25 Ways to Save Money on Food- Food For Kids Podcast episode 73

Joanne Roach (00:13)

Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. Today's episode is going to be a fairly speedy run through of 25 practical ideas for saving money on family food.

Chances are you'll know a lot of them, but it never hurts to refresh your memory about something you might have stopped doing if you've got in a rut and you might pick up one or two new ideas to try. so pick and choose what you want and there'll be some links in the show notes to additional information for them too. So let's get started.

OK, we're going to start with five tips about different ways of organising your food to save money. So number one is the one that you'll see on every kind of list like this, which is to plan your meals.

Some people love to plan all their meals across the whole week and that really works for them. But for a lot of people that doesn't really work at all because they find they either just don't stick to the plan or they find it too overwhelming to plan them all.

But one part of meal planning that most people can apply is to look at the meals that your family likes to eat over and over again and make sure that two or three of the meals in the week are those meals that you know are enjoyable, affordable ingredients and easy to prepare.

That way nearly half your week is taken up with meals you've planned in.

Even if you don't like planning your meals in advance, the one part of meal planning that can apply to everyone and can really be helpful is to look at things that you already have in your cupboard and fridge and try to find two or three meals to use some of those things up.

There are quite a lot of apps now and websites where you can put in the ingredients that you've got in your fridge or cupboard that need using up and they'll tell you recipes that can use several of them at once. I'll link to some of those in the show notes.

So even if you're not really a big meal planner, if you plan one or two meals that are using up what you've already got, and then two or three more meals that are family favourites, then you've already covered quite a lot of the week without really having to do a formal plan. Number two, is either batch cooking, if you're the kind of person that likes that, or meal prepping ingredients rather than full meals, if that would suit you better.

Batch cooking can really be a good way to reduce your effort and energy costs on cooking, as well as the fact that if you buy larger quantities of ingredients at a lower price, you can often save money.

But a lot of people find batch cooking a bit overwhelming.

So if that sounds like you, you might instead want to look at meal prepping ingredients or components.

So rather than cooking entire meals in advance, you look at preparing components of meals that you can then put together later in the week with more flexibility and in different combinations. So this might look like cooking some chicken that you can use in a pasta meal, also in some sandwiches and a salad during the week. It could look like preparing some chickpeas or beans with sauces or spices on.

that you can then use in a bowl or in a burrito or as a side dish. Or it could look like my favourite type of meal prep, which is where you put a load of vegetables onto one or two trays in the oven at once and roast them. Things like small cubes of potato, bits of pepper, pieces of broccoli, butternut squash or sweet potatoes. Things like that that you can then put into the fridge and you can add them together in different combinations to make up bowls, burritos, pasta sauces, quesadillas, side dishes, omelettes, or even pizza toppings.

That way, when you come to making meals and you don't feel like it, you've already got ingredients ready and you're much more likely to want to put those together quickly than to go out and start all over again getting something new.

And that brings me on to number three, which is if you put your oven on, try to cook more than one thing at once. With utility prices so high now, we can't ignore the cost of actually cooking the ingredients in the cost of the food.

So if you're going to be cooking a roast in a great big tray, why not find something to cook on a tray underneath for a later meal in the week? Or if you're going to be cooking a casserole on one side of the oven, could you add in something alongside it that would take a long time on the stovetop, like for example a pot of soaked dried beans or a roast piece of meat or some chicken thighs to add into the freezer?

Basically, have a quick look at the meals that you're cooking during the week and see if at any time there's going to be half an oven free

and see if any of the cooking from another meal could be done at the same time.

Number four, when you're planning your meals, try to actively plan in opportunities to use lower cost equipment.

If you have a slow cooker, an air fryer or an instant pot, try to actively plan meals that are going to get cooked in them. If you don't have any of these items, you can get most of them now on eBay, Facebook marketplace or local charity shops that sell electrical goods. You can usually get them from anything between 20 and 40 quid.

And if you've got one of those electricity meters in your house that shows how much you're using, you will be amazed at what the difference is for something like air frying a few chicken nuggets versus the job of having to warm up the oven first before you can even put them in in the oven.

And finally, number five, while we're on the organisational side of things, if the adults in the house who work outside the home don't normally take a lunch to work, see if you can plan some of that into your organisation.

Even if you don't want to take a lunch from home every day, if you could just start with one or two days a week to replace a sandwich that you might buy out, it can really add up over time. This could be leftovers from a previous meal to reheat, or it could be something you make in advance and stick in the freezer or fridge. Even if you don't have a microwave at work, things like ham and cheese bagels freeze really well, as well as lots of homemade sandwiches.

And I'll put a link in the show notes to a post about this and how to do advanced lunches that don't go soggy. Next, we've got six tips about how to shop to save money. So the first one, tip number six, is for people who find that they always spend more money at the shops than they intended to. Try online shopping instead. Although you might have to pay for a couple of quid for the delivery, so it feels a bit counterintuitive, it's actually harder to get carried away with an online shop. And even if you do, as you're going through,

then add everything to your basket, go away for half an hour and have a cup of tea, and then come back and check your basket again and you might find you'll be happy to take things out when you've got out of the swing of it.

