Saving Money on Ham/Lunch Meat. Make $34.82/Hour! Also See How I Made a Hearty Meal for .36 / Serving.

 I generally don't buy lunch meat. However, I will sometimes buy a fully cooked ham like this and cut it up. This was a half-ham on sale for $1.58/lb (I could have gotten a full ham for $1.48 lb.) This is 8.925 lbs of ham for $14.10. I did a comparison with some Great Value ham lunch meat and it is $3.42 lb. http://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Cooked-Ham-28-oz/41112622 This is the generic brand and yet it is still $1.84 lb more than the cooked ham! Also, I think the cooked ham is a higher quality food.

It does take a little time to process but for me, it is worth the time. I got out some freezer bags that I stocked up on when they were marked down to .99 a box. I will use 8 of these for packaging up the ham out of a box of 20, so the bags will cost less than .50 plus I will reuse some of them.

I take the ham out of the packaging and cut it up into the sized that I want. These will be used for cutting up with fried potatoes, scalloped potatoes, split pea soup and slices for sandwiches.

I saved the ham bone to make split pea soup. 

If I would have bought all this ham in lunch meat form, it would have cost $30.52 vs the $14.10 I paid, plus a few cents for bags and freezer storage. It took about 1/2 hour to cut this up and put it into freezer bags for a payment of $16.42 or about $34.82 an hour. You can see if you do things like this on a regular basis, that, even though you are not doing it every hour, it can add up to some real savings!

You may remember the potatoes we gleaned last fall out of the potato fields. I made these scalloped potatoes with those and the ham I cut up. I used about a pound of ham $1.58. And a part of a stick of butter I got on sale .40 plus a can of cream of mushroom soup (on sale) .48. Add some milk (on sale) .40. and some salt and pepper. So this meal, which we will have leftovers of tonight cost $2.86 total. Cut that in half for two meals of $1.43 for four people. This means I paid about .36 a serving for a very hearty meal!

 Happy Savings!