tossandeva

The year we got married we saved up to pay for our wedding in cash, and it was not a small wedding, and we paid off all of our combined credit card debt. So in addition to living in the Bay Area, California and having to buy a car, pay some medical bills out of pocket, and you know – live, we put away $50,000!

And for context – know that we made what we considered to be a good, but not a high, income for our area at the time. We were both working full time, salary jobs which helped us have predictable cash flow. But it was because of the changes we made to our spending that we were able to achieve our financial goals, NOT because of the level of our income. We had already demonstrated we were perfectly capable of being broke at that income level too, lol.

Now with inflation it feels appropriate to turn back to the time when we imposed spending limits to return to the wisdom of eating well while reducing spending. We eliminated extra spending however we could, including with food. But we were still into quality, nourishing food, as we are now, so here are 8 strategies that we used to eat well while saving like crazy.

Grocery Outlet

Or “Gross Out” as my Aunt Jacque calls it 😅

Most people would probably place cutting eating out as the first thing to do to eat well while saving money, and I’ll get to that. I’m putting Grocery Outlet as the number one thing we did because we used it for everything:

• cheaper grocery staples,
• fun foods,
• treats,
• and even entertainment

We regularly went on Grocery Outlet dates (and still do on occasion) where we would go together, browse every aisle, and if there was something we needed and they had it, then we were allowed to buy it. This was a form of spending freedom that we didn’t allow ourselves anywhere else, but we needed in small doses. We seriously prioritized shopping at Grocery Outlet, and recommend shopping at any equivalent store as well.

We did have certain rules for shopping, even at Grocery Outlet, which I will put further down the list of strategies we used to eat well while saving major money.

The staple things at Grocery Outlet became our staples, and when they had fun foods or other things rotate through their stores we enjoyed the variety. Plus they have some good stuff! Depending on your local store’s availability. I could probably write a full “Love Letter to Grocery Outlet” as a separate post 😊

Limit or eliminate eating out

Limiting or eliminating eating out is an obvious strategy to eat well while saving money. There is a big price difference between buying your own ingredients, preparing them, and serving them at home compared to paying for the service of a business and its employees doing the same for you.

That being said, we did allow ourselves a small, and I mean small, budget to eat out. We each had $25 per month. I’ll repeat: $25 per MONTH. That wasn’t a lot then, and it certainly isn’t a lot now. I mean that would barely cover the cost of mayonnaise these days!

Typically we would not actually go out for meals together with this budget, but when we did we really tried to make it count. Often this money would allow us to grab a coffee or meal out when we found ourselves without prepared food from home. My ritual at the time was to go out to Chipotle for lunch while I was working. Once or twice a month I would get a burrito bowl with 2 large tortillas on the side which I would roll into 2 burritos – one for then, one for later. So I could squeeze 4 meals out of my $25.

No single serving drinks

This one is short and sweet. Basically we translated bulk buying principles to beverages to save money. We did not buy small bottles of kommbucha or juice in our groceries. Instead we bought bigger bottles that contained many servings and costing significantly less per serving. We also bought ingredients to make our own coffees at home (nothing fancy, but it did the trick).

Replacement only shopping

There may be other names for this strategy, but I’ve always thought of it as “replacement shopping” – replace what you need that you’ve run out of. Define what your household and grocery staples are and only make purchases that maintain your supply of those items.

Some of our staples at the time were:

• Organic pasture raised eggs (when possible)
• Organic tortillas – we ate egg breakfast tacos as a weekend tradition
• Organic fruit – fresh, and frozen, whatever kinds were cheap
• Organic vegetables – greens, cabbage, zucchini, carrots, onions, etc
• Yogurt – Grocery Outlet had great deals ($0.79 specials)
• Condiments – Chunky Garlic Pepper Plant, jam, butter, honey
• Organic meat – at the time I was vegetarian, so this one was just Thomas

Set a budget and stick to it

Obviously budgeting is a huge part of saving money. We budgeted and tracked our spending diligently while we were saving for our wedding and paying off debt. We actually continue to budget diligently to this day, although we do enjoy more flexibility now.

