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Eating Great on the Cheap: Part 5
September 28, 2010 at 6:00 am
One month into this budget series, I am excited to report that my grocery bill is slightly less terrifying. I’ve learned so much from Rachel, Kara, Meg and Tamara.
Have you found some of their tips useful?
As the final part of our Eating Great on the Cheap series I’d like to introduce you to Sarah, her husband Eric and their 1-year-old son, Del.
Sarah’s family eats the majority of their meals at home. Eric works close to home so he can come home during his lunch hour.
TVNT: How would you sum up your family’s food philosophy?
Sarah: We think that organic is the only way to go. We don’t want to subject ourselves or our son to dangerous chemicals. We try to buy local when we can. Buying good food is what we choose to spend our money on.
TVNT: Do you purchase convenience foods? If not, what do you try to make at home?
Sarah: We try to stay away from frozen and processed food. Less is more when it comes to ingredients. We make soft pretzels, cookies, pesto, non-dairy sour cream (see recipe, below), brownies, muffins and pancakes from scratch. We also make homemade baby food.
TVNT: Cooking from scratch can take a long time, especially in the beginning. How do you budget yout time for longer cooking processes (baking bread or soaking beans, for instance)?
Sarah: The things we make from scratch don’t really take that long to make. For the couple that do take a few minutes we just set aside some time on the weekend. We haven’t tackled dry beans yet – I’m hoping to get some good ideas from this series. We will need to have a more definite idea of what we are having for meals each night so we can start soaking.
TVNT: What are some things that you always buy organic?
Sarah: We choose to buy almost all organic products. All of our produce is organic and local if possible. If something is natural we look at the ingredient list to see if we can recognize all the ingredients.
TVNT: Do you buy in bulk?
Sarah: I’m almost addicted to buying in bulk. I love it. I think it is super fun. I love trying to find the right jar. I love looking at all the new things they have in bulk.
”The grocery store we shop at has a great bulk department. We buy spices, honey treats, chocolate chips, pine nuts, almonds, flour, sugar, polenta, rice, olive oil, maple syrup, baking powder/soda, honey, dried fruits, laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, dish soap, hand soap, shampoo/conditioner, bar soap, etc. (from the store’s bulk department). ”
If I can buy it in bulk I will. It is less expensive to buy in bulk even if it is only a few cents. A few cents add up. I can also buy only what I need. If I only need a teaspoon of a random spice for a recipe I don’t have to spend a bunch on a big jar of it. And if things are especially tight I can buy enough of what I need to get by. I don’t have to break my budget by buying a prepackaged expensive alternative. We also get five cents back for each container we bring in.
TVNT: What are some tips you would give to someone looking to eat well but not spend a fortune?
Sarah: Buy in bulk, buy produce, don’t be afraid to make the convenience items you like by yourself. Try canning, freezing or drying your own garden produce.
TVNT: Do you belong to a CSA?
Sarah: We don’t belong to a CSA at this time. We do have our own garden and love it. When our tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, basil, peppers, etc. come in our food bill goes way down. We have fresh vegetables for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Sarah’s Tofu Sour Cream
6 oz soft silken tofu, drained
1 1/2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 Tbsp sunflower oil (or other neutral tasting oil)
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp sugar or natural sweetener (optional)
(I use 1/4 tsp salt and I don’t use the sweetener)
Place all ingredients in a food processor or blender and process until smooth and creamy. Transfer to an airtight container. Refrigerate until ready to use – up to 3 to 4 days.
I want to thank Sarah, Rachel, Kara, Meg and Tamara for their great ideas.
And I also want to hear from you!
In the week’s to come, I plan to talk meal planning. Do you have tips or ideas? Does meal planning help you stay on budget or prevent 5 p.m. freak-outs? Please e-mail me your thoughts at kanderson@imorganic.com.
I’m looking forward to hearing from you!
Eating Great on the Cheap: Part 4
September 21, 2010 at 6:00 am
Tamara Miller’s e-mail caught my eye when she told me that in the past few years, her family has reduced their food budget by 40 percent.
And they are still working on it.
As part of a continuing series on eating well on a budget (find parts One, Two and Three), Tamara Miller of Portland, Ore., talks about how her family, husband Jeffrey Hopp, and 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter Annika (and a baby boy due this week!) have reduced their grocery budget but have continued to making eating really well a priority.
Tamara’s family eats about 90 to 95 percent of their meals at home.
TVNT: How would you sum up your family’s food philosophy?
Tamara: Life is too short to eat crap.
TVNT: Do you purchase convenience foods? If not, what do you try to make at home (cookies, crackers, pretzels, etc?)
