Meat and Produce and Dairy, OH MY!!

It seems when you start couponing, that most of the food items for which these coupons apply are processed foods, or items that you do not use. It also seems that it is rather difficult to save money on fresh produce, meat, and dairy. While this is often true, there are ways to cut down on the items that SHOULD be incorporated into your daily diet, rather than chemically littered lazy man meals. Here are a few suggestions.

Meat-

If you are able to shop early in the morning, or later at night, after the rush, the meat department often tags (coupons) certain items at a discount. Sometimes these discounts are as much as 50%. There is nothing wrong with buying this meat, albeit, there have been some cuts that are less than appealing. Most of the time the meat department simply has to move these products for new inventory. I paw around and have a lot of success with finding one beef product, one poultry, and one pork. I use one that night and freeze the other two. I do not do this with fish (personal choice.) But if you can score three meals worth once a week with this method, you will notice your weekly cost of dinner, shrink.

Produce-

My biggest advice to cutting your produce spending is to shop seasonally. Americans are spoiled. They want strawberries when they are out of season. Well, they are going to pay $4.99 for a 16 oz. package, that isn’t even ripe. However, there are other ways to save on produce. Some packaged bags of produce, ie. Fresh Express Salad, or Eat Smart cut vegetables go on BOGO sales. When you see this happen, go to the manufacturer sites and look for a coupon. You will be surprised at the ratio in which you can score. And if it is under $1, the coupon will likely double at Shaw’s.

Dairy-

I don’t recommend freezing much dairy (although some people do it.) It takes up too much of the freezer for it to be cost effective.  I look for cereal deals in which a certain criteria can be met to get a free gallon of milk. For example, at Shaw’s last week, General Mills sponsored a deal for a free gallon of milk on the purchase of certain cereals and Nature Valley Granola bars (4/$10.) Well, you KNOW I double couponed my 4 items down to $5.20. That means the retail value of the cereal, the bars, and the milk was approximately $15. I paid 1/3.

There are coupons for milk and other dairy items, but I rarely use them unless the sale price and coupon is less than the cost of the store brand.  However, the coupons are worth keeping, as it does happen from time to time.