Chef Mary Berg on how to slash your food bill–and still make a damn-good dinner

For this week’s MVP, we’re chatting with Mary Berg.

Naturally, The Good Stuff television host, chef and cookbook author Mary Berg loves food, eating and cooking. But unlike many of us (myself included), the perky Torontonian also enjoys the planning, prepping, list-making and grocery shopping part of the never-ending dinner process.

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I’m particularly interested in the shopping part, as long lines and ever-rising grocery prices often have this dinner-planner (me again) in a frustrated rage. Grocery prices in Canada are up about 30% since 2019, including some of the highest spikes since the early ’80s—before 36-year-old Berg was even born, by the way—with staples like coffee, tea, meat and eggs atop the list of most-affected products.

Her latest book, Mary’s Comfort Classics: Food to Fill Your Plate is chock full of what she dubs “comfort core” recipes like Mac & Cheese, Chicken & Bacon Pot Pie, Shredded Beef Tacos and Steak with Brandy Peppercorn Sauce. Steak? In this economy?! She agrees entirely, so in this week’s MVP profile, Berg’s going beyond recipes to help with another cozy comfort: an enjoyable grocery shop and manageable bill.

What is “comfort core” and where does it fall on the expensive scale?

In my mind, comfort food is about going with what I want to eat at the moment. I always try to be budget-conscious when I’m writing recipes, but comfort food especially should be cost-effective. Nothing is comforting about spending too much money.

Obviously the eating part should be wonderful, too, but there’s so much more to comfort food than the food. If you’re stressed out when you’re making it, that’s not comfort food. If you really have to think about the “What’s for dinner?” question, and dread it, that’s not comfort food. And spending a ton of money on a great cut of meat can be fantastic, but I wouldn’t call it comfort food.

“Comfort core,” as I like to call it, is something that’s simple enough to put together with ingredients mostly from your pantry. Unless you just moved into a new place or it’s Christmas, you shouldn’t be starting from scratch. You should be buying maybe 20% of what you need at the grocery store every week.

What is your pantry like and does it look like the ones on Pinterest?

Not at all. I live in a Toronto semi with a really small kitchen and a tiny pantry. It’s literally one cupboard with two doors—not two big doors, two narrow doors—so that’s all I have to work with. It’s good though because I have to be very strategic with what’s in there and how to keep stuff.

Especially if you have a bigger pantry, you tend to use only what you can see at the front. Every few months I reorganize my little pantry to move the stuff in the back to the front, because I do forget about stuff I have.

I’m so proud of myself the day before garbage day, when we clean the fridge out, and have one tiny green bag to go. If we don’t have to throw food out because we’ve eaten it all, that’s the dream.

But how do you do that? What’s your shopping strategy?

Your shopping starts in your own fridge and pantry. Know what you already have on hand and think about how those might go together. Maybe you have a jar of tomatoes, a spare lemon, half a jar of pesto and a block of cheese hanging around. Think about how those might be delicious.

There are always ways to amend recipes to use what you already have around, you just need to think about what that ingredient is actually doing in the recipe. Is it adding acidity? Great, you can swap it with something else acidic. Is it adding fat? You don’t need a new block of butter, at $7—often, any oil, or cream, or rendered bacon fat you were throwing out will all do. You don’t need to run to the grocery store to pick up a carton of cream when you only need a tablespoon. You can use the butter you bought when it was on sale.

Do you like sales as much as I do?

I like sales so much that while I’m looking in my pantry, I get out my flyer app, Flipp. Based on what kinds of proteins are on sale, I figure out what I’m going to cook that week and start a list of on-sale meat and cheeses to buy.

I’m that nightmare person who does grocery shopping with a spreadsheet. You don’t have to go that far, but you shouldn’t go grocery shopping without at least a loose plan for what you want and what’s going on at the store that week, whether that’s sales or points or promos.

I’m not great at coupons, because I always forget them at home, but I’m pretty good at the rest. Maybe something’s not on sale but has got 10,000 bonus points, which is like $10 off. You gotta do the math.

Is there anything you just don’t buy because it’s too expensive these days? Or something you’ll splurge on no matter what it costs?

Beef has always been a special occasion protein in my house, but except for ground beef when it’s on sale, I haven’t bought it for a long time. I don’t buy a lot of prepared goods because they’re so much more expensive than making them yourself.

But I’ll splurge on something that I know I probably won’t get around to making. I like frozen bags of premade pizza dough that I know will save me in a pinch. The other day I was shopping, and the store had really nice frozen pizzas that are regularly like $14. I’m not buying them for $14, but they were on sale for $6 each, so I bought a pile. I recently got a deep freezer, so that’s been a really exciting game-changer for me.

You seem to genuinely love grocery shopping, which I honestly think most people hate. What’s your secret?

One of them is what I call “chores for hangouts.” Life is already really busy, and especially as we move into colder months, my friends and I like to meet up on the weekends and grocery shop together. Maybe we’ll all go to St. Lawrence Market together and do our shop first, then get a sandwich. It’s honestly the best way as an adult to hang out with your friends.

Other times we’ll go to Costco, because we can buy the 10-pack of canned tomatoes and split it up. On my own, I might want to buy something because it’s such a good deal, but I don’t need or want twelve boxes of pasta. If you take a friend or two and split it, it’s totally worth it.

Photo by Kyla Zanardi.

Read more from this issue of The Get:

1. Boomerang kids in Canada: why they never move out 
2. Does bankruptcy or a consumer proposal ruin your credit in Canada?
3. How to write a Facebook Marketplace listing that actually sells your stuff
4. Is a heat pump worth it? What’s the cost for Canadian homes?