Do you want to save money on groceries?
Of course you do! Who doesn't want to save a little bit of money? That's why we've got some great tips for you on this episode of the Grounded in Simplicity Podcast.
Follow these tips and you'll be able to save money feeding your family. You'll be able to afford the things you really need – without breaking the bank.
Listen to this episode now and start saving today!
Resources:
Living Without The Grocery Store
7 Ways to Save Money on Your Grocery Bill
Do you want to save money on groceries?
Of course you do! Who doesn't want to save a little bit of money? That's why we've got some great tips for you on this episode of the Grounded in Simplicity Podcast.
Follow these tips and you'll be able to save money feeding your family. You'll be able to afford the things you really need – without breaking the bank.
Listen to this episode now and start saving today!
Resources:
Living Without The Grocery Store
7 Ways to Save Money on Your Grocery Bill
Welcome back to the Grounded in Simplicity podcast. This is Bonnie from the modern housewife. And I am joined by my good friend Danielle from the rustic elk. And today we're talking about saving money in the kitchen, which I know is forefront of everyone's minds with the rising cost of food and everything in general. So with that happy thought in mind, how on earth do we spend less money?
Danielle McCoy:I don't think it's so much that you're spending less money. I think I think you're going to spend more than what you're used to, but you can certainly conserve some of it is a better way to put it. Yes. You know, like, even if you're eating the same way, and you are already frugal in the kitchen, you're probably spending more, you know, with better more frugal eating habits than you were sending because everything went up.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Well, that's true. Yeah, I mean, I will say, it has changed what we buy and like the way we eat. Because, you know, I like to try things from different cuisines and get special ingredients, and maybe some more exotic stuff. And I really can't afford to do that right now. And so we're, you know, we're going with the cheapest cuts of meat and kind of just going back to I don't know, I guess more of the foods that I was raised on, as I
Danielle McCoy:say 1980s foods.
Bonnie Von Dohre:I mean, I'm not I'm not doing you know, Hamburger Helper, but I mean, am I the only family that like, it seems like almost all of our meals were either Hamburger Helper or Tuna Helper. Yeah, and I'm not I'm not. I'm not doing Kool Aid. My kids can drink regular water with all of the sugar and stuff in it. Or, you know, we do like juice concentrate, frozen juice concentrate, but anyway. Yeah, it's we're doing to Noodle Casserole. I'm just doing the from scratch version and from scratch macaroni and cheese. I'm really like, not doing very many cheeseburgers, because that's so much hamburger. Like.
Danielle McCoy:Right, right.
Bonnie Von Dohre:So yeah, just just you know, seeing how far we can really like stretch the meat and stretch our food budget and making casseroles that you know could feed us for a couple of meals, things like that.
Danielle McCoy:Yeah, we had forgotten the Costco membership for the last several years and decided to go back to Costco even though it's super far because it's so much cheaper than a lot of things not everything I was trying to like price check to make sure that I'm actually getting a good deal on something at Costco versus you know, getting in the regular grocery but right since we spent a lot of time in Fort Wayne anyways, we went ahead and got the membership back and buy a lot of that stuff in bulk which helps
Bonnie Von Dohre:right Right yeah. Yeah, and I guess I don't know I don't want to get too far down the rabbit hole of saying what we do before we can start getting into Alright, so I want to just go ahead and start with point number one what are so what are some of the things that we can do to save money on groceries?
Danielle McCoy:What everyone is buying? So yeah.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah, I need to get into doing more of this be I mean, we there's some things that we buy larger quantities of, but one of my strategies for for saving money is going to be getting back to making more stuff myself. And so there's certain things especially grains, flour, rice, oatmeal, that we could certainly be buying in larger quantities to use and more recipes.
Danielle McCoy:We use like we bought carrots, carrots, you my six pounds of carrots, Costco, they're like three bucks here. Nice. And then I take them in freezer Mecanim we do the same things with potatoes by a big 15 pound bag at $7 by Costco and then you can you know queue them up and carry them or make them into French fries and freeze them or you know, whatever. Same thing with like green beans. We buy fresh green beans and almost all their produce is organic. So we just buy a bunch of produce mostly and then I bring it home and can freeze it turn it into something you know so that it doesn't go to waste and we don't have to use it you know, all right up front, but since our gardens not really productive yet. And we ran out of carrots. I bought it Hey, go.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah, I'm like, I'm just now Reclaiming my garden from my infection last year. And so, I've got stuff growing, but nothing's really producing yet. I do have a decent sized green pepper out there, but I need to support the plants somehow because the, the green peppers so heavy on this little pepper plant that it's like touching the ground.
Danielle McCoy:Get you a little, like thin bamboo sticks or dowel rods or whatever. Yeah, some of those clips like I've got my tomatoes on. That's how we clipped our peppers to keep them. Yeah, I've
Bonnie Von Dohre:got I've got bamboo poles and then I have the Velcro that you can cut a little strip and then velcro so I think I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna come out of that whole crew. But anyway, yeah. One thing I've thought about too is getting like a big thing a big thing.
Danielle McCoy:I think you've been to the south to La
Bonnie Von Dohre:by southern Ohio is showing anyway, but getting a big thing of dried beans and canning the dried beans. Yeah, we do that too. Because yeah, like we use. We use a lot of black beans, but also kidney beans for like chili and stuff like that. And well, we'll talk about like stretching meals here in a minute. But I found that like adding beans in is a really good way to stretch a meal and get more protein in instead of having to do as much meat. So
Danielle McCoy:except it's way too hot for chili.
Bonnie Von Dohre:It's never too hot for chili. It's too hot for
Danielle McCoy:show and we got the chili and
Bonnie Von Dohre:we were drinking hot chocolate last night.
