To stretch your food budget without feeling a thing...

...follow these five simple rules:

1. Eat more meatless meals. It's really not hard or even noticeable really. Instead of adding meat to your pasta sauce, do it the old college way: just boil your pasta, mix in your sauce and serve. Cheap, easy and just as good.
2. Make a weekly meal plan. You'll find it unnecessary to make that extra grocery store stop if you have written out a weekly meal plan (Monday - tacos, Tuesday - quiche, Wednesday - tuna casserole, etc.) and used it to buy groceries for the week. Sure, you might have forgotten the avocado for taco night, but generally you can make due with what you have.
3. Do it yourself. Whether it's chopping your own onions rather than buying them in the freezer section, or buying a whole chicken and separating it for two meals, convenience foods always have and always will cost more. If you're expecting to run short on time on the day you work late, chop onions the night before and place them in a Ziploc. Or better yet, pull a Julia Child and chop enough onions for the week. They can be refrigerated or frozen and they'll be ready when you are.
4. Stretch your meat. Use more vegetables and grains in your meals, such as making casseroles that combine many ingredients, therefore using less meat. An earlier blog post, titled "Not your typical tuna," gives a great tuna casserole recipe. Also you can use any leftover meat in casseroles, quesadillas or soups, making a single meal into two.
5. Eat what is in season. This is one of the best tips simply because it depends on using local resources. Visit your farmer's market or what's on sale and marked in season at your local grocery store.

The bottom line is this...use whatever resources you have to the best of your ability. If chicken is on sale, plan two meals with chicken that week- one where you cook the whole chicken and a second using what's leftover (think chicken noodle soup or chicken & dumplings). Planning always gives you an edge...and more free time means more time to live life and enjoy your friends, family and yourself!

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination." -Oscar Wilde