4 Tips to Save at the Grocery Store - From a Farmer

$247.58 was our bill last week at a discount grocery store. I don’t often do big grocery shops so to say I had major sticker shock was an understatement.

It brought me back to when we first moved rural and how I struggled with grocery shopping. Both the limited variety and there is only one store to shop at. If you’ve ever shopped small town or cottage country you know that prices are slightly increased too.

So what did I do? I changed the way I fed my family.

With everyone feeling the pinch at the grocery store (even those who grow the food!) I thought I would share my top 4 tips to save on groceries.

Plan Your Meals

I plan our dinners out for an entire week and make a shopping list based on these meals. I allow us one meal out a week and have a flexible option in case life happens. For example this week a morning got away and I never started our beef stew, I just switched it out with chicken breast and veggies and made stew the next day. You can download our free printable weekly meal planner to help you get started below!

Don’t Go To The Store!

There are a few ways to do this and the first is by shopping local and direct. Shop directly at a farm, a local farmers market, or utilize home delivery options. CSAs or subscriptions like our pasture raised chicken program is a great way to get a month’s worth of local chicken direct to your door! There are lots of farms who offer veggie CSA’s year round too. Secondly is to utilize services like click and collect. By ordering online it prevents you from picking up extras (read treats) as you walk the aisles and it’s really easy to shop the stores flyer.

Leftovers

I don’t mean eat them, I mean don’t have any! Leftovers are a conundrum. There is often too little left to make an entire meal or you just ate it and don’t feel like eating it again. I hear this one A LOT in our house! This is one of the biggest reasons why we package our meat the way we do, it’s based on a two person meal with no leftovers! One pound of ground chicken, turkey, or beef, 2 chicken breasts, 4 chicken thighs, 2 turkey drumsticks, 4 sausage etc. Having guests over? Just take out another pack! 63% of the food Canadians throw away could have been eaten and leftovers account for 16%!

Can You Make It?

As a mom to a toddler I love convenience items but I don’t love their price tag. Homemade stock for example is one of the easiest set and forget foods you can make, and can even be made for “free” with a little planning. I love this recipe for chicken stock from NY Times Cooking and use 3 of our pasture raised soup chickens to make about 24 cups. The free version involves keeping a bag of scraps in the freezer from onions, carrots, and celery. When a recipe calls for these, keep the cutoffs and skins in a bag and when full add it to a pot with the carcass from a whole roasted chicken. A well stocked spice cabinet will also allow you to make homemade spice blends! Did you know we include a new spice blend every month with our Chicken CSA boxes?

We’d love to hear if you have a any tips to save on groceries!