Yes, I definitely think it's cheaper to make meals rather than by prepared stuff. You might have to plan a bit for the more expensive ingredients, but almost always, you'll have more of whatever it is you make, so it goes further.
Something else I've noticed is that homemade food is more filling and satisfying, so I'm happy with less.
Soups are a great way to stretch your money while enjoying good food. The Enchanted Broccoli Forest has some fabulous soup recipes and you can always add meat if you like.
I make our bread, and I haven't priced it out but I suspect it may actually be more expensive. But by that I mean it's more expensive than the awful cheap stuff that you can roll into a ball.
The biggest expense per batch is easily the flour, since I pretty much go through a 5lb bag for every four loaves. (I posted the recipe I use to this comm a while back, if you don't have one of your own.) I've gotten a little, well, snobby, about my flour lately, but really, you can get decent unbleached all-purpose flour for not too much, depending on what your own food ethics are like.
Yeah, I mean the price of bread has really shot up round where I am, and flour's still quite cheap, if you buy the own brand stuff, so I reckon I'll stand to save quite a bit, hopefully. I was always quite good at baking bread, so I'm hoping it'll work out quite well for the budget and the tum :0P
I buy our flour in bulk and store it in 5 gallon food grade buckets, which brings the cost of a loaf of bread WAY WAY down. I think my costs with bulk flour and yeast run >$1 a loaf. It's still not cheaper than Wonderbread, but we never bought that to begin with and as someone whose favorite meal is soup and good bread we're saving a ton making the bread rather than buying it for $5 a loaf.
I hope you wanted a long answer!sapote3February 19 2009, 14:15:52 UTC
Honestly it depends on what you make - bread, I find, is usually 1/2 the cost of cheap bread and 1/5th the cost of good bread, but if I were you I might try it out and make a little comparison chart. That might just be because I love making price comparison charts, though
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oh, another tipsapote3February 19 2009, 18:06:58 UTC
Don't think you have to stock the whole pantry at once. I have twelve zillion different kinds of oils and spices and dried beans and dry noodles, but I bought them a bit at a time as I added recipes to my repertoire. Looking back, it's thinking I have to buy all the staples at once that usually made stocking a new kitchen difficult.
Ooh yeah stock's a good one, thanks! I reckon that'll be good for me as well because I can be quite wasteful about leftovers, especially not planning meals particularly well so I use up whatever veggies I buy at the beginning of the week. But that's also a habit I'm going to give up for the sake of my budget if nothing else :0P
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Yes, I definitely think it's cheaper to make meals rather than by prepared stuff. You might have to plan a bit for the more expensive ingredients, but almost always, you'll have more of whatever it is you make, so it goes further.
Something else I've noticed is that homemade food is more filling and satisfying, so I'm happy with less.
Soups are a great way to stretch your money while enjoying good food. The Enchanted Broccoli Forest has some fabulous soup recipes and you can always add meat if you like.
Good luck!
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The biggest expense per batch is easily the flour, since I pretty much go through a 5lb bag for every four loaves. (I posted the recipe I use to this comm a while back, if you don't have one of your own.) I've gotten a little, well, snobby, about my flour lately, but really, you can get decent unbleached all-purpose flour for not too much, depending on what your own food ethics are like.
Congrats on the house!
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