Last week you learned what a grocery freeze is and why you need one. You picked your date and made your inventory. Now you’re ready to dive in deeper and be successful! These grocery freeze tips will help you stretch your food to last the whole month. They will also give you small tips that will make you more successful and less-likely to give up. If you’re ready to rock your grocery freeze let’s get to the tips!

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Stretch Your Food

A grocery freeze will force you to stretch you’re your food, especially meats. For example, I turned 5 lbs. of ground beef into 6 meals. I mixed up and froze meatballs and baby meatloaves which gave us 3 freezer meals. Then I browned the remaining 2 lbs. and made stuffed peppers, soup, and homemade Hamburger Helper from it. This brings us to the second tip:

Learn to DIY

Your convenient meals will be the first to go during a grocery freeze. Learning how to make your own bread, tortillas, and seasonings will be imperative for success. For example, when we didn’t have any spaghetti sauce or even tomato sauce, I made my own with jarred tomatoes that I pureed and seasoned. Little DIY’s can make all the difference.

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Save Freezer Meals

Make the meals that you can’t freeze earlier in the month while your excitement is still high. As the month wears on, start utilizing your freezer meals.

Substitutes

Remember to come up with creative substitutes instead of buying missing ingredients. If you run out of milk used condensed milk and water. Don’t have any bread crumbs? Smash up some crackers for your recipe.

Utilize Soup

Soup is one of the best meal-stretchers around. Above when I told you that I made soup from the ground beef? That soup was made from the excess rice and ground beef mixture that the peppers were stuffed with. Instead of having leftovers we had an entire extra meal.

Let Nothing Go to Waste

Leftovers can be turned into new meals to stretch food further during the month. Dice leftover pork chops to throw into fried rice. Toss leftover spaghetti noodles with butter and vegetables for an easy pasta dinner.

Transform Produce

If you have fresh produce that is starting to wilt or go bad, transform it. You can learn to can it, add it to freezer meals, or cook it up store it in the fridge to be a side dish. You can also freeze it to add to recipes later.

Temper Your Caffeine Fix

Coffee is a staple to my existence but sometimes during a grocery freeze, I run out. Crazy, I know. Since I’m not ready to give up my daily caffeine, I have found other ways to keep it coming. If you know that you do not have a lot of coffee for the month, make a half of a pot to stretch it further. You can also substitute with tea (iced or hot) that contains caffeine to get you through the month.

There you have it! Now you have the grocery freeze tips you need to rock your grocery freeze. Do you have any tips that you use to stretch your groceries further? I’d love to hear about them in the comments! If you missed Why You Need a Grocery Freeze you can check it out now to rein in your grocery budget and prevent food waste.

See where I’m linking up!