McPrior / Flickr

This is a post by BargainBabe.com writer Yazmin Cruz.

You’re in the office and your tummy starts grumbling. You have many options for lunch but which one is best for your wallet? Options include eating out, brown bagging and re-heating a frozen entree.

Eating Out

Pros: This option is convenient and depending on where you work, you have an array of foods at your fingertips. There is no need to pack a lunch the night before or wake up extra early to prepare something.  Eating out with coworkers can be a bonding experience and if you can chose the eatery, you can make sure you have an Entertainment Book coupon. Cons: This can quickly become an expensive habit if you don’t find deals for eating out. If you stick to dollar menus to minimize the cost, your waistline and health may take a toll. Cost: $10 per meal x 5 days a week = $50 per week

Brown Bagging

Pros: Keep an eye on your wallet and your waistline with this option. Brown Bagging can be more environmental if you use a reusable lunch bag, bring utensils from home instead of using disposables and pack a reusable water bottle. Being your own chef allows creative meal planning, especially if you use a multi-compartment easy lunch box. Re-heat dinner leftovers for a tasty meal. You can eat quickly at your desk or find a nearby park. Brown Bagging is nearly as fun as eating out with a favorite co-worker. Cons: It gets boring fast if you stick to the same meals and requires advance planning. Cost: $2.60 for a sandwich + .40 for baby carrots or fruit slices = $3 x 5 days a week = $15

Frozen Entrees

Pros: Prepackaged foods are very convenient and easy to grab on your way out the door in the morning when you’re in a hurry. You can stock up when they go on sale and keep them for weeks in the freezer. You can eat quickly at your desk. TV dinners used to have a bad rap for being unhealthy but there are now healthy options. Cons: Many TV dinner are loaded with salt and lack fiber and vitamins, taking a toll on your health over time. Portions are often so small you head to the candy machine for an afternoon snack. Cost: The entrees cost around $5 and sometimes cheaper when you can find coupons.  $5 x 5 days a week = $25

Eating out costs significantly more than brown bagging or relying on frozen meals,  but also takes a lot more time. What’s your frugal lunchtime option?

jekert gwapo/Flickr

This is a post by BargainBabe.com writer Yazmin Cruz.

I have a confession to make. I am addicted to coffee – the pricey frapps and ice blended drinks. But that’s not my only problem. In order to keep up with my caffeine addiction I’ve been charging the drinks on my credit card. Not smart at all, especially when I carry a balance.

I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten until I was reviewing my e-bill and noticed almost half the charges made were at coffee shops. My addiction began about six months ago when I took on more responsibility at work and couldn’t get out of the newsroom until 10 or 11 p.m.

Waking up extra early didn’t help either. By 3 p.m. I needed a pick me up and walked to a local coffee shop for my fix. If I didn’t have cash on me I would simply charge my $4 drinks. In no time my habit added up to $20 a week. Now I pay for my indulgence plus interest.

I shared my dilemma on the Bargain Babe Facebook page and many readers offered solutions that I am implementing. Here’s my plan. First, I’m going cold turkey. I had my last ice blended drink this weekend. I am not frequenting any coffee shops for a while and most importantly I am working hard to pay off my credit card debt. Note to self, don’t use plastic to pay for food or drink!

I am also fighting my expensive coffee addiction one tea bag at a time. Compared to coffee, tea is less expensive and doesn’t add extra calories (unless you add cream). I am using my coffee maker at home more often, as reader Janna suggested:

“I make my own cappuccinos now. I have a Senseo, which I *love* ($.25 per cup). I warm up some milk in the micro, then foam it up with an Aerolatte; simply awesome. For the counter space saved over a home espresso maker and the cost you can’t beat it.”

Having worked at a juice bar, I have enough experience to tackle making coffee at home. I also have an Aerolatte so I just need to commit to doing it myself.