Danielle McCoy:On you got the hot chocolate out today. She's no she pulled a mug out. And she's like, What are we gonna have this again? I'm like, what? It's below zero not 100
Bonnie Von Dohre:I mean, I drink hot coffee here round so I guess.
Danielle McCoy:Well, yeah, yeah, I drink hot coffee around but we don't do that. I just don't really Yeah, we occasionally I'll have like, a bowl of soup or something in the summer, but it's just heats the kitchen up too much. It's just not. Yeah, it's more of a cold cool weather type of thing.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Maybe if I did it in the crock pot. It wouldn't be quite so bad. Yeah,
Danielle McCoy:I do that. Like I just
Bonnie Von Dohre:like still. I just like the flavor, you know?
Danielle McCoy:Yeah, but I don't I don't know. I like to come in from a cold winter's day and warm up with a bowl of soup. I do not like to come in from 100 degree day and have hobbles.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Honestly, if I've been outside working in the garden, I just I don't eat I just come inside and like chug water and take a nap.
Danielle McCoy:Yeah, it's like I've been trying to think of meals for the surgery. And I'm like, some a bunch of people are like soup, and I'm like, it's too hot for that. I'm gonna Yeah.
Bonnie Von Dohre:I, um, ever since I had mono in high school, and I was on a strict diet of soup for a month and a half. I'm not a real big soup eater. Yeah, I mean, I'll, oh, I'll make it but all of my soups end up being more like a stew anyway, because I add so much other stuff and not enough liquid. But also my kids aren't real big on soup, like or they'll waste all the broth. So it's really it suits us better to have stuff that's a little bit thicker.
Danielle McCoy:You know, all my soups are pretty much tastier. We do like chicken gnocchi and chicken tortilla soup, which I mean, that and chili and potato soup that's never soupy. It's always right. Like, those are our top soups. And my chicken noodle is like chicken with noodles. And there's not a lot of broth.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Was like chicken and dumplings. Yeah. Yeah, that's the big one here is beef and barley soup. Oh, yeah. I always you know, it's like it's a nice soup consistency up until the point that I add the barley. And then the barley sucks up like all the liquid it is what it is. So yeah, there there are more options than just Costco. Obviously, Sam's Club, I had a Sam's Club membership and really didn't find a whole lot there that I wanted to buy. It seems like yeah, like they have a lot of it's a lot of prepackaged name brand stuff. Not a real great organic selection. So I'd say I do remember. It's been a long time since I've had a BJs membership. But I remember BJs having a decent organic selection.
Danielle McCoy:Yeah, we don't have those here. I have a few friends on the east coast to have them and they liked them. But
Bonnie Von Dohre:yeah, really good. So it's something you can check out. We had him in Ohio. And I mean, we have them here, but the closest one to me is like an hour away. So
Danielle McCoy:I don't I don't know if we have him here at all. I don't think we do. I'm not sure. Might be further east.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah. And then in terms of online as your standard is one that I know, a lot of homesteaders use, because like they have a lot of stuff that is organic, as well as like bulk grains. And, you know, things that people will typically stock up on. And then you found another one that you had mentioned.
Danielle McCoy:Yeah, it's called boxed.com. We've looked into it, we haven't actually done anything with it yet, but we considered it and then we ended up getting Costco memberships and I have to try to compare. I know there's no membership fee to use the box thing, and then they deliver it straight to your door. So
Bonnie Von Dohre:yeah, that would be a big incentive for me. Because with gas at $5 a gallon, I don't really feel like driving anywhere.
Danielle McCoy:I can't drive for six weeks, so
Bonnie Von Dohre:I need to like get my horse back in shape. I'm gonna start riding him to town. Yeah, I cannot see my horse standing tied in a parking lot for any period of time. But that's another story. Um, anyway, all right. So now next up, are you ready for the next point?
Danielle McCoy:Fire direct from the farmer.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah, we need to look into buying beef. I've been working on clearing out some space in the freezer, so that I can get like a quarter of a cow. But like with that big die off of beef in the wet out west, I don't know what that's going to do to beef prices. It sounds like auction prices are still decent here. But I'm sure it's just a matter of time for all trickles down.
Danielle McCoy:We bought a whole cow filled an entire freezer. We have deer meat still not a whole lot. We've eaten most of it where we both got a deer over the winter. We never own chickens and ducks and turkeys in the freezer and but we also bought a pic. My question to you is Bonnie, how does one budget for all this look fine, because I know our cow was close to $4,000 and that was cheap. And Harrison to even how much it would cost us now. A whole cow so Alas, this
Bonnie Von Dohre:was right, right? Um, I mean, I hate to say it most people I know will use their tax refund to do it. I'm sorry, unless you're self employed and you end up owing the IRS. But I mean ours our tax refund didn't go towards that it should have at least part of it. Um,
Danielle McCoy:but pay 10 grands.
Bonnie Von Dohre:So how much money are you setting aside for taxes this year? But no, I mean, really like it's one of those things where like the best time to start saving for it was a year ago, the second best time to start saving for it is now
Danielle McCoy:where I start mining is how do you set some aside when grocery prices are already where they're at? And they don't seem to be, you know, selling off any? So your budget already? I mean, like for us even without having to buy meat. Our grocery budget is close to double. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's not by me. So, you know, you know what I mean? Like, it's kind of hard to figure out the semantics of how you're going to save money when you're spending twice as much already. Well, you know, everything's going up except your paycheck. Right?
