First, you want to become acquainted with your store's bulk section. Bulk sections have bins that carry pasta, rice, beans, baking items, cereal, dry fruit, snack foods, dry mixes and nuts. They often have large bottles of bulk spice too. The bins, containers or bottles will have a label telling you how much that item costs per pound or ounce.
The price can look really low, like .10/ounce or really high like $21.00/ ounce. The prices vary so extremely for two reasons. One is that the items have different weights per volume and the other is that some items are hard to get and more people want them than they can sell to. The weight of an item makes a big difference though. When you buy a cup of raisins it is going to weigh a lot more than a cup of potato flakes.
When you choose the bulk item you want you can put as much or as little of that item into the bag as you need. By doing this you only buy the amount that you wish to use. If your store has customers that buy in bulk regularly you will be getting your goods cheaper and fresher than the boxed items in the aisles. Where I live most of the bulk bins are filled with Bob's Red Mill products. Buying Bob's Red Mill in the bags on the shelves generally costs 25% more per ounce than it does in the bulk bin. Check it out yourself by picking an item in the bulk section and note its price per ounce. Then go to the aisle section where you normally buy your items and look at the tag on the shelf under the product. Most stores list, in small print, on the shelf price tags how much an item costs per ounce. If it lists it per pound, just divide by sixteen and you will have your ounce price (or alternately multiply the bulk price by sixteen to get the price per pound). Exceptions to this are bulk items like Oatmeal that are subsidized by the government and generally cost the same for most of the manufacturers whether they are bulk or aisle items, unless you are buying organic.
After looking at the prices per ounce you decide to buy the bulk items. How do you do it? The way bulk sections work is that you pick up a plastic bag from the bulk area and a blank twist tie tag. On the item container will be a bulk bin number. Usually the number is four digits long but organic bulk items are usually five digits long. Write the item number on the blank twist tie tag and fill your empty bag with as much of the product as you need. Some bins have tongs, some have scoops and some have levers that you pull down to release the contents into your bag, be sure the bag is held tight to the opening of the lever type of bin. Close the bag and tie with the twist tie tag. The cashier will type the twist tie tag item number into the register and be able to ring up your purchase that way. There will be scales in the bulk area that you can use to weigh how much of an item you have put into the bag.
Many store have liquid bulk items too. In that case there will be empty jugs, jars or bottles in the bulk area. Write the bulk item number on a blank twist tie tag and twist the tag to the handle or neck of the jug, bottle or jar. Nutbutter machines also are found in the bulk sections. For these there are tubs that you can fill with as much as you want. Usually you will also see a special black waxy pencil attached to the machine. You are to write the bulk item number for the nut butter on the lid of the tub in that case. At home, using a funnel, pour your bulk items into jelly and canning jars. The jelly jars
are great for spices and the wide mouth canning jars
are great for everything else. Put the lids on the jars and attach a label. Use sticky dots, like the ones they use to price items at a garage sale, to note the day you bought the bulk items--that way if you don't use something up super quick then you will know that you need to replace it within three months of buying it.Not everything is sold in the bulk section so you will want to go to the canned food aisle and canned broth aisle next. You will need tomato sauce for a great many of your dishes so buying four 15 ounce cans of tomato sauce is a good start. Canned broth is more expensive than homemade, and doesn't taste as good, but not everyone can make a gallon of broth from scratch each week. Most dishes call for broth so having a gallon of broth, or four quarts of broth, is a good start. Buy all of these with Low Sodium labels. If you find that a recipe needs more salt you can always add it yourself, but if the manufacturer uses more salt than you need you can't take it away. Plus several dishes require that you boil the broth until it is evaporated by half of the original amount for a richer flavor, but if it already is salted then the half evaporated broth will be too salty. (Canned tomatoes can have far too much sodium in them so by getting low sodium tomato products you give yourself the control over how much sodium your family is getting).
After hitting the dry and canned goods aisles you will want to head over to produce. Pick your produce, wrap with a paper towel if the produce is damp, and place in a plastic bag. Produce is usually sold by the pound. There will be scales in the produce area that you can use to weigh how much of each item you are getting. I will do a post later that will tell you what to look for in each type of fruit and vegetable for freshness.
The remainder of your shopping should be meat next, then milk, eggs, dairy, then frozen foods.
So how do you know how much to buy and what?
At the beginning of each month you will want to go through your cabinets, pantry, refrigerator and freezer. Look at all of the ingredients that you have. Write down how much you have left of items that you use regularly. Then write down the items that you have some of, but not alot of. Next you will need to write down the things that you don't have in your cabinets or pantry that you use constantly throughout the month. Compare the lists and figure out what you are going to need for the month, broken down by each week.Write up something like this:
Here is a typical American family of four example:
Week One, 7 days, 21 meals, 84 servings
Breakfast--quick breads, cereal
Lunch--Soup and salad
Dinner--pasta 2x, Mexican 1x, Asian 2x, Roasted Meat 1x, Vegetarian 1x
You want to think through each meal. What does that meal include? How much of an ingredient do we need to buy without buying extra? Here is an example:
We eat a pasta dish twice a week. For a family of four we need 1# of pasta for each of those meals. 1# of pasta multiplied by two servings per week multiplied by four weeks is 8 pounds of pasta, or 128 ounces a month. Half of that pasta needs to be medium sized pasta shapes for the casseroles.