Related posts:

I wish I hadn’t bought…

What tempted me to use my credit card this month

Bruce Tuten/Flickr

Time again for a list of in-season fruits and vegetables to help you save money on groceries. Buying in-season produce is almost always cheaper than buying out-of-season produce. Greater supply…lower prices. Plus, in-season produce is often grown closer to home than out-of-season produce, which we import from Chile, Mexico, and other countries. Expect prices for spring fruits and vegetables to rise.

The following list of summer fruits and vegetables comes from FruitsAndVeggiesMoreMatters.org. The list includes some of my favorite foods, like beets, cantaloupe, corn, eggplant, grapes, limes, peaches, and watermelon. If you can’t remember what is in season, prices are a good indication.

Apricots
Beets
Bell Peppers
Blackberries
Blueberries
Boysenberries
Butter Lettuce
Cantaloupe
Casaba Melon
Chayote Squash
Cherries
Cherries, Sour
Corn
Crenshaw Melon
Cucumbers
Eggplant
Figs
Garlic
Grapefruit
Grapes
Green Beans
Honeydew Melons
Jalapeno Peppers
Lima Beans
Limes
Loganberries
Lychee
Nectarines
Olallieberries
Okra
Passion Fruit
Peaches
Peas
Persian Melons
Plums
Radishes
Raspberries
Strawberries
Summer Squash
Tomatillo
Tomatoes
Watermelon
Zucchini

hipsxxhearts/flickr

How many times when growing up did you hear, “Eat everything on your plate. There are starving people in Africa”? If it was anything like my household, it was almost daily. Interestingly enough, I recently had my own paradigm shift about food waste. What started out as “I don’t have the money to toss out food I don’t eat” has turned into a realization that none of us do!

Statistics show that Americans throw away about 25% of the food we prepare. That amounts to about 96 BILLION pounds of food tossed into a dumpster (video). The food service industry (restaurants) estimate that 4-10% of the food they prepare is wasted before it gets to you. That’s a lot of food! “There’s a huge disconnect,” says William Rathje, a Stanford archaeologist who ran the University of Arizona Garbage Project for years. “People don’t pay attention to their food waste because it goes straight into the garbage or disposal. It’s not like newspapers that stack up in the garage.”

According to the USDA, the average weekly amount spent on food for a family of four using a low cost plan (we’ll go with kids in the age range of 6-11) is about $170. That breaks down to about $24 per day. Remember that earlier stat that 25% of the food prepared in America is wasted? What’s a quarter of $24? $6. A family of four is essentially throwing away enough food for an entire person each day!

So how do we get that 25% waste down to zero? Recycle it! The most obvious option is just not to throw it away! If you have leftovers, think of ways to reuse them. Make sure they’re in a clear container so that you can see what’s in them, and try your best to keep them up in front. You’ll have a better chance of not forgetting about them that way. And who says you need to eat the same dish four nights in a row? I found a great site for leftover recipes that lets you plug in the main ingredients and populates a bunch of recipe ideas. (See BargainBabe.com site review here.)

Ripened fruit? No problem! Toss them in a blender with ice and make smoothies.

Obviously some things aren’t reusable and some food needs to be tossed. But even then, it doesn’t necessarily need to be wasted. You can easily make your own homemade kitchen composter which will allow you to save those scraps and turn them into fertilizer for plants around the house, or even your garden in the backyard.

So the next time you start to scrape your plate down the disposal, pretend it’s cold hard cash that you’re inserting down the drain, and think again.

The folks behind I Love Trash sent me a link to their 1:15:45 film after watching me going dumpster diving. Their video gets good about 2 minutes and 30 seconds in. 

Quick TRUE or FALSE quiz. Every American creates 4.5 pounds of trash per per day.

The answer is TRUE!

Wow! It is amazing how many things get tossed out, but I don’t know if I could go dumpster diving.

..to disgust…

This is just not right. I don’t eat food that falls on my floor at home or that grandson has sneezed on. No way am I going to eat food from a dumpster. If I was homeless, maybe. Thankfully I am not in that predicament.

…to understanding…

my son bragged about our dumpster finds once, and the church gave us a care package for Thanksgiving!