Bonnie Von Dohre:Right. Well, first of all, at least I like, at least around here. There are ways to buy from the farmer without having to spend $1,000. You know, I mean, especially like when it comes to the produce, we can really buy in one day we want when it comes to the meat, even if you can't buy a smaller quantity for the farmer, you can find like a friend or family member who's also looking for some and split whatever you get with them. So you're still getting that like discounted per pound price. But maybe now instead of 300 pounds of meat. You split it with two other people and now you're only paying for 100 pounds of meat or your you know, whatever. Right? I'd say that's probably the easiest. Otherwise, maybe you can find some farmers that are just selling, you know, retail cuts. It really depends on the laws in your state and like the permitting requirements and licensing requirements and stuff like that, because I know here in Florida the only way you can buy like the individual cuts of meat from the farmer whereas if they are using a USDA butcher, which then you're butchering costs are a lot higher. But otherwise, the way around it for a lot of farmers is they will use a custom Butcher, who is not USDA certified. But what you are doing is you are paying the farmer for the animal. And then you're and then or shop for the slaughter. Right? And then you are and then the farmer is doing you that convenience of taking your animal to the butcher. Right. And then you are picking up from the butcher and you're paying the butcher directly.
Danielle McCoy:Right. So our large animals are pretty much the same here in Indiana, you can't sell individual cuts of meat unless you're going through a USDA certified facility. But chicken and rabbit can be sold here. But anybody can I can sell it here. Yeah, I don't know. Rabbit has to be frozen
Bonnie Von Dohre:chicken. Yeah, I think I think rabbit still has to go through a USDA processing here. And there's only like one processor in the whole state. And I don't know if they do small quantities. Otherwise, there is a special license we can get to sell the whole process poultry.
Danielle McCoy:Which we can we can sell so many chickens per year.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah, well,
Danielle McCoy:he says that. But
Bonnie Von Dohre:yeah, and even with the limited poultry license, we're limited on how much we can sell per year. Right. And admittedly, like if you're not doing a decent quantity of processed chicken, the paying for the permit is kind of process cost prohibitive for most people, because it's like $125 a year, and you actually have to have a health inspector comes out. And you don't have to have like a certified commercial kitchen or anything like that. But they just want to know what your process is, and that you like that you've thought through your process. And like kind of how you're going to keep everything clean, and, and everything. But if we're selling
Danielle McCoy:cost prohibitive to raise small quantities of meat birds anyways, and try to sell them for resale. Because unless you're charging, you know, like $30 A bird, which most people aren't gonna be willing to pay? Well, you're gonna be making a lot of money off of them. Here,
Bonnie Von Dohre:they're actually willing to pay it. So I would say, you'd be surprised what people are willing to pay for?
Danielle McCoy:It, I'd be super surprised if somebody pay that kind of money here.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah, I mean, here like, well, and again, you know, we have like, we have Whole Foods and fresh market and like, you know, the, the organic grocery stores. And so it's your kind of marketing to those types of people that are, are willing to, you know, go to go to Whole Foods and pay that price anyway. And they understand that it is about more than just the cost of the chicken, it is about like they are supporting their local agriculture, they are getting a bird that was raised humanely. And it's kind of like they're voting with their dollars kind of thing. But yeah, I know, I get it like far and even in the town that I'm in. We're far enough removed from the city, that it is still kind of farm country here. And so you get people that are less willing to pay those prices, because like they just they don't see the benefit. Right. But I mean, same thing, like they don't want to pay for eggs either. And then it drives me nuts, because we've got people who aren't even licensed to be selling eggs, because of course, you're the same, the same license that allows us to sell process poultry, is also what allows us to sell eggs. And so you've got people that don't have the permit. But because we're far enough out, we're not really monitored. Right. And so they're selling eggs for $2 a dozen. And really, it's like, it's not even paying their feed bill. Yeah, they don't know where they don't even care about recouping their feed costs. They're just want to get rid of extra eggs.
Danielle McCoy:That's how it is here. I mean, we don't have a license or anything, but that's what everybody does. They just and I'm like, so I can buy your eggs cheaper than I bought the store now because now the store is like 319 for a dozen here. Right? Like, and now I can't sell my eggs for that because I'm not going to give them away.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Right? And yeah, it's because that yeah, you end up taking a loss if you're actually selling them for that not to mention, okay, even if you're making enough money to buy that bag of feed for that week, what about all those months in the year when your birds aren't laying and you're still feeding them? Right? So it's like you're, it's what you're doing is not sustainable. But you don't care cuz you have another source of income. Whereas if you've got someone who is using this as a source of income, now they're not able to, you know, actually sustain their business right. Now, there's, you know, there's marketing that can Go into that and you end up building up customer loyalty. Because when you are a sustainable business, and people come to know that they can rely on you for eggs, and it's not just, you know, on your whim, then you end up, you know, having customers that are willing to pay that. But sometimes it can be an uphill battle. Most of the time, it can be an uphill battle. So please support your farmers who are actually trying to run self sufficient businesses.
Danielle McCoy:And don't you know, I think a lot of times, though, it is cheaper to buy from your farmer, especially when you're talking about produce, because you're buying it in season. So, right.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah, I mean, yeah, like, we have one farm that we buy sweet corn from, and they they only have sweet corn two times a year. They they plant their fields for like a two or three week window. And then they sell out as like, as soon as the during that two week window that will be closed on certain days, if they run out of corn, and the rest of the corn is not ready to harvest. But then once they've sold everything, they have their they're done, they closed back up until the next week, Warren season rolls around, right. So yeah, it stinks that I can't just get sweet corn whenever I want. But there's their corn tastes a whole lot better than stuff in the grocery store. Because it is just picked and it's fresh. And the stuff that is at the grocery store has like been traveling and is half dried out. It has no flavor. But also it's like the stuff from the farm is half the price per year, as the grocery store is.
