One thing to reduce food costs

I live very simply on a limited income a friend recently asked what is the most important thing I do to feed myself as frugally as i do and stay healthy while doing it. I honestly had to answer it's more complicated than just one thing. It's more like a few? I mean, I buy as much in bulk as I can but I also can and dehydrate in season which really helps. But I also buy staples in bulk! And i never buy brands, I buy individual ingredients and cook! The only thing in my pantry that is pre-made are crackers and that's because I haven't tried making them yet. So I guess the real answer now that I have had time to think about it more? I cook everything i eat from scratch.

What tactics do you use to keep your food budgets manageable?

Jesse Greywolf wrote:
What tactics do you use to keep your food budgets manageable?

I was lucky that it was very easy for me to change from German home cooking to Thai food as I relocated from Germany to Thailand in 2002.

See the pictures below for an example please.
Abundant breakfast in the Isan area (Countryside Thailand)

Ant pupae and larvae, out of the trees in rolled up leaf nests, with herbs growing around on the farm
Eggs from chicken which range fully free
sun dried fried beef
French fries
Tom Yum soup with herbs from around and frozen seafood (a handful out of the 1 Kilo bag)
Rice from the land

I guess all well below 2.5 USD for a two person breakfast...

I was once working on Oshima Island in Japan.
The Island had two fishing villages.
The locals grew all vegetables in Styrofoam fish boxes in front of the house and harvested only the amount they were eating.
Cabbage for example, always the outer leaves are picked, the rest continues growing.

Jesse wrote:

feed myself as frugally as i do and stay healthy while doing it.

The stay healthy part is key! It takes very little space to grow a few key plants/herbs that pack a lot of nutritional punch when added to soups, sauces and bone broth.

One is the often abused dandelion! Grow it in some home-made compost in a spot that no one will notice it, and it will mostly look after itself!

Another one is parsley. Parsley is easy to dry just in an oven in the left-over heat from baking something. I crush it dried into all sorts of  dishes.

I'll mention one more that I use a lot, and that's Oregano. It's a perennial, also dries easily, and doesn't need fancy soil or a lot of moisture.

It's so hard to pin it down to one thing!

If I had to pick only one, I'd say cooking completely from scratch with no pre-made stuff, because that really is the key to being able to cook with homegrown and bulk ingredients.

Cooking (and preserving) in season is another.

Growing, raising, and foraging, another.

Being adaptable and substituting ingredients in recipes is another - often cheaper cuts of meats can be used, or cheaper vegetables.

The list could go on!

Eliminate food waste as much as you can. SO many good ideas in that thread.

1. Switch to eggs as your primary protein source
2. Eat organ meats as they provide a great bang for your buck nutrition wise (this, if you absolutely hate eggs)
3. Make spice mixes from scratch since they offer great taste for pennies
4. Buy local ingredients and replace exotic ingredients with locally available ones (I use bottle gourd in place of zucchini as the latter is expensive)
5.Drive food waste down to zero through consistent conscious review. I eat cauliflower leaves, cauliflower stems, peels get made into stock.
6. Beans and lentils are your friend. Buy in bulk (not cans, but as dried lentils), soak in water, and cook upto a pound at a time. Beans and lentils freeze well so you can always pull out a bag when you need it
7. Invest in good tupperware - leftovers and some veggies lasts longer stored in it
8. Store veggies correctly to increase shelf life (I cut off the stem end of okra,  remove the stems of chilly peppers and slice off the tops of carrots, store lemons in an air tight container and lettuce in a sealed tupperware.
9. play music and sip your favourite beverage when in the cooking (I used to enjoy wine ... now its tea with a few marigold petals floating on top, just so I can make believe Im a celebrity chef ) - enjoy cooking and your desire to save the earth will naturally show you ways to optimise food costs
 

If you have pets (we have cats), their food can get expensive if you go with kibble or canned food. Plus, kibble seems to be very addicting and dehydrating. We started buying ground up reject turkey and chicken (meat, tendons, organs, bones, etc.) From a local farm for $2.50/lb. It took a while to get them to eat it but it's cheaper and they seem much healthier. One of the cats had a rough patch in his fur that went away and his coat is all super soft now. The other one was getting crystals in his bladder with the kibble and that hasn't happened since.

Me it was cooking mostly with what i can grow or i can find in nature or at friends. To much of our food system is based on having everything anytime. I even talk again greenhouse around me because i think we should adapt more of our food system on our area were we live...