Food prices

[rickymouse]

How does someone feed a family of 3 or 4 nowadays - My wife usally does the food shopping I decided to looks at some things I wanted and wow it's almost cheaper to go out to eat then buy the ingerdients I never really noticed it but I just made a batch of salsa and added up the cost it's just about the same as store bought "But way better". Me and my tiny Wife just us two cost $150 a week just for basics nothing exstavagant per week now, Just can't believe how much stuff cost now.

The wife and I budget eight hundred fifty bucks a month for food in our house.  That number includes toilet paper and paper towels, and napkins and paper plates and stuff like plastic wrap and foil and vacuum packing rolls and bags.  It also includes the cost of buying half a head of grass fed organic beef from a farmer we know and the processing of that beef.

But we feed ourselves, and also my great grandkids who get on and off the bus here all the school year and my grandson-in-law who picks them up too.  Plus we also do a couple of days a week in the summer babysitting them.  In that money, we also give quite a bit of the beef to the relatives to eat for Christmas presents each year, but that present amount of the beef goes into the Present catagory of our budget.  We also make freezer jams to give to relatives from that money, and also we buy local maple syrup quarts and give both daughters and the grandson inlaw a quart too...that is added to the food budget total.

So, about eight fifty is what we spend on food and kitchen/paper supply money.  Detergents and soaps and cleaning stuff has it's own catagory.  I do not know how much a month that budget amount is.

But we make most of what we make from scratch, and since we are retired, we make shopping trips once a week and have a good stock of food, so we have reserves and we buy almost everything on good sales that way.  We could go about nine months before buying coffee again if we don't get a good sale, we have eighteen cans over twenty six ounces in stock presently.  We date and rotate food well, and we are at the maximum amount we can stock when we are all stocked up, we cannot expand our inventory or there will be waste.  Not many people have over ninety pounds of various kinds of chicken parts or whole chickens in their freezers, or twenty meals of fish for five people in their freezers.

We are not the usual preppers, we started this to save trips to the store in town, we were going to town almost every day for something or other on roads with deer crossing them half the trips we make.

We have a seperate budget for pets, sixty bucks a month for food, but both cats died so now we have lots of deer and fawns we have to buy for too out of that money.  The six ants that we feed on our counter just eat scraps...one had babies, I had to put on my ICE hat and deport about forty baby ants last week...didn't want to kill them so hauled them outside.  But when you have four does and five fawns coming to the patio door throughout the day, it gets expensive...apples aren't cheap, neither are carrots or potatoes..we stock those getting them when on sale too and pick apples from some trees in areas to feed them when those homeless come to our back door.  My daughter says she will come to our door with antlers on to get our fresh homemade bread we throw out for them...those deer have great noses, they show up when it gets out of the oven most times.

But the deer food comes out of the pet budget....

Prices in restaurants have gotten high, one big mac meal money will be able to feed five of us the way we shop...but our system working relies on a weekly menu, we need to take out meats from the freezer ahead of time to cook...so we have weekly meal planners with an overlapping day to plan for thawing.

Most working people do not have the time to do what we do, making things from scratch is time extensive.  And it creates a lot of dishes to wash every day.  We do get frozen pizzas on sale, and stock cheese and peperoni to add to them, we buy five pound bags of peperoni and vaccum pack them into about eight ounce packages to save half on the cost....but that half does not include the vacuum bag cost...that comes out of the food budget though anyway.  Reminds me, we need to buy another twenty five pound bag of sea salt this month.

[Ray1990]

Most working people do not have the time to do what we do, making things from scratch is time extensive.  And it creates a lot of dishes to wash every day.  We do get frozen pizzas on sale, and stock cheese and peperoni to add to them, we buy five pound bags of peperoni and vaccum pack them into about eight ounce packages to save half on the cost....but that half does not include the vacuum bag cost...that comes out of the food budget though anyway.  Reminds me, we need to buy another twenty five pound bag of sea salt this month.

