S/O With higher grocery prices are you cooking differently

Honestly in some ways it has had a perverse effect on me. I have to feed myself a few nights a week this year (usually my husband does the cooking), and I have discovered that, with rising grocery prices, it is often comparable or cheaper to just buy a store-prepared thing from the deli case at the supermarket for myself rather than buying raw ingredients and making a meal from scratch. It's also often cheaper to pick up cheap takeout than to cook for myself. So now I'm eating "treats" more often.

The biggest change at my house is DH are mostly empty nesters this year. We don't have to cook as much so that saves on the food budget. We also bought another 1/2 cow last Fall which will last a long time and saves us from paying variable grocery store prices.

I've switched to buying my beef from a local farmer. Its way cheaper across the board doing it that way. We buy a half a cow along side my sister. That will last us a little over a year or longer. I buy bulk from sams or costco and use my food saver when I find a good price on chicken and pork. I try to hit the sales and buy one for now and 2 for later on any canned or boxed goods and have stocked up quite a bit in our pantry. We also garden every year so we can a lot of veggies. I make my own Chicken and beef stock to save on that also. We try to go through our pantry and plan a few weeks of menus so we aren't always running for the store, which always leads to buying crap we don't need. Like you, I try to switch out some ingredients if something I normally use is super pricey. I try to take left overs to work for lunch so we are not throwing food away. I keep a freezer bag for veggie scraps, onion skins and meat bones to use in stock.

I'm not. I suppose I should, but I'm not.

You know, I feel like we had already done so much to cut down on the cost of groceries that we've just had to absorb this latest increase.

We don't eat much meat to begin with.

When we do eat meat (pasture raised and finished) it's in a "surprise box" from a local farm. We get a certain number of pounds for a set price each month. Mostly bone-in cuts, not necessarily the most popular commercial cuts. It lasts a long time because we don't eat much to begin with.

I shop for produce based on what's in season because it's better and cheaper. I rarely buy pre-cut produce - I can cut my broccoli into florets myself and slice my own apples. Much cheaper.

We've seriously cut back on diet sodas for our health. We've also started drinking more regular water from the tap and less carbonated water in a can.

We buy very few packaged meals or snacks. I cook from scratch most of the time.

I'd say as we get older, we're also trying to be even more cognizant of what a reasonable portion looks like. We try to snack less and not eat if we're not hungry. Less food consumed.

So our prices have gone up, but realistically I've already cut back as much as I'm willing to.

Same here. We are empty nesters so only two to cook for, and neither of us are big on leftovers. DH has been doing a local meal plan for a couple of months, so mainly I'm just cooking for myself. It's easier to buy a meal from the store deli counter and not any more expensive.

When I do cook, I am paying attention to prices, trying less expensive cuts of meat, focusing on fruit/produce that is in season. I am also using my Food Saver more now to make produce last a bit longer and to store extra servings of soups and sauces in the freezer.

Not really. Prices aren’t going to go down and Im not at the point of changing how I cook. I was already shopping sales and eating leftovers. I work at home so I almost always eat leftovers. Being able to work from home offset a lot of these rising costs.

I haven't really changed the meals that I make, but I am trying to cut down on snacks. I would love ideas on how people ration snacks for kids. My boys go through snacks so quickly and it drives me crazy.

Mine are teens now, so it doesn't apply as much, but when they were younger I had a basket of pre-portioned snacks like cheese its, granola bars, trail mix....  They could pick something from there once a day.  The rest of the day they were welcome to have as many fruits or cut up veggies or string cheese that they wanted the rest of the day.  (If they went crazy with the string cheese I would have limited that as well, but they were reasonable.

I keep telling my husband the cost of groceries so he doesn't complain when he sees our credit card bills! He wants to eat as we always have and he still wants me to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, so he can't complain about the cost.

I haven't changed anything around here 🤷 We buy in bulk, eat whole foods.. honestly I haven't noticed too much of a price increase on things we get.

A couple months back (November maybe?) Costco had their pork loins for $8 off at the register and I think I grabbed 3, maybe 4? We've basically had some form of pork chop 2-3 times every week since then

We're 3 adults and last month I put us on a strict food budget much to the annoyance of my mom lmao But hey it worked to clean out the freezer!

No changes. Same as usual. Actually, we spend a lot less because my ds is away at college and not eating us out of house and home. Dd is in grad school so she isn't here either.

We have pork a little more frequently and beef a little less frequently plus we make a much better effort to eat leftovers.

If we were beef eaters we would def cut back there. As it is we eat a lot of non-meat meals so that’s not relevant.