An organised pantry not only saves you time, it can save you money by ensuring you don’t buy multiple packets of the same thing when you can’t find what you’re looking for, or by helping you keep an eye on ‘best before’ dates.

Over the last couple of months I have been working on reorganising my pantry, little by little, one day at a time and I thought I would share the results so far.

My pantry wasn’t too bad. Most of what I have lives in a labelled jar or container. It has just gotten disorganised and hard to find things when I need them. This week, I focused on the main, eye-level shelf where all our tinned foods, herbs and spices and sauces live. Here are the results:

Most of my spices have been stored in old coffee jars for some time now. I saved these from my coffee drinking days and purloined a few extra from coffee drinking friends. The problem was that even with the labels on the jars, I still had trouble finding what I was looking for.

So I added labels to the lids. Problem solved.

The quick way to do this is to buy one of those circle paper punches and a sheet of sticky label. But that would have cost money. Instead, I did this the old fashioned way by tracing the circles on paper, cutting them out with scissors, and sticking them down with a glue stick.

Complete spice organisation without spending any money at all.

Two organisational items I did invest in was a tiered shelf for the tinned goods ($10) and a turntable for the back corner of the pantry ($12) (which is always hard to reach). It is so much easier now to grab what we need.

So far, the bottom four shelves of our pantry are now ‘functional’. Just the top two to go, and I have no idea how I’m going to tackle them…yet.

Top tips for pantry organisation:

• Take your time organising your pantry. Do a little each week. This gives you time to think about how you’re going to tackle the job, how you use your pantry, and what you can do to make it work more efficiently.
• Arrange and rearrange things until your pantry is working for you.
• Save money by using recycled jars, boxes and containers to store food in. My favourite container is an empty 1 kilo honey jar. The large jar we keep our rolled oats in is a recycled catering-sized coffee jar. The spice packets that have yet to find homes in jars are kept in a Ferrero Rocher plastic gift box (the perfect size).
• Label, label, label. And label lids if this makes viewing your pantry contents easier.
• Put small containers at the front and larger containers at the back.
• Put the items you use most frequently on the easiest shelf to see and reach.
• Group like items together (all baking items together, for instance).
• Put the things you use least frequently at the back or on higher shelves.
• Line your shelves with paper to make drips and spills easy to clean. I use old newspaper or junk mail.

What are your tips for organising the pantry?

Have you read these articles?:

1. tip tuesday–beyond the status update. using facebook for frugal ends and an invitation
2. tip tuesday–frugal toasted sandwich press
3. tip tuesday – keeping a restock list

I’ve got some potty talk for you.

Today I’m going to get to the bottom of how you can save money on toilet paper (you can even use your savings to wipe away some debt).

So lets get a roll on…

In our household, dunny paper is one of the great multi-taskers: we use it not only for it’s intended purpose, but also for nose blowing, kitchen floor wiping, splatted cockroach disposing and the occasional streamer strewing.

To me, ‘facial tissues’ and toilet paper are exactly the same thing, except loo paper comes on a roll rather than in a pretty box. My mother, however, finds it mortifying that I whip out a loo roll in public to blow my nose. DH also agrees that it’s pretty embarrassing.

What is the world coming too when we get embarrassed about using the wrong shaped tissue paper for wiping snot on? Just saying…

Anyway, because it’s a multi-tasker, our toilet paper has to meet certain criteria: disintegration upon contact with liquid is not ok. A certain level of absorbency is a must. Artificially scented toilet paper is also a bad thing (it doesn’t help stop the sneezes).

And you know what? Cheap-o toilet paper suits all our needs.

How to save money on toilet paper

1. Buy a cheaper brand

I admit it. We buy our toilet paper from Rough Scratchy and Co because let’s be frank here, I’m not writing letters to the queen. I truly have no appreciation for coloured, printed, 3-ply, scented loo paper.

What’s more (and I realise this may be too much information), I think that the cheaper, no frills brand works better because it has more traction, if you know what I mean, and it doesn’t tend to get left behind (in your behind – sorry, couldn’t help myself). We use 2 ply homebrand, and I find it just as absorbent, if not more so, than the expensive brands.

I’ve discussed the pros and cons of toilet paper with family and friends (as you do), and some argue that the 3-ply stuff is one of life’s little luxuries. I have to say though, when it comes to luxury items, toilet paper isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. Dark chocolate and champagne? Well, now you’re talking. But dunny paper with little printed flowers..?

I’ve also heard the argument that if you buy the more expensive 3-ply paper you use less because it’s thicker. If you’ve been using 3-ply for a long time, then that might just be the case. However, I think that the number of squares that come off the roll has more to do with habit than it does with thickness.

2. Compare and save

There is no standardisation for toilet rolls. One, two or three ply, 180, 260 or 1,000 sheet rolls. How do do you compare prices to get the best value?

The first step is to settle on your desired ply. If you never want to use single ply toilet paper, then eliminate it (get it? I could go on all day) from your comparisons.

Then compare the per sheet cost within the desired ‘ply’ range. To calculate the per sheet value, divide the cost per number of toilet rolls in a pack, then divide this amount by the number of sheets per roll. This is the comparison amount.