I vacuum pack a lot of stuff and cook things like curry or pasta sauces for the week, prep time can be an issue with cooking from scratch but bulk cooking can save lots of time in the long run and you can never underestimate the time saved by things like a cheap food processor, blenders or juicers.

A big issue I see these days is the fact you need money to save money, too many people have slipped into the "hand to mouth" phenomena, space can be an issue too when it comes to storage. Generally a small fortune can be saved buying in bulk and dividing it though.  I've started doing that with spices too, compared to those spice rack jars I'm saving 80% plus by getting 1kg of paprika, salt & pepper or garam masala etc.

It's that initial investment to get the ball rolling that a lot of people struggle with, decent tools save most of my time as I'd struggle doing any of this if I was prepping everything by hand. Instead it's usually 5-15 mins prep + cooking time for on average 10 portions of whatever I'm cooking. The quality is night and day as you'll know yourself which is quite important, people are paying over the odds for convenience now and it doesn't just hit the wallet.

I know too many people claiming poverty whilst they eat frozen meals or takeaways every night, it costs more usually, in terms of health and finances. That said, being prepped can be a bit of an addiction in itself. If someone made a thread about "cheap ass food that doesn't taste like ass" I'd happily contribute bits and pieces I've learnt over the years, always figured I'd be preaching to the choir round these parts since a lot of what I've learned is from here and there (ATS) since our community has a lot of forward thinking fellows.

[Vermilion]

Holy Jesus where are you shopping ? 

I'm getting a carton of 18 eggs for less than $4 and a dozen for a little more than $2 and that's at Wal Mart.

If they’re spending 12.99 for a dozen then it’s on them for not owning chickens.
If it’s on sale at 12.99, I probably can’t afford to visit that luxurious island.

[argentus]

We spend about $1200/month for three of us.  I would guess most people around us spend significantly more than that.  I make my own alcohol, and we grow lots of vegetables and spices.  I used to go out torching at night to spear fish and lobster (in season).  Nobody is inspired to do such a thing anymore, and I won't go out alone.   I used to freedive conch at up to 80 feet.   Even shallower depths would be just plain stupid at my age.  I'll stick to fish'nin.

[rickymouse]

We spend about $1200/month for three of us.  I would guess most people around us spend significantly more than that.  I make my own alcohol, and we grow lots of vegetables and spices.  I used to go out torching at night to spear fish and lobster (in season).  Nobody is inspired to do such a thing anymore, and I won't go out alone.   I used to freedive conch at up to 80 feet.   Even shallower depths would be just plain stupid at my age.  I'll stick to fish'nin.

I fished a lot when I was younger, but after I turned fifty five, I just started buying fish mostly from the Indian fishermen or the fish market in Marquette MI down by the lakeshore.  The Indian fishermen are much cheaper though than Thills...but my original native commercial fisherman died, a heart attack I think.  Whole whitefish with the guts in when he came off the lake was a buck and a half a pound fifteen years ago and I would get like four whitefish and a trout every week from him when he was out.  Cleaning the fish is not a problem for me, in fact I like doing it.  When I get the whole whitefish from the fish house, it is five bucks a pound now.  I have my brother pick me up some Whitefish from the native American guy near Baraga when he goes up north.  He is the cheapest, it comes out to about five bucks for a fillet, or about six bucks a pound average.  Freshly caught that day....but if you do not know him, he charges the same as the fish house, tourists pay about twelve bucks a pound.

I used to mostly fish for bass, pike, and perch.  I like the flavor of those three the best.  But the perch and Bass need to come from good waters, or they taste not so good.  Lake superior fish are the best, and there are some small lakes with in and out rivers that have clean water too.  The water should be colder, not piss warm to get a nice meat.

Yes, I am fussy about my fish.

Brook trout are really good too, I used to grab the pole and go fish the streams on side the road a lot, but haven't done that in over five years now. 

