Cut Your Food Bills in Half

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Spend Your Food Dollars Wisely

Shop at home first. If you grow any food, or stock up through farmers markets at peak season (which is when you can get the best deals on any kind of produce), always shop your freezer and pantry first. Even garlic and winter squash won’t keep forever, and the garden treasures in your freezer are best used within a few months. Plus, you’re less likely to buy things you don’t really need if you shop in your own “store” before heading to the market.

Take your lunch. When you pack up some pasta salad made the day before and take it to work, it’s almost like having a free lunch. Even a cheap fast food lunch can cost $5, as will a Styrofoam box of salad bar selections from the supermarket. Compare and contrast: a homemade salad wrap with garden-grown spinach or arugula, or a $6 sandwich that came to you through the labyrinth of our institutional food supply? We should address packaging here, too, because the amount of paper, cardboard and plastic waste involved in a fast-food lunch should make us all queasy. Be sure to bring your own snacks to work, too, which will make it easier to avoid break room donuts and vending machine junk.

Make your own wine and beer. Let’s say you and your partner like to sip a glass of wine at the end of the day, or maybe you prefer a good beer. Buying two inexpensively priced $8 bottles of wine a week will cost you more than $800 dollars a year; two $6 six-packs of beer a week comes to $624. And what about those extra bottles purchased for holidays, gifts or parties? It can add up fast, plus there are all those bottles. Even when recycled, glass bottles are major energy hogs.

If you make your own wine or beer, there will be an upfront investment of about $70 for equipment, which will quickly pay for itself. (See recent articles on making wine, beer and hard cider.) At my house, we make lovely “country” wines from our apples, plums and other fruits, but if you have no fruit you can make wine using packaged juices. Stores that sell winemaking supplies usually stock packaged “varietal” juices such as chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, etc., which can be fermented into wine at a cost of about $2 per bottle.

Homebrewing is as fun and easy as home winemaking, and the payoff in both cases rises with your level of skill. If you avoid the temptation to invest in equipment you really don’t need, and tweak your recipes and procedures to achieve superior results, you will also save a bundle in the long run.

Work with a CSA. When various studies have compared the value of food delivered in weekly boxes by member-supported CSAs to their retail counterparts, costs come out about even. (Search our website to learn more about CSAs.) This is as it should be; there is fundamental absurdity in the notion that organic produce should be cheap just because it is farmer-direct. Yet there are two easy ways to reduce your CSA bill. First, if your CSA offers them, sign up for extra volunteer hours, which will earn you a significant discount on your membership fee. If you are seriously short of funds, apply for a discounted membership. Loyal patrons of established CSA farms often donate enough money to cover sponsored memberships for others, and some CSAs accept food stamps and have grant money to cover costs for low-income members. (Learn more at the United States Department of Agriculture.)

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