For example, our home brand toilet paper costs $4.29 for a 12 pack, each roll containing 260 sheets. That means each roll costs 35.7c and each sheet 0.137 cents. This makes it easy to compare value between brands.

3. Use less

According to the Toilet Paper Encyclopaedia (no, I can’t believe there is one either), the average number of sheets a person uses per quiet time is 8.6 sheets, or 57 sheets per day (assuming a frequency of 6 – 7 trips to the small room). That’s around 20,805 sheets of toilet paper per person, per year (did you fill out that question on the census?).

If you buy the Wondersoft brand, that adds up to $60 per person (or $240 per family of four ‘regular’ users) per year. Kleenex Cottonelle comes in at $83 per person per year (or up to $333 for a family).

Switch to home brand and you can reduce your loo paper cost to $28 per person per year ($114 for the family). That’s a saving of up to $55 per person, which isn’t too crappy for something that only gets used for a second before being flushed.

4. Bulk up and save

Toilet paper is a great item to bulk buy because, if you have the space, you can store it indefinitely. Supermarkets regularly have specials on toilet paper, but don’t forget to check out discount stores like Kmart, Aldi and Crazy Clarks, or buy online by the box load from websites like The Toilet Paper Man. If you do buy online, share the cost between friends or family to save on delivery fees.

5. Squish the roll

This is especially useful if you have children who like to watch the loo paper unravel in streams onto the floor. If you give the roll a good squeeze before putting it onto the holder, it creates a resistance that prevents this kind of excess. It also makes you aware of how much you’re unwinding off the roll.

6. Fold, don’t scrunch

Not that I want to get too personal, but apparently, if you’re a ‘folder’ you have more surface area, and therefore need less to get the job done.

Here’s a tip on how to get the time-saving convenience of scrunching with the saving power of folding:

Wrap the loo paper around your hand as you unroll.

Instant fold without all the folding.

8. Do your business at work

The cheapest toilet paper is that which you don’t have to buy yourself.

If your boss has an issue with you spending company time in the small room you can remind him of a productivity survey which found that almost all ideas, creative break-throughs and solutions to problems come in moments of solitude and quiet reflection, not by slogging away at a desk.

9. Go recycled – pay more but save the planet

According to Greenpeace, Americans could save more than 400,000 trees if each family bought one roll of recycled toilet paper — just once. [source]

That’s a lot of trees. I have to admit that after using recycled loo paper for the last five years or more, we switched this year to homebrand because it is cheaper. I think I need to reconsider that decision.

I realise that calculating the per sheet cost of toilet paper or shopping at Rough and Scratchy might seem like taking frugality too far. But I honestly believe that saving on the little things will leave you flushed with success.

What are your tips for saving money on the toilet paper? Why not leave your suggestions in the comments section below?

Have you read these articles?:

1. Cleaning The Toilet – Naturally
2. 5 frugal tips on saving money abroad
3. don’t be a drip when it comes to saving water

I read this tip on the Tammy’s Recipes blog. Her tip is to mix together the peanut butter and honey in a bowl to make spreading it easier.

I have to admit, I’m not a fan of the combination, but if you eat this often, I would go one step further and make a jar of it to store in the pantry, ready to go, without having to mix it at spreading time.

The great thing about peanut butter is that it is a healthy and cheap protein that everyone seems to love (except me).

Actually that’s not true, I thought I hated peanut butter for years until I started buying the freshly ground stuff from the health food store. No salt. No vegetable oil. No sugar. Just peanuts. And it tastes sooo much better than what you get in the supermarket. Turns out I do like peanuts, just not adulterated peanuts. The downside is that natural peanut butter is a little drier than the brands that include oil.

Here’s a different version of peanut butter and honey on toast that I ate by the truck load when I was pregnant:

Spread a piece of buttered toast with mashed banana. Drizzle with honey and sprinkle with chopped peanuts and sesame seeds. Yum.

Have you read these articles?:

1. honey roasted pumpkin risotto
2. marinated pork chops with honey roasted vegetables
3. Honey Balsamic Salad Dressing

Well today’s the day. It’s finally here.

After two years, 240 pages and 65,000 words, I’d like to introduce the first Frugal and Thriving eBook: PLAN COOK SAVE: A busy person’s guide to eating healthy food on a budget.

PLAN COOK SAVE is all about eating healthy food on a tight budget and a tight schedule.

Here’s what you’ll find in the eBook:

Which foods to eat more of and which ones to eat less of to ensure a healthy diet.

How to select, store and use the food you buy so you’re not throwing your hard earned cash in the trash.

Tips on finding the best deals on the food you buy (without spending hours running around comparing prices).

How to develop a working routine to make the most of the time you have and make more time to do the things you really want to (while still preparing healthy food from scratch).

How to avoid the age old question “what’s for dinner?” by planning in advance and how to make this process quick and painless.

How to plan your shopping trips so that you cut your shopping time.

Shopping tactics to help you save money on the groceries.

How to organise your kitchen for maximum efficiency.

