My husband is laid off work and his unemployment still isn't straightened out, so money is even shorter than it should be. I just went back to work after being laid off for 2 weeks. So basically we are living on 1/2 our normal income.
We all know it's hard to make the necessary cut backs when, come Friday night, you still want to order Pizza Hut. We have done a good job of talking ourselves out of it and, in the end, are happier for it.
Tonight I said "Let's just order Pizza Hut for once." My husband said, "Hmm, I like those little frozen pizzas from Save-A-Lot!", LOL. So, we decided on making our own Pizza Hut night! We made those little frozen pizzas (one each) and cooked spaghetti and opened a can of Heinz spaghetti sauce and had bread sticks! ALL from Save-A-Lot! Our supper cost us $5.50 instead of $22! And it tasted better!
By Jess
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Hi Ariela,
I am from Jax, too. Good for you to be able to find a cheaper alternative to your Friday night delivery cravings.
I almost always make pizza from scratch. We are always so disappointed when we treat ourselves to delivery pizza. The toppings are skimpy and the crust seems so greasy. Homemade or doctored up frozen pizza is always better!
Gotta love Save-A-Lot! Tracey in Jacksonville, FL
You could actually enjoy it knowing you could still have gas money for the next week!
A great web sight for budget cooking is Hillbillyhousewife.com. So many wonderful recipes and all on a shoestring budget!
We've really been cutting back on eating out the last few years too. Eating at home and getting twice the amount of food for 1/3 the price seems to be a no-brainer, especially when you are able to fix it the way you like (no salt, extra veggies, low fat, etc).
Hi! Just wanted to post what we do for pizza in our home. We buy the "supreme" from Walmart Deli section. It is a 16 inch pizza - really big one! When we arrive home we just add extra ingredients to it such as: pepperoni, bell pepper, black olives, onion and cheese (which we always try to have on hand). This has saved us so much money and we absolutely love the taste and texture of their pizzas!
Plus, you have leftovers to freeze and use for later if there is any left over. For the cost of this pizza -- under $10.00 -- it can't be beat. Give it a try to see what you think.
Just say no to buying pizza.
I use hillbillyhousewife.com's pizza crust recipe. I roll a single crust into two very thin crusts. I top both with tomato sauce I season with Italian seasoning, garlic, onion powder and pepper. One gets pepperoni and cheese. The other gets pepperoni, sausage, green pepper, mushroom and cheese. Buy everything store-brand or on sale.
It costs me $5.00 to make two 16 inch pizzas. This is enough for dinner for the two of us and lunch for hubby for days! I love knowing exactly what does - and does not - go into our food.
Look in freezers at store sometimes they have
great sale prices and stock up.
Many couples are not so lucky to be able to
agree to save together and be supportive.
We don't order pizza alot and are not crazy about the frozen ones in our supermarket. We order a large plain pizza from our fav place and we add our own toppings.
When one of us picks up the pie, the other is cooking the sausage or mushrooms to add to the top!
My husband and I used to get delivery pizza but now we get the Sam's or Walmart pizza for $7 and we add our own toppings. Extra cheese, can of mushrooms, ham, etc. We can made inch high pizza with gourmet toppings for a fraction of delivery gourmet pizza.
My family and I would eat pizza all the time because of poor meal planning, and because I have a pizzeria across the street that sells them 2 for 1. One day at my daugher's house, she was actually making a pizza. She used wheat flat bread, tomato sauce, spices, cooked sausage,(chicken pcs for me) onions, peppers - both orange and green, and grape tomatoes. Then she sprinkled the chopped mozzarella. I couldn't believe how delicous it looked and how quickly she prepared it. The house smelled like a pizzeria. The good thing for me is that I have high blood pressure and diabetes, so won't permit me to ever enter any pizzeria since making one is easier and healthier. I'm grateful to her for caring about me.
I prefer to make my own pizzas. Lebanese / lavish bread as the base, low fat grated cheese, piled high with cooked minced meat, sausage, pepperoni, bacon bits, onion, grated carrot, tomato & whatever else you enjoy. Cheaper & tastier [and healthier] than Pizza Hut.
(Submitted via email)
Yes Sav-a-Lot is wonderful! I have been shopping there for years. I am on ss and they money goes more than two weeks at Sav-a-Lot. Who cares if you have to bag your own groceries take the boxes and get a few bags and you can get it home just as fast!
Papa Murphy's has really good pizza at reasonable prices. Its a bake @ your house raw pizza & they are so good. We also like making individual pizzas with grands biscuits. Learned that in home ec @ school lol Papa Murphy's also takes Food Stamps/Purchase cards, so for those of you who have those, its great!
papa murphys also has $5 specials once a week, not sure if Tuesday in all areas.
