Right now, it is 2024. Almost everyone I know or have had any contact with is struggling financially. The inflation is out of control, especially at the grocery store. A typical weekly shopping trip for your family of four used to cost about $150 a week a couple years ago, now it costs you double. You are not alone, we are all struggling. Prioritizing protein can be even more difficult because meat is typically the most expensive portion of our grocery bill. Protein is the most important macronutrient that we consume and needs to be prioritized to help prevent muscle loss.

Eating healthy is usually seen as too expensive, and frankly, it is, if you’re not smart about it. To save money at the register it would be much easier to just decide you’re having top ramen for dinner, but is that the best choice for your health? As a mom who went from having a full time job and a part time job to just working part time, I can relate to the financial impact of the grocery store trip. Our family went from 2.5 incomes down to 1.5. I decided that eating healthy was still a priority, not just for me, but for my child. We all want the best for our children, I believe that starts with giving them REAL food.

This is not to dog on any of you that choose to buy mostly processed food. I understand that sometimes that’s just what the monthly budget accounts for. It is truly unfortunate that we live in a society that fake food is more budget friendly. However, if you are looking for a way to at least cut back on your intake of processed food but you don’t know where to start, continue reading.

STEP 1: KNOWING WHAT FOOD YOU LIKE

Now I could easily tell you to just shop sales, but if you don’t know what you like, you’re probably going to end up throwing a bunch of food out. The easiest way to do this would be to sit down and make a list in each food group of things you like. Example below:

Fruits: Berries, Apples, Mangos, Pineapple, Bananas

Vegetables: Spinach, Romaine, Broccoli, Asparagus, Green Beans, Peppers, Potatoes, Carrots

Meat: Chicken Thighs, Ground Beef, Pork Loin, Salmon, Shrimp, Bacon

Dairy/Eggs: Whole Eggs, Milk, White Cheese, Greek Yogurt

Grains: Penne Pasta, Egg Noodles, Oatmeal, Bread, Rice

Now you can go through your local grocery store ads and see what’s on sale. Most grocery stores have an ad you can pull up online or on their app. Going to a grocery store with an app for coupons is also helpful, stores like Walmart may seem like they are less expensive, but when you can shop sales and coupon you normally save way more somewhere else. Only downside to eating mostly Whole Foods is that there are limited coupons available. I normally shop at the two of four grocery stores available to me in my area Carrs (Safeway) and Fred Meyer (Kroger). Most of the time they do have coupons for meat and produce, just depends on the week if it’s something I buy. I will look at these deals every week and then plan out my menu for the week from there.

STEP 2: INVEST IN A VACUUM SEALER

The word “invest” is not used lightly here, vacuum sealers can be pretty expensive. The amount of money I’ve saved in the long run though by being able to bulk buy meat that’s on sale is totally worth the investment to me. You may even be able to find a vacuum sealer at your local goodwill for cheap. Vacuum packing your meat allows you to stock up when there’s a really good sale. Recently, one of our local grocers had ribeye steaks on sale for only $6.99 per pound, usually $17.99 per pound! My son LOVES steak, and so do my husband and I, so I bought 6 value packs that had 3-4 steaks in each. Now even if I cooked steak for dinner every night, we wouldn’t be able to go through all of that before it went bad. Sure, you could throw the packs of steaks in the freezer in their original packaging, but they aren’t going to last long in the freezer that way. They will freezer burn quickly. By vacuum sealing the steaks individually, they will stay good for about 6 months.

We have a commercial grade vacuum sealer from Cabelas that we use, so I’m not too familiar with others. We use commercial grade because my husband hunts and we process our own meat. Regular kitchen vacuum sealers aren’t really meant to work for 5-6 hours straight and usually overheat. However, they are great for someone who’s just trying to seal some meat from a grocery trip.

The link above is for a vacuum sealer I found on amazon, pretty inexpensive ($90) and has great reviews!

STEP 3: SHOP SALES, STOCK UP,CREATE A MEAL PLAN

Any time I go to the grocery store, I always go to meat aisle. Typically, we don’t buy a ton of meat since my husband hunts and I like to fish in the summer. However, I also don’t want to eat ground moose meat or salmon every day. I love chicken, and that’s something we have to buy. We also really enjoy steaks, game meat steaks are no replacement for a cow steak, cow steaks just taste wayyyyy better. We do a lot of parties and BBQs at our house, having things like ribs or pork shoulder is nice to feed a lot of people. There is almost always a sale going on for some kind of meat, some weeks it might be stuff you like, and some weeks it might not. The weeks that there aren’t any good sales on meat, maybe that’s the week you hit your stockpile in your freezer instead and not buy meat at all.

As discussed in step 1, before you go to the store you can shop sales on your phone. Pull up your grocery stores local ad and you will see what meat sales they have for the week and this will determine your weekly menu. Even if I didn’t see anything on the ads that appealed my interest, I will still walk through when I’m at the store. A lot of times they will have meat that is close to its sell by date and have it price reduced. If you have a vacuum sealer this is great, because when you get home you can pack it all up and freeze it. I’ve scored packs of organic chicken breast for $3-$4 because its sell by date was within 2 days. It never hurts to look! This is another way to grow the stock pile in your freezer and have some options on weeks where money is tighter.

Moral of the story, pre plan and shop sales. When you shop sales, stock up if you can. Vacuum sealers are your best friend! For fruits and vegetables, everyone always talks about “shop what is in season.” Well, in Alaska our season is like 4 months long so we don’t have that option. Do your best to buy what’s on sale. I am not a fan of frozen fruit, but frozen veggies are so great if you’re going to be cooking them anyway.

I hope this can help you!