Thursday, January 8, 2009

Making a dollar stretch

Not my usual topic around here, but I wanted to share something I discovered this past week. It is one of those things I wonder why I never asked about before, so I thought maybe others had never tried this either. I was shopping at S*m's Club - I try to do my monthly bulk shopping there - and was stocking up on meat. Now, I have always noticed the prices in the meat section, they give a price for the product, then they give a case price. It never occurred to me before to ask about getting a case. I guess I just figured it was too much meat? Well, a package of 20-22 chicken legs ran about $12. If you get a case, that same quantity of chicken legs cost about $6. A case was only 6 packages, so I got 125 chicken legs for $33! Now, I realize that is a lot of food - I am fortunate to have a deep freezer in my garage to store excess meat (it is currently stocked with lots of venison). However, for those without that storage capacity - find a friend and split the case. My mother and sister each bought one package of legs from me, then I split the other 4 packages into groups of 8-10 chicken legs and froze them that way. I also bought a whole pork loin (the really big piece, not the smaller tenderloins) and cut it into single serving pork "steaks." The one pork loin (which I think ran about $15) gave me enough boneless pork chops to freeze for 4 meals (I freeze these in a ziploc bag with a marinade of honey, ketchup, bbq sauce and apple jelly). So, for those of you trying to find a little extra give in the grocery budget - think bigger - quantities that is!

1 comment:

Pres. Kathy said...

Thanks for the great ideas! Money saving tips is something we think about.