I’m not going to go into detail about how to budget here. We use Dave Ramsey’s EveryDollar app and website to run our budget and it’s worked well for us.

Even if you simply find out how much you naturally spend on food and cap your budget there – then you can know how much money you have permission from yourself to spend on food and what you can go ahead and allocate to other things.

Still get the good stuff

This will be a theme on this blog. Get. And. Eat. Good. Food.

It is such a worthy investment of whatever budget works for your life. Food is fuel and especually if you are trying to make something big happen with your money you want to be fueled right. Plus it feels luxurious and reassuring to still have a stocked pantry, even when you are running a shoestring operation overall. We developed a running list of what we liked to get organic and local, for example, and what we were fine getting more generic or cheaper versions of.

Know how hardcore you are going to be and why

Now-a-days we still use a food budget because we truly could go really crazy with food spending if we didn’t, and it’s just wise for everyone. However we intentionally operate it at a different level now than when we were saving $50,000 in one year. We were hardcore then because we chose to accelerate our goal of getting out of debt. We didn’t KNOW going in that we would even have enough money for our wedding in time to pay cash. We HAD to do everything we could – short of going insane – to strive to make it possible.

Spoiler alert: we did have enough cash on time, and even enough extra to buy a car one week before our wedding when BOTH of our other vehicles died.

So we were driven. And it was hard, but rewarding to save money on food given our drive to reach our goals.

Learn what is cheap, where

Get creative with your shopping. Maybe try new stores. the experience of switching it up can also be valuable when you are trying to save money on food. Again, Grocery Outlet 💕, but also Costco, Azure Standard, Amazon (selectively), and local stores.

What were our actual food budgets for 2019?

Our average monthly food spending was $830.28 including groceries, eating out, and food while travelling.

I was honestly a little surprised by this number. I wanted to present something lower I guess, but I’m glad I can attest that we spent this much on food and were still able to save $50,000 that year!

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Are you already using some of these strategies to eat well while saving? Is there a strategy that you want to add in? Please let us know in the comments below 😊

Yes, you read that correctly. $19 for mayonnaise.

Ok. It’s possible this figure is slightly off. Thomas remembers seeing $19 on the receipt from the grocery store. But the receipt is in the car, or somewhere, and I don’t know if we can track it down…it’s a whole thing. Anyway it was somewhere in that ballpark.

I. Was. Floored. “WHAT?!”

Now I’m not wishing that Thomas bought a cheaper kind from the store or that he didn’t get mayonnaise to begin with. We wanted mayo in the house, we wanted the convenience of someone else making it for us, and we wanted the good stuff with healthy fat. But I still couldn’t believe the price.

Let’s be clear: I’m not above shelling out for good food

For the last few years since we deepened our commitment to high quality food we have paid a lot for groceries. I don’t know how it compares, but we probably spend more for 2 people than a lot of families. Quality food is a huge emphasis for us, so we want our money to go there.

I also know there are global and societal forces at play contributing to rising food prices right now, and that isn’t for me to comment on. My question is: What are we (Thomas and I, and each of you) going to do about it for our groceries?

The kicker here is: I have everything in our pantry to make mayonnaise using items we already have – and chances are you do too!

It takes pantry staples and 10 minutes to make mayo at home.

Now, more than ever it might be worth it to take that 10 minutes, rather than that $19 to keep mayo in the fridge at home.

So what do we take away from this $19 mayonnaise experience?

• You can still pay for convenience, but now you’re paying more dearly. Fun fact: in French the word for dear and expensive are the same, lol. Maybe reevaluate where to pay dearly for convenience to make sure it is really worth it to you to take that option.
• You get what you pay for OR It pays to pay for the good stuff. Really, bad fats are scary business. If something is cheap, maybe it’s not for a good reason. Unless not having enough to eat is at stake, please prioritize the quality of your food.