Tips on how to save time in the kitchen.

Essential cooking methods that make preparing and cooking meals easy.

Essential recipe bases from which you can create hundreds of meals.

Over 100 recipes from the Frugal and Thriving blog all of which I cook myself on a regular basis.

Printable resources to make cooking healthy meals easy. These include:

A to-do checklist that takes you through the process of how to eat healthy on a budget.

Templates for organising your time, creating a master meal list, menu planning, restocking the kitchen and doing the shopping.

Food guides including a pantry list, a freezer guide, a ‘what’s in season’ guide, a guide to common meat cuts and how to use them, and a guide to essential kitchen tools.

The eBook also comes with a bonus excel file of fully formatted templates to use if you prefer to work on the computer. The excel file include:

a weekly schedule

morning and evening routines

a meal master list template with filters to help you sort and find your favourite recipes

a full menu plan template

a dinner menu plan template

a price book template with filters and example formulas to copy and paste to help you calculate the price per unit.

The introductory price for the eBook is $22AUD (regular price $27AUD). And of course, there’s a money back guarantee. Click here or the button below to download your copy.

FAQs

1. Do I need a special reader to read the eBook?

The eBook is in PDF format, so all you need is the free Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader or similar.

2. Do I need a Pay Pal account?

No, you can pay via Pay Pal without having an account.

3. What version of Excel is the template file in?

There are two template files, one formatted in 2007 Excel version and the other in 97-2003 compatible version.

4. What about couponing?

As we don’t have a couponing system here in Australia like in the US, the eBook doesn’t cover couponing. You can however, use the information in this eBook instead of couponing and save money on your groceries or in conjunction with couponing and save even more.

Any other questions, don’t hesitate to leave them in the comments section below.

Have you read these articles?:

1. plan cook save–save time by using a meal master list
2. plan cook save–eating healthy food on a budget
3. plan cook save–how to cook anything

This article comes from the eBook PLAN COOK SAVE.

I know that many readers have been cooking from scratch for a long time; this post is for those who are just starting out.

Maybe you’ve just left home, or maybe you’re wanting to make the switch from processed, convenience foods, to more basic, whole foods.

It can be difficult to cook from scratch when your kitchen is bare of the basics.

So when it comes to starting from scratch, there are two kitchen essentials you need to think about:

• the food you’re going to stock in your pantry, fridge and freezer; and
• the essential kitchen tools and equipment you need to get cooking.

Stocking the pantry

I don’t tend to stockpile months worth of food. Here in a tropical climate, we don’t have natural cold storage (unless I burn fossil fuels to make cold storage) and food quickly rots. I have to store potatoes in the fridge during summer, for instance. I do stock enough food so that I can:

• whip up a huge variety of meals
• cook new recipes without having to buy many ingredients (we have a lot of herbs and spices in our pantry, for instance)
• and if I couldn’t buy food for whatever reason, then we could probably get by for a week or two without it really affecting our diet.

The other day I felt like something a little different. We had some chicken to cook for dinner, but I was feeling rather uninspired by what was on the menu plan. I ended up cooking butter chicken from scratch (from this recipe), because we had all the ingredients on hand (and it turned out quite nice, although not so good for the waist line).

1. Start small, go slow

It can be difficult stretching the budget in order to buy food in bulk to stock the pantry. You will save money in the long run, but as you’re building your pantry, each week you may have to spend a little extra.

The easiest way to stock your kitchen of the basics is to buy one or two things each week in bulk. So if rice is on your shopping list for the week, buy a larger bag (make sure you’re getting a bulk discount) than what you would normally buy and build your pantry one item, one week at a time.

2. Start with items from your family favourites master list.

The other day I wrote about creating a list of family favourite meals. If you’re wondering where to start when it comes to stocking the pantry, start with the meals on your list and get what you need for those meals, as you cook them.

For instance, just say chilli beef is on your family favourites list. You probably already have ingredients like cumin, oregano, chilli etc, but if not, stock up on those things next time you have chilli beef on your menu plan.

When it comes to spices, you don’t need to buy in bulk unless you use a lot of a particular spice (we buy paprika in large tubs – I love it).

Buy a couple of tins of tomatoes and kidney beans when they go on sale to have ready in the pantry. Buy your beef mince in bulk when it’s on sale and portion and freeze it.

And of course, if you come across another dish that calls for kidney beans, tinned tomatoes or mince, you’ve already got those ingredients on hand. Or if you’re wondering what to cook for dinner, you can create something from a pantry that’s stocked with ingredients.

3. Storage solutions

Your pantry is an investment. The last thing you want is to waste your food and your money. So it is important to store what you buy properly.

Store dry goods in air tight containers to prevent insect infestation. Check the label on condiments and store according to the label. Decant packets of herbs and spices into jars so that they don’t get lost in the back of the pantry.

And label everything so you know what’s in each container.

4. Check out your parent’s pantry for ideas.

If you’re not sure what else to put in your pantry, ask your mum. Chances are, you’ll be cooking meals that you’re familiar with from home. So you’ll want to stock the necessary ingredients for those meals.

