10 great money saving grocery tips

I cook healthy. yes. I cook yummy food, yes. But I am horrible at doing those things AND not spending our retirement on our meal of the day, a la mode.

A few of my closest friends in town, who also eat like we do but do so for 1/3 of our cost have inspired me to try to improve this. Now, they don't have the dairy, wheat or organic restrictions on their diets which alone will create havoc on the bottom line, but they do have 3 children and both families spend about $400/month on food.

My friend in the valley is a master at couponing - so much so that she does talks, leads seminars, and has this blog. I read it and truly don't get it! I am horrible at detail management so this blows my mind - but many of you are gifted here so her tips will help you! It works - she feeds her family of 6 for CHEAP!! check it out: http://momsequipped.blogspot.com/

Anyway, here's what I did. We spend $800 to $1200 on food. Now granted, since we started eating clean, we don't spend money on doctors. So, in the end, we spend less then we used to on cheap food and doctors/drugs/supplements...but, I still sought to improve this as I know I can do better then $1200! Hubby is losing money this year and next year at work, so we really don't have a choice and I enjoy the challenge.

1. I stopped creating my meals from recipes. I used to sit down with my favorite recipe books and sketch out a month of recipes and create my shopping lists this way. It forced me to purchase lots of extra food to create gourmet type entres. No more!
2. I pull out $600 in cash and keep it in an envelope and that's how much money we get for groceries, period. When it runs out, we call you and come over for dinner. :)
3. I create my meals by looking in our freezer and pantry and seeing what meat, beans, and grains we have to create an entre around. I then go online to sites like www.cooks.com and do a search with that ingredient. I pick the healthiest recipe with the fewest exotic ingredients that contains the most amount of ingredients that we already have and print it out.
   
4. We purchase our dairy and eggs from our friends - I make our cheese and yogurt from the raw milk and the eggs are so rich in flavor and nutrients, we tend to need less of them to feel satisfied. By not having to go to a store to buy milk, cheese, yogurt and eggs I have avoided that easy temptation to throw spontaneous purchases into the cart.
   
5. We stopped buying cereal and make granola each week from whatever we have around: I currently have 5 pound bags of wheat germ, ground flax meal, oat bran, and coconut that all add depth of flavor and nutrition to the organic oats, walnuts, almonds, raisins, dried apricots, dried mangoes, and sunflower seeds.
6. I hit the Canned Food Outlet now first - and then supplement with the more expensive Fred Meyer and Costco store second. Canned Food has surprised me with a nice selection of organic and clean foods. But, you do have to be careful here.
7. I don't go to Costco as much, if at all these days. I thought it saved us money, but really we end up just buying more of what we only "kind of" needed. Some things we need to get from there but I sat down with the husband and outlined exactly what we need from there and disciplined myself to not throw other random things in the cart. Those random things at Costco add up super quick as it's large quantities which means $10 to $20 each - that's a lot to spontaneously spend I have realized.
8. Eat meat once in awhile, not weekly. We are getting really creative with all kinds of beans.
   
9. Eat rice or potatoes almost every dinner.
   
10. We buy in bulk from Azure Standard, as always. Cheaper then any store, fresh, with every item offered in organic as well.
    

It worked!! April we actually spent $530!! And that included a few household cleaning supplies that I never included in my $1200 food months.

Share your tips in the comments! I could use all the help I can get and I am sure everyone else can too in these penny pinching times

Improve your Digestion Tonic made with Whey

Cabbage is an amazing food. I plan to feature different foods on this blog periodically, and begin with the mighty Cabbage.

Cabbage is an unusually rich source of vital nutrients, particularly vitamin C and carotenoids. Vitamin C is required by the body for the integrity of blood vessels, connective tissue, bones and every essential biochemical activity including the immune system function.

Cabbage juice is highly valued as a folk remedy. Its healing powers may be related to its high sulphur and chlorine content, which in combination is said to exert a powerful cleansing action upon the mucous membranes of the intestinal tract. Cabbage juice has been used in the treatment of arthritis, gastrointestinal ulceration, skin disorders and obesity. "Cabbage water for the complexion" is a truism among the Irish.

Even better than plain cabbage juice is the juice of fermented cabbage, with its content of lactic acid and enzymes. German folk wisdom values both cabbage juice and cucumber pickle juice for digestive disorders, infectious illnesses and many other complaints.

- Nourishing Traditions Cookbook, by Sally Fallon , p. 614.

Cabbage Juice Tonic
makes 2 quarts

1/4 organic green cabbage
1 T sea salt
1/4 Cup whey
filtered water

This should be taken in small amounts throughout the day to improve intestinal flora.

Shred the cabbage finely with a stainless steel knife and pound briefly with a meat hammer or a wooden pounder. Place in a 2-quart jug with salt, whey, and enough water to fill the container. Cover tightly and leave at room temp for 2 days before transferring to refrigerator.

Add 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper to 4 ounces cabbage juice tonic for a gargle and sore throat remedy.