Bottom line – when you can, get the good stuff and just enjoy it! This mayo is fantastic. So. Good 🙂 But, if you want to make your own it’s actually really simple.

You can find our recipes and anything else about taking food into your own hands here.

Here I’ll give you quick descriptions of how to make these three go-to easy meals that we use on a regular basis. And honestly, a quick description is probably all you’ll need. These meals are so easy and natural to us that we often do not measure or use a recipe. We hope perhaps you can enjoy these go-to easy meals as well, or make a spin off of your own, and enjoy some recipe freedom!

Tacos

We love a Taco Tuesday, and have been known to do Taco Tursdays, or really tacos anyday, too! This seems to be a perfect, easy meal to make with whatever you can pull from the fridge plus some specific ingredients if you can swing by the store or add them to your shopping list.

How to make Tacos

Ingredients

• Meat: usually we use ground beef, seasoned with spices like cumin, salt, pepper, garlic, paprika, or even Tajin, but leftover meat can work well too
• Tortillas: fried in butter, please
• Toppings: salsa (fresh or fermented), sauerkraut, sour cream, cheese, avocado, cabbage, lime juice, tomato, onions, hot sauce, cilantro

Brown and season meat. Assemble or prep toppings of choice. Briefly fry tortillas to heat and crisp them. Make your tacos, and enjoy!

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Sausage and Potatoes

This is the meal we go to the most if we don’t know what to make and it’s, say 4:00, or maybe even 6:00, already. If you have potatoes in the pantry, sausage in the fridge/freezer, and condiments on hand, you’re ready.

How to make Sausage and Potatoes

Ingredients

• Sausage: Bratwursts are our favorites, but you can use virtually any type of sausage you have. You may want to choose toppings to suit whichever sausage you use.
• Potatoes: it’s pretty simple.
• Toppings: sauerkraut, dijon mustard, sour cream.

Place potatoes (whole or chunked)into a pot with a big pinch of salt. Cover the potatoes with water and bring to a boil for approximately 10-15 minutes, or until potatoes are tender. Brown sausages in a frying pan until desired deliciousness. Drain potatoes and serve with butter, salt, and pepper. Serve sausage and potatoes with toppings of choice.

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Pot Roast

You do have to start this meal ahead of time, but it is very straightforward and you can choose a cooking method (slow cooker, oven, stove top, pressure cooker) to suit however much time you have before you have to get dinner on the table.

How to make Pot Roast

Ingredients

• Roast: beef or pork, many different cuts work.
• Vegetables: potatoes, carrots, onions, beets, parsnips, whatever you got that seems good for this 😊
• Seasonings: Herbs, garlic, salt, pepper, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, probably look up a recipe a few times to get a feel for combinations and amounts.
• Broth: pot roast needs some cooking liquid, either a little to provide moisture, or a lot to make a soupy one (great for GAPS).

Basic method

Pat the roast dry. Season the roast with whatever seasonings you want to use, or at minimum salt and pepper. Preheat some fat (bacon grease, butter, olive oil, tallow, lard) in a dutch oven or skillet for the roast. Sear the roast on all sides for approximately 2 minutes to create a delicious brown crust, then remove from pan. Deglaze pan with broth, wine, or other cooking liquid. Add roast, vegetables (prepped to whatever size you like), and any remaining cooking liquid and seasonings to the pot (or slow cooker/pressure cooker). Cover and cook until vegetables are cooked and roast is tender and shreddable.

If you want to get fancy with anything you can try two additional steps, but they are not necessary to make this a go-to easy meal. First, you can add your vegetables in after your roast has been cooking for a while to maintain more of their structure because they need less time than the meat to be fully cooked. Second, you can make any drippings and cooking liquid into a gravy for added amazingness. The quick way is to add a thickener – we use arrowroot powder, but you can also look up and use a brown gravy recipe.

