Surreal

Depending on where you live, you may be able to save some $$ by buying some staples at ethnic grocery stores.

For example, rice usually costs less and comes in more varieties in asian or indian stores. Olive oil can be down right affordable if you've got a middle eastern store near you. I drink a lot of tea, and I can get better quality at a better price at the Chinese market.

Buy in bulk to avoid gas-wasting trips.

Lily Joliat

and better produce so cheaper and healthier?

Surreal

I love mangos and persimmons, which are ridiculously expensive in regular stores and much cheaper (and ripe!) in Chinese stores.

Lily Joliat

don't forget the mediterranean markets with great olive oils, and fresh feta cheese and tomatoes, and sausages, and fabulous cheap herbs. The only reason to go to the grocery store now adays is maybe cereal and meat.

Taco Rubio

you can save a LOT of money if you find a latino grocery store in your area, and buy your spices there. they come in small plastic bags, and oftentimes every single spice is 99cents each - i've purchased a 99 cent bag of bay leaves that had 4x as much as the $6.99 bottle at a supermarket.

Phoenix Psaltery

Plus when Surreal walks in to the Chinese markets they fall on their faces and worship her as a goddess.

Of course, that's only right.

P2

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Khamon

plus Surreal gets good exercise and Taco can grow a small Bay tree in a bucket yeah

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Trout Recreant

You can also find some really interesting, cheap ingredients. A lot of the time, when you try to drop your grocery budget, you end up with bland or repetitious food. Learning to cook ethnic cuisine can be free or very cheap, and the ingredients are cheap as well. It gives you something different to eat.

Siobhan OFlynn

I was very fortunate over the last year and a half or so, to meet 3 Filipino women (psychiatrists I worked with). They love to cook and introduced us to things like pancit, spring rolls and these little sesame candies from the Asian Grocery store. I am going to make some pancit this weekend and will be making a trip to the Asian grocery nearby for the main ingredients.

They also brought in fresh fruit grown in their own yards, like persimmons and calamansi which is a small orange fruit native to the Phillipines. It tastes like a cross between an orange and a lime to me and you squeeze it on your pancit before eating. It's just awesome! I hope the store carries them. I also hope they carry Chinese sausage like the kind one of the docs used in her variation of pancit.

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Aki Shichiroji

i'm gonna second the herb recommendation. Picked up a large handful of fresh basil for $1.60CDN and two huge thick rib eye steaks for $4.60 at one of our local Asian supermarkets. Along with some potatoes to fry and a little bit of marinade, made for a fantastic meal for under $5 a person tonight. om nom nom nom nom!

Hikari Beliveau

I agree! Learn to cook other cuisine.

Tofu at a Korean store or specialty store can cost anywhere from 99c to $2, whereas a regular grocer like Safeway it can cost more for less variety.

You can also get HUGE jars of things like kimchi, that will stay good for months on end (they get better as they age), and only cost around $7. Seaweed also only costs about $1 for a three-pack. The big things of rice cake (really good basic snack w/ no other added taste) are also only a couple of dollars.

Ramonna Villota

Farmers markets on the weekends or the local coop

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Trout Recreant

We have a Halal market in town and it's rapidly becoming my favorite place. I love it. There's an Asian market a block away and I could spend hours exploring both of them. The Asian market is full of old guys playing Mah Johng, and the Halal market sells a lot of incense, so the fragrance in there is wonderfully exotic. I don't recognize hardly anything in them, but the people that run both places are the nicest people you'll ever find and don't mind explaining to me what must be very, very basic to them.

The price on lamb in the Halal market is just stupid. It's practically free.