Spending to save.

[wrekendyke]

There are some foods which I have to resist as I am on a limited budget. Lately however I have decided to change that by spending on big items which will save me in the long run. For example, gammon steaks come much cheaper if I buy a whole gammon or ham joint and then slice it up. Recently I bought a gammon for £4.50p BP, about $11 I believe, at my local supermarket and I was able to get nine steaks out of it. The comparable sized steaks all packaged up were £2 for two, a decent saving. They all went into the freezer. On the same shopping trip I bought four Sea Bass which were on a special offer, (learn how to fillet) and again the freezer took them. Also being sold off cheaply was a roll of puff pastry which came in handy to make a chicken and vegetable pie with left overs with the rest of the pastry being cut up into useful sizes and frozen for future leftover ideas. We also bought some cheap stewing beef which was cooked in the slow cooker with beef heart to bulk it out, (heart is much cheaper and tastes lovely) and again portioned out and frozen, giving us the better part of a month's dinners for less than £30. A little over $47 I think. There is now only my wife and I at home and as we are not no longer big eaters we can make our food go much further Find the best times for buying food being sold off cheaply and use some clever thinking for meals. You can eat well at low cost. Here in Britain there are numerous charity shops where goods no longer needed are donated to a variety of charities. I have four slow cookers, two small and two large three of which were bought at such shops at a fraction of the price, a steamer and a bench to oven which reduces the need for heating up the large oven also bought very cheaply at the same shops. I have kitted out my kitchen with a number items which reduce the cost of cooking.

Happy shopping.

[duonyte]

So long as you are disciplined to portion larger cuts or packages and get them properly frozen or stored, then you are right, you can save quite a bit of money this way. It's also important to keep track f what you have and to use it timely, before it goes bad.

And I often check charity shops, etc., for bargains of various sorts.

[Krislady]

Processing and freezing my own cuts of meats saves me tons of money! I try to set aside money from the grocery budget every to have on hand for when those large items go on sale - if I stash away $20 every couple of weeks, then, when, say, the butcher shop has whole beef loins on sale, I can spend $50, cut it up myself (or, depending on the butcher shop, even have them cut it up!) and end up with far more meat, and better quality, than spending the same amount on smaller packages in the supermarkets.

I also break down my own chicken breasts - I could do whole birds, but I usually roast them, and when just the breasts are on sale, they're the same price per pound as the whole bone-in breasts anyway. I take the bones and skin off, separate the tenders, and trim the breasts to a reasonable portion size, and I usually end up with about a dozen meals worth of chicken for about $10, plus makings for chicken stock.

[wrekendyke]

Re-portion control. For two long I suffered the problem of 'eyes bigger than belly' but as my belly grew to be far bigger than the head in which my eyes lived it is now important to be , as you say, 'disciplined'. As far as far as the important point of keeping track of what is in the freezer, my freezer has become a large part of my larder and everything is used within the month and so the possibility of eating something very old is non existent. But you are correct. Be disciplined..

[wrekendyke]

Here in Britain over the past few weeks and as it has been revealed today over a large part of Europe, ready meals from big food companies has been shown to contain horsemeat rather than beef.('') The horsemeat itself is not a problem being actually more nutritious than beef and even perhaps tastier. No! The problem is the actual provenance and therefore the quality of the meat. It is thought that criminal activity is the cause and it is being looked at by the police. Buying ready made foods is so convenient, no cooking and all the preparation beforehand, just bung it into the microwave. But cooking is so simple when you put your mind to it. Many hours are spent in front of the television and just a few of those hours in the kitchen, (a new hobby), can provide the same and if enough is cooked and portioned out into the freezer, then again all you need to do is just bung it into the microwave and you can get back to watching the goggle box. If you start looking to buy good ingredients and using good recipes you are ensuring that you have safe food at all times.[/b]

[Panda Rose]

Have you tried a side of salmon from£10 at Tesco? I can usually get several portions out of that and freeze many for another day.
My DH laughs when anything is taken out of the freezer as it usually has a "special offer" or "half price" ticket on it.

[wrekendyke]

Hi Panda Rose. I have been traveling and so sorry for a late reply. I have not tried a whole salmon but I do make straight for the money off shelves in supermarkets and as long as you only pick up what you normally buy then great savings can be made particularly as at times when something is half price and and I can cut it in half. Hey presto! I can eat at a quarter of the cost. On a very recent visit to Barcelona I trekked around several food markets. With the plethora of hams hanging everywhere and the fish by the ton and all forms of fruit and veg packing so many stalls I enviously asked why we do not have that sort of thing here except in a very few places, such as London's Dalston Kingsland market, where I was a few days ago. There is a great deal of food in our supermarkets but very little variety of choice. But happy low cost shopping.

[Panda Rose]

I, too have just come back from Spain and I am so envious of their markets. There is a fresh fish department in every tiny little supermarket selling a variety of fish. Yesterday Sainsbury had a few sorry looking mackerel, and all unidentifiable fish OFF the bones so that a) you are not sure what it is and b) you dont know how fresh it is.
I loved the Sant Josep market in Barcelona. I wanted to buy everything!