So what don't you buy...

[alleyoop]

when grocery shopping? When I started sticking to a budget a year ago I was able to spend $160 to $200 every-other-week on food for our family (DH, DD and me). We all pack our lunch daily, eat organic when possible, and vegetarian mostly (fish once or twice a month, maybe, for DH and DD), so the food feeds us for 3 meals daily and snacks (mostly for DD). I cook from scratch. And we live in the NYC area so things are a little more expensive here.

But now groceries are so expensive that I am just doing without things and the same things I bought last year for $160-$200 are costing AT LEAST $220 - $240.

And believe me, nothing extravagant, spendy or convenience is purchased.

Yesterday, I was craving grapefruit and saw the price for organic ($2.99/lb). Outrageous, but I thought I would buy just one as a treat. When I weighed it, it would have been priced at over $3.00 for 1 grapefruit!

I didn't buy it and there are many other things I just don't buy and we don't eat anymore. Anybody putting things back at the checkout?

[mirlee]

I stopped buying grapes when they went out of season. I am not spending $6-9 on a bag of grapes. I have been known to put back my bananas. I stopped buying avocados. I only buy tomotoes 1 or 2 at a time so that they get eaten very quickly.

We constantly re-evaluate our shopping. It is so exhausting budget-wise. What is really frustrating is that what is $2 dollars one week, could go up to $3 or 4 the next time you go shopping. We hit the warehouse club for just about as much as we can. The prices have remained fairly stable there, including the organic stuff.

[miss_sonja]

Hmmmm....well, usually expensive produce. When fruit is over about $1 a pound, I say no. It's hard to say no when the kids want grapes, but paying $4 a lb is going to break the bank. I buy what's in season, and that is usually about at my price point. I always get bananas at Costco 'cause they're only $1.30 for 4 lbs, a fruit bargoon.

I'll skip other things depending on price, but it all depends on what it is, how the month is going etc.

[Ruthiegirl]

The tasty treats -- olives, fancy cheese, wine, expensive fruits and veggies (red peppers are usually $3.99 a pound here!), cookies, bottled water, imported capers, kippers, and such...

We have streamlined our eating habits to a pretty basic, mostly veggie diet -- lots of grains, beans, simple produce, dairy and the occasional chicken.

[shanetedissac]

I don't purchase milk. We make our milk from powdered milk. We purchase sale fruit and veg items. We don't purchase bread, make it from scratch. We don't purchase snack or ice cream unless it is a special celebrations (birthday). We don't purchase processed foods or convenience foods, we cook everything ourselves. We live in CT (Fairfield Co.) so understand the food costs.

Be well,

[RolliePollie]

I have to go to different stores to get a good deal on everything. But processed and prepackaged items cost the most so we avoid those as much as possible. Fruits and veggies are kept to what's seasonal and on sale. Meat is kept to a minimum because it's what costs us the most.

Also, most people group household items like TP and paper towels in with their grocery budget. I can't get DH to go family cloth but we stopped using paper towels so that does help a little. We also use vinegar as our main all purpose cleaner.

[Dragonfly]

I'm floored by how expensive everything has become. Apples are a favorite around here and organic went up $1/lb when they were in season!

I am not good about budgeting for groceries. I just don't spend money elsewhere so I don't have to think as much about it (plus, it's just DS and I and we don't eat many convenience or prepared foods - mostly whole foods, produce, some meat, etc.). But with the rise in costs, I'm going to have to tackle that one. It's exhausting to think about.

[Rhiannon Feimorgan]

I don't by conveniance food. Things are either cheep, easy or good for you. Sometimes two our of three but never all of the above.

So I don't buy frozen dinners, cheese sticks, individual yogurt, fruit cups and a whole list of things like that.

[Smokering]

We never really bought: alcohol, soft drinks, chips (maybe for special occasions), ice cream (I make it), milk (we use powdered), most packaged foods, or out-of-season fruit.

