Groceries can be a major household expense. In order to lower your bills and improve your cuisine standard, we asked Sophie Gray, the author of 100+ Tasty $10 Meals and creator of the Destitute Gourmet website, for her expert shopping and cooking tips.
Sophie is also the author of Stunning Food For Small Change, Live Well Spend Less and many other bestselling cookbooks. So we were thrilled to hear that she could whip our kitchens into better financial shape.
RESCU: What are 3 ways to shop smarter?
Sophie Gray:
1. “Plan your meals for the week, that way you buy what you need and avoid emergency dashes to the supermarket and expensive over-spends.
2. Use seasonal ingredients – the peak of season produce is the freshest and cheapest, learn to use what is available and substitute with seasonal produce in recipes e.g. in winter, make a salad from finely sliced cabbage, grated carrot, apple, and bean sprouts all of which are in season and inexpensive instead of lettuce and tomato, which are out of season and very expensive.
3. Shop with cash – research has shown that people who shop with cash spend on average 20% less than when we use plastic. We just don’t like to part with the folding stuff!”
RESCU: What are 5 tips for people who want to become a ‘Destitute Gourmet? (e.g. someone who enjoys fashionable food that doesn’t cost a fortune).
Sophie Gray:
1. “Work out what you currently spend on food each week, not just groceries, included lunches and treats…dig out your supermarket receipts and look at credit card statements so you know truly what you currently spend
2. Draw that amount in cash, and use that for your grocery shopping, anything less than that is a saving, you’ll be amazed how much you can save when you know how much you spend
3. Decide not to buy anything you can realistically make yourself
4. Look at your favourite types of food or culinary styles and choose recipes that reflect the food you love –If you like Indian takeaways, learn to make some quick curries, if you like Thai or Mexican meals, choose recipes that have those flavour profiles…
5. Make the decision that you will only shop once a week. If you do that you will become a better cook because you will learn to work with what you already have to hand, your confidence will grow and you’ll save a small fortune.”
RESCU: We keep resorting to expensive takeaway meals. Can you help us break this bad habit?
Sophie Gray: “Takeaways have their place, not as a regular weeknight meal, but as a treat or in an emergency and no more than once a month.
Determine what the criteria are for resorting to takeaways. For us, it’s when suggested as a get together with friends “let’s pick up fish and chips and meet up at the beach; or in an domestic emergency “the kids have friends to stay, you were halfway home from picking the young uns’ up from sport and the car got a flat tyre”… so there are now 4 hungry youths and it’s already past dinner time and if they don’t eat soon they’ll turn on each other…”
RESCU: How did the Destitute Gourmet website come about?
Sophie Gray: “The Destitute Gourmet website seemed a logical way to support the cookery books, when they were proving so successful. We were also deeply conscious from our own experience that when you have very little money, you need access to free resources and support that you can trust.
People wanted to buy books directly from us where they weren’t available in bookstores. And we wanted the website to encourage people who were feeling challenged by their financial situation, to create a sense of community that made it okay to talk about money and money saving, but not make it so frugal that we didn’t relate to it ourselves.
We love to eat out, enjoy treats like a glass of wine or lovely shoes. Our aim is to help people spend less on groceries so they have money left for other important things in life – debt reduction, education, shoes, handbags, weekends away.”
For more information visit www.destitutegourmet.com
Sophie’s latest book, 100+ Tasty $10 Meals (RRP: $27.95), will show you how to spend less on groceries and enjoy delicious, nutritious and easy-to-prepare meals. It contains everything from delicious pasta meals and warming oven bakes to spicy curries and fragrant stir-fries. It’s available online and from all good bookstores.
