Oct 12, 2026, 10:58 PMgrocery store prices are absolutely off the hook bonkers and I'd love to hear how you're managing as well as you can
what are your best tips and tricks when things start to take this much bite out of your budget
to use a covid-era metaphor, we are not all in the same boat, but we are all in the same storm, and most of us are feeling it in one way or another
what adaptive hacks are you using?
Oct 12, 2026, 11:05 PMSome of ours ... I can't tell if these are manifestly obvious or things that are very habitual for me but maybe not so much for those raised differently or during different eras, so here goes
*think 'filler'- we serve things with meat IN them rather than, like, a cut of meat. Tons of ways to do this deliciously and healthily, from "hot dish" casseroles to one-pot stove top cooking to omelettes/frittatas to burritos and enchiladas
*We let the instant pot or crock pot do what it does best, buying cheaper, less tender cuts that need to be slow simmered for a long time, put them in with liquid and spices, and then enjoy barbecue sandwiches, chicken tinga, etc.
*We wait to plan meals for the week until we've gone to the store and seen what is fresh and cheap for both meat and produce, and then we build around that. This prevents disappointment if you can't get there in time to grab an advertised special, but does take some background cooking knowledge and self-restraint. We have those.
Oct 12, 2026, 11:10 PMWe put ourselves on a food budget, with an eye toward both weekly and monthly, and then game the shit out of it. This takes some margin, but if you can set your goal where it's actually doable without suffering ... you want PLANNING and following through, not pain ... then you can make it flexible enough to reward yourselves if you stick to it.
I see people do this in ways that assume they are either super human or get off on being punished and I mean, whatever floats your boat, but I like to set it up so that we LIKE the thing, and I think we get just as good of results. So
*ANYTHING YOU ALREADY OWN IS FREE AND FAIR. Eat out of your pantry. Eat your freezer stores. Eat your leftovers. So much winning.
*Anything you can stretch farther, so long as people want to eat it, is also winning. (Do not push any limits as far as food safety and quality; jeez I hope I do not even have to say this ack. YOUR HOME EC TEACHER IS WATCHING YOU.)
*Extra money at the end= eating out AND TREATS
Oct 12, 2026, 11:14 PMDo you have any idea how much food you are wasting? Did you know that is money into the trash?
It's easy to think you solve this by pledging not to ever waste food but in reality YOU SOLVE IT BY HAVING A FOOD BUDGET THAT FORCES YOU TO PLAN.
You will, I promise, waste SO MUCH LESS FOOD when doing so is what's coming between you and Friday night dinner and drinks at the place you love. You will HATE food waste. And you will pivot your thinking and buying to have less of it. This saves money. Real money. Possibly serious money, depending on your household.
Oct 12, 2026, 11:25 PMAnd finally, there are some specific recipes that are amazing value for work involved/$ spent
This is why I posted my hilarious costo fries frittata 2 months ago and why I tell you I make amazing chicken broth with our saved vegetable scraps (big ziploc bag in the fridge, everywhere and always) every time I buy a rotisserie chicken or bone-in anything--because IT'S EASY, GOOD FOOD THAT IS ~ FREE
One hack: buy "split top chicken breasts"- your grocer/butcher can point them out to you. They are huge, bone-in, and you probably don't know what to do with them.
Here's what (trust me): Oven @ 350, Peel 4 carrots and 3 medium potatoes. Cut in thick slices (yes, THICK, the carrots, too). Put oil on a baking sheet- we like to use foil too, for easy clean up- put the carrots and potatoes on the sheet, flip once to coat, salt and pepper, put chicken on top of the veggies, salt, spice, oil on chix to taste, bake for like 50 min; BOOM. Amazing dinner for ten bucks. Leftovers. Bones for broth. 🙌
Oct 12, 2026, 11:29 PMI'm not into "pretend poor" but the affordability crisis is pretty intense for anyone who pays monthly bills. We are definitely paying attention; like yours, our margin is getting sucked toward serving someone else's. (This morning I held in my hands a small jar of mayo PRICED AT TEN US DOLLARS. AND THEN I PUT IT BACK. LMAO.)
Anyway, I'd love to hear your tips, tricks, and magical know how. I think we are in for quite a winter, northern hemisphere side.
@jnl If you have a few minutes, I made a video on methods for avoiding surveillance pricing. That might help.
Whatever your shopping list is, make an account on slickdeals.net and set up alerts for it. This is a community that boosts shopping deals and it may help you acquire grocery and toiletry items you use often in bulk.
Apart from that, buy in bulk where possible. That's a guaranteed price reduction over the long term.
