Useful Links

[beckyzoole]

This post is for leaving Useful Links.

Please comment with links to websites that offer hints, tips, advice, recipes, menus, and encouragement for Thrifty Cooks.

Here a few for starters:

Hillbilly Housewife's $45 Emergency Food Plan, comprehensive information on how to feed a family for a week with only $45. Assumes you start with no staples in the house, uses a lot of beans, and is frankly boring. However, in case of emergency these menus and recipes present a good way to get filling and nutritious food on the table. Substitute Tang for the frozen oj concentrate, and use the shopping list as the basis for emergency food storage.

Aldi Menu Planner, not the menus put out by Aldi's supermarkets but a primer from the Mom Advice website on how to plan menus around sales at Aldi's. You don't need to shop at Aldi's to find this useful for thrifty menu planning in general.

$5 Dinners, a blog detailing how to spend $5 or less on dinner for four. Some winners, a few losers, but always interesting.

Comments

[aedifica]

The Low-Budget Vegetarian Cookbook is available as a free PDF download. I first heard about it because it was written by my sister's college roommate's father, so we always just call it "Eve's Dad's Cookbook" instead of its actual name. I really like that the first half of the book is a primer on how to work with the ingredients that will be used in the second half (for example, differences between various types of rice, etc).

[beckyzoole]

What a great resource! This is a real winner.

[aedifica]

It is! Thanks for your links as well--I've bookmarked them all.

[red_trillium]

I heard about this on our local news last night. This woman has cut her family grocery budget to $100NZ a week (that's about $65US). My wife and I aren't overly thrifty on our groceries, We spend something like $300 to $350NZ every 2 weeks roughly on groceries ($195US - $227US). I have only just seen her blog this week but look forward to cutting down our grocery bills with her tips as well as the tips I pick up here.

On the news story last night she was talking about buying her food from fruit/veg shops and local butchers because they tend to have better quality for less than our supermarkets do. She also makes her own laundry powder and dish soap (they didn't say how).

Pig Tits and Parsley Sauce blog at the Taranaki Daily News (yes, that's what it's really called).

[beckyzoole]

$65US is very low for groceries!

I know that part of my problem when comparing how much I spend on groceries is defining "groceries". Is it only food, or does it include other things I buy at the grocery store like dish soap and toilet paper? What about antacids and herbal supplements? (The supermarket near my house has a large pharmacy section inside it.) What about special expenditures for entertaining?

I'll bet she counts Food Only.

Edited to add: No, she's included mouthwash, shampoo, toilet paper, pet food, everything! WOW. I'd love to see how she does it.

[red_trillium]

I've had Homebrand bread and it really is nasty, a bit bitter/dry. But it's cool that she's got some alternatives. I may not go completely to that extreme but would like to cut our grocery bill down a bit.