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How To Shop Once And Eat Well For 30 Days To Save Money
How I went 30 days without grocery shopping, and saved hundreds of dollars
Want to learn how to turn one dinner into 4, or 5 to help save money? Keep reading.
One of my very favorite food experiments was opting out of grocery shopping for a whole month and only eating what we had on hand. For 30 full days, I planned breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and occasional desserts, and even managed to put up some salsa and preserve some foods, all without going grocery shopping. This fun experiment ended up saving me a lot of money, as we wasted less of our food.
Why did I do this? Well… this was directly after the Vid exploded across the nation, and although I wasn’t afraid to be out in public, doing what I’ve always done, I was extremely put off by the way people were acting and treating each other, so i opted out of being around them. It was a crazy time. Was it Charles Dickens that said “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”? I think so.
So I challenged myself to cook from what we had for 30 days. I had a few parameters… if the kids needed milk, I’d go to the store, or if we ended up eating out a few times during the month like we normally do, then we would. We just wouldn’t go out just because I couldn’t think of what to make. I ended up not needing to ever go to the store that full 30 days, but we did eat out 2-3 times because we were in town for sports things during a meal time.
So HOW did I do this? Well, first of all, I had just done a shopping trip, so we had fresh milk and veggies on hand. It was also garden season, and we have chickens, so we had a few fresh veggies coming in every day, (not a lot, like a handful of cherry tomatoes or similar at a time) and we also had 2-3 chicken eggs every day from our hens who were starting to freshly lay.
I started out by doing a rough inventory of what we had available to us, and putting it down in order of “freshness”. To make sure we were eating up fresh items before the pantry items so we’d minimize food going bad before we could use it. So through the 30 days, we transitioned from fresh produce first, to dried, canned, and frozen. Same with any meats we had in the fridge and freezer. We ate the fresh first, then moved on to the storage foods.
But as I was planning my meals, I found myself naturally taking the leftovers from one meal, and turning them into the next. For example, one night we had elk smokies. I had to make fresh buns for them because we didn’t have any hot dog buns around, and we ate them with sauerkraut, and some sort of vegetable. I think it was broccoli. Then I took the leftover sausage and broccoli, chopped it up really small, added some cheese and rolled it up in tortillas. I put them in a 9×13 pan like enchiladas and poured beaten eggs and seasonings over it, and cooked that the next day for breakfast enchiladas. When that meal was all used up, I moved on to the next meal.
I cooked up a bunch of ground burger, and made chili with beans one night, then we had chili nachos with the leftover chili the next night, then chili dogs a 3rd night, and I finished off a 4th night with chili cornbread pizza cooked in a cast iron. Did we get tired of chili? Maybe, but the kids loved the different ways I was getting creative and giving one meal a completely different taste and feel as I rolled it into the next. I also took that burger and made bibimbap, which is just a mixed rice dish with whatever veggies you have on hand, and seasoned ground or minced meat.
You can call it “Cook once, eat thrice” or just a smart use of leftovers, but at the end of the 30 days, we had saved over $500 we would have spent on grocery shopping, and it only cost me about $200 to restock what we had used for the month. That told me we waste SO MUCH food during the month that gets thrown out or given to our chickens. This was prior to purchasing our freeze dryer, so now we preserve a lot of our leftovers that way, also helping to save on grocery bills. It’s nice to take a leftover, freeze dry it, and set it on the shelf so my kiddos can just add hot water and eat!
So as a recap:
Develop a food plan
Stick to the plan
Adjust as necessary
Get creative
Make allowances for things outside your controL
If you want to get planning on a 30 day no shopping challenge of your own, I’d really recommend grabbing a notebook (any notebook will do) and writing down as many meals as you can think of that you could make from what you have on hand. Then, add meals your family loves that you have MOST of the ingredients on hand for. Don’t forget simple meals like yogurt and granola for breakfast, or base recipe ingredients such as eggs or potatoes. You can do a LOT with eggs and potatoes. Also, never underestimate the power of a good stir fry. You can throw in whatever meat and veggies you have, either already cooked as leftovers, or fresh/frozen, and have an amazing meal.
I will say, having a meal planning notebook dedicated to this helps to keep your lists of food items organized. I love this one, and as a bonus it has an expense tracker in it too, so you can keep track of how much your stock up shopping trip costs, and your re-stock shopping trip to see if this is something you can do long term! The tear-off shopping list is kind of handy also! The idea of only having to go to the grocery store once per month makes me GIDDY. It’s such a time saver, and that’s worth a lot to me.
Written by Jessica
Crushing That Good Life one weekend at a time.
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