So If you're anything like us, you're always looking for new ways to save money at the grocery store. While we're not experts, we've certainly gotten much better about shopping since being in Ecuador. There are a lot of differences with grocery shopping here, verses in the States, but these ideas can still help shave just a little bit off the bill.
1. Buy whole chickens. No matter what way you dice it, you're paying more for chicken that is boneless, skinless and in a pack with other similar parts. It didn't take us long to learn how to cut the chicken up into pieces and even how to de-skin it. De-boning a chicken is a little more difficult, but definitely doable. So here, in Ecuador, we pay around $7 for 2 whole chickens. Not only is that about 1/3 cheaper than buying boneless, skinless, we also then have the carcas, the innards, and other parts to make soup. We eat soup most days for lunch. So not only is buying whole chickens cheaper per pound, but you can also get so many more meals out of them. Plus, if you cook for your dog you can make bone meal by simply putting the dried bones in a spice grinder!
2. Buy in bulk. Now this is something we haven't mastered here in Ecuador but we're working on it. We don't have a ton of sales (really we don't have any sales) but there are some places you can buy in bulk. They're called bodegas and we're currently looking for the closest one to our house. The only ones that I know of are about a $5 cab ride away and after we pay for the cab, we've lost our savings. The reason we need a cab is because we're planning on buying a 100 lb bag of rice for about $25. In the supermarket rice cost about $5 for 5 kilo. You don't even need to know what the kilo - pound conversion is to know that this is a good deal. In the States you can buy just about everything in bulk and when it's on sale. Sale - Buy - Freeze. It's that easy.
3. Make your own. It's amazing how many things we buy at the store that we could really make homemade. For example, Ryan made corn bread last night and it was absolutely delicious. Between Ryan, Chuki and me we've eaten the whole pan already. We were talking as we sat down to eat about why people buy the packaged stuff. It cost us about nothing to buy corn flour (I think about 90 cents for a medium sized bag). All of the ingredients we had on hand, we didn't buy anything special. And it maybe only took 10 minutes longer than the packaged stuff. We also make our own tahini paste, our own bread, our own pasta sauce, our own jam, etc. The important thing to remember is, with a little extra time you can make almost anything yourself for a fraction of the cost!
4. Household products. I hate buying household products. I absolutely hate it. To me, they seem like the biggest waste of money in the whole grocery store. You can't make anything from them, you can't produce anything else. They just eat your money and then go in the trash. So our theory is, buy as little of them as possible. I think cleaning products especially are such a trap. You see something new in the store and you think 'this would really help me clean.' Let me tell you something: IT WONT HELP YOU AT ALL. We don't buy paper products and we buy 3 cleaning products: windex, all purpose bleach cleaner and a gentle cleaner for the floors because of Chuki. Oh and dish soap! Our mop is a broom with a towel over it and we don't have a vacuum. You'd be surprised what you really can live without. The one thing that I do miss though, are those Clorox bleach wipes. I'm working on making our own, but I'll save that post for when I've actually done it.
Anyways, hope these help you! Good luck!
MULUB,
Taylor
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