$100 a Week for 7? I This So.

$100 a week for groceries is hardly anything for the average 4 person North American family let alone a family of 7. It's doable though. We've been on a $60-$100 a week budget for groceries for the last year. $100 would be on the generous side.

So whether your husband's job is downsizing, your saving for something special or you'd just like to try living a little more thrifty, I'm going to share some tips I have come up with, do's and don't's, and techniques to get your grocery budget down. If you don't want to read this whole massive post, I've put in bold the topics of each paragraph. Read what applies to your needs.

The first set of general tips are these:
DO:

• Cook a lot of soup
• Make things in bulk. Any soup or sauces-always make it in the stock pot. Freeze it or eat it several times a week. 
• learn to bake your own bread. Bake 3 loaves at a time to save on energy costs. 
• Make meals that require cut meat, not whole pieces of it. (ie, don't serve chicken breast for dinner. Serve chicken Alfredo instead. I use 2 large chicken breast for 1 meal for 7 eaters. Cut it up small and there's chicken in every bite)
• Reuse rejected parts of your last meal (ie cook chicken for dinner then save all the juice for soup. Or use the leaves of beats in salad)
• Make 1 dish meals. 
• Drink really good juice instead of fresh fruit. But is has to be good juice. Learn how to read a label. We buy V8 Splash and stock up when it's on sale. Each glass counts as 2 servings of fruit and veggies and it is delicious. 
• Find a local farmer and buy eggs in bulk. We buy eggs by the 15 dozen. Its cheaper than other breakfast options. My family will eat 10 eggs all together for breakfast. Our eggs are $1.80 this way. If you are too few to buy 15 doz eggs, do a share at work or with friends. Or prepare omelets (don't cook them) with all your ingredients and freeze them individually. Who doesn't love a nice hot omelet before a busy work day. It's really only possible if it's already prepared. 
• Use online tools to help you make a meal. If you are feeling uncreative and your cupboards are getting bare you can go to  http://allrecipes.com/search/default.aspxms=1&origin=Home%20Page&rt=r&qt=i  pick ingredients you have, and staple items that you don't have. So if you know you don't have any milk or butter left put that in the "I don't want section" and see what recipes come up. I'm going to do an experiment. I'm going to say I have carrots, flour, onions, sour cream and say I don't have milk, butter, or honey and see what happens (I just chose those randomly right now.) ... waiting...Awesome. It came up with potato pancakes and pickle soup. 
• Use what you have in the fridge. Don't let things go bad. Make button soup if something is going to go bad. 

DON'T:

• Buy packaged food. It will cost you way more money. My family would need 1.5 of anything pre-made in a box which will cost about $15 per dinner as opposed to the $6/meal soups you'll see later. 
• Buy things full price. Shop on the half priced veggie shelf (As long as you can freeze or cook that day. There is a reason why they are half off. Because they are almost bad)
• Restrict yourself if you don't have the right item. Try substituting for other things. 
• Mind eating the same thing more than once in a week. Sometimes 2 or 3 times a week. (It's just food. There's no rule saying you have to eat a different meal every night except your pride.) Eat what you have and don't throw things out. 
• Snack-you don't need to. And if you really want a good snack watching TV, make your own popcorn. It's easy and satisfying. And cheap. It about $4 for a bag of kernals which make at least 10 nights worth. If you eat snacks at night it works out to about $.40/night instead of $2/per night for a bag of chips. 

The first thing is you're going to need to learn how to do is cook without a recipe. I'm going to write a few idea's of how to do this but this stage is very experimental. If you've used a lot of recipes in the past you might be scared to venture away from the page but to your benefit you have a huge background of knowledge locked down in your brain waiting to burst out. If you are an open-the-box-and-put-it-in-the-oven type of cooker, this is going to be a little more challenging.

SOUP
Soup is so easy. Always cook soup in bulk. Get a big stock pot and make sure it's full every time you use it. This will save you time and money. Cooking in bulk will always save money because you can buy out all the sale veggies at once and then use them all before they actually go bad.