Danielle McCoy:Yeah, we didn't add that as a point. But I'm eating and season is definitely
Bonnie Von Dohre:another Yeah, well and I get like it's a lot though. If you're buying from the farmer you're kind of forced to buy and season right. But
Danielle McCoy:I think we've become you know, complacent to the idea that food has seasons all food, you know, whether it be eggs, or even me, but especially produce because you know, we expect fresh tomatoes, on our store shelves, you know, anytime a year where it's not really the case and you sacrifice a lot of quality by having the the crummy cardboard tomatoes that don't even have a flavor like I don't even understand why people buy Oh, but anyway. I guess right on their food because they don't really taste.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah. I guess I I usually only buy the the tomato on the vine. And I don't know why. But it has at least some flavor. Yeah, but I still I still prefer the ones I grow myself. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, I've run into the same problem with apples. And then really stinky thing is we can't grow a lot of apples here in Florida. So I'm kind of having to rely on them being imported and getting them from the grocery store. But like, there's certain varieties I just won't buy anymore, because I know they're just they're not going to have any flavor. They're going to be mealy. And we're not going to eat them.
Danielle McCoy:Right.
Bonnie Von Dohre:So I don't know. It's like they've just bred the crap out of them.
Danielle McCoy:Are we ready for the next one?
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah, I think so.
Danielle McCoy:Stretching meals and meats. Yes.
Bonnie Von Dohre:So we've been doing this a lot lately. And something that a friend of mine pointed out was the shrinkage that's going on with prepackaged foods to reflation. Yeah, yeah, sure inflation. Because she was commenting on how she got smoked sausage. And, you know, it used to be a one pound, you would get a one pound package of smoked sausage. And now it's like 14 ounces. We're gonna might even or 12 ounces. Yeah, like it might even be taken the same way. Yeah. And, and I made jumble i this last week, and we ran into this problem where Yeah, it was less than a pound of smoked sausage. And so we had to add an extra like diced tomatoes to kind of stretch it a bit. Right. And then like I made spaghetti and typically we'll do a pound of hamburger to a jar of tomato or jar spaghetti sauce. And instead I decided I did a pound of hamburger to two jars of spaghetti sauce so that we could get a couple of meals out of it.
Danielle McCoy:Right. And you can see as far as like searching meats like you can eat meat and then you can you know pull leftovers off and make it into a sandwich or a soup because we all have soup. And then you can also use the bone to make broth for later for a soup or you know a base for something else or whatever or
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah, like in culinary school we would call that rewetting the bones when you take a roasted bone and then turn around use it to make a soup soup stock because you Yeah, it's I mean, it may have slightly less flavor than it would have if you just use it straight, or you might have to like cook it longer to get all the flavor out. But it's still usable that way. And like, or an example would be, you do roast chicken one night. The next day, you pull the meat off the bone and make like chicken salad. And then you turn around and use those bones to make a chicken broth for something else. Or you pull that meat off. I mean, honestly, I guess it depends on the size of your bird. But if I pull the meat off of a roast chicken, it ends up being too much meat for just like chicken noodle soup. So I will use some of that meat for one thing, like maybe chicken tacos, and the rest of it will be chicken noodle soup, something like that. So there's a lot of ways that you can like repurpose your leftovers. I mean, the biggest thing for us is on these individual meals, adding in like grains and beans, so that the meal is more filling, and then we're not having to use as much meat per meal. I'd say making casseroles is another good way to do this, right? Is you can get away with using less meat in the casserole by like adding in potatoes or beans or things like that that can like fill it up. And usually that casserole is going to feed you for a couple of days.
Danielle McCoy:Right. And you're usually using a cheaper kind of meat to make the casserole to so right.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah. So yeah, there's definitely ways you can do it. And
Danielle McCoy:we don't do meatless. I'm not ended the whole like Meatless Monday thing, but you know, that's yeah, I mean, I like broad. I'm not saying we never do it, but it's like I don't we go out of our way to do exactly.
Bonnie Von Dohre:I don't make a point of doing vegetarian dishes. If I do vegetarian dish, it's just because the recipe looked good. Right? Um, otherwise, like I still feel like the meat gives the the meal a certain amount of flavor that like I don't get from grains and beans, things
Danielle McCoy:like that. I think it's more filling but
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah, well I mean protein, protein and fat and you know, in general are more filling so
Danielle McCoy:like longer term, like you're not getting that like empty carb on full right. And then 20 minutes from now I'm after I had my you know, fettuccine, I'm hungry again. type of things.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah. Well, yeah, in and I like, I went through that. When I was pregnant, I, I ate a lot of like chicken breast or something like that, like, I would have a meat first thing in the morning. To otherwise I would end up with nausea throughout the day. Right. So it's like that having that protein. Like, I couldn't just have, you know, toast or oatmeal or whatever, or granola bar, right? I had to have protein to help keep me
Danielle McCoy:cdated And not nauseous. Right? Yeah, right.
Bonnie Von Dohre:And I'm sure there's some science behind it, like regulating blood sugar and stuff like that. But we're not gonna talk about that. No, I don't like I don't feel like going into that right now.
Danielle McCoy:Let's talk about menu planning and said yay.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Um, so I have to give a shout out to this app that I use called cook list. And what I like with it is I can put everything in like everything from my pantry fridge freezer, into the app, and it will actually tell me what recipes I can cook just based off the ingredients I already have on hand. So I can save money on my groceries just doing that because a I'm not really buying ingredients that I already have that I forgot to have. But then also, I'm not picking recipes that I'm going to have to buy all of the ingredients for I'm like already narrowing it down to recipes that I don't need to buy a lot of ingredients for. And it helps keep everything rotated in my pantries
Danielle McCoy:I use a pen and paper
Bonnie Von Dohre:there's that
Danielle McCoy:no fancy apps here just you know pen and paper and I have like a pantry list of what we have. And I kind of have you know, like a little bit of mental note and all look and see if I think that we have something to see if we actually have it. And like last night, I made chicken and broccoli and I usually put an oyster sauce on it. And I didn't have any sort of just omitted it from the recipe so and that was like a spur of the moment type of meal. But I just use a pen and paper and just write down usually I'll just kind of like write down meal ideas for a week or two and then pull from my freezer what I can from my pantry when I can and then figure out what I need to buy from the grocery and Most of the time, it's not much. We went three months without going to the grocery. So
Bonnie Von Dohre:Oh, wow. I have to go every week just to replenish the milk.