@jnl I didn't realize this but SD also has a dedicated grocery section now, but I HIGHLY recommend people put their shopping list in their personalized deal alerts. You'll get an email any time someone posts a deal with a matching keyword.
@jnl I used to pour out cooking liquid or the liquid from canned goods, now I save it and cook rice, corn grits, or quinoa in it for extra flavor and nutrients.
Oct 13, 2026, 12:45 AM@jnl BudgetBytes was my go-to in grad school. I don't really use it now (I have gotten a lot better at cooking and I rarely use recipes), but it's really fucking useful if you are an unsure cook, unused to cooking most of what you eat, etc. Recipes are all pretty easy and they help you think about pricing it out per serving, if that matters: https://www.budgetbytes.com/
otherwise: if you can, split a Costco membership with someone else. plan trips together; split items that your household wants but you know you can't eat all of (for us, that's usually meat etc, because it is cheaper there per pound than most other places).
also, this is a weird one, but: you are probably using too much laundry detergent. bad for your washer, bad for the environment, costs you a lot of money. Details here: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/stop-using-so-much-laundry-detergent/
Oct 13, 2026, 1:37 AM@GramrgednAngel I didn't think I did! It's a very handy site! I am more "I know what I want to make and what the ingredients likely are, what's the optimal technique" now, so my recipe-sleuthing looks very different from what they offer, but I am a weirdo who cooks something like 90% of what we eat, including making all of our bread, pasta, etc, so I am not the target audience for their recipes, and that was all I meant to imply! :)
(Cooking is very much one of my hobbies and I enjoy it a lot; I do not think most of what I do is typical or sustainable even among people who do like to cook, and I don't recommend it unless you too are a big ol' weirdo.)
Oct 13, 2026, 12:59 AM@jnl oh, *also*!
Recognize that your time is valuable, as is your effort, and be realistic, not aspirational, in your meal-planning.
If you have a week where everyone has something going on after work/school and you *know* you're going to be exhausted and not want to cook...fine! Buy the premade frozen lasagna or whatever. Get the stuff for a "dump dinner" that you throw in the slow cooker or InstantPot.
You need to look at your time and energy budgets as well as your monetary budget when you're doing meal planning, or you *will* burn out and waste ingredients (and money).
Also if you're an unsure cook, start with recipes where the ingredients themselves are familiar. "Previously we lived mostly on frozen meals and takeout and now we want to cut our budget down, so we're reducing takeout" -- cool, totally get you, great plan, but maybe don't start with the dish that requires fourteen different things, only two of which you have on hand. Start simple, build on success, you'll do better.
Oct 13, 2026, 1:05 AM@titania omg this so much.
Y'all, anyone reading who wants to cook but doesn't think it "counts" if it's not extremely fucking complicated, I would guess that MOST of us who learned to cook did so as small people adjacent to a kitchen that was there primarily to get people fed, overseen by a person who knew how to do what needed to be done to meet that goal. THE GOAL OF FEEDING PEOPLE.
Getting yourself/your family fed is "cooking." It counts. It ALL THE WAY COUNTS.
Just get it figured out in a way that works and the creative pieces come along the way. You got this.
Oct 13, 2026, 1:21 AM@jnl truly I think a lot of the tips re: "how to save money through cooking" like making your own stock etc are great *if you have the time and you know how to cook*. What is intuitive to people like you and me is not intuitive to the poor grad student who is living on their own for the first time and realizing how very little $25k/year gets you.
Learning how to make meals that you like, where you will *eat the leftovers*, *if there are any*, is pretty key.
Also learning about food safety and when to call it quits on leftovers is pretty useful, too. https://www.foodsafety.gov/food-safety-charts/cold-food-storage-charts
(I don't personally adhere to their chicken guidelines but only because 1-2 days is a wildly short turnaround time; I've never had anything spoil in my appropriately-temped-fridge in that time frame, everyone needs to figure out their own risk levels but this is at least a good start.)
Oct 13, 2026, 2:29 AM@stevegis_ssg @titania I mean if they are people in your home, the answer is a family food budget with rewards at the end; you basically bribe yourselves to eat your leftovers but I can testify, it works
@stevegis_ssg @titania @jnl When you live by yourself it's looking at the fridge and going "suck it up buttercup, it's pasta with weird veggies all week". And then sighing and putting your pasta in the microwave and knowing you have only yourself to blame for the weird veggies combo.
My best tricks to revive leftovers for myself:
- Add some acid (apple cider vinegar, citrus juice) to brighten it up.
- Add more spices/herbs
- Add a sauce.
