How to Save Money on Snacks for Tailgating

It’s tailgate season! Football season! Cooler weather!

Okay, that last is relative in Texas.

But my air conditioner hasn’t been running quite so much, so I’ll let it slide.

How do you save money on all of that tasty junk food that your family wants you to make?

There’s a couple ways. You can buy what’s on sale, and work it into your plans. You can wait for things to go on sale, and shop around. And you can get creative.

Today I made a veritable feast of fattening foods.
Gorilla bread for breakfast.
Spinach-Artichoke dip mini bread bowls.
Buffalo Chicken dip.
Sausage pinwheels.
Pulled pork.
Sopapilla cheesecake.

And I bought almost all of the ingredients for $30. I still have 4 loaves of bread to bake later, pulled pork for lunch tomorrow, and 2 sticks of butter left.

I used a lot of overage from the Covergirl $8/2 coupon and facial puffs (included per Covergirl’s website). I used some breakfast sausage that I bought on markdown. I used biscuits that I had bought on markdown. Pulled pork is really cheap anyway, when I can get the pork for less than $2/lb. I knew that I was probably going to get the best price on dairy at Kroger, and used their overage policy to my advantage.

I also spent a little time figuring out what was going to be the cheapest way to use ingredients. I used frozen spinach because it was half the price of fresh. With the money I saved from that, I was able buy a good jar of marinated artichokes. Everything is a trade off. When I’m able to coupon effectively, it leaves me extra money to do fun stuff, like make a smorgasbord of tastiness.

Kristin