Danielle McCoy:Well, I mean, we went sour cream. We Yeah, we bought milk and we bought bread. But I mean, we didn't have to like go grocery shopping like it. I didn't need produce, because I had a bunch of frozen produce. And we didn't need meat because we bought all of our meat in bulk, or we butchered our own. So we didn't go to the actual grocery store for three months. But I mean, I can't say that we didn't stop at the store at all. But I'll you know, it was you know, like, a $10 expense is your boss,
Bonnie Von Dohre:right? Yeah. And I mean, and that is one thing with buying in bulk is you can cut down on those trips. I mean, a nice thing like I've been using Kroger delivery and the minimum for it is $35 or so. Yeah. So it makes it really nice. Like, I don't have to do a big grocery order to be able to get stuff. So like, I don't feel like I need to buy stuff that I don't need. Right. So if it's, you know, yeah, if it's just milk and a handful of other, you know, pantry items, then all I have to do is meet that $35 and I'm good to go.
Danielle McCoy:Which is not hard to do with price of food the way it is. But yeah. Which brings us to our next point which is
Bonnie Von Dohre:ordering groceries. This episode was brought to you by kitchen botanicals, your sustainable gardening headquarters, stopped by kitchen botanicals.com and get a look at our 2022 seed varieties as well as supplies and pest control products to help you with your organic garden 2022 is a great time to take care of yourself with our pampered gardener subscription box. Every month you'll receive all natural self care products untreated heirloom seeds, high quality garden tools, organic garden amendments, cute and practical supplies and fun products that we know you'll love. This is your opportunity to take care of yourself in the garden, I started the pampered gardener subscription box, because I had gone through a time of not taking care of myself and dealing with the stress that it put onto my body I was ill I was tapped out and I felt like I couldn't possibly pour any more out of my empty cup. So I created the paper gardeners subscription box for women like me who wanted to get back to what they enjoy, but also wanted to love themselves. So we've put together this collection of gardening and self care products that are geared towards women who love to garden you'll get things such as gloves, lotion, bags, hats, sunscreen, mosquito repellent, things that you can actually use but also things that you'll enjoy. And don't worry, there will still be plenty of gardening tools seeds, we've created a subscription box like no other by gardeners for gardeners order your own box today. So I will say ordering groceries safely probably like four hours a week is what I figured. Because it not to mention like actually, the groceries budget that it saves me but just not having to go into town drag kids through the store run up and down aisles because I just remembered something that I forgot. And not to mention taking my kids into the store and then them nagging me for every little thing that they want to buy.
Danielle McCoy:Right or impulse buying even though you when you plan you made a list and you're trying to stick to it you see something and you think oh, it could be something that you legitimately need but at the same time it's probably not something it's you know, that's not pressing, it's just
Bonnie Von Dohre:half the time it's like oh look cookies are on sale. And oh, I'm really craving Publix buttercream icing I better buy some cupcakes trust me the stuff is a Dixie don't
Danielle McCoy:say you buy junk food. You go to the grocery it's not necessarily
Bonnie Von Dohre:that's my husband my like I I'm going to forbade him from going to the store if he keeps coming home with more junk cereal but
Danielle McCoy:um See Austin my husband and like Hey honey, pick up a gallon of milk on your way home because it's on his way home. And then he's like, Why didn't want to spend $2 I'm like really
Bonnie Von Dohre:that's that's pretty much how it ends up stop by and get milk. Milk, granola bars, chips cereal. Some other random say we don't need
Danielle McCoy:to spend $2 And I'm like why? Because now our grocery budget went from we're doing okay to Ah right. We have no money.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Well and that's one thing is it's kind of insane. So Kroger Kroger came to Florida. They do not have brick and mortar stores. They have a distribution center that uses robots to pull the orders And then everything's loaded onto trucks. It goes to different points throughout Florida and then the delivery drivers pick it up from those points and do their delivery routes. But that saves them a ton of overhead, since they're not having to actually operate brick and mortar stores and they're not having to pay as many employees. Right. So, Kroger groceries delivered are cheaper than Publix groceries in store by like half and so
Danielle McCoy:Kroger own Publix No, no, no to downloadlink nope, two totally separate brands. Well, because like they were using Scott's here and it was Kroger's, I don't know if we have any more left and then like when I lived in Colorado King Soopers is owned by Kroger.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Okay, no here Kroger it was years ago. Or I mean Publix is a Florida based grocery chain. And, like, it's, I think it's still family owned. Okay. And it's one of those things where Kroger never wanted to come to Florida and directly compete with Publix. Because they know, like when it comes to brick and mortar, they, they literally have the same target markets. So they're really not like, it's just, it's just too competitive, because there's too much brand loyalty there. But when it comes to grocery delivery, our only other options are like shipped and Instacart. And they tack on so much in fees, that just the prices are astronomical. So I mean, I was like I was delivering for shipped and Instacart for a while until gas prices got ridiculous. And like it was just our our pay as a delivery driver was crap. Like the only way you could really make money is if you got a good tip. So which is why when gas prices skyrocketed, it wasn't worth doing anymore. Right? Um, but yeah, so in terms of ordering groceries, one like since I'm going with Kroger, going through Kroger delivery to get my groceries. I'm getting twice as much for half the price as shopping at Publix anyway, but then also, like, Yeah, I'm literally only getting what is on my list because I'm doing I'm doing my meal planning and cook list, it automatically generates my grocery list which then I can upload to the Kroger app. Like it actually syncs with Kroger and since my list to Kroger and then I do the whole checkout and there's like no thought process involved. It's fantastic.
