Saving on Bread Products

The same way I save on meat products, I save on bread products. Now I'm not talking about the bread you use to make sandwiches, but you can save on that too this way too.

Most grocery stores now days have bakeries. I'd much rather purchase rolls made from the bakery than the rolls in the frozen food section or ones on the shelf. However, those fresh made products come with a higher price tag. Figures, right? Well, not if you purchase "day old" products. You can really save on them and they freeze beautifully.

For example, when I was in Krogers the other day I stopped by the cart with the day old products on it and found two items to purchase. One was cinnamon bread, one of my favorites. It was originally priced at $2.49 for 20 slices (yes I counted) which makes each slice $.12. However, it was on the "day old" rack and was marked down to $1.29 making each slice $.6. Woo Hoo, in my cart it went! Now we have used two slices of it and I don't want it to go bad so I tossed it in the freezer. It freezes great and not something that I have to break down into separate sections.

The other item that I purchased was a pack of dinner rolls:

I had to show you both sides because one side shows the pre-discount price and the other shows the product. LOL. Anyway as you can see it was originally $1.79 but marked down to $.89 There were originally 8 rolls in the package making each roll roughly $.11 versus the original $.22 before discount. Now we used 3 for dinner the other night (hubby had 2) and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the remainder.

Sunday in our house is mostly snacky food type days. The husband calls it his "lazy" day which translates to I'm not getting off my butt to do anything so don't ask. It's basically his one good day off and the sabbath so I don't mind. I don't plan big meals for Sunday as he prefers just to snack all day as he gets hungry.

Back to the rolls, as it was snack food day, I decided to make little sandwiches with them. I used one package of Budding ham which was 4 for $3 and I had a $1/4 coupon making them $.50/package. Had one slice of cheese left but some shredded cheese so I just made little sandwiches. Now getting picky here, there were 10 slices of meat in the package so each slice was $.05. Add in a little bit of cheese and some Mayonnaise and I made snack sandwiches for about $.25/ea. You can't even get a White Castle for that cost anymore.

Use your money to benefit you and always compare mentally what it would cost to get the equivalent at the store or a restaurant. The more you train yourself to think this way, the more money you will save because you will soon realize how much you are paying at fast food restaurants, etc. and you will find the time to make things at home.

As you can see, the mini sammies are nothing special but they are a pinch for snack food and each one which is the size of a Grands biscuit is about $.25 which is probably actually more than it costs, but I'm not going to waste the time to figure out how much a swipe of Mayonnaise and a couple of sprinkes of cheese and half a piece of lettuce cost so I'm being generous with the cost. I already know the roll and the meat cost a total of $.16 for each sandwich so I think I'm being pretty fair with the cost. $.30 at the most!

Now this by itself is not much of a dinner, but if you looking for a way to feed your family for cheap, pair this with some fruit and maybe a small handfull of chips or crackers and you have a dinner for each person for well less than $1.00

Breakfast, lunch and dinner doesn't have to be fancy. It's what you make of them. You can make them simple and cheap and somewhat healthy without breaking the bank and your budget. Be creative. Look at what you have and figure out ways to use it without it ending up in the trash. Remember the old saying "Waste Not, Want Not". No waste here and we had a simple little dinner that cost $.50 for me (I had two) and $.75 for the husband (he got the other three without the lettuce LOL).

So start checking out the "day old" bread carts in your store. If you don't know where they are, ask the bakery department. Find out when they put the products out and where it is located. You'd be really surprised at what you can find there and you can save a lot of money and the products are better for you than what is in the frozen food and regular shelf section.

Hugs,