Stretch your food budget: stock up on staples @ Saver Queen

Stretch your food budget: stock up on staples

Posted on December 7th, 2008 Saver Queen 6 comments

Keeping your pantry stocked with staples is a great way to save money. By making sure you have access to the basics you can ensure that you eat healthy meals even when you’re nowhere near a grocery store. Not only are these foods incredibly cheap, they permit you to stay out of the grocery store for longer and stretch that food budget! For me, basic staples include chick peas, canned tomatoes, eggs, and carrots.

Here are some basic, healthy meals and snacks I make with these staples:

Chick peas – hummus, chick pea-salad, chickpea curry

Canned tomatoes - pasta sauce, soups, Indian spiced tomatoes and lentils

Eggs – egg salad sandwiches, frittata, omelette, impossible pie, fried rice

Carrots – soup (lentil and carrot soup, tomato and carrot and ginger soup, etc.,) carrot muffins, and of course carrots are great as raw snacks with hummus or steamed as a healthy side dish; they are also a nice addition to pasta salad

Tonight I made a great carrot and lentil soup using little more than carrots, canned tomatoes and lentils. It’s amazing what you can do with just a few simple ingredients!

What are your favourite “staples” that you keep around for cheap, easy, healthy meals?

6 responses to “Stretch your food budget: stock up on staples”

jpkittie December 7th, 2008 at 21:10

yum – hummus… you are making me hungry!

we have done pretty well stocking up our pantry, thank goodness… it has been nice to just go out & get the necessities.
Cara December 7th, 2008 at 21:26

I like to keep plain pasta sauce on hand, then I can just add whatever veggies and spices I have on hand! It is so quick and easy, sometimes its a veggie sauce and sometimes we add lean ground beef!

Eggs is something we alwasy stock up on as well as canned tuna to make tuna salad or macaroni salad!
an ostrich named sam December 8th, 2008 at 05:38

pasta, rice, tomato soup, creamed soups, beef or chicken stock and canned tomatoes. Potatoes, carrots and onions for veggies. I also always have chocolate chips and marshmallows for baking. I may have to make soup tonight… With homemade biscuits…
Kate December 8th, 2008 at 09:51

*shudder* You have stumbled upon one of my weak spots…

See, in a previous/not-so-previous life, I was an aid worker. I worked in a lot of super-scary countries. The country that was the scariest though, didn’t have bombs going off every day, or gunshots or anything. It had no food (and a scary dictator, but that’s not the point here). Because the supply lines were so messed up, we didn’t have food either. We might go 3 days or so without any food, maybe having some cornmeal a couple times a week.

Although it wound up being for a short time, it made a tremendous impact on me. I am TERRIFIED of running out of food. My SO laughs at me (in a nice way, I think) because our pantry is stocked to the brim, just in case. Luckily I tend to stock up when things are cheap.

Soy milk is a big one, because it can be used in everything and it’s expensive if you buy it one at a time. Coconut milk (good in everything from curries to dessert). Pasta sauce. Salsa. Rice. Canned corn. Canned beans. Dried beans. Chickpeas. Usually some kind of canned fruit (for ice cream in summer, for stretching curries in winter).

My SO might laugh, but when we were cooking at his parents’ place in TO this weekend, they had nothing stocked up and we had to scramble for things that would have been basic cooking materials in our house.
Saver Queen December 9th, 2008 at 12:26

Wow, Kate. It’s understandable that it had such a tremendous impact on you. I have some friends who are aid workers too and I know they are affected very deeply by what they’ve been through. Sorry to hear that it still bothers you – but I love your idea for using canned fruit to stretch winter curries!
Kate December 9th, 2008 at 13:04

Thanks I highly recommend pineapple and/or mango- even apple! A nice bit of sweet to cut the spiciness of a great curry.