- Melt (dairy or non-dairy) cheese on top
- Reheat as a stirfry, hash, scramble, etc.
- Put it in soup, ochazuke, congee
- Make a portion for dinner and one for tomorrows breakfast
- Freeze a portion for emergency back-up meals
It works better for me to give an old dish new life than reheat/repeat for days.
@stevegis_ssg @titania @jnl I try hard to keep plastic out of my kitchen, so refrigeration often happens in recycled glass jars, and freezing is in freezer-proof wide-mouth mason jars of different sizes with silicone lids or food freezer trays (e.g., soup cubes) which I empty into larger silicone freezer containers (when I'm on top of my game, anyway).
You can puree leftovers and use it for a creamed soup, or as a gravy or soup base .
@titania @jnl
So much this! Most of the food I cook day to day is from a small number of recipes with a few ingredients, some if them are optional or can be swapped out when I don't have them on hand. Go to "I'm tired" meal: pasta with tomato sauce. Salads are great too because they don't need cooking. Or when I do a bake, I do too much on purpose so I have some to reheat in the microwave the following days.
I had a hard time thinking of things when you first posted, because we haven't really adapted in the last year, but realized your extended thread covered a lot of what we've been doing for a long time.
My spouse does almost all of our meal planning, starting with what's in the fridge/freezer and needs to get used up, "clipping coupons" in the store app, and watching for sales on things like shrimp or salmon that are nice to have, but an infrequent treat, and then we do a fair bit of meal prep on Sunday to have healthy/affordable options for weekday lunches.
There's a balance between buying cheap, healthy, and convenient, and it's not always easy to feel like one is successful at all three.
Particularly with prices going up quickly, it's helpful to have a sanity check that it's not lifestyle creep on our part, so we look at the USDA cost of food reports, updated monthly, and I presume are still accurately done.
https://www.fna.usda.gov/research/cnpp/usda-food-plans/cost-food-monthly-reports
Not a fix or tip for eating cheap, but makes it easier to know when it's not you, it's the system.
@IrrationalMethod @jnl I’ve been looking at these numbers over the past year too and it’s indeed very helpful to calibrate. Doesn’t make me happier about the prices, but I can at least tell it’s not me being extravagant at the grocery.
Meal planning and slow cooker usage as you mentioned. I’ve also been pressure cooking beans more often (I live at altitude so that’s a necessity for most bean prep).
An upright freezer in the garage is a huge help, so that I can buy more of certain things when they are on sale, as well as freeze snacks and dinner servings. I try to always have some dinner options frozen to prevent emergency takeout plans when I’m not up to cooking.
I keep most flour, all the rice, nuts and dried fruit in the freezer, which keeps it in quality shape longer.
For spices/herbs I use the most, I look at savings on buying in bulk; the price difference in a bag or other large container over small jar can be major in some cases. I don’t buy bulk for things I use slowly as the taste deteriorates. I’m also planning on getting a bigger tin of olive oil and dispensing it into a smaller (dark glass) bottle for use as my household uses a lot of it and I’ve done some math on it.
I keep an eye on prices for the things bought most often and, as needed, cut back on certain things or switch brand if it’s getting absurd.
I keep a list of partially used perishable ingredients so that I remember to include them in the week’s plan. I monitor food waste closely and it’s been reduced to almost (but not quite - yet!) none.
If you have a library card to a library with Libby use, look for good cookbooks to checkout. Having an ebook copy means it’s extra quick to search for ingredients you want to use amongst the recipes, but it’s also just a nice free way to find good recipes (I see ever more errors on some recipe sites and more things generated with LLMs.). Many libraries have a lot of the America’s Test Kitchen cookbook line and those are well tested and clearly written.
I bake a fair bit so most treats like cookies etc are homemade and it’s way cheaper than equivalent items bought in town. It’s a more rural area so bakery goods can be very expensive.
Last year I made and canned a lot of jam and swapped flavours with a friend who did the same. But a late freeze this year ruined the fruit harvest.
If you have a library card
Oooh, on that note, lots of libraries carry Consumer Reports, and they are ABSOLUTELY worth reading before spending money.
@Lemniscate @jnl What is your reasoning on EDIT: pressure cooker being a must for bean prep?
I usually keep dried beans over night in a bowl of water, strain them / change water a few times before boiling. Similar treatment for dried peas. Beans need to boil a little longer than peas in my experience, perhaps 15 minutes before vegetables in the pot for peas and 30 minutes for beans. Then 15 minutes after adding the vegetables, comes out about right. Usually I make 3-4 litres at a time.