Since cutting down our budget, we no longer buy: ginger beer, fancy cheeses, pesto, cream cheese, those little flavoured tins of tuna, crackers, or nearly as much meat. We weren't huge meat-eaters to begin with, but we eat a lot less now. It's tempting to cut down on fruit and veggies, because we're not huge fruit eaters and that casserole won't *really* taste much different without the $1.99 capsicum; but I try to buy as much as our budget allows. Skimping on nutrition not being the brightest idea! Sometimes we can only afford potatoes, onions, carrots and apples, but it's amazing what you can do with those.

I do miss our 'fancy' foods, though. Homemade wholemeal bread with a smear of cream cheese and some sundried tomato pesto is a YUMMY meal! Having bacon to add to 'vegetarian' dishes was nice, too. Oh well, saving money feels good!

[becoming]

I don't buy grapes. They are ridiculously expensive here. Like $10 a bag. I also don't buy strawberries, which are currently $4.95 for a tiny container.

I also only rarely plan meals where the main dish is mostly meat. Instead, I plan dishes with meat as just one of the ingredients so that I can use less meat (i.e, spaghetti where I can use 1/2 lb. hamburger instead of hamburgers on the grill where I'd use 1.5 or 2 lbs. of meat).

[mtm]

We buy what's on sale for fruit and veg, do a lot of lentils and bean main dishes and save a bunch by shopping at ethnic markets. And for now we only do organic on a couple of foods, anything we can peel the outer skin off (grapefruit, pineapple, bananas) is conventional produce while we concentrate on debt clearing.

[mnnice]

I honestly don't buy grapes and strawberries at this time of year because that usually look terrible and there are no organics at any price.

I try not to buy single serve stuff except a little for ds1 school lunch.

I try to think more winter salad and eat less lettuce and more carrots, brocilli, cauliflower. This week I tried sprouting some lentils and mung beans (as an experiement we'll see how it turns out) It's cheaper and I think it tastes better than some tired lettuce. I still buy some lettuce, but I enjoy it more when I can eat it from my own yard in the summer.

I will still buy small amounts of wine, good micro beer, a dab of fancy cheese or chocolate, but I really try to enjoy it and not think of it as an entitlement.

On the upside as conventional meat has gotten more expensive the local grassfeed meat we buy has been seems to be at less and less of a premium (corn prices have gone up, but the cost of pasturing animals has stayed the same.)

[PrettyBird]

I no longer buy organic milk. It is just too expensive and the mainstream brands are not much different than conventional milk anyway. I signed DD and myself up for WIC since I am not getting paid anymore and we can get hormone free Kroger brand milk. WIC is really saving us a lot of money on food now. I also started making my own bread, which saves a lot of money but I am still perfecting my skills.

We use meat, but I try to stretch it out in large recipies. I use 1 lb of ground beef in a huge crock of chili that lasts days, for instance.

I only do frozen berries unless it is the season peak (I can get Cascadian farms organic at the commissary) because they are cheaper and last longer.

[Amys1st]

We do not buy any prepackaged foods. Not only because of econimical of wasting money of packaging, but environmental we cannot do this.

We do not buy already made up patties, expensive cuts of meat (unless huge low low sale), any sort of packaged snacks or items that have a huge list of hard to pronounce ingredients.

We do not buy paper products expcept paper towels which takes us weeks to go thru a roll. We cloth everything else including napkins.

We do buy stretcher sort of things. Borax, vinagar, baking soda, etc do wonders in your laundry and cut the amount of detergent you need everytime.

We do not buy the swiffers etc of the world. A rag and some vinagar work just as well.

[Miasmamma]

We don't do pre-packaged things. Most of it, I'll look at and then go home and make myself. I make all our bread and cookies. I'm going to try to make my own noodles, but we really don't use them unless it's for a specific recipe, so that will wait. We eat a lot of fruit and veggies, so that's where the most of my money goes. Grapes are down to $.99 a pound here right now though, so I've been stocking up. DD and I LOVE them!

[enkmom]

We shop at Aldi much more than we used to, and we found a Mennonite butcher/grocery store about 60 miles away, so we plan ahead and stock up there. There meat is fresh, delicious, and significantly cheaper than the tasteless stuff vacuum packed at our local grocery store. The grocery store has bulk spices, pastas, oats, and other good things, also at significant savings.

