Foodies way to save some dough

Well here are some of the tricks and tips that we have learned on how to cook and save money...

1.  Limit how much you really go out.  Duh, we only go out once or twice a week, including fast food.  Mike comes home for lunch and of course I make food at work, it seems so simple but most people really don't do it.  I think of it as money that I could bought clothes with ;)

2.  Freeze your beef by pound.  Best tip we have done, we get our ground beef wrapped by pound and only keep one thawed at a time.  That way we can have it for dinner but it won't go bad before we can use it.  Since there are only 2 of us it works great.

3. Subscribe to the Sunday paper.  I have a subscription which equals to about 1 dollar a week, and I figure if I can save at least a dollar a week with coupons then it was worth it, but I usually save more. 

4.  Sam's Club.  This can be tricky, the things I don't buy there are non perishables.  I can usually get detergent on sale and with a coupon, but you can get good deals on meat and produce. 

5.  Substitutions in recipes.  I make a cream based pasta sauce and the recipe calls for garlic and onions.  I don't like to keep fresh on hand because I don't use those ingredients enough to make it worth it and I hate to throw out food, so I have more in my spice rack to make up for it.  It does cost a little more upfront, but the shelf life makes it worth the extra bucks. 


There are always creative ways to save money without taking all the time to search in store ads and compare prices because my time is worth a lot more than that!