…to outrage…

I worked at Starbucks for several years, and you would all be sickened at what was thrown out. Perfectly good baked goods are thrown out by every store, every evening. TONS OF THEM. Giant garbage bags full of them. The poor, minimum wage baristas are generally not allowed to take any of it (although I often broke the rules and took stuff anyway). There oughta be a law against this waste.

…to another kind of outrage…

What you are advocating is highly dangerous. Let me explain. I operated grocery stores for over 60 years. What was safe to eat, but damaged or close to its ‘do not sell’ date was marked down and sold in the store or was donated to charity. What we threw in the dumpster was often contaminated or unsafe to eat. Contaminated with what? Spills of household chemicals like bleach, soap, cleaning supplies, dirt, insects, and poisons. Unsafe to eat included foods that contained salmonella, botulism, or listeria. Salmonella and listeria can make you very sick or if you’re young or elderly kill you. Botulism will kill you even in small amounts. Yes, sometimes an employee will put something good in the dumpster and not all food there has these bacteria, but, can you tell the difference? Foods that have been recalled often go into the dumpster. When they are recalled, there is a serious safety reason. There are hundreds of recalls a year that you don’t hear about. If you wouldn’t buy it because it was recalled, why would you eat it for free? Do you have a death wish? What you are advocating is much like playing Russian Roulette. Sure, when pulling the trigger, most people will get off. Then again sometimes you are just out of luck. Is it worth it to take a chance on the safety of your loved ones or yourself?

…to practical…

Why don’t more people start groups like FoodNet (Nebraska) and then people who really need food could pick it up for free and not have to dive in dumpsters. I use to help with this group and we would pick up unused food from various restaurants, cafeterias, and grocery stores and take it immediately to a refrigerator or freezer (if needed). I was able to take some of the food for my family and we never got sick. I wish there were more groups like this one.

To be clear, I am not advocating dumpster diving, which is illegal. I sought to tell the story of Allison Burtch, who believes passionately in dumpster diving as a way to take individual responsibility for the waste our country’s food system produces, for better or worse.

Comments in order were left by Blakely, Lynda, prettybama, Chrystal, Ron, and Amy.

If you haven’t watched the 2:49 video, click more to see it.

If you click on the Coupons tab at the top of the GroceryCouponNetwork.com homepage, you’ll get a huge variety of food coupons via Coupons.com, the biggest distributor of online grocery coupons that I know of. You can search for coupons by category or name brand. There were almost 150 coupons when I last checked.

GroceryCouponNetwork.com also has a ton of kitchen recipes. On the Recipes tab I found more than 2,000 individual recipes, from Apricot & Cucumber Soup to Yum Pra-Hmik (Thai squid soup)! That’s handy if you find some vegetable or fruit at a great price but have no idea how to cook it, like Kale. Who knows how to make that stuff edible?

The Community tab is where you can register, ask questions about coupon stacking and other advanced clipping techniques, share great deals you find, and gloat about the ones you took advantage of. It’s nice to meet other coupon clippers.

If you are interested in shopping checklists, tips for budgeting grocery cost, kitchen recipes and cooking tips, special promotions on popular brands, holiday cooking advice, weekly coupons, and local deals, sign up for the email newsletter on GroceryCouponNetwork.com.

This is paid content. Want to take out an ad? Read my advertise page.

phototram/Flickr

UPDATE: I had no idea this contest would be so popular, with more than 300 comments so far! You still have time to enter as the contest goes through 11:59 p.m. on Monday, March 22, 2010.

PREVIOUSLY: I’ve partnered with GoBankingRates, which has banking rates for financial services,  personal finance info and helpful tools, to give one lucky reader $500 worth of groceries. There are a number of ways to enter the contest. The more you do, the higher your chances are of winning.