Tamara: More and more, we are making our own food. We still buy crackers occasionally and I satisfy my pregnancy-induced sweet tooth on ice cream from the grocery store. Most of our sandwich bread comes from the store still, as do our pasta and tortillas.
TVNT: Cooking from scratch can take extra time, especially in the beginning. How do you budget your time for longer cooking processes? (Soaking beans, baking bread or making yogurt for instance …)
Tamara: There’s definitely a learning curve when it comes to cooking from scratch. It wasn’t until I quit working that we really made a commitment to wean ourselves off processed, pre-packaged food.
It used to take me all afternoon, it seemed, to whip up a batch of huevos rancheros from dry beans. Making a breakfast out of steel-cut oats, instead of instant oatmeal, was the biggest time suck. I’d literally get up earlier in the morning to make sure my husband could eat a decent breakfast and still make it to work at a decent hour.
The key, really, was to start doing a much better job of planning meals. We’ve gone from pretty much no planning of meals to a weekly planning of meals. So if I know we are going to have beans tomorrow, I know to start soaking beans the night before.
We’ve also started using our slow cooker more. For example, we’ve started cooking our oatmeal overnight in the slow-cooker instead of on the stovetop. It’s nice to be able to walk into the kitchen the next morning and know breakfast is ready.
I also try to make large batches of meals — soups, casseroles, etc — so we can take advantage of leftovers. Most of our meat is consumed over a couple of days and makes appearances in different types of dishes. One night, we’ll eat roasted chicken with veggies. The next night, the leftover chicken may make an appearance in burritos or tacos. This saves time and money.
Now that we’ve joined a food buying club and are buying in bulk more — which saves so much money — I’m starting to take an even longer view on meal planning. I have a general sense of what we are going to eat each month. It’s so worth not having the anxiety of figuring out what’s for dinner with just a few hours notice. Plus, once we started planning better and became more willing to do some things the long and slow way, we really started to see our grocery bill go down.
TVNT: What are some things that you always buy organic?
Tamara: Hard to say. Now that we are eating more and more locally, much of the food that we eat is organic, but it’s not certified organic.
Most of our produce, for sure, is certified organic or at least labeled as “no spray” by the farmer.
We were committed to buying organic eggs until we got hooked up with pastured eggs from a local farmer. We feel confident that these eggs, because they are are laid by pastured hens, are even better for us than the certified organic eggs we could get at the store.
Our milk and butter are organic. We planted a garden for the first time this summer, and all of the vegetables in it are organic.
TVNT: Are there certain foods that you rarely buy organic?
Tamara: We rarely purchase certified organic meat these days, but again that’s because we have made a commitment to eating grass-fed meat, which is difficult and very expensive to certify as organic.
“Most days, all of our meals have come from local sources (which, in our case, means it came from Washington or Oregon), from farmers and producers who have made a commitment to creating goods in a sustainable way.”
We rely on the leaders from our food buying group to vet these producers and farmers for us, so there definitely is a sense that we sometimes are trusting something that we haven’t necessarily verified. But the members of our food buying group are pretty discerning customers, so between all of us, we ensure that we all are getting food we feel good about feeding our families.
TVNT: Do you buy in bulk? If so, how does that help your food budget?
Tamara: Yes! In the long run, it helps tremendously. In the short run, it hurts to fork over a couple hundred bucks all at once just for meat, $25 just for a flat of peaches and $10 to $20 for grains. But then you figure how long all of that lasts you, and how much it reduces your grocery bill on a monthly basis, and it’s totally worth it.
Still, there definitely are some start-up costs to buying in bulk and you have to reap the benefits later. For months, I balked at signing up for a six-month CSA meat box subscription because it would require forking over $110 each month in one fell swoop.
But then I sat down and added up how much were spending on meat each month — and most of it not grass-fed meat, either — and I realized that in the long run, we were spending more because each meat box usually lasts us more than a month.
“I can’t underestimate how much it helps to be working with other like-minded people. At first, I was paying $5 for a dozen of pastured eggs, but because of the number of people who order eggs through our food-buying group, I now can get pastured eggs for $3.33 a dozen.”
We also split very large orders with other members of our buying group, that way we aren’t purchasing a large amount of perishable food that could easily go to waste. For example, we recently purchased one-third of a flat of organic peaches for what amounted to about $1.25 a pound. We didn’t have the energy to eat or preserve 25 pounds of peaches that week, so by splitting it with others, we got just the amount we wanted at a great price.
TVNT: What tips would you give someone looking to eat well but not spend a fortune?
