We’ve covered a variety of topics in this Feeding Our Family for $40 a Week series—from menu-planning to using coupons to buying ahead. Today we’re going to talk about one final key ingredient to keeping our grocery budget low: cooking from scratch.
While shopping the sales and using coupons allows us to get many products for pennies on the dollar, we save hundreds of dollars each year by baking and cooking from scratch.
Many people assume that from-scratch cooking has to equal dozens of hours each week slaving in the kitchen. On the contrary, it actually can be done with minimal effort.
1) Use a bread machine.
We love homemade bread and cinnamon rolls, but I don’t have hours to devote to this each week. Instead, my bread machine has become one of best kitchen friends!
I rarely use the bread machine to bake the bread, but I constantly am using the dough cycle on it. In less than five minutes, I can have a loaf of bread started. The bread machine does the rest of the work. All I have to do is pull the dough out and stick it in a pan to bake
See our favorite Bread Machine Bread recipe here. We also love this recipe for Bread Machine Buttery Rolls and this fabulous Bread Machine Cinnamon Rolls recipe.
2) Cook in bulk.
While once-a-month cooking might intimidate you, cooking ahead really doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Start small: triple a casserole recipe, eat one for dinner, and stick two in the freezer. Or, mix up a double batch of your favorite cookie dough and freeze half of it in cookie dough balls.
Set aside one day a week to prepare food ahead of time and you’ll save a lot of time and a lot of money. Plus, homemade food trumps boxed and processed food every time!
You can see some of my freezer cooking recipes and successes and failures here.
3) Keep it simple.
Cooking from scratch doesn’t mean you have to have six course dinners every night. I recommend keeping it simple. Find some quick and easy recipes with only a few ingredients and stick to those most of the time.
We’ll often have some Italian Chicken (a bottle of your favorite Italian Dressing poured over chicken breasts and baked in the oven or crockpot), steamed veggies, fruit, and homemade bread (made in the bread machine) for dinner. This whole meal can be put together in less than 20 minutes. It’s nothing elaborate, but it’s filling, healthful, and delicious.
Who says homemade has to take hours?
