I struggle mostly with saving money while shopping for food because its hard to buy produce for one without spending a lot of extra money for small portions and a lot of packaging. When I buy regular-sized things, they tend to go bad before I can finish it. I hate to waste food because it feels like I’m throwing money away! Do you have any advice on how to shop more frugally for one?

I understood exactly were Elizabeth was coming from. I am single and live alone except for my beloved tri-colored corgi. I have a small 720 square foot 1/2 duplex with a tiny kitchen and very messy pantry.

At the end of 2008 I was working in the hospital building industry. The industry just tanked and all of a sudden I stopped working for my client. I found myself happily broke, moving in the direction I wanted to be moving in and now having to cook my own meals. I wasn’t even sure if I remembered how to cook for one person.

I had been single for ages but hadn’t done my own cooking. The culture I had been working was one where you went out to lunch every day with your co-workers. This entailed a $10.00+ meal of varying degrees of nutritional goodness. The meals fell into the categories of bbq, mexican, chinese, southern and foods from your childhood.

Dinner was eaten out or whatever snack food and condiment combination I came up with from my fridge. That is one thing about being single you have a great condiment selection. I am very partial to pickles, olives, pestos and mustards.

And I have definitely gained some weight over the last couple of years embracing this lifestyle. This is not something I am happy about. I am short and when I gain weight I start to look alot like a fire hydrant. Not particularly attractive. Plus being in my mid-40′s now with bits falling off I am hyper-aware of health and eating.

So I searched around online to see if there was any web sites with tips and so forth for the single kitchen. I thought it would make my transition to home cooker on a budget easier. There wasn’t to much out there but I did learn how to potion out 24 servings of chili to freeze but that was about it. Which is really surprising considering that according to Euromonitor International:

• The number of one-person households worldwide reached 202.6 million in 2006, up from 153.5 million in 1996;
• The trend of single households is closely correlated to culture and living standards. As such, developing regions tend to have a considerably lower proportion of single households than developed regions;
• Most single householders fall into one of the three categories: single young professionals who can afford their own place, middle-aged divorcees, and elderly people who tend to be on a tight budget;
• The proportion of single households is highest in developed countries. In 2006, one-person households accounted for 28.9% of all households in Western Europe, 26.7% in North America and 25.7% in Australasia;

That’s alot of single people that need help in the kitchen. I know 8 months ago I did. And it is not like I can’t cook because I can. It is just different when you are single. Even a friend of mine who is a stellar cook admitted to regularly eating canned tomato soup and toast in her single kitchen. And Elizabeth is right about the food waste. The USDA states:

• 91 billion pounds of food were lost by consumers and foodservice in 1995.
• Foodservice and consumer losses accounted for 26 percent of edible food supplies.
• Fresh fruits and vegetables accounted for nearly 20 percent of consumer and foodservice losses.

That is an outrageous amount of waste. Waste that I can’t afford in my kitchen. The USDA Food Plans budgets for my sex and age group anywhere from a thrifty $34.80 to a liberal $69.00 per week for food. That means I can be losing anywhere from $9.04 to $17.94 in food waste per week. I have better things I could be doing with that money than tossing it out.

For the last 8 months, I have been practicing and experimenting in a single kitchen to see just how best to operate a kitchen for one and save money. And now that we have the site relaunched I have a forum to expand on this topic.

I hope some of my posts help you in the kitchen and you find the rest of our site useful as well.

So how do markets deal with rising food costs? They tinker with the price of the roughly 45,000 items people don’t buy regularly enough to have a fixed idea of their cost—tacking on 3 to 4 percent to specialty products like, say, gourmet pasta sauce or fresh-squeezed juices, without consumers noticing. “There’s an opportunity to make some margin back on those items,” says Jim Hertel, managing partner of Willard Bishop, a consultant for the industry.

But don’t expect the savings to be passed on to you when costs come down. Many manufacturers lock in prices well in advance, and they often hold off on bringing prices back down to make up for the resulting losses, says Howard. One way to be sure you’re getting the best deal when prices drop: Stick to basics. Products like coffee and meat are likely “to reflect their underlying costs more quickly than most other foods,” Howard says.
How can I spend less money on food?

One word: cook.

I can offer no specific advice (buy store-brand cereal, buy vegetables in season) that will take you as far as the general exhortation to cook your own food.

When you eat in a restaurant or buy prepared meals, you are paying for both labor and materials. When you cook, you pay only for materials. The price of your meal is determined not by what the market will bear but by what the ingredients cost. When you cook, you can vary your menu based on what looks best and costs least.

