Food budgets and the recession

My weekly grocery bill is going up and up and up. Apparently, the Recession is moving from politicians talking about it to an actuality. I know gas prices are on a real roller coaster here in the greater Cincinnati area. You can drive by a gas station and find gas for $2.86 a gallon on your way to the grocery store, and find the same gas station's price has gone up to $3.09 on the way home! Something's just not right about that. Obviously, gas prices affect food prices. And I'm definitely seeing it in our stores. Ground beef is up to $3 per pound (oh, for the .49 a pound days!) and any decent cut of beef is well over $6 per pound. So I need to start thinking about how to cut my grocery budget. There are only two of us, plus Brayden two days a week, and one cat. However, I do make three meals a day -- Jeff gets a full breakfast every morning, plus I make his lunch for him to take to work, plus dinner. My grocery bill is currently about $140 a week, which includes cleaning supplies, paper goods, and pet food and supplies. I'd like to cut that back to $100 per week, despite the increase in prices. I do know how to cook economically. Putting it into practice is something else. On days that I have Brayden, I prefer something fast -- canned soup and grilled cheese or a frozen pizza, for example. But soup is now up to almost $2 per can, and that's just not economically feasible when I can make one batch of homemade soup that will give us 6 to 8 meals for about $4. I need to plan ahead. Use sale flyers and coupons and come up with a menu for the week, then prepare a grocery list accordingly. I also need to put in some meatless meals. Jeff does like eggs and omelettes for dinner, and we will both eat spaghetti with a plain tomato sauce. I have a recipe for budget rice pilaf using leftover meats and vegetables, and stir fry is also an option that we like. I used to have plastic freezer bags in my freezer -- one for leftover veggies and one for leftover meats. Little pieces of this and that which don't seem worth saving, but when it comes time to make a good vegetable soup, make a world of difference. I also used to save all meat stock in a freezer bag. I'll have to implement those bags again. I'm a loyal shopper. I shop at our local Krogers and have for 20 years. New stores have come and gone, but Krogers has always been my favorite -- clean, nice employees, reasonably good produce, OK meats. There is a new Aldi's in town, but it seems to be mostly prepackaged and prepared foods, which we don't generally eat. But Krogers sends me "loyal customer" coupons -- with at least one every month or so for $16 off my total! And the coupons they send me are for goods I buy on a regular basis. So it's time to cut back on some things -- prepared foods (like canned soups and gravies) and expensive beef cuts -- and use my coupons, study the sales, and plan plan plan ahead. It's definitely going to be necessary if I want to keep my grocery bill at it's usual amount, but even more so if I want to get the grocery bill down by $40 per week. Good news on the financial front last night. Jeff told me that we have used 10,000 gallons of water LESS than last year! Despite water prices going up, our bill has gone down. We put "water saver" faucet thingies in all our faucets, neither of us run the water now as we brush our teeth (we turn it on, wet the brush, turn it off until it's time to rinse -- I hear this saves 8 gallons of water per person per day!), and we did not water our lawn or our garden this past summer. I also try not to run the water thoughtlessly in the kitchen, and make sure our washer is always filled with clothes (no half loads), and that the dishwasher is full before running it. Apparently, something's working! It's been easy to do. All I do is picture living in a poorer country and having to tote water whenever I want it. I doubt those ladies walk away from the kitchen sink with the water running without thinking about it! If you picture yourself carrying all that water, you definitely cut back on the amount of water you consume needlessly.