1. Comment on this post below for 1 entry.
2. Sign up for the free GoBankingRates newsletter here for 2 entry points.
3. Sign up for the BargainBabe.com newletter for 2 entry points.
4. Retweet this message – “I want to win $500 of groceries! Follow @GoBankingRates & @BargainBabe & RT this msg if u do too! http://bit.ly/9F0Aw3.” All twitter accounts must have at least 10 followers to ensure that you are not creating accounts solely for the purpose of entering. This is worth 1 entry.
5. Create a post on your own blog (if you have a blog) about how much this savings calculator can save you, whether or not you agree with the logic, and include what else you could be doing less of (or more of!) monthly to save even more. Comment on this post with the URL of your original blog post for 3 entry points. If you do this option you will not gain an additional entry for doing No. 1.

The contest begins at 12:01 a.m. PST Tuesday, March 16, 2010 and ends at 11:59 p.m. on Monday, March 22, 2010. The winner will be emailed (or DM’d on Twitter) and announced here on Bargainbabe.com on Monday, March 29, 2010. Here are the official contest rules.

If you’re wondering how we’ll pick the winner with all these different ways of entering…After the contest ends, GoBankingRates will compile a spreadsheet with each commenter name, every email added during the contest dates, each Twitter post, and each original blog post about the savings calculator. Then weigh each for how many entries the various entry methods are worth. Then GoBankingRates will randomly choose a winner and email or dm them that they have won.

If you are already on my email list you will not get two points for joining again. However, there are plenty of other ways to increase your chances of winning!

Get a free turkey product from Jennie-O with this $5 mail-in rebate.

Restaurant discounts are happening at Restaurant.com right now with a coupon code that expires Thursday, March 11, 2010.

If you live on the East Coast, check out this Filene’s Basement coupon for an extra 10% off their designer sale.

Here’s a Coldwater Creek coupon for 20-25% off when you spend $100 or more, now through Saturday, March 13, 2010.

Snag a Kenneth Cole coupon for 20% off when you donate gently-used shoes for Haiti. Ends March 31, 2010!

Buying books, DVDs or Blu-Rays? Check out these two Borders coupons for 25-40% off.

Plus, did you hear that Disneyland gave away all its free passes for 2010? The volunteer-for-a-day-and-get-a-free-pass proved more popular than Mickey Mouse.

I read your column at Star-Ledger every week with the greatest of interest. It is fantastic to see that there are people in this country conscious about their spending. But, I am amazed: $27 per week for groceries???!!!?? What do you eat and how many people do you feed for $27 per week?

And my next question would be – do you honestly like the food you buy for such little money? And does the $27 include warm dishes every day? I really cannot believe it.

I would consider myself very conscious about spending, but when it comes to groceries, unfortunately I only like the expensive stuff and I am not willing to substitute anything I like with something I don’t like. I also would never substitute fresh and healthy food with canned or otherwise prepared stuff and may face the bill later in health care costs because of unhealthy nutrition. And when you drive around to get the weekly offer in each grocery store in your area, did you consider your time and the fuel you spend on this?

I am really, really interested in what your secret is! Thank you so much for revealing it (I bet a lot of people are asking the same question)!

Best regards,

Christiane

I’m happy to share more details about my grocery habits if it helps other save!

1. I aim to feed one person (myself) on $27 a week. Some weeks I go over.

2. I eat mostly fresh food and a lot of home-cooked meals. I almost never get take out but I do occasionally graze for dinner if I don’t feel like cooking.

3. I love the food I eat! In fact, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about what I am going to have for my next meal. I really like food.

4. Yes, my meal plan includes warm dishes everyday, though sometimes that means re-heating leftovers.

5. I eat canned food, but usually only for tomatoes, beans, and occasionally corn. I also save and clip coupons for groceries.

6. In terms of cheap v. expensive food, I seek out value. In other words, I don’t equate expensive food with quality food. There are a lot of great values at off-the-beaten path grocers, Trader Joe’s, and mainstream chains.

Tip 1: The main thing I do to keep my grocery tab down is to shop by price and quality, not by a pre-set list. For instance, instead of putting down “brocolli and asparagus,” I’ll put “vegetables-2″ on my list. Buying in season produce is usually the best bet. When I get to the store I’ll see what looks like the best values. I do the same thing for fruit and meat. Then I put together meals and snacks based on what I purchase.

