Tuesday 17 September 2013

Top Ten Tips To Budgeting # 5 Supermarkets

Supermarkets:

It is always a good idea to get to know your deli, fresh foods, meat and bakery manager at your local supermarket, as they often have goods such as pizzas, cheeses yogurts, breads, muffins and goods that are due to expire or have dated and for next to nothing you have gained a meal.
I have been a manager of a bakery department in quite a big supermarket, and believe me there is so much wastage on food that is still excellent quality, and could be eaten no problem, just it cannot be sold over the counter, so my motto to you is do not ever be embarrassed by asking,
If you do not ask, you cannot receive
we never once apart from staff had anyone, come up and ask if they could buy leftovers, we did have a daily clearance basket which we did fill, normally in the mornings, but once it was gone, everything sat on a shelf until next morning.
















Even when I was not working there, I would shop from the reduced bin, a loaf of uncut bread, can make many a possibility.
  • Scoop the inside of a round loaf out and fill with a dip mixture as an entree
  • Slice a Vienna loaf into 3 lengthwise and make each oval into homemade pizzas
  • drizzle a little water over top of a stale loaf and then pop into a medium oven and bake for 15 minutes, the bread comes out fresh as, it must be consumed that day though.

Deli's are amazing in what they throw away, and some of it is for ridiculous reasons, I once bought 10 pizza's for $2.00 each simply because they had ordered the wrong kind and it was easier to sell at clearance price than to return them, all that was wrong was they had mis keyed the button and ordered plain pizzas instead of Hawaiian, my boys at the time were playing rugby, so each Saturday I would jazz up these pizzas with my own extra toppings and send them off and they were happy as.

Cheese's by asking you can get all sorts, I have been known to buy up camembert, brie and blue cheese for 50 cents a circle as its a day over the Best Before date, I freeze it straight away and then grate onto pizzas, or use for salads grated from frozen, its got a magnificent taste, and an eighth of the price.
















A Best Before date is the manufacturer's recommendation that their product is at its best until that date, whereas an Expiry date, is the manufacturer's way of saying after that date they say do not eat it.
We have all been to the butchers and seen assorted trays of selected meats that have been reduced, well they too have wastage, and stuff that they find hard to sell, and that for no reason other than it has sat out for a day it needs to be sold off cheaply, so if you ask the right questions at the right time of day, you may score a meat bargain.

Produce is another section where you can save, they are normally more than willing if they have it to do up a bag of goods that are not at a perfection level, but again if you do not ask, you will not know.
I have purchased a whole banana box full of over ripe bananas for $5.00 before, ''why would you do that, you say'', I froze them and they were always on hand to make, smoothies, cakes, muffins, banana fritters or milkshakes or just to mash and have on toast they certainly got used up and quickly I might add.
Grapefruit is another score I had, 10kgs of grapefruit that needed to be sold pronto, $3.00 I juiced them, sweetened the juice with some sugar and filled milk bottle containers 3/4 fill  and froze them.
The reason I left a little room in the top was not only do they expand, but you can then fill with a small amount of water once its defrosted and give a good shake and it makes the most wonderful grapefruit juice.
For $3.00 I got 4 litres of juice, so more than a weeks supply, and 1 litre sells for over $3.00 in the supermarket.







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