Tamara: Take baby steps and realize that eating well on a budget is going to require a certain time investment. Start trying to make more of your meals from scratch.
When we started this journey, we were spending more than $1,000 a month on groceries for two adults and a baby. I was addicted to Amy’s Organic meals and I can honestly say that about 60 percent of my meals came out of a box. I was more likely to pick up a bean-and-cheese burrito out of the grocer’s freezer than to make it myself. So I started making them myself for about a $1 a burrito instead of the $3.50 I’d spend at the grocery store. At first, that was a big step for me. I just was not used to investing time in making my own food and really, sort of lacked the cooking skills to do it quickly.
From there, we’ve become more self-sufficient, bit by bit. We no longer buy artisan bread since coming across a fantastic “crusty bread” recipe in Mother Earth News. We are tinkering with a sandwich bread recipe and once we get that down, I’ll probably stop buying sandwich bread for $3 a loaf. We plan to start making our own yogurt.
Definitely start looking for ways to buy your most frequently used items in bulk. For awhile there, we were big Costco shoppers, which actually carries a fair amount of organic food. As we became more committed to shopping locally and purchasing natural and grass-fed meat, I started to investigate other avenues.
I’m lucky to live where we live, in Portland, Oregon, where the locavore movement really is pretty mainstream, there is an abundance of farmers and producers nearby who are committed to raising their goods in a sustainable way and where the demand for organic and whole food is high enough to bring prices down a bit.
I shop around a bit and found that it’s actually usually much cheaper to buy organic food at the local natural foods market than at a mainstream grocery store.
I also can go directly to the mill that supplies the flour and grain we buy and purchase it for much cheaper than I could even through our food buying club.
“That said, I can’t underestimate the value of our food-buying group. Since joining, I can honestly say that some days, 100 percent of our food came from a local source. Eating locally and what’s in season has saved us bunch of money.”
We also try to economize more expensive food items like meat and cheese by making them last through several meals. Eggs show up as our protein source in meals more often than it used to. We also eat more vegetarian dishes than we used to, which saves money and also forces us to eat a greater variety of vegetables (and more of them). So it actually can be healthier to eat more cheaply, too.
My goal is to get our grocery bill down to $600 a month. I hit it sometimes, and I’ve come to realize that I need to adjust that number seasonally.
During this summer, the bill has definitely climbed up but that’s because we’ve been buying and preserving a lot of produce. My hope is that will help lower our grocery bill in the winter when so many fruits and vegetables are out-of-season and expensive to buy.
We also are looking into buying a freezer so we’d have the storage space to buy, say, a quarter of beef or half a lamb, which would make our bill for meat even lower than it is.
TVNT: What are some of your child’s favorite school lunches that you pack?
Tamara: Cold pizza made with homemade pizza crust, homemade sauce and basil, kale and tomatoes from our garden. She also loves almond butter-and-banana sandwiches.
I just found out that the mill that produces the flour we buy also has fresh almond butter in bulk at a much cheaper rate than I was getting at natural foods market I frequent.
My daughter is a total yogurt fiend, so I’ll mix it up with a little leftover chicken and stuff it into pita bread with some grated veggies. Her lunch box usually comes home empty.
TVNT: Do you belong to a CSA? If so, how does that impact your family’s diet?
Tamara: Not really a CSA, but a food-buying club that links us with local farmers and suppliers so we can eat local, usually organic food for cheaper than we could otherwise.
TVNT: Would you be willing to share a recipe that your family loves?
Tamara: It’s not fancy, but we all love, love, love huevos rancheros, especially with pastured eggs.
Tamara’s Huevos Rancheros
Beans:
2 cups dried black beans, soaked and drained
1 tsp. olive oil
1 onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 dried chipotle (omit or half to reduce heat)
4 cups water
2 tsp. sea salt
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/2 cup chopped tomatoes
6 eggs
6 corn tortillas
1 cup of shredded cheese (we like good old-fashioned cheddar)
Heat oil in a large pot. Saute onion, garlic and cumin in oil until soft. Add beans, chile and water to onions and spices. Bring to a boil. Turn down the heat and simmer and cook, covered, until beans are tender and have absorbed much of the water. Then stir in salt, cilantro and tomatoes.
Dish beans onto warmed tortillas. Sprinkle with cheese. Cook the eggs as desired. (My daughter and I eat them scrambled, my husband eats them over-medium.) Top each tortilla with an egg and serve.
Note: This recipe makes a lot of beans. I use about half of them for huevos rancheros and use the other half for burritos or with rice the next day.
