How to Start Food Prepping

A how to guide to start food prepping to save time and money!

As a child I would spend summers with my grandma and thought it would be fun to go grocery shopping with her! (She’s Grandma, maybe she’ll buy me something?… nope) I learned very quickly that shopping with Grandma was not fun but instead a marathon shopping trip to a minimum of 3 stores and there was NO time to stop and look around. She was a woman on a mission! If it wasn’t on the list, don’t even expect to have time to read the package on the way by. Now I’ve learned her tricks and understand why…

The last two years food prepping were REQUIRED for survival. There was no way I could afford, money or health wise, to eat out daily but my schedule and crazy commute just didn’t allow for much food preparation during the week. Here’s how the hubby and I learned to make it work AND save money in the process. All you need is a little preparation and a lot of Pinterest. 🙂 Ok, so maybe not a lot of Pinterest, but it can help. Be sure to check mine out and follow me for some of the recipes and inspiration I use.

Step 1: Grocery Ads and Multiple Stores

Every week we get the local ads delivered to our mailbox whether we like it or not. As the importance of food prep increased, so did the ads’ importance. You can, of course, food prep without the ads, but to save money you’ll want to pay attention to what’s on sale. Most stores have their weekly sales ads available online or through their app. Grandma actually got herself a smart phone because of the ads, deals, and coupons available through the stores’ apps! I never thought I’d hear of the day…

We start our weekly plan by browsing the ads looking first at fruits, veggies, and meats. In our attempt to eat healthier we aim for less processed foods and these make up most of our diet. After awhile you’ll start to learn that hamburger for $3.49/lb isn’t as great as when it is $2.99/lb and if it ever hits <$2 you buy extra for the freezer. Or when asparagus is less than $1/lb you buy it! But, apples at $1.25/lb you pass on.

Now, what drove me nuts about Grandma’s shopping trips turns out to be a HUGE money saver! Different stores have different prices on items and most of the time it is worth the gas it takes to make the trip. (Depends on how far to your stores of course, but we have a route we make to hit up our top three stores. The other stores we hit up when we are in the area or they have a REALLY great deal.) One example is bananas… recently bananas have been regular priced at one store for $.69/lb. A second store will have them on sale for $.59/lb but the last store on our stop has regularly been at $.49/lb. So if there are other items we need to grab at store 3, we buy bananas there! Otherwise we forfeit bananas for the week or I’ll have hubby stop on his way home from work.

Side note… today I discovered a new store which describes themselves as a “grocery liquidation business” and we found bananas for $.39/lb. We grabbed a few bunches to bake with and to make some banana chips in the dehydrator. Sometimes you jump on a deal BUT MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A PLAN or you’ll just end up throwing money in the trash.

Step 2: Make a Menu Plan

Using what is on sale that week we start to make a menu. I’ve been slacking more this year without the crazy commute but salads were my daily lunch item. That means lettuce and any veggies that are on sale (cucumbers, carrots, bell peppers, etc.) get added to the list. Not on sale? Not in the salad for the week! A head of iceberg, green leaf, red leaf, or romain tend to be all about the same price weekly and more cost effective than packaged lettuce. Yes, it is a little more work, but I’m already planning on prepping so much so chopping lettuce doesn’t seem like much.

Breakfasts consist of eggs of some sort, usually egg scrambles or muffins. Being pregnant I now need a second breakfast (some day I’d like to go back to not having to eat breakfast at all… but for now I eat twice.) and plan on something like yogurt and fruit for my off hour at school.

Dinners usually are three different meal options. This allows for some options to mix it up each night but also allow us enough leftovers to make it through the following weekend. I hate when we forget to have enough food for the weekend!

This is where Pinterest, or your favorite cook books, come in handy! (Side note: Libraries usually have a wide selection of cook books… just sayin… free recipes) When we are stuck in a rut of the same recipes each week, or just need some new ideas, I’ll do a Pinterest search for the main ingredients on sale. Scroll through, save the ideas, and go with it! Sometimes it reminds me of a recipe I haven’t made in awhile and sounds good again. Other times we make something completely new!

