Inspired by this post by Eating Well on The Huffington Post, I thought I’d share a few ideas on what we do to save money on food without even noticing.

The number one way to save money is by learning how to cook. You might have a hectic schedule and be exhausted at the end of the day but push yourself to prepare a nice meal. You’ll get to enjoy it, expand your knowledge about cooking, and eat better than ordering it from some fast food place. You won’t be good at it in the beginning but over time your skills will improve and you’ll enjoy it even more.

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Bonefish Grill, a seafood restaurant owned by OSI Restaurant Partners (they own, among others, Outback Steakhouse, Carrabba’s, and one of our favorite restaurants – Roy’s Hawaiian Fusion restaurant), is running a special holiday gift card offer where if you give $100 in gift cards, you automatically get a $20 gift card, valid Jan. 1 – Feb. 10, 2010, plus an entry into their Give, Get and Win Sweepstakes. If you win the sweepstakes, you could win $5,000 cash and $5,000 you can give to a charity of your choice. You can buy the certificate in a restaurant or online but you have to register the card online to participate in the sweepstakes.

A Maryland/DC/Virginia chili chain, Hard Times Cafe, always does this same type of promotion around the holidays and until they closed the one near us, we used to buy at least a $100 in gift certificates because it was any easy $20 off. If you live near a Bonefish Grill and you enjoy their food, taking this promotion is a no brainer. If you don’t, well… then it doesn’t really make much sense, now does it?

I also have a bonus today, as Bonefish Grill has given us a $25 gift certificate to give away to one lucky Bargaineering.com. First, check to see that there is a local Bonefish Grill near where you live. Then, if you have one nearby and you would like to win the certificate, just leave a comment below with the menu item you’d most likely get the next time you visited before Sunday, November 22nd for your chance to win.

Me? I’d probably get the Chilean Sea Bass in a Pan Asian glaze. Mmm… I do love me that Patagonian toothfish.

This contest is void where prohibited. Good luck!

Congratulations to Seth!

SimplyForties made a comment in the forums about how she made her own dog food, an idea I had never considered. Naturally, I turned to the power of Google to help enlighten me how whether making our own dog food made sense. I know a lot of people that feed their dogs human food but we wanted to avoid that because it’s difficult to regulate nutrition through human food. With dog food, it’s a lot easier because you know almost exactly how much nutrition is in each serving.

Starting this month I’ll be doing a monthly roundup of some posts I found particular entertaining, interesting, or informative. I won’t inundate you with a list of posts, each one will be carefully selected and given some context.

This month I’ve been doing a lot of food blog reading since I’ve been writing about a variety of cooking topics, like making bread crumbs and pizza crusts, so I found a couple foodie blogs to share with you all. I hope you like this new monthly feature!

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Breakfast can be a very frugal meal, if you have time to prepare it. Unfortunately, time is a big problem when it comes to breakfast. My kids get up at 6:15 every morning, so they can catch the school bus at 7:15. If I were to get up to make them breakfast every day, I’d have to get up at 5:45. And that idea doesn’t appeal to me at all.

When I found myself turning to expensive breakfast cereals day after day, I started looking for a better solution. I began making my own convenience breakfast foods. They’re much more nutritious, and frugal, than their store bought counterparts. I’ll start you off with a couple of ideas, but the possibilities are endless.

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As some of you may know, I volunteer at Meals on Wheels every Tuesday morning. One of the perks of donating two hours each week is that I sometimes take home a meal, when there are extras, and I often get a bag of bread loaf ends, that would otherwise get thrown out. I was talking with Rhonda, our Meals on Wheels kitchen coordinator extraordinaire (among other good things), and she recommended that I turn them into breadcrumbs. I only started taking the ends last week and I’ve just been eating them, making breadcrumbs is so much more exciting!

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After writing about how we love making pizza, we’ve learned that we’ve been fools to buy Boboli pizza crusts. In fact, Karen at MSN’s Smart Spending even said we were cheaters! Having learned the error of our ways, we’ve decided that the next time we make pizza we’ll be making our own pizza dough, which appears to be fairly simple.

Oh, I also had a revelation the other day. I was walking through Trader Joe’s (they sell 200 Cone #4 coffee filters for $1.69, cheaper than any other place I know of) when I saw they sold fresh pizza dough for 99 cents. 99 cents! What the heck have I been doing buying Boboli pizza crusts???

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In today’s economy, it seems everyone is looking for ways to cut back. The problem is, most people don’t know where to start. If you’re looking to cut back, I suggest starting in the kitchen. There are a multitude of ways to save money in the kitchen, and you can tailor how you cut your food budget so it doesn’t impact your lifestyle.

If you eat a lot of convenience foods, you can save time and money by doubling each recipe you cook and freezing half for those busy (or tired) nights. If you are attached to eating meat with every meal, focus on cutting your use of paper products or expensive side dishes. You can save a lot of money by making small changes. You put in minimal effort and get maximum savings! Don’t believe me? Here are 5 things I do to save money in the kitchen, and my family doesn’t even notice. (shhhh! don’t say a word!)

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Last week my wife and I went to Disney World in Orlando Florida to celebrate our one year anniversary and, for the first time, opted for the Disney Dining Plan. You can only include the Disney Dining Plan if you are booking a vacation package with Disney, in our case I booked a five-day Magic Your Way Package, with lodging at the Port Orleans Riverside resort, and included the standard Dining package.

Overall, we were pleased with the Dining Plan and felt that it was a great deal. There was only one downside, it was too much food!

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Sean Callebs will try and he’s documenting the whole experience on CNN. This is a little more realistic than the $1 a day meal experiment, which was more about publicity than reality. What I find most interesting about Callebs’ reports is the insight it gives him and his readers. “… it stinks being hungry when you go to sleep.” (Feb 13th) How many people go to sleep hungry? I probably have only a handful of times in my life and it was mostly because of scheduling, not because I couldn’t afford it. I think that unless you have lived it, you can’t faithfully criticize.

Much like when I talked about living on minimum wage, it’s difficult to understand the lifestyle until you try to live it. For some, the thought of food stamps invokes the image of someone on welfare spending it on cigarettes and alcohol. For others, it’s seeing a bright light when you’re lost in the woods at midnight. Regardless of how you feel about food stamps, the majority of people who get food stamps need them. They’re not living the good life financially, sipping a Mai-tai on the beach; they’re struggling.

I find myself struggling with the idea of handouts because I believe, especially in America, you can, through hard work and determination, succeed regardless of where you start. Food stamps and welfare, while necessary, will give some a reason not to work as hard and I recognize that; but I think you have to accept those who will take advantage of the system if you want to help those who just need a little bit extra to get them over the hump.

What are your thoughts on food stamps and other welfare programs?

(Photo: pengrin)