Diana Clement: How to slash your grocery bill - part 1

Are you overpaying on your grocery bill? Photo / 123RF

The cost of food is stressing New Zealanders. New data out this week has confirmed what we all know. Grocery bills are soaring.

I’ve honed my ability to eat on the smell of an oily rag - often learning from readers’ tips. So over the next two weeks I’m going to share those ideas. Not all work for everyone. But I find new ideas can be winners if I approach them with the ‘how can I make this work’ attitude instead of writing them off automatically.

Shop your pantry

Most households have hundreds of dollars worth of food in their pantries, fridges and freezers. I know, because we once lived for five and a half weeks just eating down our supplies.

Lockdown programmed some people into thinking they need sufficient food to last a nuclear winter. For the minority, like me, it encouraged eating up what we had and we became used to a more empty fridge/freezer and pantry. I was staying with friends recently who, a few weeks earlier, had totally run out of cash. They stopped buying groceries, ate their pantry, and rode out the financial crisis. Eating out of the cupboards can actually be fun. We have some family favourites like baked bean cassoulet pie, which was invented for our pantry project.

Plan your meals

The family isn’t going to starve if you don’t have every staple known to man in your cupboards. If you create meal plans, you’ll only buy what you need. Start your weekly planning by shopping your pantry to see what could be eaten up. Google is your friend when looking for recipes to use up obscure ingredients.

Learn to substitute

Even if you don’t have all the ingredients, for a meal, Google “substitute [ingredient]” before buying something you’ll only use once. Just about everything can be substituted. I found 14 different substitutes for buttermilk when I googled it.

Stick to your shopping list

I really mean stick to it. Don’t have WTH purchases. The only time to not stick to the list is if an item is on a silly sale and can be stored up in bulk. But only buy as much as you will actually use.

Price your protein

This idea came from the Love Food Hate Waste campaign. If you can’t price out every ingredient in your meals, set a sum for the protein which is usually the most expensive ingredient. Doing that makes me ruminate on the cost of various proteins when I’m cooking.

Radically reduce your meat intake

Stretch the meat over more meals or mouths and try meat-free days. You’re not going to die of protein deficiency if you replace half your mince with lentils, or make a beef stew from cheaper cuts of meat. Humans have the ability to learn to like different foods. Try something new.

A trip to the Costco store in Westgate, Auckland, proved that we should always cross-check the prices of items.

Don’t play supermarket confusopoly

They rely on us not doing our sums properly. Case in point was my “friends day out” to Costco, where an awful lot of items were more expensive than Pak’nSave.

Do your homework

Know the normal price of items on your shopping list or use an app such as Grocer.nz. Check out the unit pricing in the price label in the supermarket if you can. Larger sizes aren’t always cheaper.

Buy in season

Buy fruit and vegetables when they’re plentiful and cheap. Or buy frozen when fresh is too expensive. Eating only in-season produce adds variety to your diet.

Freeze food early to avoid throwing out

I have a compost bin dedicated to ShareWaste. I’m astounded how much food the people using my bin are wasting. Things that would have been frozen before they go off in our house, are feeding my pet worms. A good tip from Love Food Hate Waste is that the “sell by date” or “use by date” on food you buy is really a “freeze-by date”. Just make sure you cycle through the contents of your freezer when meal planning and use that food up.

Next week: Part 2.