Rebecca Nero is a frugal shopper. She makes granola bars from scratch with sons Luca, 4, and Nicolas, 4 months.

The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

How are you coping with the rising cost of foods?

Rebecca Nero cooks and cooks and cooks. Judith Schrier likes finding interesting day-old loaves on the supermarket shelves and then uses her freezer. John Grigsby and Jim Vegher plan and organize to eat healthy. Each week Donna Miley creates a meal plan according to what’s on sale.

All of them shared their philosophies.

Coventry’s Rebecca Nero cooks as much as possible. She’d rather make things like pizza which costs less than $5.

“We seem to go through a lot of granola bars in our house! With the rising cost of food, I decided to start making my own for a fraction of the cost and at least I can control what goes in them.”

She bakes with son Luca, 4, and finds it encourages him to try different things. She also has a four-month old, Nicolas.

She’d even rather cook a meal at home for her husband Bill than go out to eat. Nero does this by keeping a well-stocked pantry with cooking wines, chicken broths, garlic and olive oil.

“I stock up on artichoke hearts, olives, roasted peppers and different kinds of pastas for a quick supper,” she said.

With these ingredients, she can be creative and whip up whatever she or her husband may be craving.

“Some nights my husband will say ‘Let’s go out to eat,’ and I’ll ask him what he wants,” she said. He’ll want something special with a wine sauce but if she has the cooking wine and hot peppers, she’d rather cook it for him at home.

With tomatoes, peppers and sun-dried tomatoes, she can create some nice flavors with olive oil, garlic, chicken stock and white wine. She lets it simmer to enhance the flavor and then she throws in leftover chicken and pours it all over pasta.

“It’s like a restaurant meal,” she said.

She shared both her granola and pasta recipes.

Nero freezes leftovers she knows she won’t use right away.

“Making a big pot of veggie soup or lentils is nice to have for the week’s lunches and costs very little,” she said. “I never buy canned soup and find my own tastes better and saves a lot of money. I freeze it in single serve containers for Luca’s lunch or supper.”

Nero also buys whole chickens, cooks them at the beginning of the week and takes all the meat off. She finds it more cost effective than buying boneless breasts which don’t seem to be on sale as much anymore.

“It’s a little extra work but worth the effort. Then I use the meat during the week to make several meals — one night chicken soup, next night chicken quesadillas. I vary the ingredients with these. Sometimes I’ll make them Italian by adding roasted peppers, goat cheese and artichoke hearts, chicken pot pie, or a stir fry.”

JUDITH SCHRIER, who lives on the East Side of Providence, buys day-old loaves of bread, slices them immediately and freezes them in plastic bags. Then they become French toast.

“Use the slices for garlic bread, or spread with a little softened butter before toasting. For garlic spread, combine a stick of butter, one-half cup of olive oil, one or two tablespoons of chopped or mashed garlic and heat until everything is well combined and smells great. Let it cool and then add grated Parmesan cheese, stirring thoroughly. Refrigerate — it keeps quite a while.”

Then there’s that breakfast dish.

“My daughter-in-law taught me to make a French toast ‘cake’ by soaking the bread, along with a handful of raisins or dried cranberries, in a mixture of eggs and milk (one-quarter cup milk to each egg). Then she butters a pan, heats it, and puts the slices, one at a time, into the pan, along with the fruit. Cover and cook over a very low fire until the top dries. Turn over (you may need to cut the cake into quarters or even sixths to do this neatly) and let the other side brown. I like this with maple syrup and plain yogurt,” Schrier wrote.

Schrier also shared how she keeps protein prices down. She buys several pounds of lean ground beef at a time when it’s on sale, it’s less expensive the more you buy, and she makes hamburgers using her mother’s recipe and freezes them. She shared that recipe here. Then she freezes boneless chops, steaks, and chicken breasts on the cookie sheet, lined with plastic wrap.

“Now, we have an assortment of meats in the freezer, what shall we do with them? Most often, I make a stir-fry with an assortment of vegetables — always onions, garlic, and carrots, usually mushrooms and red and/or green peppers, sometimes leeks, cauliflower, broccoli, whatever is on sale and looks good.

“If there aren’t any fresh mushrooms around, I might pour boiling water over some of my collection of oriental dried mushrooms, which I buy in quantity in an Oriental market. If I’m going to put in some of the chicken, pork, or beef, I will slice it up and saute it in a little olive oil, then take it out of the pan and stir fry the vegetables, putting the meat back before I add seasonings. If I use the cooked ground beef, that goes in after the vegetables are cooked. Seasonings depend on how I feel about things. One can use Italian seasonings; House of Tsang Classic Stir-fry Sauce; Vegeta Gourmet Seasoning & Soup Mix which I buy at the Russian grocery store Europa Delicatessen on Hope Street near Rochambeau; or any combination of herbs and spices that pleases you and your family.

“You can serve this with boiled rice; with any pasta; with potatoes; or with bread on the side. I like to keep a few boiled potatoes in the fridge and put one or two (peeled, and diced or grated) into the stir-fry as it is cooking,” she said.

JOHN GRIGSBY and JIM VEGHER of Providence wrote, “As a gay, retired couple in our 60s and partnered for 32 years we have to watch our spending as well as paying attention to our health.”

Their recipe for saving on the food budget includes a clear list of dos and don’ts.

“We do cut coupons and use them for our single shopping day, once a week.

“We have a choice of three grocery stores, so we buy all staples and the majority of our food for the week at the least expensive one (Stop & Shop), and then supplement our meals with selected fresh vegetables and fish from either Eastside Marketplace or Whole Foods.

“We print out a blank calendar at the beginning of each month and on our Tuesday grocery shopping day we go through our cooking magazines and pick out recipes for the week. We then plot them on the calendar for the week. We build our grocery list from the recipes and add the staples. This method relieves the anxiety around wondering what to have for dinner each night and then having to shop daily. It also has the benefit of no waste.

“We plan three double meals — those that would always have a meat leftover for a second meal — and one single meal (usually fresh fish) for the week. The double meals ensure that there is no waste — which we think is one of the most important ways to save on food costs.

“Our evening meals consist of a meat dish, a starch, a fresh vegetable and a salad. We plan no desserts, except on very rare occasions.

“We never buy processed foods as they are too expensive and have little/no health value. We never buy bottled water — Providence water is great, and never buy soft drinks (expensive and high in calories).

“Lastly, we always take our three large cloth bags to the store with us and some stores give us a credit for using each of them. (Eastside Marketplace gives 3 cents.) This saves money and saves the environment.”

They shared a cassoulet recipe that they call hearty and very simple.

“We love it during the spring, winter and fall months. For two of us there is a large quantity left over. It freezes and microwaves beautifully so we pour two servings each into freezer bags (Ziploc) and enjoy it all season.”

DONNA MILEY of Exeter makes all of her own food, for two reasons.

“First of all, it is much less expensive to make it than buy it all made. Secondly, I like to control all of the ingredients for each meal. One area I find to be a great savings is poultry as I do not eat beef, deli meats, or processed foods for health reasons. I frequently purchase Shady Brook Farms hotel-style turkey breasts for $1.99 lb. It is far less expensive than paying the high cost of turkey at the deli counter. Another area of great saving is chicken. When split chicken breasts are on sale I buy enough to cook altogether. I make chicken salad and chicken pot pie. The resulting broth from cooking the chicken is used in the pot pie and the rest is frozen for future use.”

gciampa@projo.com