Danielle McCoy:I ordered my groceries I do pick up we don't do delivery but it still saves me a ton of time and money most of the time except when I forget to load a bag and I have to drive all the way back that was happening last time but they gave me $1 gift cards so
Bonnie Von Dohre:well that's good I don't think I've had that happen I will do curbside pickup for Walmart and Target I don't shop for well like there's just I try not to but there are like a few things that are just cheaper at Walmart or I can't get in bulk anywhere else kind of thing
Danielle McCoy:just not my will pay extra to not shop at Walmart I refuse
Bonnie Von Dohre:so anyway for for those things. I just I hate walking into the store because the it's just there's just so much walking like the store is just too big. It takes too much effort for me. Like everything I want is always at the back of the
Danielle McCoy:store. That's on my iris but yeah,
Bonnie Von Dohre:well we don't have Meijer here. Yeah, now so Ohio. Yeah, I didn't Ohio so yeah, in I've actually avoided buying stuff at Walmart because it was going to take them too long to fill my order for when I was going to be passing by the store. Like yeah, anyway, it said, um, and then target I will do their curbside pickup because if I go into Target, I will spend more money than I should have
Danielle McCoy:saved to the perimeter grocery shopping. This also helps you buy real actual food and not junk food if you just stick to the perimeter of the store because all grocery stores are laid out basically the same. So you have your produce section, which is on the perimeter, your meat section, which is on the perimeter, your dairy section is on the perimeter, and really most of the middle aisles you really shouldn't need. I mean obviously most of us are still buying canned goods. A lot of us still eat grains. But if you stick to the middle part or not the middle if you stick out of the middle part and stay in the perimeter. You're not buying cookies and veterinary medicine You
Bonnie Von Dohre:know, because the bakery is on the perimeter. Actually, the bakery is on the way to the produce section. Um, anyway. But what I was gonna say is, if if you are going to go in the aisles, read labels, and try to pick the products that have the fewest number of ingredients. Ideally, you want to go for like, single ingredient. ingredients, just
Danielle McCoy:single ingredient ingredients. Okay, how about single ingredient? Products that works? Like canned goods, for instance, you know, like buying a can of black beans, black? You can't talk either black beans.
Bonnie Von Dohre:It's contagious. Yeah, cuz it's like, take peanut butter, for example. You've got a lot of peanut butter that ends up having a lot of sweeteners added to it. But then, if you look at the natural peanut butter, like it's literally just peanuts, salts, and maybe like an emulsifier, or something like that. The fewer the ingredients, the healthier it's going to be for you. But also, well, I would say in general, it's going to end up costing you less, I realized a lot of the box well, because yes, a lot of the box stuff is cheap. But it's because they're using the cheapest ingredients possible. And there's a lot of preservatives and fillers and a lot of other additional crap in there.
Danielle McCoy:Quite literally,
Bonnie Von Dohre:quite literally. And so in a lot of a lot of salt, a lot of salt. But when you're when you're getting those single ingredient products, you're really, I mean, it's it's about the same in terms of costs, but you're getting a much higher quality product. But I mean, like I will say okay, so take macaroni and cheese for instance. I find it's a lot cheaper for me to go and get a big thing of shredded cheese, and a pound of macaroni noodles. And then you know I have the milk and butter anyway and flour. But I can I mean I can pretty much make like a crock pot full of macaroni and cheese for the same price as a tiny little like eight ounce box of the premade stuff or you know, like the the stuff with the powder mix. And mine tastes better.
Danielle McCoy:I would use like refried beans, I think is a good example. Because especially if you're using canned beans or you have you know, dried beans that you can't at home, so it's super quick. You just take the pinto beans and add some garlic and throw an instant pot for a couple minutes. And then voila, you have refried beans as opposed to the hydrogenated I can't pronounce that stuff that's in a can of refried beans. Yeah. So that way you start taking those single ingredient things, it's not going to cost you any more to you know, like add a clove of garlic and a little bit of seasoning to a can of pinto beans and you're going to end up with the same amount of food. Whereas if you grab that can of refried beans to cost $3 I can as opposed to the dollar I can for the pinto beans.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah. And you can like you can season it a lot better than like
Danielle McCoy:the way that you want it as opposed right right. Yeah.
Bonnie Von Dohre:And that kind of goes back to the bulk buying thing is you know, if you get a lot of the dried beans and then like canned the pinto beans, so that then all you really have to do is puree them and maybe add some additional seasonings right then it's a lot more convenient. For me, I ended up having to store all my dried beans in the freezer, just to try to deter like pantry moths and things like that. And weevils and so for me like being able to catch them ahead of time one they're already soaked they're already ready to go they're already already booked. But then also I'm not having to worry about bugs getting into the beans the beans going bad or anything like that.
Danielle McCoy:Right and I would suggest you know like if you're buying like flour or sugar or whatever in bulk putting in the freezer at least for a couple of days to kill any of those
Bonnie Von Dohre:minimum is like three days to make sure you kill the eggs and then
Danielle McCoy:put it make sure you're putting it in a gamma seal bucket don't just put it in
Bonnie Von Dohre:any open yeah
Danielle McCoy:you know waste money because you're going to end up with stuff in your food
Bonnie Von Dohre:that right Yeah, cuz like we use hard plastic containers but when I've gotten the pantry moths I don't think they ever made it all the way into the flower but they would get into the like the the larva would get into the rings around the lid. And it was just, I mean, I end up having to take the whole thing apart and scrub it clean. And it just it was gross. Yeah, I've got everything goes into the freezer and then into mason jars. Now, if it's gone to the cupboard,
Danielle McCoy:we freeze it for a few days and then put bulk amounts and gamma seal buckets.