I used to bring my grandfather bullheads, he would clean them and boil them.  I ate it with him when I was young, cooked with onions and potatoes and carrots in a pot with some butter added.  I was not so fond of the rubbery meat.  Low and behold, I ordered Lobster from Red lobster like twenty years ago....and it had a similar texture and rubbery meat and quite similar taste to the bullheads my grandpa used to make.  I was turned off immediately, cause if I went fishing bullheads are the thing you catch the easiest when fishing for bass and perch from shore in lakes that have them.  They are a nuicence fish but I never kill them, I toss them back.  Why does Lobster cost so much if it is similar to the fish nobody eats around here, a junk fish, a pest fish around here?  So I looked it up. and low and behold, nobody liked lobster a century ago in America.  It was easy to catch so they fed it to prisoners because it was cheap and plentiful.  Now it is a luxury, guess all those prisoners got out of prison and had families and got rich conning people or overcharging them I guess.  So their families became the rich in America.....I did check on verifying this a little, and found some people that had prisoners as great grandparents that became rich...but that does not mean that everyone who likes lobster comes from a criminal family line.  Stranger things have happened in this world though.

It's surprising how many things you can track down to find the origination of if you are not able to work anymore for decades.  It would have been way harder fifty years ago, you would have to order books to read from the library.

[KTemplar]

KKLoco, you’re in AZ right?   When I lived there I found Frys to be way cheaper.  Man I miss the days of picking up a pint on strawberries or blueberries for $1.00, or a ribeye for $5.00.  I found that cheese was pricey in AZ, but Fry’s was my go to.

Now, I buy red meat very seldom, it has to be on sale.  A lot of chicken, eggs.  I got a dozen eggs a few days ago for 3.50.

I have noticed a lot of price gouging, so I refuse to buy the product til they go on sale.

I average about 600.00/month for my son and myself.   It’s a lot of work though, I shop at about 4 different grocery stores, Clip coupons, and cook a lot.

During Bidens term, I literally ate a sweet potato a day sometimes while working a 10 hour shift, so my son could eat, while my neighbors who don’t work bragged they were getting 350.00 more a week under Biden.  

My favorite was a coworker who bragged about throwing away meat from his freezer because it was old (3 weeks maybe) cause his food stamps were coming through.  He was from El Salvadore.  

12.99 for eggs is insane.  When they were that high in Taxachusetts I would make homemade biscuits instead, with Raspberry jelly, oatmeal.  I missed the eggs, but I refuse to pay that.

[KKLoco]

If they’re spending 12.99 for a dozen then it’s on them for not owning chickens.
If it’s on sale at 12.99, I probably can’t afford to visit that luxurious island.

I typically agree with most your posts. However, this one is incredibly ignorant.

[KKLoco]

KKLoco, you’re in AZ right?   When I lived there I found Frys to be way cheaper.  Man I miss the days of picking up a pint on strawberries or blueberries for $1.00, or a ribeye for $5.00.  I found that cheese was pricey in AZ, but Fry’s was my go to.

You're absolutely right, Frys is a nice solution. However, it's 25 minutes from me. And BTW, those prices of fruit are GONZO!

Cheapest stores if I drive 20 miles:

Blueberries $5 pint on sale

Strawberries 2 for $7 on sale

Ribeyes $15 lbs. ON SALE

Those days are over, sister.

[KTemplar]

Maybe take a cooler with ice and go once a month and stock up!

Get the apps too and clip the coupons.  

Those days are gone my friend.  I hope you find some sales!

[chr0naut]

It's total bullshit. Many are claiming tariffs. However, all the products I've seen spike recently, were American made. $8 fucking dollars for 8 ounces of whipped cream cheese. $12.99 ON SALE for a dozen eggs - BULLSHIT!

Greedflation pure and simple.

If the cost of imports go up, the American companies seize the opportunity to increase the price of their goods and services.

That is what all those silly economists kept saying would happen. LOL.