These crazy new things really do help! Rolaids, Tums, cough meds, etc. are toxic for your liver, don't truly get you better, and make it easier for the problem to surface again. Cabbage juice actually has healing properties!

Try using God's ingredients and be amazed!

What do do with the Whey leftover after making your own cheese!

Whey is amazing. It has a lot of minerals (especially coming from raw milk). One Tablespoon of whey in a little water will help digestion. It is a remedy that will keep your muscles young. It will keep your joints movable and ligaments elastic. With stomach ailments, take 1 T whey three times daily to feed the stomach glands and help them to work well again.

- From Hanna Kroeger Ageless Remedies from Mother's Kitchen

Using Cheese Whey as a beverage in human nutrition, especially for therapeutic purposes, can be traced back to the ancient Greeks. Hippocrates, in 460 B.C., prescribed whey for an assortment of human ailments. In the Middle Ages, whey was recommended by many doctors for varied diseases; and by the mid 19th century, whey cures reached a high point with the establishment of over 400 whey houses in Western Europe. As late as the 1040's, in spas in Central Europe, dyspepsia, uremia, arthritis, gout, liver diseases, anemia and even tuberculosis were treated with the ingestion of up to 1500 grams of whey per day.

- V.H. Holsinger Whey Beverages: A Review

Whey Drink Recipe

1/2 C whey
1/2 C filtered water
juice of 1 lemon

Mix all ingredients and drink together.

Coming in 2 days: a special tonic recipe using whey for arthritis, gastrointestinal ulceration, skin disorders, and obesity. High in Vitamin C and carotenoids too.

Stuff!!! Is it all necessary?

Imbedded in my long post a few days ago was this link to the movie about stuff that I really love. I wanted to repost it in a shorter post so that it doesn't get lost in the many of words of my last post!

Today Wildman Sprout's best friend's mama and I were talking and she was wondering if we like to hike (hee hee!!)...it lead to a quick agreement that we aren't ever planning on supplying Wiis or X-boxes for our boys which means we are going to need to be intentional about what we do when friends come over. When the family is heading out for a weekend backpacking trip or a day hike or a XC ski, we agreed that we need to stop for a second and include each other. It's probably easier to have the electronic toys, but with a little more intentional practice, I think we can happily avoid this. We'll see.

I know that today as I cleaned our Sprout's rooms, I realized that they don't have a single battery powered toy. It's not a conscious decision - it's just that every time they load up boxes to send to GoodWill, they put those battery powered toys in there but keep all the markers, craft supplies, Legos, Kitchen supplies, Tinker Toys, and building blocks. Check out Magic Cabin for a pluthera of toys for kids that believe in "Kid powered toys" not Battery Powered Toys. (Their mission has been guided by the simple notion that children's lives are enriched by ample time for open-ended, creative, imaginative play. They believe in good-old-fashioned make believe and in children's innate need to interact with simple, natural toys and crafts.) The toys that sing to my sprouts and blink at them don't let them stay creative and ultimately, they quickly lose their interest. The toys that allow for open-ended, limitless possibilities like a pile of Legos or building blocks they never grow tired of.

I wanted to point it out again!! Head on over to http://www.storyofstuff.com/ to watch a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

Let me know your thoughts as you battle the issue of stuff!! Let's brainstorm ideas of things to have around the house that could foster creativity, keep the kid's interested, and avoid the marketing traps (kids are the highest targeted niches in marketing. Boardrooms are full of people figuring out ways to get our kids to think they will not be happy without "It" and our kids are believing the billionaire tycoons.)

All ideas submitted by Thursday, Oct 2nd (I'd love a list of great website resources too in this vain) will be posted on Friday, Oct 3rd with your blog address. Great way to get more readers noticing your site!!

My ideas:

• Our garage has a treadmill in it for rainy days. The kids like to run on that for fun.
• Our garage has a pretty high end foosball table in it - our family routinely has foosball tournaments
• Craigslist - find cheap deals on foosball, pingpong, and pool tables
• Dart boards
• Croquet, volleyball, and badminton for the backyard
• B-Ball hoop for the front yard
• BIKES!!! Scooters!! Rollerblades and skateboards, oh my!!
• Board games
• Puppets
• Wooden Blocks, Legos, Tinker Toys, Marble maze construction sets
• Doll houses/farm animals
• Kitchen sets/tool sets
• Crafts - keep that craft bucket packed!!
• Puzzles
• Marbles, Jacks, Pick up sticks
• http://www.magiccabin.com/

America We are going to be fine! Relax (but live your Wage)

Dear friends gave us the best Christmas gift in 2006 - the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace CDs - which preach (in a very humorous and Godly way) - LIVE YOUR WAGE!!! Check out his website for inspiring testimonials of folks who did it - and how they did it - They got themselves completely out of debt (including the mortgage). Real folks like us taking on the challenge to live within their means. I love it!

