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Nutmeggie ~ ( love that name so cute, & one of my fave spices!)
Do you know how to can or bottle? It's not too hard, and you can put a huge amount of your summer produce up in that way, to eat all winter long. Also, if canning just seems to hard & time consuming, many things can be dehydrated, and stored that way. And of course, easiest of all, ~ just get some nice heavy ziploc freezer bags, and chop up your produce & save it that way. When I used to buy meat at the grocery store, I would buy the huge family packs, because they cost less per lb, and then I would brown up the meat with onions and a few neutral spices, adn then freeze it in batches that are easily thawed & used for dinner.
I have also spent a few days a month pre-making meals, and then freezing them for quicky nights, when you have no other choice, and time is at a premium. This saves on us wanting to go out to eat or buying something quick at the grocery store because dinner is going to be a rush. Some really good meals for doing this are enchiladas, lasagna, spaghetti, big pots of soup, (bean, potato, pea, or lentil all hold up in the freezer well).
And go for it & buy a breadmaker, I guarantee you won't regret it. We run ours 3 times a day, & for the 5 minutes it takes to put the ingredients in, we have fresh bread a few hours later. Yes, you may have to play with the recipe to make it taste like homemade, but it will be worth it! And I personally NEVER use the pre-made packets or pkgs of special ~breadmaker~ mixes, they are expensive and tasteless.
One other thing that we do to cut or stretch the food budget is we drink water ~ a lot of water. We don't ever drink pop (or kool-aide), unless its for a special occasion & we are having rootbeer floats ( and my kids like purple cows better anyway) and we don't drink milk. I use dry milk to bake with and occasionally we will mix up a quart for different recipes, but that's it. And juice is another special occasion drink. We eat the fruit or eat jams instead.
And for a family of 7, with kids in range from 9 up to 16 ( which means they eat as adults), we spend about $150 - $200 per month on food.
Also, another food-saver, see if you have any nearby potato fields that you can glean from. Also, look around your neighborhoods and see if anyone has fruit falling off of their trees, they will likely let you either pick it for a small fee or just have it for free ( that assuages their guilt from not using it,lol).
I hope these ideas help.
~Red