I’m in the process of making a spreadsheet to organize my regular buys by store…according to where they are cheapest. It’s such a huge process but I think it will be worth it in paring down our food costs. Ah this home management is such a job!

We have got to live in one of the worst locations for shopping. There’s not enough competition among grocery stores, so the prices and sales are never that great. We buy a lot of fresh produce every week, and that always drives up our total. We used to have a lot of farm stands to choose from, but even they are disappearing because the farmers say they don’t have enough money to pay for the fertilizer. We do have a farmers’ market during the summer though, and now that I’m home full time I’ll be able to check it out to see if I can get any good deals there.

I do have running lists of our favorite go-to meals…a separate one for summer and winter, to account for grill meals vs. crock-pot stews and stuff like that.

The other thing I do quite a bit is when I have a meal that works good in the freezer, I do a double batch. Both of us hate cooking on the weekends and there’s always a day when something unexpected comes up and dinner seems a monumental task, so it’s good to have homemade stuff in the freezer for those times. Also, I’m a big fan of leftover night on fri or sat. nights.

I think another money saver especially in the summer is finding local farmers to get produce from. I froze a lot of veggies that way last summer and it was an enormous $ saver (esp. for the baby food). Of course it depends on your location, and some farmers try to gouge you. This year we’re hoping for our own garden for some of those items.