Tip 2: I shop at different stores. I stock up on nuts, wine, and butter at Trader Joe’s one week, then buy fresh produce at my favorite local grocer. I try to only buy groceries one day a week, but if I run out of produce I’ll make a food run with a pre-determined spending limit of $5 or $10.

Tip 3: I try to only buy 1 or 2 bread products each week so that I eat everything before it goes bad. Instead of buying pre-made snacks I buy healthy food that makes great snacks, like nuts, fruit, or veggies and hummus.

Tip 4: I don’t buy junk food because if it’s in the house, I’ll eat it. That means no soda or pre-packaged cookies. When I break down it is to buy candy or ice cream.

Tip 5: I follow my mother’s rule on sweets: if you want cookies, make them.

Tip 6: I eat from the garden. Instead of buying orange juice I eat fresh oranges off my tree. Same with lemons, limes, herbs, and lettuces.

Tip 7: I have pantry where I can stash bargain-priced canned goods, onions, potatoes, and yams.

Tip 8: I eat starches that cost almost nothing, including potatoes, yams, and rice.

Tip 9: I get a lot of my protein from non-meat sources like beans (hummus), eggs (boiled ones make a great snack), and nuts.

That’s all I can think of for now. I hope this helps you trim your grocery list. If you have another way you cut your food bill, please leave a comment.

UPDATE: Pam shared her secret for low-cost breakfasts:

I have a cheap, healthy breakfast every day at work. I purchased big containers of oatmeal, frozen blueberries, and raisins from Costco, and a 2 lb. bag of brown sugar and wheat germ from a grocery story. Then I make my own oatmeal (it is healthier, tastier, and has less sugar) in the microwave at work. One day it is a raisin oatmeal, one day blueberries, and sometimes I’ll put in mixed oats from Trader Joe’s or a bit of cinnamon for a twist. I’ve been doing this for years, and it saves a lot of money and calories!

FruitsAndVeggiesMoreMatters.org

Here is an updated list of in-season fruits and vegetables, which are almost always cheaper than buying out-of-season produce. Greater supply…lower prices. The price of items on the winter fruits and vegetable list will be rising.

This list comes from FruitsAndVeggiesMoreMatters.org. Almost all of these spring fruits and vegetables are familiar to me, unlike many of the items on the winter fruits and veggies list.

In-season produce for March, April, and May

Apricots
Artichokes
Asparagus
Belgian Endive * this is good fresh or lightly sauteed with olive oil, salt, and pepper
Broccoli
Butter Lettuce
Chayote Squash
Cherimoya
Chives
Collard Greens
Corn
English Peas
Fava Beans
Fennel
Fiddlehead Ferns * no idea what this is – any recipe suggestions?
Green Beans
Honeydew
Mango
Morel Mushrooms
Mustard Greens
Oranges
Limes
Lychee
Pea Pods
Pineapple
Ramps * again, I have no clue what this is – any ideas?
Rhubarb * pictured above
Snow Peas
Sorrel
Spinach
Spring Baby Lettuce
Strawberries
Sugar Snap Peas
Swiss Chard
Vidalia Onions
Watercress

Click on the items that are underlined in blue for recipe suggestions and fun facts about the fruit or vegetable. Did you know Chayote Squash is a good source of vitamin C and will keep for up to a month if refrigerated in a plastic bag? Or that you should never eat Rhubarb leaves? Deep red Rhubarb stalks are sweet and rich. Unlike some produce, size does not indicate tenderness.

My spending has gone crazy over the past few months. A new set of gears for my bike ($90), yards of brown suede for new curtains ($88), two new outfits for a trip to NYC ($152), and a pricey sushi lunch ($34).

Sure, I have reasons behind each purchase (I’m doing a race in May that requires additional gears, buying fabric is cheaper than buying curtains, I had a gift card and a rare coupon for the clothing store, and I hadn’t seen my friend in months), but this kind of spending is not sustainable.

