Cooking at home is an excellent way to eat well and spend less. Not only can you prepare delicious, healthy meals without breaking the budget; but you also have more control over what ends up in your food. Eating well and spending less can seem like an impossible task, but with a few simple changes to your lifestyle it is highly achievable. Eating a healthy and balanced diet can be expensive, but it doesn’t have to break the bank! Here are some tips to help you save both time and money while still enjoying delicious food:
1. Plan Ahead for Meals
Planning your meals for the week ahead and creating a shopping list can help you prevent waste, stretch your food budget, and get better nutrition; it also helps you avoid those “treats” and “little extras” that creep in at the check-out. Plan your meals around the protein foods—the meat, fish, or poultry. This is often the most expensive part of the meal, so check that your portion size is a healthy one! Use cheaper ingredients like beans and lentils in stews, chili, curry, and Bolognese to make meat go further; they are also a great source of fiber. Start each week by planning ahead with breakfast, lunch and dinner recipes that use similar ingredients throughout the week to save money while still having tasty meals! This will help ensure every meal has variety while eliminating wasted ingredients from getting thrown out before their expiration date.
2. Stick to Your Grocery List and Get a Discount
Once you’ve created your menu plan for the week, it’s much easier to create a grocery list of all necessary items needed for those meals including snacks and drinks so that impulse purchases stay away from the cart! Also check store flyer deals or online coupons before shopping as this could end up saving even more money down our grocery aisle trips too! Before heading off to the shops, check out newspapers and online for discount vouchers and special offers—but only use the ones for foods that fit in with your healthy eating plans. Collect any special bonuses, provided they fit in with your healthy eating plans. Make use of supermarket loyalty schemes; the points often add up, and as they say, “every penny counts.”
3. Look Up, Look Down!
Remember to check the top and bottom shelves for lower-priced items when in store. Supermarkets always stock the most expensive things they want you to buy at eye level. Own-label products are cheaper and often just as good as branded products, so look around and try these out.
4. Waste Not, Want Not!
Buy only what you need and think about how you can use any leftovers in another meal, in a sandwich, or freeze them for another day. Buy locally produced vegetables and fruit in season and think about freezing them if you buy them in bulk. Freeze bread and use it as you need, rather than throwing unfinished loaves away.
5. Ditch the Junk!
Tempting “buy one-get-one-free” offers on highly processed foods and drinks may seem cheap and convenient, but they contain lots of cheaper, unhealthy ingredients such as sugar, processed fats, salt, and other “bulking agents.” At the end of the day, they aren’t really good value for money and don’t do your health or weight much good if you overeat them. The more prepared the product is, the less you’ll get for your money. Buy a large bag of pasta instead of a frozen pasta dinner, or make up a salad at home instead of buying prepared salads.
6. Careful with The Ingredients
It’s great to experiment with new cooking dishes but be careful of recipes that call for expensive one-off ingredients that you may not use again; you could use something similar or look up an alternative recipe online.
Following these few steps could easily save loads of money, and with some simple pre-planning, making ingredients go further, and making “special offers” work for you, your budget can go much further!
If you are looking for lose weight recipes, the good news is that you are not alone. There is a wealth of information out there for people wanting to cook healthy at home.
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