Online shopping can often also enable you to buy bargains or different pack sizes than if you go in person.

Number seven is ways to get things at a reduced cost. So most supermarkets have a version of yellow stickers, which is items that have been reduced because they're getting up towards their date. If you regularly only use one or two supermarkets, then find out when it is that they reduce things. If you ask a member of staff who you can see marking stuff down, they'll tell you when they normally do it.

Most supermarkets either have one or two special days a week or a particular time of day where they mark things down. So if you go shortly after that, you'll get the pick of the crop.

Make sure that you always use your reward card. It used to be that reward cards got you occasional bargains that were lower than the normal price, but unfortunately now you've probably noticed that most of the supermarkets are doing that thing where they inflate the prices for non-reward card holders.

So the price with the reward card is more like the usual price.

But if you don't take your reward card, you are going to be paying quite a high price for things. So although it is very annoying that what they're doing is gathering your data in return for normal prices, if you're trying to save money, you do need to take your card. Check your app or if you've had anything through the post from your card to see if there's any vouchers, but don't buy things that you won't eat.

And then still on this point about lower prices, you can also use resources to get hold of food that's being given away by supermarkets. Three of these are Olio, which is spelled O-L-I-O, where local volunteers give away food that's come up to its sell-by date from local supermarkets. And then there's Too Good To Go, which is a waste reduction scheme that shops can take part where they give you mystery packages of food for a very low price when they're up to their sell-by date.

And then there's a website called Approved Food, which links you with food that's got up to its date, but is still perfectly good. For all of those, you'll be saving on food waste as well as saving yourself some money.

Number eight is to swap out just one item at a time for a lower price. What I mean by that is to pick one item out in a supermarket shop where you're going to look properly at the shelves and see if the one that you normally buy has an alternative that's lower price that you can try out. So instead of thinking, I'm going to try and swap all of my branded things for supermarket brands and then overwhelming yourself with the task, just pick one thing at a time.

This time, when I go to the shop, I'm going to look at the rice that I buy and see if there's a different rice I could try instead or bran flakes or whatever it is. By doing it this way, you won't get overwhelmed on an individual shop. But if you did that every week, you could end up with 50 different swaps across the course of the year.

And even if you only kept half of them, that's still 20 or 25 items that you're regularly buying that's saving you money.

And related to staples, number nine is to write down a proper list of your staple items that you always buy and put it in your phone so that you can buy them when they're on sale.

Number 10 is one that everyone always says, but it really does make a difference, which is don't shop hungry and don't shop without a list. If you do get to the shops with no list, maybe just sit in the car for two minutes and jot a few things down on your phone that you definitely need so you can go around the supermarket with a bit more purpose. And please try to eat something before you go to the shops.

It sounds like an old wives' tale, but they have done quite a few studies on this and people really do spend a lot more money when they're hungry.

And then finally on shopping, number 11, If you're lucky enough to have an international greengrocers nearby, you may be amazed at the price of staple goods like onions, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and peppers.

And if you live near an Asian supermarket, you can make big savings on dry goods like rice, noodles, and lots of sauces. If you live near a market that has a green grocery stall, you can often find really good reductions at the end of the day when they want to get rid of a whole tray of something rather than having to transport them back to the shop.

So that's shopping. Next up is 5 tips about ingredients. Number 12. If you're a household that eats meat, then try changing one or two meals a week to a meat free option. You'll be amazed at how much cheaper some vegetarian meals can be.

And if you don't want to switch to meat-free altogether, then look at ways that you can bulk out your meat with veggie proteins, for example, replacing half the beef in a bolognese with lentils. This can enable you to buy less of the costly meat and reduce your costs that way.

And talking about the cost of meat, number 13 is learning how to cook cheaper cuts of meat. The difference in cost between a whole tray of chicken thighs and a couple of chicken breasts can be quite astonishing. And the same goes for slow cooking some of the cheaper cuts of pork or beef too. Maybe just pick one a month to try, look up a recipe online, work out how to cook them. It can really save quite a lot of money on those meat meals.

Number 14 is to try to use seasonal vegetables, which you know I'm all about on this podcast, or to go to places where you can buy loose amounts of things rather than whole packs so you don't have leftovers going off, or try using wonky veg or a veg box scheme. This doesn't always save money, but if you're prepared to look at some recipes and get a bit inventive, it really can, and it's very good for the environment too. And related to that, number 15 is to not forget that frozen fruit and veg can be an awful lot cheaper than fresh stuff and can often be more nutritious.

Also, dried foods such as dried beans, chickpeas and vegetable proteins can also work out incredibly cheap.

