Conspicuous by their absence was any mention of fresh fruits and vegetables. We (me, wife, and 3 year old) try to eat 5 servings of fresh fruit and vegetables every day and it's not cheap. We try to focus on stuff that's in season, but it's not easy or sometimes even possible.

I'm a big, meat-eating guy but we've tried to cut costs by having at least one vegetarian meal each week or getting higher quality meats but just eating less of them. Again, it's tough but once you get used to the idea that not every bite of pasta you have should be loaded with chicken it gets a little easier.

The one thing we have done very consistently to cut our food budget is not go out to eat very often; if we go out to dinner once a week that's a lot for us. Spent $150 at the grocery store yesterday, but compared to the $60 lunch we had right before we went that's a pretty damn good deal.

The interesting thing about ff&v (at least for somebody living in Iowa) is that the price tends to go down right around the time the quality goes up. Fresh apples in the fall and winter, pears in the fall, navel oranges in the winter and spring, tomatoes in the summer.

In between I make do with frozen and canned, which are a great buy if you wait for a sale, and are actually better quality than fresh most of the time.

I'd rather used canned tomatoes (just not in salad) except in summer; canned peaches & apricots rather than the ones we get fresh even at the height of summer, and frozen peas nearly all year round. Because they're picked when they're ripe, instead of being picked early for shipping, they actually have more flavor and nutrition than the fresh stuff.

PS Oh yeah, and I shouldn't forget to mention the farmer's market, which is great and very reasonable. But the growing season is short here...

The growing season is short pretty much everywhere that's not named California or Florida, and as anyone who has grown food knows, the harvest season is just a tiny part of the growing season.  A lot of people don't realize that what they're buying at their "local farmer's market" are the same fruits and vegetables shipped to the grocery stores.  I live in Indiana and I grow tomatoes, so I know that when the local farmer's market starts up in May the nice red tomatoes they're selling didn't come from around here.  And neither did the corn they start selling in early June.  In fact, hardly anything is truly "in season" for longer than a few weeks.  People who blather about eating local, seasonal vegetables might want to consider that for about ten months out of the year, the only local vegetables available that aren't rotten are root vegetables covered in wax.  Knock yourself out, I guess.

Sorry to hear that. Our local farmer's market sells only produce from local farmers (plus the usual handicrafts and baked goods) and we get wonderful heirloom varieties you can't get at the supermarket. Cheaper, too. But yeah, fresh tomatoes only from late June to August, or September if you're lucky.

My wife and I will be moving from LA to a big piece of land in North Carolina. I am going to put in a massive vegetable garden, and plan to can a lot of things such as tomatoes, which won't grow in the winter.

I suspect that after the initial investment, the "free" vegetables will pay for themselves. At least I hope. Also, I will enjoy it so much.

I find that eating more fruits and veggies definitely helps cut down on food bills. Not only do you cut out costly meat, but it cuts down in costly prepared and processed foods. I must admit, I have to tear myself away from the pre-cleaned and packaged salad fixings. That is such a wonderful time saver, and thusly, I eat more and waste less.

EarlyBird, sounds like a wonderful family project and a great way to get quality produce. I would only suggest that you not start off with a massive garden the first year, if you haven't done this before. There's a big learning curve on home gardening, and particularly when you're moving to such a different part of the country. I also wouldn't advise doing it for the purpose of saving money -- it usually doesn't work out that way, especially at first. But yeah, there's nothing like fresh tomatoes, corn, lettuce, right from the garden.

That's probably good advice. My wife and I are suffering from Green Acres syndrome. She's a Brooklyn girl transplanted to LA. I've lived my whole life in LA. We're tried of going to sleep to the sound of car alarms and police choppers. We want to go to sleep to the sounds of crickets.

So, I also want to go nuts with a big garden. But you're right: I ought to just go small at first and use the first season as a learning experience.

Wise words!

The first year I lived in my own house, I couldn't wait to start growing my own food. I bought 6 different kinds of heirloom tomato seeds and planted them inside in March. I lovingly transplanted them to the garden and trained them to grow up folksy-looking bamboo tripods. Just as the plants were getting ready to produce fruit, they all wilted. I got nothing but a few cherry tomatoes.

The problem? I had planted them right next to a walnut tree and they all came down with "walnut wilt", a disease I had never heard of before. That's the kind of thing I mean by learning curve.