9 Things I No Longer Buy at Grocery Store to Save Money

1. Baked goods

I'm going to put a lot of things under this one category, and that's baked goods or bakery goods. We learned how to make a ton of different homemade frostings and different things like that.

Anything that you would go to a bakery in your local grocery store and you could pick up from the bakery there. We've learned how to do all those, and my cookie skills have gone from mediocre to prime cookies.

That's exciting, too, taking something you already knew how to do but perfecting it and getting better at it. We've learned how to make a ton of different breads and rolls, which has saved me a ton of money this year.

2. Pickles

I learned this from my in-laws a handful of years ago. They gave me a crash course in canning, and one of the things they taught me how to do was how to pack pickle jars and make pickles. I have not had to buy pickles at all this year. I don't think I'm going to have to buy them in the coming year because we did a huge batch of pickles last year.

3. Pizza sauce

This was one that I taught myself last year. I watched somebody else make pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce, and that's how I made mine. I just threw a ton of stuff in my 22-quart roaster.

I even made some in my crock pots because I had so many tomatoes coming out of the garden at once, and we made so much sauce in those. You just turn it on, let it go, cook down, take your immersion blender, blend it up, and then you can it.

4. Alfredo sauce

I used to buy Alfredo sauce pretty rarely because Alfredo sauce from the store is much more expensive than just regular spaghetti sauce. I learned how to make Alfredo this year, which is heavy cream and butter, chicken stock, and Parmesan cheese, and that has saved me a ton of money, and it's one of my family's favorite meals; an Alfredo-type pasta.

5. Salsa

This is one that I didn't can as much as I wanted to. I haven't had to buy it up to this point from last year's garden season up to now. I grew just about a year's worth, so I'm excited to get more on the shelf, but I didn't have to buy any salsa this last year.

I like to use salsa to make Mexican-style rice in my Instant Pot. That has been one of our favorite ways to use the salsa, but we also use it for chips and salsa, one of our favorite snacks.

6. Jam

Another thing I learned how to do just recently was I learned how to make jam. A couple of months ago, I saw that the blackberries at Aldi were $0.99 for a case, and I went and bought a whole flat for about $20.

I got five pints of blackberry jam out of it. We put a ton of berries outside. Blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries. I'm excited to be able to make a ton of mixed jams.

7. Chicken eggs

We have laying hens. I haven't had to buy eggs at all this year. This is the first year I've had enough chickens, and I have given them the best coop to overwinter them, where they've kept producing for me all year. We have 30 chickens right now, two roosters, and 28 hens.

We changed our coop this last year, gave them something big and beautiful, kept them super toasty warm, and they rewarded us with eggs all winter. So I haven't had to buy eggs at all this year, which has been amazing.

8. Bulk meat

We buy our meat in bulk, so we still buy meat but not in the grocery store. We don't raise our meat like other homesteads or people do. We don't have the space. I don't have the time to care for an extended herd of animals.

So we have bought our meat in bulk from other people. We buy our pigs from our neighbors right across the street. They come as locally as they can from people who do want to take the time to raise them properly and to give them the best care and to give them a good life and all the things to make sure that the meat is yummy and delicious.

9. Pizza

No more frozen pizza. Occasionally I'll buy a take-and-bake pizza from Aldi on grocery shopping days. So technically, I guess I have bought these from the grocery store over the last year, but it's very rare.

I learned how to make pizza crust. We use that pizza crust to make pizzas. Stromboli, and calzones. I've even made that pizza crust recipe into little bite-size pizza rolls for my kids, and they loved those. I haven't had to buy any pizza crust or frozen pizzas over the last year because we're making them ourselves.

We have learned more things: how to make, how to preserve, how to get things on the shelf, how to provide for our families and ourselves, and skills we've learned.

We learned how to grow and preserve, not even mentioning all the vegetables we came out of the garden that we didn't quite grow. A year's worth of broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, snap peas, zucchini, squash, and all the tomatoes we preserved in 100 different ways.

Things I no longer buy from the grocery store

It was cool to sit down and take a minute and appreciate everything we learned over this last year and the things I no longer buy. What things have you stopped buying? Share in the comments below.