Has everyone else noticed how food prices have been skyrocketing in the last few months?  I’m very concerned for the general public, knowing that many of those who were already feeling stretched to the max won’t be able to stretch any further. 

To stay within the food budget of a year ago seems almost impossible without sacrificing quality or quantity, but I’ve found it doable by making discount grocery stores part of my regular shopping.  Discount grocery stores vary in terms of quality and pricing, but the general idea is they sell the overstocks or slightly damaged groceries that supermarkets aren’t allowed to sell.  Things like: the outer box rips but the inner box is intact, an expiration date that is almost here, packaging in a foreign language, or excess inventory that a store had to get rid of to make room for new inventory are all reasons that these perfectly good foods get passed on.   I couldn’t find a single one in my state, but I kept searching, knowing there had to be something relatively near by, and over time have found several of them in a neighboring state.  Yes, I do have to drive  over 1.5 hours to get there, but I only do it every 6 – 8 weeks, and the savings more than justify the time and gas spent. 

To give you a sense of what I was able to buy for the month, here’s a list of what I bought today, from several stores.  You can see that some of the prices are super, and some are just okay, but it made for a very full van coming home:

– 57 quarts of plain yogurt (organic) – 50 cents each

– 100 lb potatoes – $24

– 40 lb yams – $13.50

– 30 lb onions – $6

– 50 lb apples – $15

– 20 lb bananas – .19 lb

– 30 lb rolled oats – .59 lb

– 15 lb quick oats – .59 lb

– approx 25 lb beans – .29 lb

– 34 dozen eggs – bought 28 dozen for 1.49, found them for a bit less at the next store

– 30 lb ricotta cheese – 3 lb container each 1.99

– 3 lb. whipped cream cheese – 8 oz container each .50

– 12 lb butter – 1.49 lb

– 10 lb sugar (because I didn’t know if I’d be able to get sucanat) – 1.99/5 lb

– 25 lb raw sugar (this was as close to sucanat as I could find) – .79 lb

– 12 lb honey – $30

– 4 lb baking yeast – 3.25 ea 2 lb package

– 25 lg. cans of tomato products (sauce, paste, diced, whole/peeled) – 3/$1

– 20 cans green beans – .29 ea

– 4 lb baby carrots (for lunching on while out shopping) – .99 ea, 5 lb carrots – 1.99

– 8 lb frozen mixed veg – 2.25 for 2 lb bag

– 5 lb frozen corn – 2.99 for 2.5 lb bag

– 6 boxes herbal tea – .99 ea

Then there were all the odds and ends – some packaged cocoa and instant oatmeal for our camping trip next week, orange juice concentrate, spices, pie filling, coconut milk, ketchup, baking soda, vaccum packed salmon (for my lunch while we were out today) etc.  Some of these things were regular prices, nothing to get excited about, but most of them were significantly less than the average grocery.  All of this came to a total of $345, and leaves me with $170 for the rest of the month.  That will be enough to buy a case of chicken, and make two trips to the veggie store on alternating weeks to keep us supplied.  I also need to pick up a 20 lb. bag of brown rice; I’m out and forgot to get some today. 

I also bought 16 gallons of raw milk, and 50 lb of hard white wheat (talk about pricey 🙁 ), for which I budget an extra $25 a month (I spend $515 monthly for regular groceries, and the extra $25 brings the monthly total to $540).  I realized that wheat prices were jumping fast about six months ago, well before the media was covering it- it’s very obvious when you buy in bulk the way I do.  I spoke to those doing the ordering for the couple of places I bought the wheat to understand what was going and leading to the price increases, which was my first inkling that this isn’t a short term situation.  (The big supermarkets were artificially holding down prices for a while, so the general public didn’t start to feel it until recently.)  A year ago, when I first started buying wheat berries, a 50 pound bag of wheat was $12.  Several months ago, it was up to $18, and today, it was $30.  That is serious inflation.  Fortunately for me, I decided to limit the kids’ gluten intake for health reasons, which means that I use much less flour than I did previously, so it doesn’t impact me as much as it would have.  Then again, all the other grains that I buy instead are even more expensive than wheat, so maybe it’s not so fortunate, after all! 

When I shop, I purposely buy more than what I’ll need for the month.  I don’t know what will be on sale next month, and I stock up when the prices are right.  So it may look like we have lots less variety than we do, because I don’t buy every ingredient I need each month.  Remember my pantry principle post?  I’m always buying to fill my pantry, and then my menus are based on what I have.  For example, I bought over 40 pounds of buckwheat last month, so I still have plenty of that on hand;  I also got 15 pounds of sliced almonds when they were on sale for 1.49 a pound (at the same discount store today, they were 4.59 lb), and have plenty of that left.  So I wouldn’t need to buy more of those things.

I often hesitate to share the specifics of what I do, because I’ve had the experience of someone implying that I was lying about what I spend, or just negating the value of anything I’ve said by telling me, “We don’t have prices like that around here.”  To which my response is, we don’t have prices like that around here either.  Don’t assume I’m so lucky to live in a cheap state.  I’m not, and I don’t.  You have to look for good deals, and know prices so well that when you see something, you can snap it up right away when you have the opportunity.  But just because you have to look beyond your average supermarket (where I also often get great deals) doesn’t mean that the deals can’t be found!  I spend half of what a frugal similarly sized family spends (and a 1/4 of what the unfrugal spend :)) because of the various strategies that I use, not by walking into a supermarket and buying what strikes my fancy that day. 

You probably also noticed that I don’t buy lots of processed foods.  I buy ingredients, not prepared food, and cook our meals from scratch.  Discount stores are filled mostly with foods I wouldn’t eat even if they were free, because they are so unhealthy. 

Hope some of this long post gives you some hope for getting your food costs under control!

Avivah