My credit card bill, which I pay off in full each month, has risen on average by a few hundred dollars. Not good. Here are two things I’m doing to shift my habits downward.

1. I only buy groceries on Wednesday. I started this two weeks ago and it has made me more aware of how much money I’m spending on food because it is easier to remember my total purchases from one day. Two weeks ago I spent $92 at Trader Joe’s, which included many staple items, beer, and wine. Last week I spent $27 on groceries. My target weekly grocery spending is $25.

Toward the end of the cycle I challenge myself to create tasty meals with what is left and finish off the last vegetables before they go bad. There is a lot you can do with beans, onions, and garlic!

2. I single out an item on my credit card statement that I didn’t have to buy. This month the dubious honor goes to an $8.10 purchase at Stamps.com. I got sucked into their $100 offer for newbies: sign up and get a $5 supplies kit, $45 in free postage (which is strung out over four months), and a free $50 postage scale (which actually sells for about $20 and is useless after my 30-day trial period unless I join Stamps.com for $16 a month).

I don’t buy enough business postage to make it worthwhile to join Stamps.com for $16 a month. So when I read the fine print the $100 sign-up package evaporated into nothing. At that point, I had already spent $8.10 to get the “free” scale mailed to me. Blerg!

I wish I had been more skeptical of the $100 intro offer, which really was too good to be true. Being greedy cost me $8.10.

What do you wish you hadn’t bought in the past month? Leave a comment and the reader with the best story wins a hot pink BargainBabe.com T-shirt, above. There are only about a dozen left!

Kids eat free every Wednesday at El Torrito. Luuuv their chips and salsa. (Bargain Babe shared this deal.)

Still hungry? All you can eat BBQ is just $12 Monday and Tuesday at Willy’s Smokehouse. I am so there! (Shared by EvieK)

Dodgers tickets are half off for many of their early season games. Great prices for the Anaheim Angels, too!

Put this one on your calender for next weekend. The United Methodist Church in Northridge is holding a massive yard sale going on March 6.

The DLM clothing warehouse is opening its doors again to the public for a massive sale with prices at 80-90 percent below retail. Last time I blogged about DLM there was a huge response.

There are five steps to coupon clipping for grocery products, toiletries, and drugstore items.

1. Subscribe to the Sunday newspaper, which is when coupons are distributed. If you don’t want to subscribe, you may live in an area that the three major coupon inserts – RedPlum.com, SmartSource.com, and PGeSaver.com – want to reach. You can inquire directly by signing up on their sites.  Online coupons are becoming more prevalent and may replace newspaper coupons someday.

2. Quickly flip through the inserts and clip any coupons that you are absolutely sure you will use no matter if the item is on sale this week. (I used to recommend clipping every single coupon and filing by category but that is not as efficient as this method).

3. File the rest of the inserts in one folder, noting the publication date. (i.e. Feb. 28, 2010).

4. Look for sales in the store circulars that arrive by mail or in your inbox if you have signed up for store email lists. Match sale items with what there are coupons for. There are two main “matching” databases that tell you when coupons were published so you don’t have to sort through each insert by hand. They are AFullCup.com and HotCouponWorld.com. To help find matches, read some of my favorite coupon match blogs, including CommonSenseWithMoney.com, CouponCravings.com, and KouponKaren.com. These blogs often do much of the work for you!

To get an idea of how much you can save by coupon matching, check out my extreme couponing adventure.

5. Take your coupons to the store and buy when the item is on sale! It always helps to be especially nice to the cashier when you are using a lot of coupons. Sometimes their cooperation can make a big difference in your total bill.

Bonus Tip: If you want more coupons than you can clip in your newspaper, check out these websites to  buy and trade coupons.

Is it your birthday? Get a free birthday dessert from Jack in the Box.

Nursing scrubs are on sale at Dickies. Get 20 percent off when you spend $50 or more.

Gift certificates for restaurants so you can get out of your kitchen are 80 percent off until Feb. 28, 2010.

Check out all the deals on my WalletPop blog.