Frugal Foodies: Making Dinner at a Discount

imagine paying fast food prices for the healthiest and freshest produce in groceries it may sound like food fantasy but these days a savvy cuisine customer can do just that by knowing how and where to shop abc's rebecca jarvis met up with a woman who's leading the hunt for high-end diet deals and saving thousands sarah mock is like a lot of americans she hates paying a lot for groceries to feed her husband and three active kids pretty much the only things we buy are unless we really need them or mommy has a coupon but sarah loves to cook eva went to culinary school so she isn't willing to cut corners when it comes to quality dear god thank you for this day and thank you for the food that mommy prepared for us she is a frugal foodie a growing movement of people who believe eating cheap is cool and delicious she even writes about saving money on her blog how i pinch a penny sarah saves thousands of dollars a year on food shopping getting almost 50 percent off her grocery bill and how she does it isn't a big secret it just takes time and planning we traveled to york pennsylvania and went on the hunt with sarah and her son harry as they stocked up for a week's worth of groceries all right ready to go shopping let's go get a cart a list that includes ingredients for tasty meals like pork loin and carne asada tacos you're making me hungry with that list i like the mexican stuff and to complete that list without breaking the bank sarah has to go to three different grocery stores it's 10 45 a.m first stop amelia's grocery outlet that sells food that would otherwise go to waste what's amelia is known for amelia's i love it because you have name brand products at a discount food that's close to or past its sell-by date every once in a while you'll find something that is close to date maybe it's within a couple weeks or a couple months and then you will find some things that are past it these pretzels are two for a dollar oh two for a dollar two per dollar check these out best buy 2 13 14 which is in less than a month so do you think my family can eat two of these in a month yeah yeah definitely and this cornmeal should have been sold in december two for ninety seven seven seven cents now whenever it's that low i check the dates ah here we expired but it's sealed up there's nothing wrong with it i'm gonna be using it within the month and so i'll just get one of these well some things do look a little worse for wear look at this this is a beat up box of raisin bran and it is 249. cereal inside is fine it's just cosmetics it's it's not as pretty anymore but that's okay there are also some diamonds in the rough here's a cranberry juice ocean spray 32 ounces for 99 cents 99 cents now when it comes to 99 cents i go okay why what's wrong with it and it's best before may 22nd of 14. so i know that's a long ways off it is still a long ways off so we're hitting a bit of a jackpot deal on this one peanut butter is another family staple all three we have a brand name jeff we have and peter pan so we have our choice it's not just one today um jeff is two separate just 279. at checkout our cart was full see how much this fun car could help but the bill 67 and 14 cents because every petty couch almost 50 percent less than a traditional grocery store you saved 65 and 55 cents by shopping at a daily use today thank you mission accomplished 12 30 pm next stop aldi a totally different grocery store experience and he's ready with this quarter you have to rent a car they save by not having cart getters sure when you get inside you won't find many name brands that's what aldi's is is mostly aldi's brand and that good deal we got on peanut butter doesn't seem so good now this is a dollar 69. so was ours a dollar i think it was more 279. does that sting a little bit it it does a little bit but for a dollar i got an extra dollar i got the name brand the store is designed to keep prices as low as possible part of their long-standing philosophy of operational efficiencies everything we can do to keep our costs low we are going to do that so we can pass that savings on to our customers aldi's stores are smaller than regular grocery stores instead of tens of thousands of products they sell about 1300 of the most commonly bought items and they display their products in the boxes they were shipped in we don't have to have somebody spending the time to individually take that product and place it on the shelf but if you think off label equals off quality think again here in the ld test kitchen outside of chicago a team of gourmets creates and tastes top of the line meals made with discount ingredients i think the color is really nice and it's a good way to get a lot of vegetables you've got the beans again it's a protein source and you could probably swap out the frozen corn or frozen vegetables as well just depending on what you have in your pantry back at our aldi in pennsylvania we stocked up on our own discount dairy 377 for a gallon of skin all the way up to 421 for the whole milk aldi's has the best price for milk sarah has what she came for plus a few extras 379 for three pounds that would easily be six dollars at my grocery store i know they don't take credit cards too many fees just cash and debit 46.87 yay 46.87 you have to bring your own bag and fill it yourself we are saving them money by not hiring people to bag our groceries so we only have a few more things to go things that we got here onions garlic tortellini no chicken tenders no at 2 p.m our last stop is giant hey let's go find your tortellinis do you know where they are her local grocery store and occasional sponsor on her blog thank you discount stores often don't sell specialty cuts of meat like flank steak fresh flank all right got one of those so she has to get that here along with a surprise remember the cheap peanut butter from amelia's gift creamy uh the 16 ounce is normally 2.99 on sale for 271. okay and i think we got it for 279. i think take a look we did 279. sorry four hours later sarah finally finishes up her list that's it for today all right your total is 54.81 for a grand total of 82 168.82 i think that's a really good deal for all that we got proving that good taste at a lower price can be on anyone's shopping list no matter where you live it seems like the bottom line here is you can be a frugal foodie you can definitely be a frugal foodie yes frugal fabulous foodie is what we are for nightline i'm rebecca jarvis in york pennsylvania

Channel: ABC News

Views: 6,026,447

Keywords: Food, Foodies, Discount, Dinner, Meals, Cheap, Prices, Family, Rebecca Jarvis, Nightline, ABC, ABCNews, News, US, Entertainment, Cooking

Id: 1UxYlBR4qIU

Length: 7min 38sec (458 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 28 2014