I Left My Food Editor Job to Go Back to School—Here’s How I Shop Cheap and Cook Fast

Last  year, I stopped working as a senior food editor at Allrecipes and became a full-time, first-year law student. As you might imagine, the way I grocery shop and the way I cook has changed pretty dramatically. When it comes to mealtime strategy, I’m balancing two key priorities: saving time and saving money. But, I’m still a “food person”—I still love making food, feeding others, and eating well. In adjusting to this new reality,  I’ve picked up (and more often, remembered) some valuable lessons that have actually helped me to become a more efficient, nimble cook and allowed me to enjoy the time I have in the kitchen more than ever. 

With that, here are the seven strategies I’ve found to be the most useful in my efforts to eat well, without spending too much time or cash. 

Compromising, With the Big Picture In Mind, Is Key

Saving money and saving time are not mutually exclusive goals when it comes to feeding yourself. However, you do have to accept that you can’t always prioritize both in every purchase that you make. I have a habit of leaning into making things entirely from scratch in order to save money, but every time I lean too far into that habit, I quickly realize, I don’t have time to make everything from scratch. 

It’s essential to keep an eye out for opportunities to embrace time-saving expenditures that won’t push your grocery budget too far out of whack, and vice versa. This is the key to balancing your two savings goals. 

For example, one of my guilty indulges is an afternoon iced coffee (or two). I used to make my own cold brew coffee so that I would never be tempted to swing through a coffee shop for a $5-$6 cup of the stuff. But as it turns out, the daily ritual of grinding coffee beans and steeping overnight, followed by straining, cleaning the equipment, and repeating every day or so, wasn’t a routine I was able to maintain during this season of life. Thus, I sought a compromise: I now spend $6-$7 on a jug of already made iced coffee or a bottle of cold brew concentrate at the store each week. At first, this felt like an unnecessary splurge—and in truth, it technically is “unessential,” but it’s an expenditure that keeps me happily caffeinated (thus, tolerable to be around), takes no time out of my day, and still rings in at a fraction of what buying daily coffee out would cost. 

Cutting Meat Means Saving Money

I eliminated meat from my diet this year as an ethical choice, but within a month of going meatless, I realized that the decision was also saving me a lot of money. Obviously, chickpeas cost significantly less than chicken breasts—not to mention, they’re also easier to incorporate into a dish, as they require little to no prep work. Even just reducing the number of meat-centered meals in your week can make a substantial impact in terms of cost-cutting. Plus, it’s no longer a big deal when someone inevitably forgets to take the ground beef out to thaw once you’re comfortable with cooking without the meat. 

Planning Ahead Really Does Pay Off

As much as I hate admitting this, because I hate meal planning with every fiber of my being, there’s a reason people recommend making it a part of your weekly routine, especially when you’re trying to save time and money: it works. As plans are apt to do, having a meal plan in place makes the entire process of grocery shopping and cooking more efficient. Deciding what you’re having for dinner days ahead of time might be annoying in the moment, but it minimizes the guesswork in writing your grocery list, makes sticking to the grocery list easier, gets you in and out of the supermarket faster, and most importantly—eliminates the dreaded “what’s for dinner?” inquiry from occurring at 6 p.m. on a hectic Thursday. When there’s no plan, the answer to that question all too often becomes takeout or dining out.  

Because it’s just myself and my partner in my household, we only make a concrete plan for usually three, sometimes four, dinners throughout the week. The leftovers from the prepared meals themselves make for easy lunch or another dinner, and we find ways to use the leftover ingredients from preparing the meals in pulling together more on-the-fly dishes. 

You Have to Know Your Fallback Meals

This is just as, if not more, important than meal planning to me. Fallback meals are the meals you know how to make with one hand behind your back, that everyone in your house likes, and that don’t require a lot of ingredients. In other words, when that “what’s for dinner?” inquiry comes up at 6 p.m., even if there’s no real plan in place, you still have an easy answer.  

Take a little time and jot out a list of what those meals are for you, and if you don’t have the basic ingredients you need to make them right now, go ahead and add those ingredients to the grocery list. Know these dishes well and make sure you’re always stocked to prepare them, because chances are, you’ll need to look to one of these tried and true go-tos at some point most weeks. 

For example, cacio e pepe has been a trusted fallback meal of mine for years. I love this simple, speedy, and comforting pasta anytime, and the only ingredients I need for it are dried pasta noodles, black pepper, butter, and a block of Parmesan cheese. (Technically, the traditional version calls for Pecorino-Romano, but Parm works just as well.) It’s easy for me to make sure I have these things on hand because I use them for so many other dishes; thus, we have a perfect fallback meal. 

Always Throw At Least One Shortcut Ingredient Into Your Shopping Cart

This is another key strategy that’s particularly useful for those of us who hate meal planning (and may not always do the most thorough job of it). When you’re short on time, there’s no shame whatsoever in utilizing the supermarket shortcuts available to you. It’s true that a lot of “shortcut” ingredients are pricier, but that brings us back to compromising with the big picture in mind. 

There was a long stretch of my adult life when I refused to buy jarred tomato sauce, it was slow-simmered, from-scratch or not at all. That stretch has passed. However, I am not about to drop $10-$12 on the high-end, artisanal jarred pasta sauce. No, ma’am; I look for the jar that’s the cheapest, with the simplest ingredient list. And when it’s time to cook, I dress it up a bit with just a bit of chopping. I mince up a few cloves of fresh garlic, maybe a shallot (I try to keep these around because they’re an easy way to deliver big, sophisticated flavor), and maybe a couple of anchovies if I’m feeling frisky. I toss that into the pan with a little olive oil and red chile flakes, saute over medium heat until fragrant, stir in my budget jarred sauce, and let it warm with the aromatics. Sometimes, I’ll stir in a dollop of tomato paste to intensify the tomato flavor even further or a splash of heavy cream, if I have it, to give the sauce a touch of richness. In 15 minutes, I have a potful of tomato sauce with close-to-homemade flavor for just a few bucks. 

Your Freezer Is Your Friend

If you too have a small household, and you aren’t a big fan of leftovers, mentally tattoo this across your brain and plan your meals accordingly. Plenty of soups, casseroles, stews, and other cooked meal elements (such as cooked rice or cooked, shredded meat) freeze well, and just because you don’t feel like eating them two days in a row doesn’t mean you won’t feel like eating the same thing in a couple of weeks. Knowing you have already-prepared meals, sides, or starts to a meal in your freezer, ready for thawing, is one of the reassuring feelings in the world. Plus, embracing a productive friendship with your freezer helps cut down on wasted food (a.k.a. wasted money). 

Shop Around 

You obviously know the grocery store landscape around you better than I do, but if you have multiple options available, you’ll typically find different deals in different places. Keep your eye out for sales on the foods you enjoy and utilize often. There are Facebook groups dedicated to monitoring and sharing information about the best grocery deals in town each week where I live, poke around online to see if something similar exists in your area. There’s no sense in going to four stores in a single shopping excursion, but if you know you can scoop up a certain ingredient you love for half the price at Trader Joe’s, swing through the next time you have to go near TJ’s anyway, and grab a few of that item to have on hand. 

For many seasoned home cooks, the above tips aren’t likely to be earth-shattering or revolutionary; they’re probably things that you’ve heard, and maybe even practiced, before. But I know that in my case, being aware of these principles and actually putting them to consistent practice were two very different things. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to this need to feed ourselves that we all share, but try adopting one or two of these ideas for a few weeks and see if it doesn’t feel like a new way of shopping/cooking.