Now, you may not know how to cook, or you may not enjoy cooking. But cooking is not rocket science, and to feed yourself and your family, you don’t need to master more than a dozen recipes and/or techniques. And you can learn to cook from a book.

The 5 percent decline in Arizona prices reported Thursday was substantially more than the 1 percent nationwide drop reported by the American Farm Bureau.

But at $54.75, the cost the 16 food items in Arizona still remains significantly above the national price of $48.19. Murphree said that Arizona prices rose faster than the national average and have taken longer to come down.

Downtown Phoenix resident Mike Butler has noticed the falling prices. He was in Safeway Thursday picking up milk, on sale for $1.58 per gallon.

“They seem to be having a lot more sales lately,” said Butler, who added that he is eating out less as a result of the declining economy.

Besides passing along the lower commodity prices, grocers are feeling increased pressure from consumers and competitors to reduce prices across the board.

“Our customers have become much more price-conscious,” said Kristie Nied, a spokeswoman for Chandler-based supermarket chain Bashas’ Inc. She said that coupon use has increased significantly over the past few months as consumers search for “deals.”

After climbing for a year, Kentucky’s retail food price index fell in the last quarter of 2008, according to Kentucky Farm Bureau’s January marketbasket report.

The 40 food items chosen for the marketbasket cost shoppers an average $111.63, surveyors found, down from a record $114.72 in October.

The latest survey finding was more than $7 above the index for the end of 2007, when the marketbasket average was $104.43, the Kentucky Farm Bureau said in a news release.

According to an American Farm Bureau survey, U.S. grocery prices in the fourth quarter of 2008 were 1 percent lower than the fourth quarter of 2007. For the full year, marketbasket prices were 7 percent higher than 2007, the Kentucky Farm Bureau said in the release.

Although food prices increased in 2008, food costs less in the United States than in other countries, Kentucky Farm Bureau said in the release.

Michigan is an economic basket case, with nearly 1 in 10 residents out of work. While it is too soon to talk about Armageddon, once-comfortable suburbanites are starting to feel the pinch and making changes that for legions of Depression-era families was second nature.

They are growing their own food.

A typical family of four growing all its vegetables and using canned and frozen vegetables from the garden can save hundreds of dollars a year that otherwise would be spent at a grocery store or restaurant, said Sandy Ryan, spokeswoman for the United States Gardening Association.

As a gallon of gas skyrocketed past $4 last year, many consumers were not surprised to see food prices follow suit. But the recent plunge in gas prices has left some wondering why grocery bills have continued to climb.

Prices for commodities – such as corn, fuel and grains – soared through the summer, and American shoppers saw substantial food inflation for the first time in 17 years. The rate of increase has recently slowed, but food prices still haven’t fallen the way gas prices have. In fact, November food prices – the latest data available – were 6 percent higher than one year earlier, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“It was always more than fuel that impacted food prices,” said ShopRite spokeswoman Karen Meleta. “Food prices are commodities, and although some pricing has come down, they’re still higher than in the past.”

And while commodities soared in 2008 on a wave of unprecedented growth in emerging markets, the dollar fell considerably against other major currencies.

Even as gas prices drop, consumers are still getting slammed with high grocery bills.

Some local stores are promoting discounts as we enter a year in which the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that food prices will increase 3.5 to 4.5 percent.

November food prices — the latest data available — were 6 percent higher than one year earlier. Grocery costs aren’t dropping along with fuel costs because food manufacturers generally lock in commodities contracts in advance.

“It was always more than fuel that impacted food prices,” said ShopRite spokeswoman Karen Meleta. “Food prices are commodities, and although some pricing has come down, they’re still higher than in the past.”

Although the recession has revived penny-pinching, Americans are still redeeming only 1 percent to 3 percent of paper coupons. In contrast, the nation’s largest traditional grocery chain says as many as half the coupons it sends regular customers do get used. Kroger’s part ownership of a data mining firm allows it to put the reams of information its shopper cards collect to use in more ways than other retailers do. And one way is to give shoppers coupons mainly for products they regularly buy.

Simon Hay, chief executive of dunnhumbyUSA, the data-mining and marketing operation Kroger co-owns with a London-based company, said targeting promotions becomes even more important in a recession.

“In a growing economy, you might get lucky because there is more money around,” he said. “But if there is less money around, the question is how can you be absolutely certain that you’ve got the right offers in the right places?”