Thanks for all the great alternative ideas for having pizza at home/vs Pizza Hut pizza/Restaurant Pizza. I've been making my own mock KFC Mashed Potato Bowls at home. I use the potato pearls/mashed potatoes from Sysco foods, I then buy the rest of my ingredients from Aldi's & Dollar General. I start by having the mashed potatoes as my base, followed by chicken/turkey gravy from a jar, then layer corn, chicken bites, followed by a little more gravy & then sprinkle a little cheese over the top. Just pop it in the microwave for a little bit & you have your alternative to KFC's Mashed Potato bowl. They cost over $6.00 for just one serving at KFC. I can serve a family of 5 for under $8.00! I'm getting more & more frugal every day & I have Thrifty Fun to thank for the most part! :)
I make my own pizza dough and freeze it. I put it in the refrigerator in the morning and it is thawed and ready to roll out for supper. I make my own sauce and freeze it in the amounts needed for one or two pizzas. I brown my sausage in bulk and also freeze it it the needed portions. It takes only a few minutes to roll out, assemble, and bake a pizza for supper. Quick, easy, oh so good, and cheap.
The last time I ordered a pick-up Pizza from Pizza Hut we couldn't eat it. Apparently it was left from lunch and warmed over. The cheese was disintegrated and awful, the crust was hard and tasteless and the whole thing was terrible. It turned me off pizza and I had really enjoyed it before. When I called and complained they offered me a discount on my next order. No thanks!
We feel like we have the best of both worlds. We buy the the pizza dough from the pizza place for $2.00. (that idea was on a Rachel Ray show) Then we add our own fresh and healthy low fat trimmings. Bake it on a pizza stone and it tastes as good( actually better) than the pizza store. We do it for health reasons but the added benefit is, it is way cheaper.
After disastrous pizza deliveries (missing items, not hot, took a long time) we decided to either pick up ourselves at Little Caesar's (they have specials that make it frugal to splurge) or do frozen pizza at home. After trying the brands we found only the French bread pizzas to be good. Then we tried Walmart's Great Value Rising Crust pizzas. They pleased both of us. The crust is not thin and cardboard tasting.
At our store they are $4.50 each. I have found some on special for $3.00 so stocked up on them. If we ate out at Pizza Hut the bill would have been at least $22.00 plus tip for two of us. We also are feeling the economic crunch and the savings let's us eat better on days we don't eat pizza (once every two weeks). And it is more relaxing to sit at home and eat. We save eating out for something only the restaurant can make better or to break out of the house and see the world that is not work-related. Those sadly are a lot fewer too for when you eat out there are no dirty dishes to wash at home.
My husband and I always make are own pizza its so much better than delivery. You can make your pizza any way you want it and it's way better.
My son is a picky eater but pizza is one thing he just loves. We buy quite a few frozen pizzas when they are a real good buy and then we can make him one whenever. We have a Presto Pizza Pizzaz electric pizza cooker. It does a real good job and faster than in the oven.
Yesterday we tried something we all liked. It was a DiGiorno flat bread pizza (Kraft). I got two of them on sale that also had coupons on the boxes plus I had manufacturer's coupons so got a very good deal on two. It is a bit different from regular pizza but still very tasty and everyone was satisfied.
My husband is the King of frozen pizza. He adds mushrooms, black olives, etc. We have made our own Supreme pizza for years.
We have Aldi's and Sav-a-Lot both here. Aldi's is cheaper than Sav-a-Lot most of the time, and they have freezer and frig items. We compare shop with other stores and pick up what's on sale that week. The freebe papers are wonderful!
Due to health concerns we, too, had to say no to pizza deliveries! We have a bread machine and I use it to mix up a wheat crust in it. I buy Spaghetti sauce from Aldi, one jar will make several pizzas. I use lower fat cheese/meats on top. They sure taste better and at a fraction of the cost that takeout costs, plus the added benefit of less fat, sodium, etc.
Of course, there's the cost of transportation to go to the store to pick up the supplies, but hopefully this was part of another shopping trip. Or, better yet, if it's within walking distance, no transportation cost. Then there's the cost of utilities to heat up the food.
On the other hand, it is more fun, that benefit varies by person! The Pizza Hut near me sells pizzas for $10, and it's about as close as the grocery store. Picking up yourself means no tip, which is more than the cost of the gas to my store (about a mile each way).
I also make pizza's out of English muffins. Spread the sauce on the muffins, put on the topping add a little cheese, bake in the oven.