I’ve included a list of pantry basics as a guide in the eBook, but the best way to stock your pantry is to let it grow as your cooking repertoire expands.

TIP: If you buy a spice for a new recipe, look for other recipes that use that spice, so the rest of the packet doesn’t sit in the cupboard for years unused.

Essential kitchen tools and equipment

There’s a lot of kitchen tools, gadgets, gizmos and equipment out there to tempt you to part with your hard earned cash. While some are very useful (I love my garlic press for instance, although I got by for ten years by chopping garlic with a knife), when the budget is tight, you can cook a huge range of food with just a few basic essentials.

1. Good knives. There are two essential knives. One is a good quality, sharp chef’s knife. As I wrote yesterday, knowing how to use a knife properly makes food preparation quick and easy. Chopping with a tiny utility knife takes ages. However, there are tasks where you will need a small paring or utility knife, that’s the other essential knife.

2. A chopping board. Wooden, glass, marble or plastic, whichever you prefer. I prefer a white plastic board, it’s cheap and easy to keep clean.

3. A frying pan with a lid. A largish pan will mean you can fry an egg or a pancake or cook up a curry or stir fry for four. There are a huge array of specialty pans available, but you can get away with just using a frying pan. Make sure it has a lid so that you can simmer and poach food (or keep it warm).

4. A saucepan. The size you get will depend on how many people you regularly cook for. If you’re only getting one pot, I would elect a medium or large saucepan, which gives you the flexibility to cook more or less. I would also seriously consider getting one with a steam attachment. That means you can cook two lots of food on the one hob. For example, I generally cook the potatoes for mashed potato in the pot and steam the greens in the steamer over the cooking spuds.

4. A mixing bowl. A stainless steel mixing bowl is not only useful for mixing cakes, serving salads, or marinading meat, you can place it over your pot of water to use as a bain marie.

5. An oven proof dish. A ceramic baking dish can be used to roast meat, roast vegetables, bake a frittata, a lasagne, a slice or a sticky date pudding, for instance. Get a dish with high sides so that it can be used to cook many dishes. A dish with a lid will mean you can slow cook casseroles also.

6. Cutlery, dinnerware, cups/glasses. Apart from eating with, cutlery can be used to measure, to mash, to mix, to chop, to turn food, to serve food. You can use a tea cup to measure. Or use a cereal bowl to mix in.

7. Can opener. With pull ring lids being common these days, a can opener isn’t as essential as it used to be, although I still get a lot of stuff in tins that don’t have a pull ring.

8. A grater. I got a microplane with a gift card and love it. But a cheap two dollar store box grater (which we also have and use) is good for grating cheese, vegetables and chocolate (and we have a grater in the laundry to grate our laundry soap).

9. Spatula. A rubber spatula is a frugal cook’s dream utensil. I have two sizes, a large one for general use, like serving mashed potato or soup to get every last morsel from the pot (this makes washing up easier too); and a small one to scrape out the last dribble from the jam jar.

10. cake tin and / or muffin tin. If you’re going to bake cakes, then a cake tin is useful (although you can bake a cake in your oven proof dish, adjusting the cooking time to suit). If I had to pick between a muffin tin and a cake tin, I would choose the muffin tin because it gives you more flexibility over what to cook. Not just muffins, but mini cakes, mini quiches and pies, mini meatloaves etc. Mini food cooks quicker, good for when you’re in a hurry.

11. Cooking utensils. A wooden spoon or two is essential for cooking and mixing. I have several, a couple for savoury dishes and one for cakes (so they don’t come out tasting like curry). It’s just as easy to mix a cake with a wooden spoon as it is a electric mixer.

Tongs, a serving spoon, a soup spoon and an egg flip are also useful.

12. A strainer, colander. I would argue that this isn’t an essential item, because you can use a saucepan lid on a tilt to strain food. However, a strainer is so cheap and makes, well, straining easier.

13. A stick mixer. Useful for blending soups, sauces and smoothies. Easier to clean and store than a blender and cheaper.

14. Cleaning stuff. Last but not least, tea towels (that can be used as oven mitts as well) dish cloths and brushes and dish soap and rags for cleaning up spills on the floor.

You can get by cooking a huge range of foods with just a few basic tools and then expand your equipment as you need to or when the budget allows.

What are your essential pantry items or kitchen tools?

This is the last article in the PLAN COOK SAVE series. Next Monday: the launch of the eBook.

Have you read these articles?:

1. plan cook save–how to cook anything
2. plan cook save–save time by using a meal master list
3. plan cook save–eating healthy food on a budget

Today’s article comes from the eBook PLAN COOK SAVE.

There are two ways to approach preparing meals: one is to find a recipe and then buy all the ingredients for that recipe. The other is to create a meal with what you already have on hand.

In the second approach, you buy seasonal and inexpensive ingredients, then make a meal of them (so to speak).

By combining meals from recipes and meals from you master list in your menu planning, you get a good balance between cooking what you know, and trying (and learning) new recipes (and planning to be creative ensures you have the ingredients you need on hand).

