Eating on a budget

Eating on a budget can seem difficult if you have never done this before, but it really isn't difficult. There are many different ways to do this too, so you have options on how you want to make this work for you and your family. One of the ways that many ladies are reducing their food budget is by using coupons and shopping sales. I have heard of some absolutely incredible deals this way. Since I don't do this, I won't cover that here, but you can do a search and find more information than you can possible read over the weekend. I don't save this way, mostly because I don't buy foods that you can use coupons for. There might be a few here or there, but not enough for me to spend my time on. I try not to buy prepackaged foods and those are where you find most coupons. When was the last time you saw a coupon for bulk dried beans or bulk whole wheat flour? I do have some coupons for Hodgson Mill products that I contacted them directly for, which is something that anyone can do. If you use a product and like it, see if the company will send you coupons for what you do buy. I have heard of many people doing this with success.
One of the main things I do that helps us feed our family of 7 for less than 350 a month is to shop at the cheapest stores around. For our area those 2 are Aldi and Save-a-Lot. We will be hitting both of those this weekend. I don't know if our food budget will have to increase since I noticed that prices had gone up on many products at Aldi, I guess I will have to see this weekend. I suggest that you find out what the cheapest stores are in your area and use them.
Something else that I do that helps are food budget stay low is that I don't use meat as the main attraction very often. A roast chicken can be served for one meal, the rest of the chicken stripped and put into some sort of casserole for another meal and then the carcass used for a soup for another meal. We use ground meat for a lot of our meals and not roasts or steaks. If there is a good sale on roast, we will have a roast with lots of veggies and rolls for a meal. I make sure that there is some meat leftover so we can have it in a gravy served over potatoes, pasta, or some sort of bread. I do the same with chili and various other meals. I try to find ways to make things stretch without skimping.
I will be posting a 2 week menu later and you will be able to see the kinds of foods that we eat that are delicious, relatively healthy and very budget friendly.