"Chile Fiend" wrote

Excellent notes!

Depends on what one considers "eating well" which would probably vary
wildly by individual.

Hehe well we have at least one person in the newsgroup who won't believe
anyone can eat for less than 400$ a person a month and eat healthy. Grin,
I'm a little mystified at that one but he also lives in a rural area with
higher prices so thats a portion of it.

For me (married no kids) we buy a lot in bulk. The people at Costco know
us well. I like Costco because while the prices are not always "cheap"
you can find high quality food for a better price than most supermarkets
or specialty stores. Some of their pastas, olive oils, spices, cheeses,
and meats, are really good deals considering the high quality of the
food.

Same here, though our local one is called 'BJ's' and we also have now a Sams
club. Same thing though. Not everything is cheaper than my commisary (I'm
Navy) but quite a bit of it is. It's also 2 miles from my house (Commisary
is a 40 mile round trip unless I can catch it on the way home which would
only be after the 5am to 5pm shift).

We buy quite a bit there in bulk. Everything from meats to cereal. We
can't normally eat their bread (most require you to buy 2 loaves) quickly
enough before it goes stale, but often we can split that with my parents
or sister. We have a small chest freezer so storage of bulk chicken
breasts, ground beef/turkey, etc., is no problem.

Good! I skip the cereals because the only one who eats them is our 14YO and
they go stale before she can eat that size of box. Besides, she seldom
wants that much of the same brand (likes to swap off types). Hence for _us_
that one doesnt work. I make most of our bread, so the big bags of white
flour work well for us. We go elsewhere for smaller sized ones of wheat as
we dont use that as much. They did have a nice 10lb bag of rye though 4
weeks ago and we like rye. They also had larger sized (and much cheaper)
bread spices so I restocked the comino (cumin seed) and caraway.

On the freezer, yes. You might want to check energy ratings if yours is
more than 5 years old. They've gotten really good at making those more
'energy star' efficient in recent years. A 15 year old 10cf might cost as
much as 300$ a year to run in a high priced electrical area (25$ a month)
and it's hard to make much savings with those. However the newer ones of
the same size run as low as 90$ a year (7.5$ a month) in the same higher
electrical priced areas. My own unit, is 48$ a year per the KWH energy star
ratings and my prices sweet. An older unit can be replaced for about the
amount of electrical savings in 1 year's use. Catch point though, a really
OLD unit may be far more engery efficient than you would think. See, they
used to insulate them better and they've gone back to that. The old one I
donated to the church (was just too big for us and we had a second brand new
one bought when we lived in Japan) has been checked. It's running at 7$ a
month and is a *monster big* unit, commercial grade and predates the cheaper
insulation of later models.

While some may argue that they aren't cheap and may no save you that much
money I find our FoodSaver vacuum sealer to be indispensable. We've found
that we can really keep things like cheese and sliced meats much longer
in the fridge when sealed. Again we buy the rolls of sealer bags in bulk
from Costco at a pretty decent price; maybe close to the cost of ziploc
bags.

Hey, works for you! I know many use them. I avoid them for 2 reasons. 1-
I cant reuse the plastic and I'm sorta 'Japan trained' now to reduce my
plastic use and be able to reuse what plastics I do get when possible. 2- I
like to be able to open the thing and pull out a portion of the contents
then reseal.

You do not however have to double-bag with your type. Me, if it's a meat
already wrapped and of the right portion to freeze as is, I use one more
'ziplock' (or even a plastic grocery bag or so if it's not going to be
frozen more than a week) over the top. When I pull it out from the freezer,
the top layer bag goes in a little bin inside the freezer and will be
reused. When I repackage meats, those get used first from the bin. Inner
bags get tossed out if they had anything other than just fresh veggies.
Each bag gets used twice normally and some may get used 5-6 times before
hitting 'inner bag on a meat' so tossed.

I was shocked at how well the smoked salmon did when sealed and frozen.
You'd be hard pressed to know it was. We also use it on veggies. If we

Absolutely!

buy bulk things like brussel sprouts, green beans, and asparagus we
usually blanch them, move them to ice bath, and them seal them with
salt/pepper or spices and butter. Sometimes a little bacon/ham in with
the green beans/brussel sprouts. These can then be pooped in the
microwave for a couple minutes for a quick and tasty vegetable side dish.

Nice! I seldom freeze anything of the cabbage family but green beans? Oh
yes.

Not quite as good as fresh but pretty darn close. That yields 2 bonuses.
One: we make use of buying bulk veggies, and two: we have quick healthy
foods for weeknights where we don't have time to cook.

The second one would be the main one for me. My work hours are wierd and I
either leave for work at 4:30pm, or get back around 6pm. Our daughter
sometimes has to forage on her own and she's more comfortable with a
microwave at this stage still. In one of my other messages you'll see I
have a stock of 'planned leftovers for work' and she raids those grin.

I'd consider our diet "healthy" given that we incorporate a lots of fresh
or minimally processed foods. Dry beans are about as cheap and healthy as
you can get. Once you master the pressure cooker you can even turn them
out in short time. We do this a lot on weekends where we cook a lot of
food for the coming week.

Good! I never mastered the pressure cooker but I have a simple smaller unit
for making jams and such. What I did master is the crockpot. I've normally
got at least 1 going at any given time so there's always 'something' (14YO
uses this too if she doesnt want to raid my 'planned leftovers for work'
g.). I have 2 crockpots. One is a big unit (6q) and the other is a 5c
'baby'. At this moment both are empty but I plan to start something when I
get done reading my messages.

Sideline: Crockpots are very energy efficient, generally pennies a day.

Aside from the vacuum sealer we tend to use more Tupperware or reusable
containers rather than using rolls of foil, plastic wrap, or ziploc bags.

I use alot of 'tupperware' sorts of things too. Foil rarely but we have it
for a few needs but never the freezer. I do not have any 'saran wrap' sort
of stuff.

Over time I'm sure those things add up and we're not creating as much
waste. I'm not an diehard environmentalist but I do try and consider
that everything I pitch in the trash is not just magically disappearing.
It's going somewhere and the less I send there the better.

True! Seems you are in-line with me pretty much. The only noted difference
was the vacumn bag thing and I agree it does give a better product.

Grin, I don't buy 'bottled water' at all. We save the occasional plastic
pepsi bottle (20oz or so), rinse well, and fill. The water in my area is
_quite_ good tasting right out of the tap so we are lucky there. Big 2L
soda bottles we dont get often, but they too get rinsed, water filled, and
stowed in the freezer. Come hurricane season, we fill an extra 20 or so (or
swap out any gone stale) and put them in along the garage as an emergency
supply.

Whew. Long post and I'm sure more thoughts will surface while this thread
grows. I think most of what we do is pretty common sense and I"m sure
others have some pretty neat ideas. We don't really focus too much on it
but for us I'd asy *buying bulk* is the primary way we save on food
costs.

Hey, reply is longer! The main drawback to our style for others is we have
the storage space to do it. An apartment dweller (at least in a small
apartment) often cant do it. Like my place years ago in Hawaii was a 1 room
efficiency with a kitchen 'nook' so small, you couldnt open the fridge and
the stove at the same time ;-)