How did our grandparents learn to cook? They didn’t have a tonne of cookbooks, they learned basic recipes, techniques and methods that could be adapted to the food they had.

That is, incidentally, what chefs learn as well. Yes, recipes are useful and a great tool for learning new dishes, but their real benefit comes from being able to take from them techniques, cooking methods and flavour profiles (yeah, I’m a MasterChef fan) and use them to create your own recipes with different (and often cheaper) core ingredients.

If you are familiar with MasterChef, then you will know that they tell the contestants to learn the basic techniques and focus on fresh ingredients. That’s exactly how to eat healthy food on a budget. While your frugal meal might be sausages and vegetables rather than whole snapper and micro herbs, the basics are the same:

• fresh basic ingredients
• basic techniques and methods

Learning the basics give you flexibility in the kitchen, allows you to alter recipes, turns cooking into a creative exercise, saves you money by giving you a means to using the food you have on hand without having to go to the store for extra ingredients and it saves you time because the more skilled you are the more confident and efficient you are in the kitchen.

You don’t need to learn everything all at once; explore a new technique or a new cooking method each week and you’ll be up and cooking your own creations in no time.

Here’s what I mean. Just say you have a single chicken breast that needs to stretch feed a family of four. What do you do? Just off the top of my head you could make:

• a stir fry
• a pie
• chicken pasties
• a chicken curry
• a risotto
• a quiche
• a poached chicken and noodle salad
• stuffed potatoes
• chicken pasta sauce
• chicken crepes
• chicken, baked vegetables and couscous salad
• gourmet chicken sandwiches

And I’m sure there are many, many other ideas.

The point is that you’re only limited by the other ingredients you have on hand (and if you have a fairly well stocked pantry, then that’s only a small limit, even at the end of a fortnight), you’re not limited by ideas.

The other bonus is that if you’ve planned a creamy chicken pasta dish for instance, and you find the cream has gone bad, or you don’t feel like it on the night, you have the resources and the flexibility to make something else without too much bother.

How to cook anything

1. Know your basics.

There are three basic skills to learn when it comes to cooking: preparation techniques, cooking methods, and basic recipes.

Take time to learn some basic preparation techniques. Get a good chef’s knife and learn how to use it properly (if you do it right, you can have a whole onion diced in a matter of seconds, for instance). There are plenty of quality YouTube videos on preparing foods. Check out how to dice an onion, or how to skin a tomato or how to julienne a carrot or how to segment an orange. Explore how to marinate or how to whisk egg whites.

When it comes to cooking methods, you have essentially two choices: wet heat cooking methods and dry heat cooking methods.

Wet heat involves boiling, steaming poaching and simmering. Dry heat cooking involves frying, baking, barbequing. Learning how to do each cooking method will give you great results every time.

Finally, there’s your basic recipes. If you know how to throw together your own stock, a few of the ‘mother sauces’ and some batters and doughs, then combined with the basic cooking methods, there’s not going to be much that you can’t cook up at the drop of a hat.

2. Know your ingredients.

What preparation technique goes well with what ingredient? What happens if you poach chicken? What happens if you deep a fry banana?

As well as the internet, a good food dictionary is a great resource for getting to know your ingredients. Take time to explore seasonal ingredients and try something different once a week for each ingredient.

Maybe this week you could try potato dauphinoise, and next week hasselback potatoes.

Recipes can also be used as inspiration on how to cook the food you have on hand and what ingredients and flavours go well together.

3. Get creative.

Mix and match core ingredients, spices, herbs, sauces and condiments. Taste as you go and note down what you like. Keep your own cookbook along with your master meal list (or as part of your master meal list), jotting down what flavours work together, tips, tricks, techniques, substitutions and variations and the recipes that you have created yourself.

Tomorrow: for those who are just starting out, some suggestions for kitchen tools and how to stock the pantry.

What are your essential cooking skills that you couldn’t live without?

Have you read these articles?:

1. plan cook save–save time by using a meal master list
2. plan cook save–starting from scratch
3. plan cook save–eating healthy food on a budget

Today’s article comes from the eBook: PLAN COOK SAVE.

So I was in Woolies the other day, and a voice over the loud speaker said:

‘Why not try a steak from our meat department? They’re on special this week at $19 a kilo [ah, yeah, not real cheap]. Grab some vegetables from our fresh produce department and a nice tomato relish and sit down with a steak and beer in front of the football. What a great way to spend your Friday night!’

I generally think I’m pretty immune to marketing, yet I found myself making a bee-line to the meat department. The picture he painted really did sound nice (and I don’t even like football and beer)!

I admit though, in my fantasy, someone else was cooking that steak and maybe the other women, four deep at the meat display, also shared that fantasy.

What impressed me was that it was really effective marketing (despite the fact there were very few males in the store at 4pm on a Friday afternoon) and it drove us to impulse buy.

And you know what? I don’t even think that’s a bad thing.

Neither is the 2 kilo tub of ice-cream and the pack of Tim Tams I bought because I had ‘one of those days.’

Unless these impulse buys are going to blow your budget or your diet, or unless you impulse buy all the time, life’s short and it’s ok to splurge.

