As a couple in Northern Virginia our grocery budget cut down a lot when I started having more time to cook and it's around $400 to $500, eating out once a week. Our groceries used to be $600 to $800. We used to shop at trader joes, hmart, and target. Now we go to mainly lidls, hmart, and buy like 1 or 2 brand name snacks at target.

A big contribution is that I've been experimenting with vegan or vegetarian recipes for the health aspect - not bc im practicing. So a lot of the times it's more vegetables and the proteins are things like chickpeas, lentils, potatoes, etc. which is cheaper than meat. We still eat meat but I was just trying out new recipes.

We freeze a lot so we freeze and thaw our meat throughout the week.

I've also been trying new recipes so that we never waste any ingredients in the fridge. We significantly cut our food waste once I started learning new recipes around certain ingredients

Bc I am aiming to reduce food waste, it takes a lot of meal planning. I plan for the whole week right before grocery shopping and look for recipes to use leftover ingredients or extra meals to make using pantry or freezer ingredients in case the portions go by quicker than expected