There are a few major rules to eating cheaply:
- You need to cook. If that's a serious problem tell me and I guess I'll post fast easy recipes and instructions too.
- If food goes bad before you eat it, that is lost money
- You are descended from a lizard and if you see excess you will eat more
- Your freezer/refrigerator space is limited, your room temperature storage is less so
- Not all items have equal markups for buying in small quantities
- Anything you buy frozen, are ok about freezing, or store at room temperature you should buy in bulk.
- Anything frozen you buy in bulk but eat thawed should be rebagged. Bags should be equivalent to whatever you expect to eat between when you first thaw it and when it would go bad. If it is a raw ingredient bags should be the size you use to cook one meal. Err on the side of bags that are too small, you can always thaw another one early.
- When you prepare food that doesn't mind being frozen, make extra and freeze it. It means you can be lazy another night.
You must keep everything extremely clean when you break food up from bulk orders. Any germs you introduce at this stage will have a very serious impact on the shelf life of the product. All containers have to be very clean, and anything which touches the food has to be very clean. I would often turn the ziplock bags I was transferring food into inside out and use them like gloves when handling the food that was going into them.
If you do Tupperware tubs do things that stack, and get ones so cheap you don't mind throwing them out if one falls to the back of the fridge and gets really horrible. Get ziplock bags in bulk.
Did you forget that this stuff freezes?
- Cheese
- Meat (some people don't like it that way)
- Bread products (bread, tortillas, rolls, bagels, english muffins)
Substitutions:
- Bread: about 30 cents to make, about $1.25-$1.65 to buy. A bread machine costs 50 dollars and the work involves dumping the materials in, hitting a button, and coming back 3 hours later. Materials for bread are water, flour, oil, and yeast which do not go bad. Figure out if that saves money.
- Candy. You are not allowed any more candy. If that's really hard you can buy bulk candy at costco/etc, or better yet raw baking ingredients. Chocolate chips are about 30 dollars for a 30 pound bag, aka the same price as about 5 packs of chocolate bars. Never buy individual candy bars. Rebag and hide the bulk candy from yourself so your lizard brain doesn't let you pig out.
- Pancakes: making your own mix is no more work than a mix, honest. Don't get prefrozen pancakes: make a bunch on the weekend and bag them up for breakfast each morning.
- Bakery items: No. Make them yourself or do without.
- Flour
- Sugar
- Brown sugar (rebag airtightly so it doesn't get weird)
- Rice
- Lentils (seriously, actually kinda tasty. Steal Indian recipes)
- Beans (warning, soaking these sucks, prepare in bulk and freeze)
- Pasta
- Alcohol. If you like it cold/have a bad lizard brain refill smaller bottles in the fridge.
- Coffee
- Laundry detergent
- Toilet paper
- Paper towels
You're probably not the only person interested in saving money. There are some things which have huge bulk discounts but not an infinite shelf life, so break up bulk runs with friends. These friends are likely to be also good for splitting a costco membership with you. Don't go in on bulk orders for stuff you don't like.
- Potatoes
- Onions
- Cereal
- Yogurt
- Cheese (if you are running low on freezer space)
- Meat (if you don't like it frozen)
- Fresh fruit
- Fresh vegetables
These things you may never finish if you get the super bulk quantity, split among friends
- Spices
- Peanut butter (advise against rebagging)
- Nuts
- Olive oil
- Other cooking oil
Local grocery stores really price gouge on vegetarian substitutes, dietary requirements and foreign food. If you get any of the following things but don't get them in bulk, you should strongly reconsider.
- Soy milk
- Nutella
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