Invest in a chest freezer
One of the best investments we have ever made to help with the cost of buying higher quality groceries has been purchasing a chest freezer. This has given us the opportunity to buy bulk items when they are on sale at significant discount or purchase large quantities of meat directly from farmers at a lower cost.
Chest freezers are great for storing meat, frozen fruits and vegetables, baking flours, pre made meals, healthful convenience foods, bone broths, and so much more!
Meat:
There are two great ways to save on meat purchases. First, is when you shop for meat at a grocery store. You can purchase your favorite cuts while they are on sale and freeze them. If they are pre packaged then you can easily just toss them in but if you are buying them from the butcher counter then you may need to invest in a vacuum sealer as well. The second way is to work directly with a farmer to buy a portion of a butchered animal. Most farmers charge per pound by hanging weight and sell things like a half or whole hog, or quarter, half, or whole cow, whole chickens, etc. We have purchased both half hogs and quarter cows and chickens in the past and loved it!
Frozen produce:
Did you know that frozen produce doesn't lose its nutrients during the freezing process?!?! Canning and other preserving processes can destroy some of the nutrients available but freezing does not! This makes it an ideal bulk storage method. Frozen vegetables and fruits are often less expensive and eliminate the added worry of using them up before they go bad.
Baking flours:
Flours can be delicate and will go rancid if left in the pantry too long. We store excess flour like almond, spelt, einkorn, hazelnut, and oat in the chest freezer to keep it fresh as long as possible.
Frozen staples:
The rest of our freezer is dedicated to frozen leftovers, and things like our favorite cauliflower gnocchi, extra tortillas, butter, loaves of bread, frozen salmon fillets, anything that we use on a regular basis that can be frozen and purchased when it’s on sale.
