did find a pork roast for $1.46 per pound. That is a great deal.

I grabbed the smallest roast they had (5.4 pounds) had the butcher cut it in half. I stuck half in the freezer and the other half ended up in my crock pot, simmered all day with onions, apples, carrots, herbs, some wine and a chipolata pepper in adobe sauce. It was really good and I have a bunch of food I can use as leftovers. It's nice when the inspiration hits, but I find I tend to go 'off my menu" frequently. Which I find funny, because I really don't enjoy grocery shopping all that much. Yet a hunk of pork makes me change my whole weeks menu.

Ah, well. I have lunch packed for today, dinner planned out and will make a loaf of bread in the bread maker this evening and hopefully I won't have to go near a grocery store until the weekend! I may dye some Easter eggs and then be eating a lot of egg salad next week.

Here's the tentative plan.

Dinners: Beans and Rice, enchiladas using left over beans, rice and pork, pork BBQ sandwiches, pasta with either pesto or tomato sauce, butternut squash stuffed with wild rice.

Lunches: Leftovers from dinner a couple days, salads (using the last of my Romain lettuce I bought at Costco) and using up the frozen containers of soup I made last week.

The Lunch Challenge Week 1

Did not spend one thin dime on food for lunches or snacks this week. Yea Ha!. I am actually looking forward to doing some cooking this weekend and planning next weeks meals.

Sometimes it's the small things that really make you feel good! Not only packing my lunch, but remembering to pack snacks has been a big help.

My basic plan for next week's meals include using up a bag of wild rice I got as a present last fall. I love rice of all types and I've someplace, a recipe for wild rice and squash. I have a recipe for red lentil and ginger soup and I do have a small pork loin that is screaming to be marinated in an adobe and honey sauce. Now just to figure out what days would be good to do this!

BB

Mid Month Overview with Minimal Progress

My zero based budget is not going as planned and I'm not happy. For some reason, last months Health Insurance Payment (my share) did not make it and I had to pay a double premium. My one dog (who likes to chew paper) chewed and demolished my mobile phone over the weekend as well. I had extra gas a travel expenses (trip to Jersey Shore for brief R&R) and my freaking electric bill was almost $300 this past month.

Since I like my mobile carrier, I logged onto their web site, purchased a new phone ($40 with a new one year contract). The other phone was damaged beyond repair (as well as being three years old, ancient for a mobile phone) and I'm lucky the dog did not get sick from puncturing the battery.

I don't know why my part of the insurance payment did not make it to my account, but it did not and I had to pay to keep from being cancelled.

Lastly, my electric bill was flipping huge this past month. In terms of energy consumption, about the same as last year, but my energy supplier raised it's rates and that added to my bill. I had hoped to see a decrease in consumption for the month of January (turning off lights, lowered heat, using less electricity overall or so I though), but 'twas not to be. This was over and above the $149 I feel like I just paid to the electric company.

AND one of my elderly Aunties is in the hospital and this weekend means I have to drive or train to NYC both Saturday and Sunday. Family obligations call and it means either driving to Manhattan and paying for parking or driving to a commuter Train Station and then taking a train and the subway to the hospital. Both days will be a get up and leave early, come home late, spend more money in transportation costs, I figure around $60-$80 in gas, tolls, trains, cabs, subways, parking,etc.

I’ll do a look in my cupboards and do a meal planning for the next two weeks using what items I have in the freezer, fridge and in my cupboard cabinet. The good news is other than a small grocery shop planned to round out the meal planning, I don’t think I have any bills that need paying until after the 1st of March. All this means I just won't have the extra money I thought I would that was earmarked for my Emergency Fund.

The upside is I sold a whopping $12 worth of stuff on half.com and picked up two photo shoots of houses, so I've earned an additional $42 in extra income and I've earmarked that for an overdue haircut. I should put it in the E Fund, but I'm feeling a bit frumpy and need to feel a little more glamorous. Personal pampering is key.