The real problem with impulse buys is when they occur frequently, when they blow your budget and when they get wasted.

According to a consumer goods survey done by GfK Marktforschung¹, around 40% of what goes into the shopping basket of the average shopper are impulse buys. When about 30% of what we buy ends up in the bin, you can bet much of what is wasted was what was bought on impulse.

You know the things I’m talking about here. That jar of tamarind paste you bought thinking ‘one day’ you’ll make a curry paste from scratch. Or the celeriac you bought because you saw it on MasterChef, but then it get’s forgotten in the bottom of the crisper.

In other words, what we’re talking about is unplanned buys that get thrown in the bin.

How do you avoid impulse buys?

• PLAN. Write a menu plan and a shopping list and take your list with you.
• Stick to your list!
• Shop less often. If you only go to the store once a week or once a fortnight, that’s only once you have the opportunity to buy on impulse. You can’t want what you don’t see.
• Go to the store at quiet times when there’s no demonstration cooking displays or tastings.
• Don’t go to the store hungry. Carry a snack in your bag to eat just before shopping, so that you’re not starving.
• Leave the kids at home with dad. Sorry fellas, but studies say you’re more susceptible to advertising and impulse buying than women. On the other hand, if the man of the house is the more savvy shopper, give him the task of doing the grocery shopping.
• Avoid the chocolate, biscuit, soft drink and chip aisles altogether.
• Practice saying ‘no, I don’t need that’ until it becomes a habit.

Tomorrow, I’ll be sharing how to cook anything.

What are your best shopping tactics?

¹ ausfoodnews.com.au.

Have you read these articles?:

1. plan cook save–save time by using a meal master list
2. plan cook save–how to cook anything
3. plan cook save–eating healthy food on a budget

"every minute spent planning is an hour earned." Benjamin Franklin

Today’s article comes from the eBook: PLAN COOK SAVE.

One of the best way to get a lot more out of your day is to be organised. Being organised means you end up with less ‘wasted’ time and more time to do the things that are important. Chapter two of the eBook PLAN COOK SAVE covers how to get organised and plan ahead to save time.

When it comes to putting meals on the table day in and day out and saving money on the groceries, the best organisation tool is a menu plan.

Menu planning is basically planning ahead of time the meals you intend to cook for the period between shopping trips (be it a week or a fortnight) and writing it down for easy reference each day.

A menu plan is great for saving money because you plan your meals based on what you already have on hand, what’s on special, what’s in season, then write your shopping list accordingly. You may plan every single meal, or you may just plan dinners.

I’ve written about menu planning before, you can read about the benefits of menu planning here.

Today’s article is from chapter two of the eBook and is about how to make the menu planning process itself quicker and easier. While menu planning only really takes a couple of minutes each week or each fortnight, you can make the process super quick and easy by using a family favourites meal master list.

The family favourites meal master list

A meal master list is a list of meals that you and your family enjoy eating. They are the meals that you’ve cooked before and that you’re confident cooking and you’re confident your family will eat when you serve them.

A simple list of meals that you can refer to is all you need to make menu planning easier. However, if you add a few extra details to your master list, you can make your list work harder for you. This is what I include in my meal master list:

• meal / recipe
• main ingredient (usually meat, unless it’s a vegetarian dish)
• other essential ingredients (these are ingredients that I don’t necessarily keep stocked in the pantry and so must go on the shopping list if I plan to cook that particular meal)
• recipe source (so I know in which book and on which page I can find that favourite recipe)
• approximate cost per meal (useful for when you’re menu planning on a very tight budget)

I actually keep my meal master list in an excel file and include one more heading: a recipe link. This is for recipes that are stored on my hard drive or on a webpage. I can put a link into the spreadsheet and rather than searching for the recipe, I can simply click the link and up pops the recipe.

The other advantage of using an excel spreadsheet is that you can also filter and sort your meals. So if you’re looking for a recipe that uses chicken thighs for example, you can filter your list to only show those recipes.

(Did I mention that there’s an excel spreadsheet that comes with the eBook with a master meal template and other useful templates? )

The process

Writing up a master meal list is a one time process. Once you’ve got your master meal list set up, all you have to do is add any new family favourite meals to your list as you cook them.

When it comes to writing your menu plan, you can just pull out your list to generate ideas of what to put on your menu plan for the week or fortnight.

(TIP: If you’ve filled in all the headings, you can filter your list to show meals that use ingredients that are in season.)

Simple. Quick.

You know that preparing those meals will be easy, because you’ve cooked them before. And as your meal list grows, the meals you cook become quite varied, because you’re reminded about that great soup you cooked last winter, or that yummy dessert that everyone loved.

The takeaway: give menu planning a go if you don’t already and write up a meal master list to make the menu planning process quick and easy.

Tomorrow: How to use smart shopping tactics to avoid impulse buys and keep your hard earned money in your pocket.

How do you save time when cooking from scratch?

