I was going broke in the beginning, too. I thought "My God, we can't stay on this or our kids will NEVER go to college!" It has rounded down now that I've been on it a while and didn't have to buy all "new" things.
Buy generic for everything that you can. I've found that things like generic salad dressing and sausages are cheaper and actually have LESS carbs than the name brand.
Don't buy more than 3 days worth of fresh veggies at a time. Any more than that and they can go bad, causing you to spend more money on veggies.
Heavy cream is expensive. Try to keep it as much to a minimum as you can. It really should be used sparingly anyway, but it was a mistake that I made in the beginning.
Don't buy expensive meats. Particularly steaks. Round steaks can taste just as good as a T-bone if seasoned and tenderized the right way.
Buy hamburger in bulk.
Find a fish and meat market. (I didn't think I even HAD one around here, but I was wrong). I just bought 30 lbs of steak for $60. And good steaks to boot! It sounds like a lot of money to shell out at once for meat, but I won't need to get meat for at least 3-4 weeks now. Meat markets are cheaper because they buy in bulk.
Look for one of the "do it yourself" grocery stores (Save-a-Lot, Aldi's). Places that make you bag your own groceries are REALLY cheap. I've saved as much as $40 doing my grocery shopping at these types of places. The "no frills" stores save you TONS of money.
Check those ads!! Anyone who didn't do BIG TIME grocery shopping this weekend missed out. Every store in the world was doing 4th of July sales. I stocked up like crazy!! It's big savings when grocery stores compete over holiday sales. Don't do like I used to do and just look at the ad and say "oh, what a good deal on hamburger" and then throw the ad away and never think about it again. lol. There's stuff on sale EVERYWHERE. You just have to find it.
Variety is the spice of life, but don't try out too many new recipes if you don't have the ingrediants right on hand. Maybe try a new recipe every two weeks or so. I have a cupboard full of things that I have used ONCE for ONE recipe and now there they sit. If it's not an ingrediant that you won't use for other things as well, then don't buy it. (What the heck IS pet's milk, anyway? I have 4 cans of it!! LOL)
Ok, I guess that's as far as my knowledge runs. If I think of any more, I'll let you know. Your grocery bill really will go down once you adjust to this WOE and you know what things you need to buy all of the time and which ones can be left at the store.
Good luck!!
~Angi~