At least one dish per week is sauced with a tomato sauce so I use four cans of tomato sauce a month. I will need four 15 ounce cans of Muir Glen No Salt Added Tomato Sauce.
To season the tomato sauce I need to get 1 Tablespoon of Italian seasoning a week, or 4 Tablespoons=1/4 cup so I will need 1/4 cup of Italian seasoning for the month.
I use half of a pound of meat in the pasta so I will need to add 1 pound of meat for two pasta dishes.
I can only buy 1 pound of fresh ground beef if those pasta days are both going to occur within four days of when I buy the meat. But buying the meat in one pound packages is not the way the stores sell at the best price. You can freeze ground beef very nicely so if you buy the 4 pound bulk pack of ground beef, just divide it into 4 pieces and then divide each of the 4 pieces in half. Put each of the pieces into individual quart freezer bags. Put on the label that it is ground beef, what the date is and that it is half of a pound in weight. Put all but one of them into the freezer and put one of them into the refrigerator. The hard part about storing your meat in the freezer is that you will have to pull out the 1/2 pound meat from the freezer and put it into the refrigerator one day ahead of making each recipe all month, or know how to defrost it properly in the microwave.
We like cheese on our pasta so I need to add 1/4 cup cheese for each serving. 4 servings per meal multiplied by four pasta meals means I need 4 cups of Parmesan cheese for four pasta dishes in one month. If I buy the dried out cheese that is sold on the shelves, I can buy all of that Parmesan at the beginning of the month. But, if I use the fresh cheese in the refrigerated section I need to buy no more than two weeks worth or it can start going stale or moldy.
One of our pasta dishes each week is a casserole. The casserole is made up of leftovers and pasta. I need a medium sized pasta to mix into the casserole. Rotini, Ziti, Fusilli, Egg Noodles, etc.
The casserole dish needs a sauce. I will need broth, flour and fat for the sauce. 2 cups of broth per week. 2 Tablespoons of flour per week. 1 Tablespoon of fat per week. If I want to add herbs and seasonings I will need at least a Tablespoon of those each week. So, since all of these things can stay good for a month in the cabinet I will need:
2 quarts of broth
1/2 cup of whole grain flour
1/4 cup of oil
1/4 cup of dried herbs
So, that covers two meals per week. Consider what your meals will be for the week, and what you can expect it to be for the month. Buy in bulk all of the items that you know that you will use. Then, if it is on sale, buy a months worth of the canned items you know that you will use. If it isn't on sale just buy what you need for that week. Maybe later in the month it will go on sale and you can buy what you need for the rest of the month. Buy the produce that you will use for no more than four days. If you buy a weeks worth of produce some of that produce is going to spoil and get tossed out. Buy the milk, eggs and dairy that you will use for a week. Buy the fresh meat that you will use for the next two days. Buy the frozen foods you will use for the next month. Go to the store every two days for fresh produce and meat. Your family will be eating fresher food and you will be able to specifically buy items that work with what you have for leftovers and what is in your pantry. Plus you will see the items that go on special and stock up as needed.
Here is the shopping list for one month's worth of pasta meals:
8 pounds pasta (128 ounces), half of it in medium sized shapes, Rotini, Ziti, Fusilli, Egg Noodles
4 fifteen ounce cans Muir Glen No Salt Added Tomato Sauce
1/4 cup Italian seasoning
4 pounds of ground beef, divided into eighths, 7/8 placed in freezer bags in the freezer
4 cups Parmesan cheese, or two cups of fresh Parmesan cheese, refrigerated
2 Quarts low sodium broth
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup oil or fat (olive oil, nut butter, corn oil, butter)
1/4 cup dried herbs
Sometimes though you can't find what you need at your local store and will want to shop online. In that case, here are some resources for getting the specialty foods at frugal prices:
Auntie Andies Grocery and Kitchen Wares: www.frugalfeeds.com
For Thai food go to http://www.importfood.com/
For organic dry goods go to http://www.bobsredmill.com/
For dry beans go to http://www.purcellmountainfarms.com/
For just about all of your organic and unique pantry needs go to http://www.barryfarm.com/
For dry pastas go to http://www.hodgsonmill.com/
For low sodium tomato products go to http://muirglen.elsstore.com/
For low sodium broths go to www.pacificfoods.com/where-to-buy/buy-our-foods-online
That's all for this time.
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