@cohentheblue @jnl I live in the mountains and it impacts baking, bean cooking, etc. due to atmospheric pressure being lower and thus boiling point being lower. It can take much longer to cook beans and some types don’t really ever get soft enough. Some are doable with a longer time like Anasazi beans. Lentils are fine, they don’t take much longer on the stove.
I soak beans in a brine for a while and then pressure cook them, with a slight increase in the time under pressure (another high altitude factor) and they work out great.
For baking, King Arthur has a whole page of helpful modifications for high altitude baked goods. The biggest issues I’ve noticed personally are with cakes and some yeast breads.
@Lemniscate @jnl I use fava beans / vicia faba. Seed's been in the family for a century at least now.
@Lemniscate @jnl My usual approach to recipes is making a pot with one change and if it tastes ok, it's now a recipe.
Usually I write notes about most things, I rarely do with food. More guidelines than exact recipes.
Ah, I miss our (chest) deep freezer. But we’re in temporary longer term housing and moving, so replacing it and stocking it now would be foolish. Cooking larger batches and freezing portions for later, just rough processing lots of tomatoes for winter and early spring, etc, etc., etc.
Maybe in a year...
@jnl Nice advice you shared above.
A good one is overnight oats. A tiny fraction of the cost of boxed breakfast cereals, none of the added sugar, and not bad for plant protein.
Another is connecting with a family that keeps laying chickens. Big organic eggs from happy chickens at the same price as caged, and much cheaper than free range organic store eggs.
Farmer's boxes and CSAs.
Sprouts!
In harvest time, canning and pickling a year's supply.
Buying from greengrocers and not from big stores. Around here at least that roughly halves the price of fresh produce.
A little herb garden is easy to maintain and delicious. It doesn't save much money but it does make cheaper meals taste richer.
@jnl
If you have normal older kids / teens, likely you have a lot of packets and bottles put back in the fridge/cupboard 95% empty.
Vigilance and working those sneaky leavings into the adults' meals & snacking can help there.
Oct 13, 2026, 12:38 AM@jnl split bone-in breasts can and should be used for chicken tinga, too, speaking of things that are slowcooker-friendly and pretty cheap to make.
Oct 13, 2026, 1:23 AM@jnl "bones for broth" - you are right in the mark ... having the courage to get good (or lucky, sometimes lol) at making a nice soup from almost anything is a great quality to foster in the kitchen, and it's very amenable to substitutions based on leftovers at hand.
@jnl 💯 back when I still ate meat, this was a standard dinner. SO good, so easy, so cheap.
And honestly, it was also a standard when I had folks over for dinner. It's that good.
Buying dry legumes and cooking them in quantity, then keeping them around for lunches (and breakfasts, for me).
Black beans in the instant pot: put like 4-6 tbsp oil in the pot on saute mode and put in some kind of seasoning (paprika, cumin, pepper, cayenne, sage, turmeric, whatever) and season the oil. After about a minute, add one chopped onion. Saute for about 5 mins, add a couple spoonfulls of canned chopped garlic, then 4 cups of washed dry beans and about 9 cups water or stock plus some salt. Cook on high pressure for 30 minutes and let the pressure dissipate. Add 1 tbsp lime juice or cider vinegar at the end plus salt to taste and maybe basil or oregano.
(This can also be done in a crock pot. Saute in a pan on the stove, then dump it all in, but double the water from above. About 4-5 hours on high, 6-8 on low.)
@jnl food waste became easily marginal the second I moved an 45 minute round trip to any grocery store and within absolutely 0 delivery zones, having to have a plan fixed a ton of our food budget issues without even having to look at the budget lol
But my best tip is not reasonably for big families at all but we saved SO much by going grocery shopping every 10-11 days rather than every 6-7, like instantly, from having to use food we already had but needed a push to use.
Oct 13, 2026, 12:30 AM@jnl I run a local food-based non-profit and I’d suggest looking for local CSA or co-op stores. While things are more expensive for everyone, local farmers aren’t paying as much to ship their food to the market so they can keep from having to raise prices. I’ve noticed a lot of things that will give you a great bang for your buck that are now cheaper through the CSA store that we work with. Also, we always get our vegetables with the greens attached which I love to eat. Carrot tops, radish and beet greens are all great these days.
Oct 13, 2026, 12:59 AM@irene @jnl when my local grocery store workers went on strike, out of necessity i reverted to a pre-big box store style of shopping of going to a bunch of different places, and it kind of stuck? now i'm regularly shopping at about ~10 different stores, usually doing it throughout the week, to grab items that had the best quality to price ratio. i kind of noticed the standard grocery stores is rarely cheaper (or it's cheaper but worse quality to price ratio) so i go to them only for loss leaders (e.g., milk) & advertised specials now.