• See-through soup is typically broth based. Saute onions and any other sauteable veggies before adding liquid. Then add your liquid whether its broth, water or tomato juice. Then add in whatever else you want. 
•  I don't cook enough whole chickens to make my own broth anymore so I buy a natural bullion. It is a bit more expensive but everything else is really bad for you. If you cook whole chicken, save the bones, boil them in a stock pot of water with already sauteed onions and add in carrots and celery for about 3 hrs or until almost half of the liquid is boiled down. It will need lots of salt
• Let's say you want chicken noodle soup. Start with onions (about 5 or 6) and mushrooms (a couple packages). Soften them up. Then add the appropriate amount of broth. I use an entire package of the natural bullion for one batch of soup. (10 squares for $4) Also at this time add in other veggies like potatoes, carrots, celery. Add 4 chicken breast or so to the pot. You can do more if you want. Everything is pretty much done when the chicken is done. Take the chicken out and shred it how ever you'd like. I would suggest cooking the pasta separately and adding it into the soup only when it is cool otherwise your noodles will disintegrate. Use egg noodles for the perfect Chicken noodle soup.  That's it. So this pot of soup which will last us about 4 meals cost me a $3 package of onions, $2 sale mushrooms, $4 broth, $2 carrots, $9 chicken, $2 pasta. Total $22 for 4 meals for family of 7. That's about 20 adult portions of soup for $22. That's $1.10 per bowl (up to the rim and maybe even seconds) of soup. Not Bad. The great thing with a button soup like this is you can get rid of any random assortment of I'm-most-likely-going-to-throw-the-rest-of-that-out veggies into it cutting the cost even lower. 
• Creamy soup can be done two ways. You can either puree everything you just made like in the recipe above (minus the noodles) or you can use a cream base or in our budget cutting case, milk. 
• To make a chowder cream base soup melt some butter in the bottom of the pan. In this case since we're using a ginormous pot use a cup of butter. Then whisk in enough flour that your butter doesn't become dry but is gooey. Probably 1 or 1.5 cups. It should be nice and thick but not like dough at all. More like wet glue. This will act as a thickening agent. Add plenty of milk, probably a whole bag (3 bags really if you're Canadian otherwise a whole jug of milk) and whisk constantly until it starts to thicken. This will take about 10 mins. Once it starts to thicken add whatever you want! How about a whole  bag of corn? Peas? Sauteed onions? Potatoes? You can blend this soup as well if you want to. If you have enough flour in the soup you can add in as much water as you did milk to make it stretch. As long as it stays thick. If you find it really needs more thickness, DO NOT ADD FLOUR DIRECTLY INTO YOUR HOT POT! You'll get disgusting blobs of dough that are impossible to whisk away. Whisk more flour with COLD milk or water and then add it into your soup. You'll be safe then. So this pot of soup probably wont yield as much as the soup above but lets say it will serve 3 meals for my 7 people. That's about 15 adult portions. $2 half a pound of butter, $7 milk, $6 any veggies added. That's $15 and about $1 per bowl. 
• To make a veggie based cream soup like butternut sqash soup (mmmm my favourite, and soooo easy) cook your main ingredient thoroughly. What I do is buy 2 squash. Pay attention to  the shape. You want to get 4 halves in the oven at the same time. If you can get more in, do it. Chop a few onions and place them on your baking tray. Put plenty of blobs of butter over the onions. Then place you halved squash, skin side up onto the onions. If you can try to bunch the onions in piles to fit in the holes of the squash. Bake until you can very easily poke a fork through. Now if your oven is broken like mine is, saute onions and butter in your stock pot then put your large pieced of squash in the pot and put enough broth in to cover the squash. Boil it until you can easily poke a fork through the skin. Then take them out and remove the skin (tip, cool them first :) do the same if you cooked yours in the oven and add the broth. Remember, it's worth more to you to make a full pot of soup BUT here's a tip: never put more liquid than substance in a cream soup. So if you have 12 cups of substance you shouldn't be adding more than 12 cups liquid. Alright back to the soup. Put all the squash meat back into your pot and and use a hand blender to blend it all together until there are no lumps left. If your budget allows for you to get cream you can add a small carton otherwise add some milk. Depending on how much soup you've made, you might add in a 1 liter bag of milk. Maybe less but you don't want to dilute your deliciousness. So Butternut squash soup costs $2 half a bag of onions, about $7 squash, $4 broth, $2 milk. $15 for this pot which makes about 2 meals worth for us with maybe some left overs. So lets say 12 adult portions of soup from this pot. That's $1.25 per bowl of soup. Now with this type of soup you could thicken a portion using the flour, milk method, heat it up, add some substance like shredded carrots, slightly melt in some brie or parm and voila! Pasta sauce. That didn't cost you much. You just made a new meal out of your left overs.

Alright, that's a long post. I think I'm done for now. If anyone would like any specific tips, please leave a comment and I'll dedicate another blog to this topic.