Have you read these articles?:

1. plan cook save–how to cook anything
2. introducing plan cook save – the frugal and thriving ebook
3. plan cook save–starting from scratch

This week’s posting schedule is a little different from usual. This week the articles will be from the content of the upcoming eBook PLAN COOK SAVE, which will be available from next Monday 27th June.

For the average family, the cost of food and other groceries is the third largest expense after the mortgage and car payments. That’s a huge chunk out of the budget. But the grocery budget is a lot more flexible than repayments, so it’s not surprising that many of us strive to save money on the groceries.

But we also know it’s important to eat healthy food. In fact, of all the jobs we have to do each day, preparing healthy meals is one of the most important.

Healthy food gives you the energy and vitality you and your family need to live a full life. It helps prevent illness and chronic disease like obesity and diabetes. It keeps you in shape and makes your skin glow. It even makes you smarter.

PLAN COOK SAVE is all about finding the balance between saving money, eating healthy food and saving time.

What is healthy food

Despite having managed it for thousands of years, eating got really complicated sometime over the last few decades. Suddenly it’s not just about filling our bellies and pleasing our taste buds, we are now supposed to think about calories, trans fats, omega threes, anti-oxidants, whether we’ve eaten enough of this or too much of that…

It doesn’t have to be that hard.

Eating healthy is simply a matter of eating natural whole foods like fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, meat, dairy, eggs, herbs and spices most of the time.

Simple, right?

But what about organic food?

There is no question that organic food grown without pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals is better. Better for you and better for the environment. You don’t have to be ‘alternate’ to not want chemicals in your body.

But organic food is expensive.

While I would love to eat all organic foods or food that is sustainable, chemical free and naturally grown or reared, the truth is that I don’t.

Our grocery budget doesn’t stretch that far.

The thing is, if you’re eating less packaged foods and more whole foods, then you’re already eating healthy.

‘Organic’ is the icing on the cake, so to speak.

When it comes to healthy eating, focus on wholefoods, buy organic foods when you can (even it it’s just a few things) and if you have some spare time, grow some of your own food organically to supplement what you buy.

Saving money on the groceries

The eBook covers tips on buying, storing and using all the basic foods listed above as well as specific savings tips for each food group and ideas for using up leftovers. However, there are two main, overarching tips for saving money on the groceries:

• cooking whole foods from scratch; and
• reducing waste

Cooking from scratch

Cooking food from scratch means avoiding takeaway food, pre-packaged foods and convenience foods and cooking basic foods (meat, vegetables, grains etc) from scratch most of the time.

What does from scratch mean? It means marinating your meat rather than buying it pre-marinated in who knows what. It means chopping your vegetables rather than buying tinned vegetables (except tomatoes and beans) or pre-chopped vegetables. It means making your own casserole with herbs and stock rather than buying a recipe base in a packet. I’m not saying you have to make everything, like pasta for instance, from scratch (although you can if you want) and it’s ok to use some conveniences like curry paste. The point is to avoid the stuff that you can reasonably make yourself at home.

However…

then there’s the realities of life…

If you’re a regular reader of Frugal and Thriving then you know that we eat takeaway on a fairly regular basis (around once a fortnight). Like most people, there are days that I’ve been disorganised, or that I’m exhausted or something else comes up and we opt for the convenience option.

We’re lucky we have a convenience option.

When you’re trying to eat healthy and save money, the most important thing I’ve learned over the years is to cook from scratch most of the time and give yourself a break occasionally. You don’t have to, but if you need to rely on convenience foods sometimes, then you really don’t need a side serving of guilt with along with it (in fact guilt can make you put on weight)!

I’ve found the best option is to allow yourself a ‘junk food rule’ or two if you need to, where you only eat junk food on a certain night of the week, and then stick to the good stuff for the rest of the time. Scheduling your occasional convenience foods establishes expectations within your family (cutting down on the nag factor at other times), and I found that by allowing yourself a guilt free day off, it actually reduces how much you eat takeaway.

Buy what you need and eat what you buy

Wasted food can literally add up to thousands of dollars per year.

Don’t believe me?

Here are the stats. The average basket of groceries in Australia in 2007 cost $281 per week or $14,612 per year. (ABS stats). The average household wastes approximately 30% of the food that they buy (Aus. Gov. stats). That equates to $4,383 per year. And that’s just the average.

The first step to reducing your grocery bill is to reduce your waste.

How do you reduce waste?

The key is to:

• plan what you’re going to eat (more tomorrow)
• buy only what you need
• store it correctly
• eat what you buy

Saving money on meat

As meat is one of the biggest expenses in the grocery budget, today I want to look at ways of saving money on meat. Here are just a few tips for saving money on meat:

