Groceries: Just Like, How?

I think I finally cracked it, both in terms of minimal time and minimal $

Photo by Maria Lin Kim on Unsplash

Grocery budget advice is always like, “shop around” and “go to Aldi.” If I had time to visit more than one store, I probably wouldn’t need advice like “shop around” because I’d be doing that, you guys.

I don’t even time to actually go into a store, I have to order stuff through an app for pickup, if I don’t want to spend my precious time with my kids dealing with the heartbreak of not being able to take home one of the grocery store balloons (holy crap can we please stop it with the grocery store balloons, why must you torture moms?!).

Also Aldi produce often goes bad before you get it home, in my experience (maybe it’s just me). And also I just don’t have time to go to Aldi to shop in person.

I have to automate and and manage groceries virtually. I need quality produce that will last. My kids are a bit picky and we all hate anything that is ‘ready to reheat and eat’ (bleh). My daughter has some weight issues due to a thyroid condition and is prone to migraines so I really try to avoid heavily processed food as much as possible.

Historically, our ridiculous food budget has been due to getting too much takeout or fast food, so most of the savings here is from eating at home literally every single meal. But I finally cracked how to ensure there’s enough variety and easy to make and eat food so that we’re never tempted to just get DoorDash because we’re tired and everything in the house sounds gross or takes too long to make.

So most months between takeout and groceries, we were paying around $1800/mo for our family of 4 (yes, trust me, I know how incredibly insane that is). Another caveat: My ex still lives with us for now until he can afford to move to his own place, and while I have moved away from cooking specifically for him, he does still eat a lot of the general family food.

So given those caveats, here’s what I did last month that saved me over $500, and we ended up spending about $1200 the entire month on food.

Monthly Food Planning Time

The first Sunday of each month after the kids go to bed I:

• Select my meal plan recipes up to 4 weeks out (see Dinner below)

• Schedule grocery pickups for the same order every Monday afternoon for the next 4 weeks (see Breakfast and Lunch below) so I can pick them up on my way home from work on Mondays

• Schedule Costco delivery of coffee and snacks

This takes about an hour, depending on how fussy I want to get about choosing the dinners in EveryPlate (I can be very fussy about this). I drink my coffee and listen to a podcast and it’s actually a pretty nice time.

Dinner

I think I’ve tried all the commercially available meal kits, and the only one that I have found is actually cost-effective (and has recipes my kids will eat) is EveryPlate.

5 meals for 4 people is approx $130/week or $650. This is what we’re eating this week. It was all pretty good!

I am not sponsored by EveryPlate or anything (not even sure how that works but EveryPlate if you’re reading this please feel free to gift me a free plan or something). I signed up with a 40% off discount from a podcast (I’m sorry, I don’t remember which one - possibly Let’s Not Meet?) so my first week was only $50. While there is quite a bit of cooking involved, it’s all stuff my 9yo can help with (while we….listen to podcasts. Yeah we like podcasts!).

Breakfast and Lunch

With dinners taken care of, all I need to do is buy stuff for lunch and breakfast. I order basically the same groceries every week through my local grocery store’s pickup app:

• Milk

• Lettuce

• Deli Meat/cheese/cream cheese

• Fruit (apples, bananas, berries)

• Bacon/Sausage

Once a month, I buy:

• Flour

• Butter

• Eggs

• Sugar

• Yeast

• Pasta/Rice

• Spices (if needed)

• Peanut butter (this usually lasts me 2 months or more)

• Mayo (same as PB)

• BBQ sauce (same as PB)

• Frozen Fruit (we drink a lot of smoothies for breakfast)

• Puff pastry sheets

• Canned stuff (black beans etc.)

My grocery budget averages about $320/mo, so alongside EveryPlate, we’re up to $970.

Snacks and Coffee

I have a Universal Yums subscription for $31/mo, which feels like a bit of an extravagance but it’s a good variety of things that can go into lunch boxes as a bit of a surprise to keep things interesting (running total: $1001).

I put in a monthly Costco order for about $200 that includes:

• Coffee

• Goldfish crackers

• Apple sauce

• Granola bars

• Popcorn, chips, whatever for variety

• Boxed mac and cheese

Running total: $1201

Baking

Baking is my #1 money saver. It does take some time but I stick to things that require very little prep and can bake while I do work and/or laundry after the kids have gone to bed. I focus on making things that can go into lunches or be grabbed for breakfast on the go.

Some things I like to make:

1. Monkey Bread

2. Spinach and cream cheese puff pastry wheels

3. Lemon cream cheese puff pastry tarts

4. Bread (just regular…..bread)

5. Blueberry or other muffins

6. Cinnamon rolls

Gardening

I never considered myself a gardener, but having a small garden is super rewarding, not just for the food it produces but for the positive impact on mental health. I love checking the garden every day, and harvesting stuff we managed to grow is very satisfying.

This is what we planted in April:

• Potatoes

• Kale

• Tomatoes

• Strawberries

• Peppers

• Watermelon

The tomatoes and potatoes, as would be expected, flourished and we’ve harvested a ton of them. I had to give away about half the tomatoes because despite us making a ton of salsa and using them every chance we got we simply couldn’t eat them all. Kale also has been very productive - we’ve had kale from the garden basically every week and we only have one plant. The strawberries, peppers, and watermelon have been a bit more fickle but I need more space for them, so next year I’m going to get a more spacious growing area for those. But each of these plants have produced something we’ve eaten this summer, and it’s been awesome.

This fall I want to plant zucchini even though I know it takes over everything and is way productive, because I like zucchini and it can be used in a lot of recipes.

The key to all of these is that they are pretty foolproof. I’m terrible at keeping plants alive and so far everything’s in good shape, so if I can do it I really think anyone can.

We also have citrus trees (lemon, lime, and orange) that were here before we moved in, and we use those every week also in recipes.

I don’t know how much money this has actually saved us, because there was a pretty significant investment in soil and some DIY fence supplies to keep bunnies out early on. At this point, I’m pretty sure we’ve at least broken even.

If you’ve got more tips I should try to further reduce my $ and time spent on groceries, please share!

-Patricia

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