Frugal Meals – Eat Well, Spend Less…Much Less!

Frugal meals don’t have to be meagre tasteless affairs. You can eat fantastic, filling meals everyday, even on a tiny budget.

For most families, food is the second largest item of expenditure, eclipsed only by accommodation costs. It’s not so easy to move house but it’s a piece of cake to cut down on your food budget.

Learn how to make Basic Frugal White Bread

Frugal Meals – What’s the secret?

It’s simple, you need to plan ahead and cook from scratch! For even more impact on your grocery bill, grow a garden if you have some space.

No more going to the store and picking up this and that. No more leaving uneaten food to go mouldy in the back of the refrigerator. No more reaching for the phone to order dinner because you have nothing prepared.

If money is tight and the bill at the checkout is giving you a headache, it’s time to get tough with yourself and make some changes.

Make A Meal Plan

The key to feeding your family on a budget, is planning ahead.

When you know exactly what is for breakfast, lunch and dinner each day, you won’t end up ordering take out or heading out the door to go and eat.

With meals planned in advance you’ll find it easy to make a shopping list and you can plan your purchases to maximize savings.

Some people like to repeat their menu each week, while others opt to fill out 4 sheets covering an entire month and then repeat that monthly menu. Do whatever works for you.

Make A Shopping List

Once you have your meals planned out, check the recipes and make a list of ingredients that you need to buy.
Don’t forget to check and see what items you already have stored in your cupboards.

Look through any coupons that you have and clip them to your shopping list so that you don’t forget to use them!

Sign up for your grocery stores on line shopping service. It’s easier to do price checking from the comfort of your own home, instead of trying to figure things out at the supermarket.

 Food From Your Garden

If you have some space to create a garden or to site a few plant containersthen you can enjoy some extremely frugal meals!

One lunch that we enjoy during the summer months, when the garden is in full swing, is our yummy garden wraps.

The only ingredient that we have to buy for this lunch is the flour to make the chapatis for the wraps. We have to feed five people and this lunch costs us pennies.

Just make a quantity of chapatis and fill them with lettuce or kale, tomato, grated carrot, sliced onion, chopped cucumber, sweetcorn and beetroot. You can add a little mayo too if you like.

We also keep chickens. They pay for their food with one weeks egg production, so the eggs for the rest of the month come for free.

A few eggs and veggies from the garden make us a tasty omelete with potatoes and salad. When it comes to frugal food you can’t do much better then free food from your garden.

Take a look at our gardening pages if you would like to learn how to grow your own food.

Starting A Garden

Growing Vegetables In Containers