(also quick note on quality to price ratio, i noticed that by shelling out for the better garlic at the produce market i spend a little less on garlic overall, bc it's more flavorful & i just naturally use less of it in each dish. obv this is going to be a trial and error process to figure out.)
i thought it was going to take so much time and it's going to suck etc but i kinda love it?? it feels more like... i live in a place, if that makes sense. it does help that i do groceries/errands by bike, so all the going around is pleasant ("leisure and exercise time instead of wasted time", if you frame it in productivity terms. also doesn't cost gas).
Oct 13, 2026, 1:05 AM@jnl
I work at a restaurant... got any friends who work at restaurants? Easy end-of-night leftovers to be had.
Oct 13, 2026, 1:06 AM@jnl One easy one, if finances permit it, is buying staples in massive bulk - I'm not embarrassed to buy 20 pounds of coffee when it's on sale for < $10 a pound, as happened recently - I'll certainly go through it over time.
My wife also scores a ton of deals via Too Good To Go, especially proteins, but to consistently take advantage of that, it helps to have enough freezer capacity to be able to stock up there too when you find a great price on multiple packages of ground beef or some such.
@jnl I love to make a 2 gallon batch of beans (start from dry) every three months or so. Season the hell out of them and then freeze them in small containers. “Beans day” takes a few hours of work (3-4?), but then I’ve got ten minute dinners for the next few months. Reheat beans, make rice if I feel like it, or just add cheese.
Other tips, not universally applicable: go vegetarian. buy anything you’ll go through in bulk.
Oct 13, 2026, 1:54 AM@ericdaryl I am super with you in bean love and I do mine in the crock pot so my main work is "HOW ARE THESE NOT DONE YET" which continues until finally they are 😂
I am not vegetarian, so I throw cut up kielbasa into them, or leftover italian sausage crumbles, or make them into chili, or or or ...
my spouse does not eat beans at all due to a health conflict with a few of them so this is how I occupy my time in Newfoundland AND I LOVE IT
@jnl most grocery stores that have bakeries have a discount bakery section at the end of the week. You can get loaves of bread for half off. They won't last long but often they do make it the full week.
Reducing the amount of meat and increasing the amount of vegetables helps a lot too. Freeze half the meat to last 2 weeks. Then in pasta add eggplant, or in rice add tofu, tacos add beans.
@jnl
Every coupon, every sale, every loyalty discount. It's unfortunate, but they have "gamefied" shopping. I manage to get anywhere from 15% to 40% off by playing.
Costco membership if you can afford it is worth it, they don't mark up over 15% and you can buy in bulk. Chefs Supply or similar has no membership, and prices are more reasonable because it's bulk sales and restaurant margins are thin.
Winco is employee owned, their profits are not buying a CEO yacht so they are pretty reasonable.
Oct 13, 2026, 1:40 AM@jnl
My best tips for cheap cooking are this: learn how to cook potatoes, rice, and beans. Potatoes will always be dirt cheap, and rice is an excellent calorie-dense food.
Between potatoes, rice, beans, and butter, you will never be hungry, and it will take a very long time to develop nutritional deficiencies if you have to live on those exclusively.
Learn a bunch of different kinds of meals that use those ingredients.
Potatoes will always be dirt cheap,
Here in BC, I have seen potatoes at $3/lb while (sale) pork was $2/lb.
More often I see chicken or pork at the same price/lb as potatoes.
It is ridiculous, and "I feel like potatoes but they are too expensive" is a weird, weird situation, but it is a real one.
Oct 13, 2026, 2:53 AM@datum
During potato harvest season, potato growers in idaho have a hard time giving away potatoes, because they have so many. I'm in Montana, and regularly see potatoes at $1.70 for a 5 lb bag during harvest season.
This might be an example of regional differences. Sounds like a lot of pork is grown in BC, and so it's really cheap to source.
@katanova We have $5 for 20lb bags sometimes too, it's highly variable. And we do grow lots of potatoes pretty close to here! I can't really say exactly why it happens but whenever I notice it, my brain and spirit hurt for a while.
Oct 13, 2026, 4:01 AM@datum I've noticed "by-the-pound" prices tend to be quite a bit higher than "by-the-bag" (5lg, 10lb, 15lb, 20lb) prices.
@katanova Typically here too, but sometimes we still get under $1/lb loose. The really good prices, when they happen, are 10-20lb bags which might go down as far as 20c/lb.