Variations

Like we said you can cook this meal many different ways, each take a different amount of time. Allow the approximate timing for these various methods, and again, probably look up a couple recipes at first to get an idea:

• Slow cooker: 8 hours on low
• Oven: 3 hours at 350º F
• Stovetop: simmer for 2 hours
• Pressure Cooker: 60 minutes high pressure

If you want a specific recipe for pot roast, one of our favorites is from Jill Winger’s The Prairie Homestead Cookbook, but we also often look up recipes online to try new seasoning combinations and cooking methods.

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What are your favorite go-to easy meals? Or, which one of these will you try first?

Another meal we make a lot that we have a complete recipe for is our Quick, Easy Frittata

Almond flour coffee cake is a gluten-free, vanilla cake with a cinnamon filling ribbon and nutty crumble. I love to make almond flour coffee cake for breakfast, as a snack, and for special occasions.

I started this recipe from the Sourdough Coffee Cake recipe from Farmhouse on Boone. This blog is one of my go-to places for recipes. Recently Thomas and I chose to go back onto a “GAPS-ish” diet. While we are really loving the way we feel, and I am loving the way my skin is healing, there are some treats that we now need new recipes for. To be fair, I’m the one who needs a new coffee cake recipe. Thomas would almost just as easily only eat meat and vegetables. Mama needs carbs and some suga, you know?

Who doesn’t love coffee cake? You better not have raised your hand if you’re reading this recipe! Just kidding. But seriously we love coffee cake in our family – particularly my dad and I. I mean it is essentially a cinnamon sugar cake, so what’s not to love?

I prefer coffee cakes that have the cinnamon in a ribbon and crumble rather than mixed into the cake batter. This almond flour coffee cake gives you that cinnamon filling in a homemade treat.

Almond Flour Coffee Cake Tips

• I used date powder in this almond flour coffee cake to make it sugar free. I have also made it with sucanat for a lower sugar option, and of course it would taste great with sugar or brown sugar.
• If your date powder has clumped and you want to even out the texture easily you can run it through a coffee grinder to powder the sweetener (wipe it out with a dry cloth first, unless you want coffee flavor). You can also use this trick if you are baking with sucanat, maple syrup crystals, or honey crystals too!
• The first time I made this almond flour coffee cake I didn’t put nuts in the topping. It was good, but I found the texture to be pretty monochromatic. Wheat flour clumps better in the crumble than the almond flour does, so I would recommend you keep the nuts in this recipe with the almond flour. Unless you’re some sort of coffee cake purist or something, then you can just leave 😛

Tools you may need:

9×9 Baking dish or pie plate

Measuring cups and spoons

Mixing bowls

Ingredients

Cake:
2 cups almond flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup butter
1/3 cup date powder
1/3 cup honey
1/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
3 large eggs

Cinnamon filling:
1/4 cup date powder
2 tsp cinnamon

Crumb topping:
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup date powder
1 Tbs cinnamon
1/3 cup almond flour
1/2 cup chopped pecans

How To Make Almond Flour Coffee Cake

Preheat the oven to 325° F and grease a 9×9 inch baking pan or pie plate.

In a small bowl combine cinnamon filling ingredients. Set aside.

In another small bowl combine crumb topping ingredients. Set aside.

In a medium bowl combine cake ingredients and stir until thoroughly mixed.

Place half of the cake mixture into the baking dish. Sprinkle the cinnamon filling evenly over the cake mixture. Spread the remaining batter over the cinnamon filling, then top with the crumb topping mixture.

Bake for 40-45 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Serve hot after about 10 minutes, or allow to cool.

Storage

Store covered for up to three or four days. You can also store in the refrigerator for five to six days, or freeze for up to two months.

Find our other recipes here.

If you try this recipe and love it, we would love if you could come back and give it 5 stars!

