Thread: Fighting the rising cost of groceries

Grow as many veggies/fruit as we can,especially as the mrs is a vegetarian.
Chooks for eggs.
Buy meat from mates when available,just got 2 hoggets for $130 dressed/cut up etc.Top quality contract killed/cut up in the Narrogin abbatior.
Brew my own beer,a nite at the pub is an easy$100 gone!!!,I can afford to DROWN anybody who dares stay for more than 3 pints without worrying about $$$.2 cartons of beer costs me around $19.00
Take any overtime thats available.
Do weekend work to cover play things for the Disco/holidays.
Make all my own smoko/lunch,guys at work spend up to $20 a day at the roadhouse every day EXCLUDING THEIR FAGS!!!
Re-use grey water in the orchard to save on watering costs.
Re-cyling everything we can.Saves on rubbish costs.Didnt even use any of our free tip passes last year,the wheelie bin is only half full every week.
Im lucky as the Mrs is now working full time,but our boy is 13 and well on the way to being 6 foot tall,lots of $$$ go into keeping that motor running!!!!
Andrew

We had to make strict rules.
No prime meats except a steak once every 6 weeks
We buy 'economy cuts' from butchers
Oxtail
Beef shin
Lambs neck
all meals are with oodles of veges-casseroles, cassoulets, ragu, stews.caccitore
so a little meat goes a long way.
We eat a lot of Asian home cooked, very economical.
We only buy whole chickens never pieces, bones are used for stock, spare skin grilled and used in 'Peking Duck for paupers"lol.
We buy NO processed food at all, no boxes or plastic wrapped items.
We buy real quality coffee and tea, we make herb tea drinks and stock the fridge(peach, lemon rosehip etc) so no soft drinks....this saves a fortune!!
If you ate with us you would see we live very well, most people would envy us, but roasts are once every 4 months.
I recommend
1) Good cookbooks
2)forward meal planning
3) relationship with local butcher and forget coles or woolies except for chicken.
4) Quality veges, again forget chains.
5)Check the trolley before the register and toss processed items.
It is hard at first, HTH Ace!

Originally Posted by LandyAndy

Grow as many veggies/fruit as we can,especially as the mrs is a vegetarian.
Chooks for eggs.
Buy meat from mates when available,just got 2 hoggets for $130 dressed/cut up etc.Top quality contract killed/cut up in the Narrogin abbatior.
Brew my own beer,a nite at the pub is an easy$100 gone!!!,I can afford to DROWN anybody who dares stay for more than 3 pints without worrying about $$$.2 cartons of beer costs me around $19.00
Take any overtime thats available.
Do weekend work to cover play things for the Disco/holidays.
Make all my own smoko/lunch,guys at work spend up to $20 a day at the roadhouse every day EXCLUDING THEIR FAGS!!!
Re-use grey water in the orchard to save on watering costs.
Re-cyling everything we can.Saves on rubbish costs.Didnt even use any of our free tip passes last year,the wheelie bin is only half full every week.
Im lucky as the Mrs is now working full time,but our boy is 13 and well on the way to being 6 foot tall,lots of $$$ go into keeping that motor running!!!!
Andrew

Hi LA, i wish i could do overtime, unfortunately being a teacher on a set salary and work i do outside of school hours like excursions that take longer than school time i do out of the goodness if my heart.

One question about the meat in bulk from mates- how do you go about keeping all that meat, obviously you freeze it, but do you find that towards the end of the batch the meat has gotten freezer burn and is rather ordinary?

We couldn't until my wife started working part time.
Shopping is done once a fortnight. Rarely drink. I rarely buy food at work. If you watch the budget and know where you $$$ go them it becomes easy. We find we often have spare $$$ these days.

Originally Posted by Tango51

We had to make strict rules.
No prime meats except a steak once every 6 weeks
We buy 'economy cuts' from butchers
Oxtail
Beef shin
Lambs neck
all meals are with oodles of veges-casseroles, cassoulets, ragu, stews.caccitore
so a little meat goes a long way.
We eat a lot of Asian home cooked, very economical.
We only buy whole chickens never pieces, bones are used for stock, spare skin grilled and used in 'Peking Duck for paupers"lol.
We buy NO processed food at all, no boxes or plastic wrapped items.
We buy real quality coffee and tea, we make herb tea drinks and stock the fridge(peach, lemon rosehip etc) so no soft drinks....this saves a fortune!!
If you ate with us you would see we live very well, most people would envy us, but roasts are once every 4 months.
I recommend
1) Good cookbooks
2)forward meal planning
3) relationship with local butcher and forget coles or woolies except for chicken.
4) Quality veges, again forget chains.
5)Check the trolley before the register and toss processed items.
It is hard at first, HTH Ace!

Thanks mate, thats a big help, we get all our meat from butchers, except chicken as you say, and thats our biggest item, stacey doesnt eat much red meat.

Our biggest problem is the area we live in, its very cold here in winter and the growing season is short, so we can grow a range of vegies but alot is only able to be grown here over summer so we have a gap over winter. I get alot of our vegies from school as we have a large vege plot system happening at school, so i bring as much of that home as possible. Matt

Originally Posted by Ace

One question about the meat in bulk from mates- how do you go about keeping all that meat, obviously you freeze it, but do you find that towards the end of the batch the meat has gotten freezer burn and is rather ordinary?

Not if its packed properly, when we do ours we either tripple wrap - or we use out foodsaver vacuum kit.

The tripple packing works great, just make sure you get all of the air out of each bag.

The foodsaver vac system is a good investment - we buy things like bacon in 50 kg boxes, and seperate it into 1/2 and 1 kg packs and then vac pack it.

We have kept our own steers and sometimes we buy 'mates rates' half an animal (Cow Sheep Pig) and it saves a bloody fortune

G'day Ace,

Yep, it is getting tough man.....

There is 3 in our family at the moment and my missus workds part time so it is a bit tight for us also.

With regard to food shopping, we find that it certainly works out cheaper if we plan for the week or fortnight and try hard to stick to it. Apart from getting fresh fruit we try and use only whats in our pantry and fridge for the week. Just takes a bit of planning, I also take my lunch with me to work, this cuts down on heaps of expenditure.

Also, get into a habit of doing a weekly budget mate, it's hard at first but it definately works once you get into the swing of things.

Hope this helps ya.....

Hucksta

Hi Ace,
We do most of our shopping at ALDI. The price is good but some things they do not sell. BTW they now pricetag items by not only the price of the tom sauce per bottle but also per 100 b or mls etc.

As suggested in a post above. Prime cuts of meat OUT. Mince, is good you can do mayn things with it. Get the slow cooker / crock-pot out. Cheap meat and some veggies make a great meal and with some imagination you can do a lot.

Cheers and good luck. Been there, done that