Bonnie Von Dohre:And then have you ever put baby leaves in your flower? That was actually something I grew up with the smell from the baby leaves will deter pests from your flower,
Danielle McCoy:does it permeate your flour,
Bonnie Von Dohre:I never noticed an issue with it. Just you know, make sure you don't scoop out the bayleaf when you're scooping out flour, there is that. But one thing I'll say is like flour will go rancid over time. And so you need to make sure you're if you're storing a large quantity, make sure it's enough that you can that you are cycling through on a regular basis. Otherwise, you're just gonna end up with a lot of food waste.
Danielle McCoy:I think you should do that with anything I put making food from scratch because we kind of already talked about that. But oh, yeah, kind of talking about it.
Bonnie Von Dohre:I mean, yeah, to me, the more you can kind of cut out the middleman, the more you end up saving over time. Well, it's better for you.
Danielle McCoy:Even if you're eating grains, you know, that's debatable. What's the you know, lots of people say that you shouldn't eat grains at all other people say it's fine, especially if you're eating at homemade or whatever. But a homemade loaf of bread is a lot better for you than something for the store. Because you don't have all those preservatives and other junk that you can't pronounce on it. And added sugar and added right. Yeah. Right. And you get to control those things. Right. You know, like,
Bonnie Von Dohre:you know, it will go stale faster. Although you do have to kind of ask yourself, why is your bread lasting more than a week without going stale or moldy?
Danielle McCoy:Well, and you can't freeze it like, you know, it's not Yeah, that you have to have out fresh all the time, especially like in the summer, I know somebody in my group is talking about how it was too hot to bake bread. But if you kind of plan ahead or get an oven that you could put outside like a wall, you know, like countertop oven or countertop and it'll bake a whole loaf of bread or a bread machine, I guess. But then you're not heating up your house. And you can think ahead of time and then freeze several loaves at once. So you're not having to, you know, like we don't bake. We don't bake bread weekly anymore anyways, but I wouldn't do it the summer like I would bake several loaves at one time. And then put several of them in the freezer and keep the other one out fresh.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah, well, and the other thing you can do is, if you don't want to be baking in the heat of the day, is mix it the night before, let it proof in the refrigerator overnight because it's going to it's going to rise slower. And then you just take it out do that final proof the next morning, it's actually going to develop better flavor that way, because the yeast has had more time to create the flavor in the dough. But it will come to room temperature and finish rising that morning. You can bake it that morning before it's gotten hot out. I do I definitely think that baking your own bread and making pasta ends up saving you money. I guess pasta could be a toss up, but I mean honestly you can. It's so easy to make pasta noodles and so cheap. I mean it's literally just like flour, salt and an egg and you can dry those like
Danielle McCoy:you don't have to keep Yeah. Does that sound? Or right? Yeah. Yeah, you can freeze your noodles or your pasta, whatever you wanna call it.
Bonnie Von Dohre:So repurposing leftovers. I guess we did kind of hit on this already. But yeah,
Danielle McCoy:I'm terrible at it to be quite honest. So,
Bonnie Von Dohre:Mike, my kids are really into cooking shows. So there there is actually a cooking show. Now. I don't it might be on Netflix, where they are given leftovers, and they have to create a whole new meal
Danielle McCoy:without seeing that. I saw that on TV like Yeah, it's really it's,
Bonnie Von Dohre:it's interesting. I don't go to that extent. I know some people are really weird about leftovers. And so it needs to look like something totally different. Or else they won't eat it.
Danielle McCoy:We just eat leftovers. We like yeah, we only purpose that usually we just you know, like, I have some of that chicken broccoli in there. And I'll just you know, we ate it for lunch.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah. And so and that's what we will usually just reheat stuff. I mean, I was like, leftovers were a way of life growing up. So it's just is you know, it just is what it is. But for other people like they want to turn it into something different. So like I was saying, like if you're doing the roast chicken, and then turn around, turn it into, you know, chicken salad or something like that. I found that turning. I mean, I can take just about any meat and turn it into taco meat and it works really well. The other thing that we we'll do is we will take meat and put it on top of baked potato. All right, we're gonna move on to the next or last one here. Yep. All right growing your own. So we will do not be complete. Yes, we will do a whole other episode on when like when it comes to raising livestock, because that can very quickly turn into more expensive but in terms of like growing like with vegetables and fruits and things like that the the more perennials you can put in like perennial fruit trees and bushes and things like that. I mean, that is really just going to be a renewing set, renewable source of food. That is going to require very little input from you year after year.
Danielle McCoy:And you know, like things like asparagus, a lot of people don't realize that garlic can be a perennial, which amuses me but anyway, garlic is a perennial, or it can be well yes, most of us grown as annuals. So I think a lot of people just don't realize that you can actually just plant garlic and just leave it right it'll it'll
Bonnie Von Dohre:we'll have years you will have a lime bowl. Yep, yeah. Yeah. Well, if you're in a warm climate sweet potatoes are perennial. They just keep coming back and coming back. I only
Danielle McCoy:calendula is definitely
Bonnie Von Dohre:if you'd like an edible flower or a tea or makes your own SAVs Yeah, I only intentionally planted sweet potatoes once and it just keeps coming back if
Danielle McCoy:I only intentionally planted Columbia love once. He's coming back say with borage all over my garden. Or if he's letting buddy picket Oh, yeah, you know like whole the whole point and I'm like no even alone, the servers like it's not a we're not today.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Oh, my southern piece. I made the mistake. Because like you're supposed to kind of let them dry on the vine before you harvest them because you're harvesting the dry the hard bean. And I didn't harvest them fast enough one year. And so once they are completely dry, the seed pods will like burst open and spill beans all over your yard. And now I have years later being seedlings. Everywhere.
