I’m trying to reduce our grocery budget by tacking one budget buster each month this year. You can read the different things I’m trying in this post. For our U.S. readers (most of you) this list will probably look different than one you would write. We were paying import prices on some of these products and are trying to use local goods to reduce our costs.
My task for February was trying to find a recipe for homemade spaghetti sauce. We were spending about $3.50 for a can of spaghetti sauce that is imported into China but costs about $1 in the States! Not only was it expensive, but it didn’t taste all that great. I went to my go-to site for all things homemade, All Recipes. I love that there are tons of reviews and that I have a good idea whether or not a recipe really turns out as promised.
After reading through several reviews, I settled on Stephanie’s Freezer Spaghetti Sauce. I followed the recipe as it was written except that I cooked it on the stove instead of in the crock pot. I also blended it after it was fully cooked so that my little one afraid of “chunks” in his food wouldn’t pick all of the veggies out!
Besides needing to stay home and stir the pot frequently, it was so easy to make! I didn’t peel or deseed the tomatoes. That simply takes too much time. In about 15 minutes I was able to chop everything and throw it into our biggest pot. We ended up with about 6 cans worth of yummy homemade sauce costing a total of $7. A home run!
We usually use about 6 cans of sauce a month, so that would cost our family about $252 a year. Now, we can make homemade sauce that has a better taste and is much healthier for us for only about $84 a year, a savings of $168 a year!
Our first meal with our homemade sauce was homemade gnocchi, a family favorite!
Have you been making an changes that are reducing your grocery budget? We’d love to hear about them!
Sharing at lifeasmom.com, womenlivingwell.org, and wearethatfamily.com.
Making your own sauce definitely is a money-saver at those prices! I stock up on jarred sauce when it goes on sale, and we use it in the gaps between batches of homemade sauce. My homemade sauce is different every time as I use whatever vegetables are handy–my last batch had a small turnip in it! Here is my index of spaghetti sauce recipes.
I found your post from the Women Living Well Wednesday Link-Up party. I make my own spaghetti sauce too and freeze for future use. Once I make a batch, I freeze in 2 to 3 cup portions, so I can thaw them out quickly on busy weeknights.
Looking forward to checking out the rest of your blog!
That’s what I did as well. It’s wonderful to have homemade sauce to pull out when we need it!
I am excited to try this recipe you posted. I have been looking for a good homemade spaghetti sauce recipe that I can freeze and have on hand. I recently started my own blog about “living simply”. I have 4 children and another on the way and living frugally is essential. My first blog post is all about cutting my grocery budget down to $275 per month for our family of 6 (soon to be 7). We have been going strong for 2 1/2 months now and I’m so pleased to see so many other women doing the same thing for their families. Finding websites like yours make me smile! Thanks!