Many retailers have loyalty cards and some offer “instant coupons” at checkout based on buyers’ habits. But dunnhumby — named for founders Clive Humby and Edwina Dunn, who are married — is about more than coupons. Kroger uses dunnhumby’s consumer analyses, which the data firm augments with customer interviews, to guide strategies for promotions, pricing, placement and even stocking variations from store to store.

An easy way to eat healthy and keep grocery costs down is to focus on vegetables and fruits, said Robert Murray, a faculty member at the Ohio State University College of Medicine.

Buying frozen or canned food can save money. And, since preservation methods have improved dramatically, the nutritional quality of canned and frozen foods are higher today as well, he said.

Murray also warned that organic foods are not necessarily more nutritional.

“Concerns about hormones, antibiotics or pesticides have driven many to choose organic foods,” he said. “But don’t be fooled into thinking that because something is labeled organic that it is any healthier.”

Many of you splurged on fancy foods for holiday dinners and parties, but you may want to keep an eye on your wallet as you go into the new year. Food prices are going up. Some economists are predicting that food prices will go up between 7 and 9 percent in 2009. They say don’t count on the cost of food plunging like gasoline prices did.

John Lincoln is a dairy farmer in Bloomfield. He’s seen the price of milk rise and fall recently. And it may be the same for food in general as well. His costs have risen substantially. But though some costs have dropped, he is locked into production prices when they were higher.

But the news isn’t all bad…

Pennsylvania-based Weis Markets cut prices on thousands of items for 90 days at its 155 stores.

“With consumer confidence at an all-time low and the poor economy, we know that our customers are looking for long-term ways to save money,” said Weis Markets President David  Hepfinger.

Whole Foods, longing to shed the “Whole Paycheck” nickname, just issued its latest Whole Deal circular that includes tips such as how much different types of grains cost per serving. There are coupons too, for basics like frozen pizza and vitamins.

It isn’t just a U.S. phenomenon. Wal-Mart’s Asda, the No. 2 supermarket in Britain, is cutting prices on at least 1,000 items. Asda said it is selling 200 health and beauty products like shampoo and deodorant and 100 frozen food items for 1 pound ($1.46) each.

Tightening the food budget needn’t mean sacrificing flavor or health, however. In fact, by stocking up on nutritious staples and an array of seasonings, it’s possible to become more frugal while enhancing your family’s meals. Some suggestions:

* Season those staples.

Not only are basic, natural foods — like whole grains and beans — inexpensive, they’re versatile. Take rice, for example: Flavor with basil, garlic and ginger and serve as a bed for in-season veggies, or sprinkle with curry powder for an instant stir-fry. Use it as the basis of a casserole, seasoned liberally with marjoram or gently with cayenne. Toss in a little rice — along with a pinch of cumin — to add body to your cup of soup or stew. Or stir up some aromatic rice pudding, flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. Treat other grains, beans and even seasonal produce, similarly — and make the most of your staples by spicing each dish distinctively.

Of course, you can also use spices to enhance your standard fare, turning yet another omelet or whole-grain pasta dish into something special. Ready-to-add seasoning blends of spices offer an easy route to give the meal some pizzazz.

* Buy in bulk.

Buying food items in quantity allows you to purchase at the very best prices. Buy exactly the amount you want of each bulk item at your natural food store, or, for convenience, shop online. Frontier Natural Products Co-op’s Web site, www.frontiercoop.com offers a wide array of bulk items, including herbs and spices; baking ingredients like cocoa, milk powder, baking soda, baking powder and active dry yeast; and other cooking ingredients like tapioca, grains, teas and dried vegetables.

* Rely on local, seasonal produce.

Growing your own is ideal, or you may want to join a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, which will enable you to harvest fresh produce while supporting your local farmer. And of course you’ll want to schedule a regular trip to the farmer’s market to pick up what’s in season — to serve fresh or to put up for later months. Shopping for seasonal produce will provide the freshest and most economical buys at your local food store.

* Look for more frugal substitutions.

Replacing soda and other expensive drinks with homemade iced tea, for example, can provide savings as well as increased nourishment. Vary the tea — green, herbal, black — as well as the sweetener, if desired. And be sure to try your hand at developing your own custom blends; try a variety of teas, or mix tea with lemonade or juice.

Enjoy the taste and aroma of this delicious, economical tea:

Spiced Green Apple Tea

(Eight  servings)

Ingredients:

1 quart apple juice

1 quart green tea

1 cup Frontier Cider Mate

Directions:

Combine juice and Frontier Cider Mate in a pot. Bring just to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Add green tea and strain.

For more cost-saving ideas, visit www.frontiercoop.com/eatwellforless.

Courtesy of ARAcontent