Then, take one gallon of full fat milk, and one empty, fully washed and sanitized milk jug. Pour 50% of the full fat milk into the clean empty jug and then add water to both containers.

The results taste, cook, and work like 2% milk but now you got FOUR GALLONS for Less than the price of TWO. Freeze portions that you cannot use within a week. (yes it defrosts and tastes just fine, just make sure to shake well before the first serving)

Thank you for posting this. I enjoy reading your blogs and those of other frugal minded women but since I live in Mongolia, where there are no big store chains, much less sales, I sometimes feel a little “left out”. You covered the basics in your post and gave me a shot of confidence, too!

Keep up the good work,
Melanie

Also, to prevent waste, we make “clean out the fridge” dinners. I’ll make a big batch of pizza dough, and store that in the freezer. We can use veggie scraps on that for a quick dinner. Frittattas are also good for using up veggies.

Then we save all the leftover bits of vegetables (extra celery, onion skins, etc.) in a bin in the freezer. When it’s full I make vegetable stock out of it.

We can find canned organic soups for 75 cents, pasta for 40 cents, or maybe Kashi cereal for around a dollar! For those who live in Georgia, there’s one in Metter called Metter Farm Market, and one in East Dublin called Tim’s Country Store.

I agree with menu planning.

One thing I do at the store is look at the price per ounce when trying to decide which brand to buy.

Another way to save and have yummy salad dressings is to make your own. Its very cheap. I found some recipes of Rachel rays where she makes salad dressing in the honey bear container with the little bit of honey that you can’t get out of the container. It lets you use the last little bit of honey without wasting it and you reuse the honey bear again.

I pretty much ask myself, “What would my grandmother do?”. She grows most of her own veggies and fruits and cans them in her pantry for selling and eating in the winter, she NEVER purchases disposible (paper towels) items or highly processed items (Pop Tarts), she makes everything from scratch, rarely goes out to eat, cleans everything with baking soda or vinegar…and this behavior was commonplace in her generation.

-Morgan

A few things that we try to do -
1. Don’t run to the store each time you run out of something – improvise.

2. Meal plan – look for what you have in your pantry, fridge and freezer before you make your list.

3. Cook once, eat twice or three times. I will cook a roast or chicken and then make the leftovers into other type dishes say for roast, I’ll make beef stroganoff or orange beef stirfry, fajitas. For chicken I might make enchiladas, chicken soup, etc.

4. Meatless meals – twice a week we have meatless Mondays and then Wednesdays we have brinner (breakfast for dinner).

I have just found Aldi’s recently and have been pleased with their products plus they have a double guarantee.

One of my favorite cookbooks is The Use It Up Cookbook: a guide to using up perishable foods by Lois Carlson Willand. It may be out of print but you can find used copies on eBay or Amazon.com. It will help you tremendously with leftovers or when you have too much of a good thing… like summer produce.

Another favorite cookbook is More With Less which is a Mennonite cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre. Both are good to help with new ideas which is the hard part of the planning process.

A web site recommended in Women’s Day this month is great, too, especially if you type in “Meals under $1.00″. It is receipefinder.nal.usda.gov.

Looking forward to everyone’s ideas!