Keeping food budget down with kids

What do you to keep grocery bills down?
Do you have any special circumstances that make it hard to cut costs?

We have four kids, two girls (12 and 7) and two boys (10 and 5).  As a result trying to keep the grocery spending, among other things, is a huge challenge for us.  Add in the fact that both of my girls have Celiac Disease is another challenge for us, but one we gladly accept and deal with.

With celiac disease the food that our girls can eat is different than the rest of the family.  Some things we all eat the gluten free food but on some things we make separate batches but we have to be careful for cross contamination.  Here are some examples of our challenges: These prices are a guide.

Bread – $4 vs. $1.15
Mac & Cheese – $2.25 vs. $0.49 (on sale)
Cake mix – $3.50 vs. $0.88
Pasta – $2.50 vs. $0.99 (actually I don’t know on these because we just use the gluten free when making something with pasta for everyone…..normally)

We do buy flour as well but have found the girls like the other bread much better, and in the end the price difference wasn’t big enough to worry about. Something that helps is our local grocery store does a 15% off whatever you can fit in a bag every so often.

Our children know that eating out is going to be few and far between.  They’ve also been told that certain things at the grocery store will no longer be bought; we do still buy snacks and stuff for school and dessert.  Our plan is to use coupons, watch ads and just overall try to watch what we’re spending on food.  Dave Ramsey is all over the beans and rice but our family isn’t going crazy with that but will be cutting some things out of the routine.  I don’t expect us to be perfect overnight, improving a little bit each and every month to reduce spending.