For the Oregonians reading this, He will be doing a live event in Portland, OR at the Colliseum - He's extremely entertaining - teaching Godly principals to our money management and some of the many errors in our suppositions. So if you are reading this thinking, "There is no way! I can't even begin to make this a goal. This is crazy thinking!" you might benefit from peaking at his website and maybe going to a Financial Peace University Class or this Live Event in Portland so that you can see the benefits to it and the "how" behind it and the Godly reasons behind the "why" of it all.

With the insights he taught us, we aggresively dove in to pay off our truck, car, thousands of dollars of medical expenses, and trailer payments. In one school year, we pulled $10,000 from our budget and accomplished this goal by simply being intentional with each dollar we spent.

Now, we are aggressively hitting our mortgage. We are in our early 30s but our goal is to own (not OWE ON) our house in 5 to 7 years. We have a real plan for this (which mainly centers around Simplicity) to truly accomplish this. Our house is on the market - if it sells,we plan to go smaller and simpler as that is truly what we can afford (although lenders are willing to lend us over $300K, but they don't really care how stressed that would make us) - if it doesn't sell, we are going to up payments so that in about 5 to 7 years, we own it. Dave Ramsey's perspective was hard to swallow at first - he is strong about his beliefs, but backs them up with God's word. The current crisis is because broke people tried to buy too much. (says Ramsey: "Greedy banks financing homes to broke people. It all seemed to work okay in their minds when the economy was booming, but when the economy slowed a little bit broke people quit paying on their subprime mortgages. DUH. No wonder they went out of business. Stupid decisions." )

We, in America, have been duped into this 30 year mortgage propaganda - truly, our new realization is this: if we have to spread payments out over 30 years to own this house then we are buying OVER our Wage and this is not being good stewards of our cash.

What I seek to do on this blog is touch on all areas of life that help us be balanced - spirit, mind, andbody - and finances fit right smack in the middle of all of this.

We did not take out an equity loan or refinance our house to pay off debt (that is NOT paying off the debt - What that is is taking the 5 year loan on the car out to 30 years inside of a mortgage payment) - what we did and continue to do is seek Simplicity, buy less, buy local, and live our Wage. It is so freeing to be down to simply a mortgage payment and I can't even imagine how free it will feel to be able to live without a mortgage or rent payment.

• God can use us so much more when we aren't strapped to working non-stop just to pay that bill, but are freed up to do things like A. long-term missions, B. more time with our family (joy joy joy!!), or C. Give more.

• Another reason we did not take out an equity loan or refinance our house to pay off our debts is that this practice does not work on the fundamental issue - overspending. It doesn't help us redirect our budget so that we can make our expenses fit within our (small) teacher's salary! By working to pay off loans, we taught ourselves how to live our wage, live within our budget, and be empowered by spending habits that lead to financial freedom, not controlled by debt.
  
  It requires a divorce from our incessant craving of "stuff". (Head on over to http://www.storyofstuff.com/ to watch a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.)
  
  Check out http://www.daveramsey.com/ for tips on saving on groceries, buying a car (cash!!), and cell phone hidden expenses you can avoid.
  
  

Dave's Thoughts About the Economy

Over the past month, we’ve witnessed the largest bankruptcy in history, the stock market dropping like a rock, and the talking heads on TV freaking out that the world is coming to an end. I’m here to tell you the truth—we’re going to make it. We’re going to be fine. Take a chill pill.
This month I’ve compiled some of the most-asked questions I’ve gotten recently from you:

Are we okay, Dave?
Definitely. Remember Enron and WorldCom in the recent years? We survived that. But much worse than all this was the financial crisis of the ‘80s – S&L collapse and 1,000 bank failures in 2 years. We’re nowhere near this type of thing; that was probably 50 to 100 times worse than all of this.

What does all of this come back to?
Greedy banks financing homes to broke people. It all seemed to work okay in their minds when the economy was booming, but when the economy slowed a little bit broke people quit paying on their subprime mortgages. DUH. No wonder they went out of business. Stupid decisions.
Is there anything we can do to fix this bailout mess?
YES! Here's a quick summary: Companies that had billions in subprime loans were feeling the effects of their stupid decision to make those loans in the first place, and practically gave them away for pennies on the dollar. But since no one wants these loans, and they've had to mark them down to market value, it has frozen the market. If we temporarily change the rule that forces companies to do that, that will free the market up.
This is an absolutely huge deal, and it involves everyone getting in touch with their congressperson before we spend hundreds of billions of dollars that we don't need to! Learn more

Will the collapse of businesses and banks affect me?
No, not unless you work there. Thousands of stock brokers on Wall Street have lost their jobs in the past few weeks, but that happens in other industries across the country in good and bad times. This time it just happened in NYC where all the national news media is so they made a big deal of it.

Should I sell my US stocks to buy gold and foreign stocks?
Absolutely not! Why would you think foreign stocks are any better than US stocks? Again, diversify your money in good growth stock mutual funds instead.

What practical lessons should small business owners learn from these bank difficulties?
When you have no cash, you freakin’ go broke. You must keep some cash on hand, no matter what kind of business you have. Give yourself some wiggle room where you can take a hit and still be standing.

Remain calm, America. We’re in a slow time, but just pay your bills and you’re going to be fine.