Gerrit Botha's 15 ways to reduce food costs

Found this beautiful article to reduce food costs. A must read.

How’s your monthly food bill? Is it sustainable? We’re a family of five on a limited budget from a single income, so we are hawks on food costs. And we’re living in a world of increasing food insecurity, so that it becomes more and more important to consider how we obtain our food and at what price.

1. We keep a whiteboard on the fridge and as we run out of things, we put it on the board. This is the basis of that weeks grocery list and we don't buy things that are not on the list
2. We look at the sale flyers from the newspaper for the items we use and are out of to make up the grocery list and we clip coupons
3. We make up the grocery list by aisle
4. We try to stay to the exterior of the grocery store, where we buy diary, fresh fruit and veggies, frozen vegetables in bulk. Instead of bread we buy the flour, and now the wheat to mill, and make our own bread
5. And we stay away from the processed food and the junk food aisles
6. We don’t buy anything with pretty labels, we buy the no name brands in large quantities
7. We make stuff: we make our own pasta for example
8. We eat vegetarian: it's amazing to bypass an entire aisle
9. We buy strawberries and other fruits pears, blueberry, currants in season and make jam
10. When tomatoes are in season we buy bucketfuls of plum tomatoes and can them. We make salsa, spaghetti sauce, and tomato chili
11. We use a big chest freezer to store food
12. We grow anything we can, even in containers. This past summer we accidentally grew a squash in a container full of marigolds
13. We pickle cucumbers, beets, carrots and beans
14. We make cucumber and other relishes
15. Oh, and we eat out very rarely

Food security is such a big topic and we'll come back to it regularly. But it is important to start somewhere and this is our start. We have a long way to go and much more to do. I'd be very interested in what others are doing to keep food costs under control.