Step 3: Plan a List and Your Trip

Now that I know what ingredients I need and planned for most of them to be on sale I make a shopping list. I like to divide my list up by store sometimes noting the price of the item. During the shopping I’ll see something that wasn’t in the ad, or forget the price in the other stores’ ads, and want to avoid spending extra. Having the advertised price written down helps sometimes. So I have a column for each store and one column for “extra” items. These are things that need to be purchased that week but might not be on sale. Usually our store number three has the best non-sale prices but if I come across a good price I’ll buy it wherever I see it.

Be sure to check your cabinets, pantry, freezer, and fridge to see what you already have! Also, keep an eye on condiments and staple items. If you’re getting low keep a look out for when they come on sale. Catsup? Mustard? Mayo? Flour? Sugar? They do come on sale and often are shelf stable for awhile so you can grab one as a back up when on sale, but if you’re saving money, don’t stock pile it too much either.

Planning your route when you plan your list will also help save money. I once read an article that said women drive less miles then men and it had to do with their planning of trips. Apparently men have no issues running to a store, back home, out to a different store, back near the first, and just run errands in a very erratic pattern? I did not marry a man like that and we most definitely plan trips carefully. Our usual route makes a loop and is so well planned that we make right turns into every store to avoid crossing traffic. Yeah… we are those people… but it saves us gas and frustration!

See the note at the bottom about coupons…

Step 4: Shop

Now you carry out your plan and check items off your list! But stick to your list…

At one point in life the budget was tight enough that I walked the store with a calculator in hand recording the price of each item to track my spending. Now I will sometimes do it as a challenge to see how low I can keep the budget for the week. It really helps to see if you NEED that item or could do without or substitute something else. If you’re looking to save money, I HIGHLY recommend tracking as you go.

This is also probably the most time consuming step so far. I understand why Grandma rushed through the store! If you take your time and look around the whole day will pass before you know it. Plus, you’re sticking to your list so it is just a waste of time to look at other items.

Step 5: Begin Prep

If you’re curious about some of my favorite food prep tools, check out Top 8 Things You’ll Want to Food Prep Right.

The easiest thing to prep is my daily salads. I usually will chop and wash the lettuce, divide it into dishes for the week, and start chopping veggies. Here’s where you can save some time. Need carrots for a recipe? Peel and chop some for the salads and a bunch for the recipe. Done chopping salad veggies? Use the same knife and cutting board for the rest of the week’s veg then move on to cutting up meat. Or, use a separate cutting board for the meat all together.

Multitasking in the kitchen can save time, if you don’t burn things. I usually have my breakfast meat cooking while doing salads. Sometimes I’ll prep extra for another week by tossing extra chopped veg or meat purchased into freezer bags. Or, if a deal was really good I’ll double the recipe to have extra to freeze for later. We tend to do this with soups and chili. A crock pot full will last the two of us more than a week and it gets old, quick. So we freeze it in bags for weeks when nothing on sale sounds good, or the prices just aren’t worth it that week. Easy to thaw and toss on baked potatoes or tater tots for an easy Friday night meal too!

Food Prep Container Secret: You don’t need fancy ones but you might want quite a few! Lunch and breakfasts get divided into daily grab and go serving sizes. Dinners get put into larger dishes since we can easily scoop onto a plate and serve. I tried the divided dishes but am just not pleased with the ones I have. They leak. They don’t sit flat in my lunch box. They work for salads sometimes but the cheap plasticware works too. Someday maybe we will be big spenders and buy glass containers but for now we just need too many that the glass won’t fit in our cabinet and is not cost effective.

Notes about Coupons: I have always liked clipping coupons! Now there are digital ones and it is still exciting but just not the same… Here’s what I learned about coupons though: You. Spend. More. That’s right, you buy things you don’t need! You buy it because you have a coupon! (This is why companies make them…) Coupons are only money savers if you’re already going to buy the item. PERIOD.

Since we don’t buy a lot of processed foods most coupons don’t do us any good. I use the store coupons through the store apps, and sometimes Ibotta, but I refuse to buy an item just because I have a coupon. Unless it is a coupon for something FREE, and not a buy one get one kind of deal either… Bonus if it is on the list, on SALE, AND I have a coupon. Once I did buy some drinks that after being on sale, having a coupon, and Ibotta, I actually earned $1.50, but that’s rare and they were gross.

If you sign up for Ibotta, feel free to use my referral code. Depending on when you sign up they usually have different deals for both you and me! Referral Code: bcfkmja

If you’re wanting to learn more, check out my post about the Top 8 Things You’ll Want to Food Prep Right.