PS: I'm offering a giveaway prize for one lucky commenter--details at the end of the post!
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1) We practice part-time vegetarianism and eat meat in fewer than half our meals.
2) The majority of the foods we eat are simple staples like pasta, rice, brown rice, lentils, beans, and vegetables.
3) Laura brings her own lunch to work every day, almost without exception.
4) We eat out rarely, perhaps three times a month. Even a relatively inexpensive dinner out can cost more than our typical weekly food bill.
5) We avoid buying heavily advertised products. We have no interest in paying for the biggest part of a product's cost stack.
6) When buying staples, we generally buy store-brand or generic products. They're almost always of equivalent quality.
7) We tend to make infrequent purchases of staple foods--and when we do buy, it's in huge volumes of on-sale items. When the 20-lb bags of rice or the 3-liter jugs of olive oil are on sale, that's when we pounce.
8) We've bought a grand total of just three new cookbooks in the past two years. There are just too many untried recipes just waiting to be exploited in our existing cookbook collection.
9) We buy junk food occasionally, but we never keep any stashes of it in the house. It's our way of practicing moderation in our moderation.
10) The brand of wine we drink more than any other is Carlo Rossi--simple, unpretentious table wine that comes in a gigantic one-gallon jug. Who'd guess that for a paltry twelve bucks we can ease our pain for an entire month!
Readers, now's your turn--what frugal things do YOU do? Share them in the comments!
And now for the giveaway: I have a spare copy of Emeril Lagasse's excellent cookbook Emeril at the Grill: A Cookbook for All Seasons
available for one lucky reader [take a look at my positive review of it from last year].To enter, just leave a comment sharing your favorite and most effective frugal food habits (and be sure to include a link to your blog or an email address so I'll be able to reach you). I'll run this contest until Thursday, December 2nd, 8pm ET, and I'll announce the winner with my weekly links post on Friday December 3rd. Good luck!
Related Posts:
Review: Cooking Green by Kate Heyhoe
Almost Meatless: Cookbook Review
Ten Tips on How to Cut Your Food Budget Using the 80/20 Rule
What Have You Given Up That You Don't Miss?
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