Generic brand foods - my family's year long experiment

[scootrd]

Over the last 12 months my family has made a determined effort to cut our food bill.
We started with coupon clipping every sunday (rule 1 only clip items you use).
The we moved on to buying generic brand foods and packaging. (rule 2 except a very very few of our favorites).
We hardly ever buy mainstream brands now (rule 3 unless with a coupon mainstream is less than generic equivalent. 
We only shop by meals and make a list of our meals for the coming week each Sunday afternoon before we shop. example monday dinner pasta (so at the store we buy , garlic bread , pasta sauce, and choice of pasta. 
We stuck to our list while in the grocery store.
Dinner leftovers become next day Lunch always.
We started eating smaller portions as well.
We use our crock pot regularly .
Meats are purchased in bulk and cut up at home. example ( buy whole chickens , cut yourself, buy whole ham cut your own cold cuts. But block cheese cut your own slices. )
We only shop grocery chains that provide rebates.
All scraps always go to Pigs and chickens. (they have Made out like bandits from this change as well)
Our out the door trash to trashcan has shrunk as well.

End results after 12 months (actually 11 1/2) we have been able to cut our previous years food costs below 1/2 .

When we tallied up all our grocery receipts over the past year (we kept them in a drawer after we went to grocery store each time) last night we were both amazed.

Most of the generic brands we eat actually do taste better than what we were eating.

With the money we saved we can now afford to make an additional house mortgage and tractor payment at end of this month.

[jhm]

     A lot of the generic Items are made in the same plants also several brands are made in the same plants, abt. the only difference is the fancy label pretty pictures etc. I do have some rules here though NO CHEAP CHIPS, I like Lays and thats carved in stone.  Jim

[Conan The Librarian]

Scooterd:
 
That is excellent information. Thanks for posting that. I'll discuss this with Mrs. Conan because there's a lot of good ideas there.
 
One thing that I've been doing a lot is buying inexpensive meats and turning them into really good food. One of my favorites is to go to Costco and buy a 5 pound pack of lean ground turkey and make meatloaf with it. One cup of dry brown rice cooked in two cups of water, cooled, and then mixed into about 5 or 6 pounds of turkey. A few eggs and whatever seasonings I like (pepper, worchestershire sauce, a little cayenne, not much else). That makes 3 or 4 loaf pans of meat loaf. After it's cooked and cooled, I slice it and wrap it in plastic, then freeze it. It's a great convenience food because you can serve it with most anything from potatoes and vegetables to spaghetti.

[scootrd]

Scooterd:
 
That is excellent information. Thanks for posting that. I'll discuss this with Mrs. Conan because there's a lot of good ideas there.
 
One thing that I've been doing a lot is buying inexpensive meats and turning them into really good food. One of my favorites is to go to Costco and buy a 5 pound pack of lean ground turkey and make meatloaf with it. One cup of dry brown rice cooked in two cups of water, cooled, and then mixed into about 5 or 6 pounds of turkey. A few eggs and whatever seasonings I like (pepper, worchestershire sauce, a little cayenne, not much else). That makes 3 or 4 loaf pans of meat loaf. After it's cooked and cooled, I slice it and wrap it in plastic, then freeze it. It's a great convenience food because you can serve it with most anything from potatoes and vegetables to spaghetti.

We buy generic seasonings as well . The markup  on brand name seasonings and sauces . is ridiculous. garlic powder is garlic powder. Black pepper corns are Black pepper corns ect...

My better half also does a lot of canning , and we grow a lot of veggies and garlic. I know some can't due to land space or time constraints , but our garden has been not only a great food source all year round, but it has actually allowed us to spend more quality time together , weeding , planting , harvesting etc..
 

[bobg]

     I have been buying the generic brand for 5 or 6 years now. Haven't found anything yet that isn't as good as the name brand stuff.

[guzzijohn]

Don't try kroger's disposable razors. I could have a smoother shave with a well used lawn mower blade than one of these so called razors. I just trim shave around a beard and a disposable Bic or Gillette razor will last about 12-14 days. I could get three days out of the house brand but that third day was borderline torture and the first day wasn't fun.
GuzziJohn