We buy our beans in bulk, and they are usually organic. I soak them and freeze them sometimes I boil them then freeze them. I was going to can my own, but I don’t have a pressure canner.

I also make almost everything from scratch. Although we don’t have a cow or a goat, we do have chickens (although they don’t give milk.. LOL). We buy our yogurt, milk and cheeses.

I make pasta, although not well. I make bread (but my kids are allergic to wheat, so I am having to learn a new way to make bread).

I love your site, I like some of your recipes. Thank you!

Sabrina

I’m working on all of this myself. Do you know if you can freeze cooked beans? I’m trying to shun canned beans as much as possible now, but I want cooked beans to be available to me at all times!

Leah at http://halfwayhip.typepad.com/freelance_foodie/

With regards to my menu…I just try to cook very basic meals with few ingredients. If there are beans, I am now using dried beans instead of canned to save tons of money. Here are some of my more frugal meals:

Honey Lentils
Potato and Corn Chowder
Sweet Potato Chili
Cilantro Lime Soba Noodles
Bean tortillas with the fixings
Homemade pizza
Black Bean Soup
Scrambled Tofu

All of these meals would be accompanied with one of the following:

Whole wheat bread
Toast
Cornbread
Brown rice
Homemade chips

Eating a vegetarian diet obviously helps immensely in keeping costs down. It’s worth switching for that reason alone! Hope this helps!