And of course it wouldn't be a Foodies podcast without number 16, which is to try growing some of your own veg. Now growing everything isn't for everybody. And if you're starting off and you have to build up your equipment list, it isn't necessarily cheaper, but some items definitely are cheaper to grow at home. If you've got a tiny bit of space, then cut and come again salads are way cheaper than buying salad in the shops. And they have the advantages of not going off in the bottom of the fridge. Soft fruit like berries can definitely be cheaper to grow at home.

Raspberry plants are dead easy to grow. You can grow them in a pot and they come back every year and they taste amazing and they're well worth it with the price of them in the shops.

OK, so that's ingredients. Next up, we've got six tips about buying less. So number 17 is once a quarter, do a cupboard clear out where you take things out of your cupboard and your fridge, make a big list of them

and try and figure out what you can make to use up quite a lot of those ingredients. This can be quite a fun one for kids to get involved with because it's kind of a mission to find recipes that will use up more than one of the items at a time.

It's a little lesson in home economics, plus a bit of fun for them to interact with the food and you get to clear out some space. And in a similar way, number 18 is bottom of the fridge meals. So that's things that can use up lots of random bits you've got in the bottom of your fridge. That's things like soup, curry, frittatas, pasta sauce, vegetable stock, tray bakes with potatoes and sausages alongside them. Basically anything that can use a really random assortment of foods.

Number 19 is to learn to store things effectively.

That way you're less likely to be throwing stuff in the bin that's gone soggy or wet or dry or mouldy.

If you look back through the feed on this podcast, you'll see that once a month we take a category of fruit and vegetables and we walk through how to store them properly, how to freeze them, and how to use them up. So make the most of those episodes. Number 20 is to go through your fridge and see what looks like it's up to the date and buy yourself an extra few days by either cooking it, which will give you another two to four days in the fridge,

or if you haven't got time to cook it and it hasn't previously been frozen, freeze it or cook and freeze it. These are all good ways to kick the can down the road and make sure you're not throwing food away just because you've run out of time to cook today. And related to that, number 21 is to go back through this podcast feed and look at Kate Hall's freezer tips.

Kate's done two or three episodes for us about how to use the freezer effectively to save on food waste and save money by doing things like freezing half cans of something or half packets or spoonfuls of ingredients, as well as things that are about to go over. So I'll link to those episodes in the show notes.

And number 22 is to use the whole of a food that we'd normally only use parts of. So for example, this is things like using the stems on cauliflower and broccoli, which are perfectly nutritious and can be cooked really beautifully. Or roasting the peelings from vegetables, particularly potatoes to make little crisps. There are loads of great tips out there about how to use up all parts of a food and I'll link in the show notes to a couple of websites that give out really great suggestions.

So finally, our last three are tips about saving money on takeaway. Number 23 is to have a short list of what I'll call boring dinners.

Boring dinners are those things you can have in the cupboard and easily cook. They're not gonna set the world on fire, but they keep everybody happy. And they're good to pull out of the bag on those days when you're tempted by takeaway only really because you're too frazzled or late to cook the things you were going to cook that day. We're talking things like jacket potatoes, pasta and sauce, noodles, omelettes, egg and chips, beans on toast, that kind of thing.

If you have a list of the ones that you know your family will always eat, then when you go shopping, check the cupboards and make sure you've got one or two of those in your cupboards.

Then the next time you're struggling and you really don't want to cook what you were intending to cook tonight, you can switch to one of those boring dinners instead, instead of buying takeout. If you do want to buy takeout because it's a nice treat, then number 24 is a hint to reduce the cost.

So think about buying in or cooking and freezing things in advance to bulk out those takeaways. This might look like cooking a batch of rice and lobbing it in the freezer in portions to go alongside an order of a curry or a Chinese. If you want to have skillfully made sides like egg fried rice or pilau rice, then obviously you might want to pay for them to deliver you something delicious.

But if you're just going to order white rice for several people, there's not that much difference between your white rice and the white rice from the takeaway. And that can add up to quite a lot of money as a side dish for four people.

This could also be things like having supermarket garlic bread or flatbreads in the freezer so that if you buy a pizza, you don't necessarily have to buy the garlic bread to go alongside it.

or keep in things like frozen french fries so that if you want to order a really gorgeous gourmet burger for everyone, you don't necessarily have to order lots of portions of quite expensive chips that are often soggy by the time they arrive. You can just lob some of your oven chips into the oven or air fryer while you're waiting for the delivery to come. These little things do nothing to take away from the joy of the takeaway. They take very little effort to prepare while you're waiting and they can save about a third of the price of the overall bill.

And then finally, number 25, if you do regularly buy from certain places, then try following them on social media or get their apps because they often have special offers, coupons or deals. Obviously don't get sucked into buying them when you wouldn't otherwise, but they can be really helpful to save you money on the days that you do want to go there.

Okay, that's our 25 tips. I hope you might have found one new item in there to think about and remembered maybe a few more that you've got out of the habit of.

I'll be back again next week with another episode.

so I hope to see you then. And in the meantime, happy, cheaper eating.

00:00 Introduction

00:44 25 tips to save money

16:05 Summary and outro