This quick, easy frittata combines eggs, pantry staples, and whatever you have kicking around the fridge. This will be a hit if you want to add more protein and vegetables into your diet (who doesn’t?) without feeling like you’re eating eggs AGAIN.

So we have a new baby and sometimes we need to limit the amount of other things we think about – there’s enough on our minds already as new parents. But we ended up in a breakfast routine of eggs, “breakfast meat” as we call it, and toast.

This is a great meal and a great start to the day, but the repetition was beginning to wear on us. We wanted to bring back the pleasure of a simple, hearty breakfast – add the form back to the function, as you will. So we tried this quick, easy frittata and we were not disappointed.

Quick, easy, and a great way to add brunch vibes to our life as new parents who are trying to stay fueled while not letting food go bad in the fridge.

Easy Frittata Tips

• Don’t hold back on the high quality ingredients. This dish is entirely made up of staple items like eggs, milk, salt, pepper, herbs, veggies, cheese, and meat. So it is simple and rustic, yes, but that also means every flavor counts! Take the opportunity to make simple, easy food shine.
• Make this dish in a cast iron skillet or other oven-safe frying pan. The beauty of using the same skillet for frying and baking is that the pan is pre-heated when you pour in the egg mixture. This helps the frittata to come out of the skillet without sticking. A healthy dose of bacon grease will help do the trick too. 😉
• This recipe is designed to be customizable, so plan your favorite ingredients or simply clean out the fridge. See below for suggestions.

FAQ

What is the difference between a frittata and a quiche?

The main difference between these two egg dishes is that a quiche has a crust while a frittata does not.

What goes with a frittata to complete the meal?

toast, juice, coffee, tea, breakfast potatoes, side salad, sausage, etc.

Can you freeze this recipe?

Yes. Allow your cooked frittata to cool, then transfer it to an airtight container and place in the freezer. When you want to eat it, thaw it out and bake at 350 until it is hot all the way through.

What can you put in this quick frittata?

You can customize this recipe however you wish.

Add veggies like peppers, greens, mushrooms (not a veggie, but, you know), onion, broccoli, etc.

Use meats like bacon, sausage, ham, or any leftovers like ground beef.

Use whatever cheese you like or have (goat, cheddar, jack, mozzarella, ricotta, pec Romano, parmesan, maybe blue if you’re feeling adventurous).

You can even choose which cooking fat to use – we chose bacon grease because we had it from cooking the bacon pieces

Tools you may need:

cast iron skillet or baking dish

mixing bowls

measuring cups and spoons

knife

cutting board

Frittata Ingredients

• 4+ oz Bacon and bacon grease: ’nuff said 🙃
• 8-10 Eggs: Pasture raised eggs are ideal for added nutrition.
• 1/2-2 cups Milk: We used our raw milk that we get locally (find yours here). More milk makes the fritatta lighter and creamier.
• 1 bunch (3-5 ish stalks) Chard: Rainbow is our favorite, Red (pictured) a close second.
• 2-4 Tbsp Goat Cheese: We wanted the tangy and creamy flavors to go with the bacon.

How To Make A Quick, Easy Frittata

1. Cook bacon until crispy in a 10-inch oven-safe skillet. Set bacon aside to cool and drain most but not all excess bacon grease from the pan, leaving a couple of tablespoons across the bottom.
2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Farenheit.
3. Separate chard stems from chard leaves, then chop each individually.
4. Add chard stems to pan and sauté in bacon grease over medium heat 2-3 minutes. Add chard leaves and saute until wilted, 2-3 minutes.
5. Meanwhile whisk eggs, milk, salt, and pepper in a large bowl.
6. Pour the egg mixture into the skillet over the chard, crumble the bacon and goat cheese over the top.
7. Leave mixture and greens over medium heat for 3-5 minutes to cook the bottom.
8. Transfer to the oven, and bake for 10 to 15 minutes, or until eggs are set.

Find our other recipes here.

If you try this recipe and love it, we would love if you could come back and give it 5 stars!