Peek into my Dining Room

Whenever I run across a book or magazine article that claims to tell me how to save money, I take notice. However, after decades of earning and spending, I find that I almost never see anything new. The tips and advice are generally the same in every book or article. Some are better than others; my all-time favorite is The Complete Tightwad Gazette, and I think everyone should read it, although I do think it's time for someone to create an updated version.

Anyway, I'm thinking about this because most of the tips in these books are old hat for me, not because I'm so smart, but because I've been living frugal for a long time and they have just become habits. So, when someone asks me "How do you manage a grocery budget of $400?"
I have to stop and think about it. My initial reaction is "I just do it." But, I've realized that's not very helpful advice for someone who has never tried to live within such a strict budget before.

First, let me say that everyone's situation is different and where your family needs to cut back is unique. But, I'm going to offer another peek into my cooking habits. See more articles on Frugal Living here.

A day in my dining room:

First, I put a whole ham in my crockpot with water and seasonings. This particular ham was a gift, but if I had bought it, I would have paid about $1.50 per pound (this was a bone-in ham). It was ten pounds (so $15) and will be the meat for three meals.

Then, breakfast: Oatmeal costs $1.99 for 30 servings. That's 6.7 cents per serving. Plus, toppings (we like brown sugar, honey, maple syrup, milk, etc. - not all at once, of course) So, I add about 10cents per serving for toppings that children choose. That means I have a cost of
  17 cents X 8 eaters = $1.36 for breakfast

Snack: Sliced apples (I usually put a fruit or veggie out as a snack in the morning while we do our schoolwork) I don't currently have a great source for produce as we recently moved and I haven't found all the great shopping yet, so I paid $4 for 12 apples in a bag. That's 3 apples for $1
Total Cost of Snack = $1

Lunch: PB&J sandwiches. 16oz loaves of bread are 50cents at the KwikTrip gas station. This means 6cents for bread. I pay $1.79 for 18 oz of peanut butter and about 1.5 times that for jelly. So, my cost for these sandwiches is 6cents for bread, 10cents for peanut butter, and 15cents for jelly (each sandwich).
 That's 31cents per sandwich X 8eaters = $2.48

Dinner: Back to the ham in the crockpot. I've got $5 just in meat, and although this was a gift, I am calculating it into the cost of the meal. We made Augratin potatoes - I wish I could say that I bought bagged potatoes and made this from scratch, but even this frugal mama needs to be lazy sometimes. I bought these at Big Lots (items and prices vary at this store, but the one near us does 20% off your entire purchase sales periodically). I got my potatoes at $3.50 for 6 family size boxes - five servings per box (-20% of course), so $2.70 for 6 boxes, 45cents per box X 2 boxes for dinner, plus 50cents worth of butter and 20cents worth of milk. I also served a salad made of Iceberg, Romaine, Spinach greens which makes a dinners' worth of salad for about $1, plus $1 worth of salad dressing (The dollar store is a good place to get this).
So, I've got $5 worth of meat, $1.70 in potatoes, and $2 for salad.
Dinner costs $8.70

We generally drink water throughout the day, but we also go through about one gallon of milk per day. The local KwikTrip has milk for $2.98 a gallon. So, altogether my grocery costs for today's meals would be:
$16.52 for the whole day, but because the ham was a gift, 
my actual costs are $11.52.

This day is a little over budget, but consider what I will do tomorrow with the food I made today. We made two boxes of potatoes, but only ate half of it. So, the leftover potatoes were mixed with about 2lbs of ham (shredded) to make a casserole for tomorrow. I shredded some ham and put it in a freezer bag to add to another meal in the future, and threw some scraps back into the crock pot with the juices, added water and some potatoes which will cook over night and we will eat the soup tomorrow when we get home from church. This way, tomorrow's cost will be well under budget.