Dh has switched to whatever coffee is on sale in the can, versus bags of Starbucks. We also don't buy much processed food, and we are diligent about eating up our leftovers and not wasting any food.

[UptownZoo]

There are so many things that we used to buy and don't anymore.

We buy in bulk whenever possible. That helps a little, if it's something I know for sure we'll eat before it has a chance to get yucky. Of course, living in the desert helps. People in humid areas have a harder time storing some stuff. Our house is built on a crawl space and I built some shelves down there that I use like an old-fashioned root cellar, since it's so dry and the temp is cool and steady year-round.

I wish I could skip buying milk. $4.09/gallon yesterday for not-organic, store-brand milk!!! I was stunned. But my big kids love milk, and my youngest is very underweight and needs the calories. Avocados are the only fruit/veggie that I will buy out of season, just because it's essential for my skinny boy. Otherwise, it's apples-oranges-bananas for fruit, and most of our veggies come from the freezer section unless I can find a good price on something fresh, but this time of year nothing is cheap except zucchini and green beans.

We're not vegetarian, but we eat very little meat. I'm the queen of the one-pot meal (slow cooker, skillet, or soup pot), and in most of our favorite recipes I triple the beans and use 1/4 to 1/3 of the meat that's called for. Tastes the same, makes my carniverous DP and eldest DS happy, makes us all healthier, and cuts the cost way down.

I hate that it's all so expensive now. I used to keep boxes of Annie's mac and cheese to feed the kids on nights when I just couldn't face making dinner, and individual little cartons of yogurt for their lunches, and sometimes we'd buy juice boxes. No more. And careful as I am, and as much time as I spend making every. blessed. thing. from scratch, our grocery bill is still so much higher than it was!

And look at my kids ages. I'm just heading into the most expensive years for feeding my family. My 14 year old is already to that phase where he can't seem to get enough food no matter what he eats! On Saturday for lunch, he ate a huge bowl of leftover chili and THREE PB&J sandwiches, washed down with two giant glasses of milk. He's grown so tall and it made him so skinny, and I guess now his appetite is compensating and trying to put some weight on him. I don't get how his stomach doesn't explode, though!

[SugarAndSun]

No paper towels or napkins, chips, ginger ale, alcohol, premade hummus, meat (I'm veggie), berries in the winter, water mellon in the winter, avocado rolls, and we buy very little juice.

[MommyErin]

We dilute our juice (DDs apple and DSs white grape) by 50% right off the top as it goes in the fridge. After the first few days, they didn't really notice and it's much heathier for them.

Also, I invested in Siggs for both kids for their lunches and it saved a ton in the long run on juice boxes. I used to buy lots!

I still buy laundry detergent but I use half of the recommended amount.

I don't buy individual chip containers -- I bought two little containers for lunches and fill them from the big one.

I don't buy shredded cheese -- that's what DH is for!

DD and I are mostly vegetarian -- just a little fish -- so meat gets purchased very rarely for DH and DS.

I don't buy bread -- I use my bread machine.

I don't buy pie crusts or cookie mixes. I'm weaning myself off muffin mixes and TJs cornbread mix.

I do buy pop but only when it's on sale. This $8 for a case is a crock of SH**!! It's caramel flavoring and corn syrup, for crying out loud!

Unfortunately, though, I'm not the most frugal grocery shopper. DDs allergies and DSs casein free diet tend to complicate things considerably.

[miss_sonja]

Originally Posted by PrettyBird

I no longer buy organic milk. It is just too expensive and the mainstream brands are not much different than conventional milk anyway. I signed DD and myself up for WIC since I am not getting paid anymore and we can get hormone free Kroger brand milk. WIC is really saving us a lot of money on food now. I also started making my own bread, which saves a lot of money but I am still perfecting my skills.

I've noticed that many of the milk producers are no longer using the Rbgh and are saying so on the label. That was my main reason for buying organic milk. So, back to the "conventional" for us.