Sounds like you made the right decision - but do treat yourselves occasionally!
Also, your meal had a lot of carbs in it. Try adding some protein to make it last longer in the tummy.
Good for you! That sounds like a fun family night that you enjoyed and that's the main thing... a fun memory!
When my son was diagnosed celiac, there went our pizza-delivery Fridays! It was getting weird, anyway, since my daughter and I are vegan and we were ordering ours cheeseless and adding our own vegan cheese at home. Twice-baked pizza--NOT so good.
We've found frozen, gluten-free, vegan pizzas (which, being 'health' items--where people are more likely to read ingredients, I guess--also don't have a lot of the crappy ingredients some of those frozen pizzas have, like hydrogenated oils and mono- and diglycerides...which are a new-fangled way for companies to hide trans fat and skirt labeling legislation).
But, many of those frozen pizzas (not just the specialty ones) are NOT cheap--even a typical mainstream DiGiorno's at our local Giant costs 8.99! If cost was the only concern, may as well pull out the extra buck it'd cost to heat the dang thing and order up!
But the REAL deal is in making your own! Especially when gluten's an issue, homemade is FAR superior in both the taste and price arenas. We've not yet done so, but the idea of mass-producing crusts and freezing them's a sure winner...one big kitchen mess SURE beats many! Even with the higher price of gluten-free flours and mixes, we can STILL make a giant, pan-filling, delicious pizza for under $5--take THAT, pizza-pizza! Or should I say, trans-fat--trans-fat (in the crust--sorry to say).
Whatever your diet, tastes, or budget, make sure of one thing: if it has hydrogenated fat or mono- and diglycerides on the label, put it RIGHT back on the freezer shelf--for your health right now, and to vote for the future. A purchase is a vote to keep things as they are--more money in the pockets of big business at the expense of our--and our children's--health.
And as for the order-up pizzas...good luck getting info out of them...
I believe our celiac challenge's been a blessing in disguise...
Thanks for the feedback eveyone. :) In todays economy, its tough to eat/order out. There are tons of websites to find cheap easy recipes that are great and healthy. Somtimes you just need that break to order out or go out. But it can be very expensive. Theres also been times we couldnt eat out cause we couldnt afford to pay and leave a tip too. Servers work very hard and deserve their tip. But can be a good portion of the total. Somtimes thats what leads us to fastfood places.. which unfortunatly for the most part is unhealthy,but when the opportunity arises we arent thinking about health. We dont get to eat out much but when we do, its a fun family time.. enjoy yours what ever it is :)
My husband use to make the best homemade pizzas, they were a treat. We got started making them when he was in college and we wanted a treat. I unfortunately can't recall the full recipe except that it was about a cup of flour, package of yeast, about a 1/4 cup of warm water and a teaspoon of salt. Just ingredients we always had on hand. He would make the dough, let it rise and then add sauce (we used a pizza sauce but froze what we didn't use for the next pizza) and added our cheese, and in college meat was at a premium so we had lots of hot dogs lol...our favorite was a hot dog pizza with American cheese slices. But as things improved we did the usual, sauce, Mozzeralla cheese, green olives, pepperoni, ground beef......whatever we wanted. It made the best pizza around. The crust was nice and puffy and the cheese melted just so.....so homemade can be better and yes, cheaper.
I love pizza. One recipe I often use is mini pizzas made with english muffins. The recipe can be changed easily depending on the ingredients you have at the time. Also, it is much easier to control the amount and calories.
Lightly toast both halves of the english muffin, add one slice of tomato (can also use sauce) add meat or vegtables and 1 T of shredded mozzarella or thin slice. I like to sprinkle it with Italian seasoning Bake at 350 for 15-20. min. So easy.
I have always made our own crust, can do by hand or with bread machine on dough...make 1 to 3 16 inch crusts...Anyway, now with food allergies it is a must. #1 for me is ADDED SALT, meaning if it is commercial in any fashion, it is NO. Yellow dye in cheese is out, but prefer any white or goat cheese...make my own sauce, freeze in batches (friend worked for a high end Italian place years ago and gave me the recipe that he, as the chef, created. So simple. Fat used is olive oil, 1TB into the sauce. You can control every aspect. My kids love to use the same dough and do bread stix too. I grow herbs and process to dry, so you can use fresh in season, dry otherwise, I dry my own tomatoes, use in cut up fashion. My NO SAUCE friends eat my sauce...no stuffing of additives in it, thickeners, etc. Simple to pickup a can of tomato sauce at grocer and add your own tastes.
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