• Don’t avoid the cheaper cuts of meat. The perception is that the cheaper cuts of meat are full of fat and therefore unhealthy, which isn’t always the case. Often the cheaper cuts of meat come from the leaner, muscled areas of an animal (the neck, shoulders and legs) making them tougher cuts of meat. These cheaper cuts of meat do require a little extra care to make them succulent and tender (like slow cooking, for example), however the effort is worth it as these cuts also have a richer flavour.
• Eat less meat by having smaller serves or regular vegetarian meals. Studies say we eat up to five times more meat than is healthy for us. I know what you’re thinking. My husband is also a prime steak and potatoes kind of guy. My answer:
• Make your meat go further by cooking meals that can be bulked up with vegetables, beans or lentils like curries, casseroles, stews, pies, quiches, stir fries etc. DH’s specialty that he cooks is lamb and lentil casserole (sometimes you can make the horse drink).
• Stir fries are a good dish for your more expensive ‘heart smart’ meats because a little goes along way when bulked up with lots of veg and served with rice or noodles.
• Bulk up mince dishes like spaghetti bolognaise, lasagne, rissoles etc with cooked red lentils. Don’t tell anyone. They really won’t notice the difference. I know someone who swears blind they’ve never eaten lentils. But I know better – they’ve eaten my rissoles.
• Buy in bulk and save. Even if you don’t have access to a wholesale butcher, your local supermarket will have bulk buys, specials and discounted items. Buy up big at these times, portion your meat and freeze and save money over the long run.
• Enjoy your expensive cuts on special occasions.

(In the resources section of the eBook is a printable guide to common meat cuts, their relative cost compared to other cuts from the same animal and suggested cooking methods.)

If you’ve read so far and thought ‘yeah, that’s lovely, but I don’t have time to cook from scratch’ tomorrow’s post is about saving time by planning ahead and how to make that planning time quick and easy.

What’s your biggest challenge to eating healthy on a budget?

Have you read these articles?:

1. plan cook save–how to cook anything
2. introducing plan cook save – the frugal and thriving ebook
3. “Eat well grown food from healthy soil”

It has been nearly a year and a half since I wrote about how much we spend on the groceries.

A lot has changed since then.

We now have an extra mouth to feed and an extra bum to keep clean. So I thought it was time for an update.

Before I talk about how much we spend on the groceries, I want to clarify what ‘groceries’ means in our budget (and by budget I mean a detailed, to-the-cent record of our expenditure which allows me to see very specifically where we can make improvements and what items are costing us the most money).

Our grocery category includes:

• all food and beverages
• baby formula and the occasional tinned baby food
• health foods, specialty foods and market stall finds
• alcohol (to take home)
• takeaway / junk food
• cat food and kitty litter
• toiletries including nappy liners, baby shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrushes, cosmetics, first aide stuff etc
• cleaning supplies including any brushes, gloves, essential oils, as well as vinegar and bicarb
• laundry needs including nappy soaker

2009 grocery expenditure

Way back in 2009, there were just the two of us and the cat. I bought quality ingredients on a regular basis like organic milk, pomegranate juice and organic dark chocolate. I don’t do that as much anymore, although looking at our 2011 expenditure so far, there’s probably a little room for a few more splurges.

To recap the original article, our average grocery spend was $115 per week in 2009 (that includes takeaway meals).

2010 grocery expenditure

The little fella was born in early 2010 and long time readers will know that despite being very pro breast feeding, I had no milk. Drier than the Sahara. Therefore we had to formula feed the little fella, ironic considering my firm stance on the issue and our frugal ways. C’est la vie.

As far as our grocery budget is concerned, formula is very expensive. We spent over $1,200 in one year. Add to that the cost of maintaining the other end (even though we used cloth nappies), plus extra laundry costs, and extra food once the little fella turned six months, and obviously our grocery expense went up. Not that I’m complaining, just stating the facts concerning our budget. On the other hand, we made savings elsewhere, by eating less takeaway for instance.

So in 2010 our grocery expenditure was an average of $148 per week.

2011 grocery expenditure to date

We’re now finished with the formula and that has made a big difference to our grocery budget.

On the other hand, we have been quite sick this year and I’ve felt really run down, so I admit to relying on the occasional tin of baby food for the little fella. We haven’t bought much (I’m talking one or two dinners a week), but it’s pretty expensive and adds up quickly. On top of that, the little fella eats a surprising amount of food. In fact, some days he eats more than us.

Also, due to all the bad weather in Australia and the world, the price of fresh foods has really gone up (although I noticed last week a big drop in our fruit and veg bill, even though I filled the box). I still buy bananas, despite the fact they are $14 a kilo. Someone once said to me that most people don’t think twice about splurging a couple of dollars on a Mars Bar, so why not splurge on a banana instead. I think that’s a good point.

To balance things out, DH and I have really reduced our takeaway habit (once a fortnight on average and we’ve been using coupons) so our grocery spending has really improved.

In 2011, our grocery expenditure so far is an average of $110 per week.

Less than 2009, so maybe there is room in the budget to bring back that organic dark chocolate. Our budget would be under $100 if we didn’t buy any takeaway.

Sigh.

No-one’s perfect.

How much do you spend on the groceries? How have this year’s price rises affected your grocery budget?

PS. For all of next week, the articles on the blog will be content from the upcoming eBook: PLAN COOK SAVE. I’m very excited to be sharing it with you and I hope you find the articles useful.

Have you read these articles?:

1. How Much Do You Spend On Groceries?
2. boost your savings with a regular no spend day
3. An Update to the Envelope Budgeting System