Shrink your grocery bill

Beth Monzel, a nutritional scientist, can tell you that the carrot in your last meal cost fifteen cents. She learned a costing method used in restaurants and cafeterias: calculate the price of every ingredient in a recipe, add it up, then divide by the number of servings. When she does this for her lentil bolognese, it comes to $1.40 per serving. The half-cup of walnuts in that recipe costs $1.07, while the carrot is just fifteen cents. “I suggest everyone try costing at least once because it’s so eye-opening,” she says. “It really does make you rethink the way you look at all the ingredients that you’re buying.”

The strategy of substitution, not elimination

The core insight from costing is that you don’t need to cut expensive ingredients entirely. You just need to change the ratio. Monzel’s chili recipe originally called for a pound of ground beef. Now she uses half a pound and bulks up the rest with beans, lentils, or extra vegetables. “Even if you just adjust the ratio slightly in your recipes, it can make a really big difference,” she says. The expensive ingredients—meats, cheeses, dairy, and nuts—are potent in flavor. A little goes a long way. Monzel uses only two to four ounces of bacon in a recipe, about a quarter of the package, and still gets the smoky flavor and fat.