Danielle McCoy:I know we've we've even like had like volunteer tomato plants where we had like a crushed tomato that, you know, the seed was everywhere. And we ended up with a couple plants out of it squash. I mean, there are ways to Oh yeah, it might be haphazard and you might not know what's what until it starts to grow. But you know, yeah, I have really just have a garden full of Lord knows what
Bonnie Von Dohre:I just did without any. Yeah, I had a Seminole pumpkin vine that last three years because we didn't get a hard freeze over the winter and so it just kept producing. Oh wow. Yeah, well and what would happen is it would kind of like die back in the winter because it does not like cold temperatures, but just enough of it would still be alive that it would once it started heating up in the spring it would start spreading again. And since it was already established, it would start with female blooms because typically a squash plant will start with male blooms and then start producing female blooms like a few weeks later. Just just put stuff in the ground like it i mean it can be in your flowerbeds. It can be along your fence line.
Danielle McCoy:Yeah, I think people you know like obviously you can you know have a big fancy garden and it may or may not produce better but you really don't have to have all this fancy stuff you just need some dirt and water and see I mean yes it might not be the most productive thing
Bonnie Von Dohre:but yeah, like how I mean having everything in like a centralized location certainly makes it more convenient to carry forward water and everything but I mean really just like plant where you have sun get as much stuff into the ground as you can companion plant like I've all of my beds are mixed with something else. So like I have one bed that is tomatoes, peppers, basil and leeks. The cucumber bed I think I'm adding more leeks to it and I don't know what else I'm putting in there yet. Eggplant bed has swiss chard planted with
Danielle McCoy:it. Hey, your beds
Bonnie Von Dohre:Well, yes. Zucchini has like zinnias and other flowers planted with it. So yeah, you can mix things up. But yeah, I've got eat well, right yeah, grow stuff that you actually want to eat. And I mean, like we've I can grow tons of greens and lettuce and all that's not necessarily in the summer but you know, they grow really easily. But my family eat them and quit right But yeah, I've got a bunch of seedlings that I'm just gonna start planting wherever. It's our rainy season. And so most stuff is getting rain every day anyway. But I'm just gonna start planting it everywhere just to get it in the ground. If I have to go out there and hand water with a hose, that's what I'll do. But one step back here, yeah, once stuff gets established, it doesn't need water does often. So
Danielle McCoy:it's 1000 degrees,
Bonnie Von Dohre:even though I mean, like, those, those squash that I put in the ground, are getting a lot less water than my raised beds. But because they are directly in the ground, and they're not raised up there. They're doing a lot better. All right, the race vent drying off faster.
Danielle McCoy:We're gonna put our drip in this weekend, again, because I'm not gonna be able to go water it and I can't stress my kids to water. Oh, I have a picture to send you later. I'm going to ask you earlier about something. Okay.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah, I think I'm actually going to get a couple new irrigation drip irrigation systems. But we've got like the PVC on the beds, that works pretty well. But I I need to get back to put in timers on it. So that I, you know, it's just one less thing for me to
Danielle McCoy:Yeah, we have, we have timers, and we had everything else set up. And then now I gotta get it re set up. We brought new we bought new soaker hoses. Yeah. Well, we have fittings to put on the soaker hoses so we can move them about in the thing where they need to be put to close and a lot of stuff. So it's just a matter of going out there and doing it the next week.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Chicken, but at least your foot will feel better, eventually. I hope so. A little bit scary right now. Just because we're struggling to survive, but a lot of us are. Yeah, I mean, we're we're just we're struggling so much to, to buy the essentials to pay for the essentials. I mean, really, when it comes to like, wants versus needs, you know, food is a fundamental need. Right. And so hopefully, you know, these are certainly the strategies that we use to save money in our own kitchens. So hopefully, they can help you,
Danielle McCoy:hopefully, and hopefully, you know, like inflation slows down a little bit so that they're still applicable. When you're paying double, for five people, that's a significant amount of paycheck there.
Bonnie Von Dohre:They're talking about us going into a stagflation, which we haven't had since the 70s. Where we go into a recession, but you know, costs stay high. And inflation stays high. And it's gonna take time for that to come down. Right now I'm just trying to get us like, living under our means as much as possible. And setting, you know, money and food and stuff aside. Right. That's
Danielle McCoy:another thing I don't know, I have we talked about that about, like, when you go to the store, you know, like including your budget, like grabbing a couple extra cans of beans or whatever it may be. So you can and of course you have to rotate your stock. But if you keep it in your budget, then you'll have a little bit of extra.
Bonnie Von Dohre:Yeah, we should have. Yeah, and I mean, especially if you can catch stuff on sale. Right, the only thing I will say is, so watch prices, and pay attention to what your is your buy price, because I know I will pay attention to like I'll use Publix as an example. But I'm sure all the grocery stores do this. Like the week before, they are going to do a buy one get one free deal on it and they raise the price. And then the next week, it is buy one get one free. But once you actually figure out the price that you're paying for your you're buying for both of them. Yeah, you're paying close to what it was normally. You know, sales will be tailored to make it look like a good deal. But make sure you know your buy price and your size and your size. And only only buy what is your buy price. And I realized that's difficult to do when prices keep going up. But I think it's what is it? Sales are usually on like a six week rotation. And so you can usually find the best deal on that six week rotation. And a lot of times this is a combination of stalking, like coupons with sales and just buying enough for those six weeks, plus a couple of weeks like maybe actually getting eight weeks worth even though you're buying it every six weeks. So then you've got Ryan, please, by all means, email us messages on social media. and let us know. You know if you have any other strategies that you're using to help save money in the kitchen. And please make sure that you subscribe to our podcast and leave a review and a rating so that we can help other moms. Like I said, we we do have some podcasts coming up talking about other ways that we can save money and kind of recession proof our homesteads. So we want to stay tuned for that, and we'll catch you next time. Thank you for listening to this episode of the grounded simplicity podcast. If we were able to help you in any way, please share this episode with a friend. And also leave us a review on Apple podcasts. You can also join us over on Patreon at grounded simplicity and help to support this podcast as well as become a patron and get a behind the scenes look at the creation of our podcast and even have some input on future episodes.