Also, the cooking instructions and recipe for the beans comes from “Feeding the Whole Family” by Cynthia Lair.
(Photos by Tamara and her family)
Eating Great on the Cheap : Part 3
September 14, 2010 at 6:00 am
As part of a continuing series on eating well on a budget (Read Part 1 and Part 2), this week I am really excited to get some ideas from Meg, 29, who lives with her family, Thom, also 29, and daughters Aviva, 5, Liesl, 2, in western Massachusetts.
TVNT: How would you sum up your family’s food philosophy?
Meg: For me, the main objectives are:
1. to start with ingredients in as close to their natural state as possible (within reason),
2. to eat seasonally and locally, and
3. to stick to “traditional” foods as the mainstay of our diet — things our ancestors, and certainly our great-grandmothers, would have recognized.
We are operating on the cobbled-together incomes of a full-time graduate student and a part-time private tutor, so cost is important. But so is excellent nutrition, and so is pleasure in cooking and eating. We put our nutritional and taste standards first, and then try to find cost-effective solutions within those.
TVNT: Do you purchase convenience foods? If not, what do you try to make at home (cookies, crackers, pretzels, etc?)
Meg: There are a couple of things that we do buy consistently: crackers, for one, and a couple varieties of canned beans. And having grown up in Pennsylvania, I do sort of have to order a box of Gettysburg Pretzels now and then. Ha! But at this point, we consider things like that a luxury.
“Sometimes we’ll buy a box of breakfast cereal, or animal cookies, or something like that, but we all know it’s just an occasional thing. There are very few things that we regularly bring home in boxes. To me what’s important is not banning all that stuff, or making it forbidden, but just making sure it’s not a staple, or something we have often or rely on. ”
TVNT: Cooking from scratch can take extra time, especially in the beginning. How do you budget your time for longer cooking processes?
Meg: I’ve always liked to cook, so I guess this part hasn’t been such a big shift for us. It’s true that I’ve learned to streamline things, and I’ve gotten better about freezing. For example, if I go to the trouble of making barbeque sauce or pesto or enchilada sauce, I usually make a whole bunch and freeze portions. These are things I used to cave in and buy some of the time, because who wants to spend an hour making barbeque sauce and then still have to cook a whole dinner?
I enjoy day-long cooking extravaganzas on the weekends and holidays, but it’s not terribly practical on an average evening.
TVNT: What are some things that you always buy organic?
Meg: Potatoes! Ever since I read The Botany of Desire about ten years ago. Berries. And anything soy, but we don’t eat much soy.
Organics can be a great option, and I’m grateful to have access to them. But I tend to prioritize local-ness, seasonality, and freshness. If I have a choice between locally-grown, low-spray peaches from a farmer I interact with every week and supermarket organic peaches grown five states away, I will absolutely choose the former. And I would much rather have fresh, raw milk, cream, and yogurt from a local farm, whose cows I know by name and who graze green pastures, than something “certified organic” from the supermarket. Ditto for meat, eggs. To me, the source is the most important thing.
TVNT: Are there certain foods that you rarely buy organic?
Grains, beans, onions, garlic, avocados, sweet potatoes, broccoli…
TVNT: Do you buy in bulk? If so, how does that help your food budget?
Meg: I try to avoid the grocery store as much as possible, so yes, when we go there, I do tend to stock up on non-perishables like oats, rice, flours, barley, that sort of thing. But I don’t tend to buy huge quantities of things, since we live in a small apartment and don’t have much storage.
I usually buy a “winter share” from one of the local farms around November that includes 100-200 lbs of root vegetables and other store-able produce. This stuff we keep in bins of sand in the basement, and it usually lasts us until March or so.
We also do a lot of pick-your-own stuff in the growing season, especially fruits. For example, every summer we pick 30-40lbs of blueberries at a fantastic rate, then freeze them and use them all year for oatmeal, muffins, pancakes, etc.
Meat is something we sometimes buy in bulk as well. You can get an excellent price by buying a portion of an animal direct from a farmer.
TVNT: What ares some tips you would give to someone looking to eat well but not spend a fortune?
Meg: First of all, east seasonally! What’s abundant is also inexpensive. Farmer’s markets are your friends!
Also, check out localharvest.org to learn about other opportunities in your area to buy direct from farmers. CSAs are one way to do this, or you might buy a 1/4 or 1/2 a cow, pig, or lamb all at once for the freezer. The prices for such things often get better and better the larger your order is, so consider going in with a friend. For example, a farm local to us sells beautiful, pastured chickens for $7.50/lb for 1-2 chickens, but once you’re in the 20 chickens range, it’s down to $5/lb. So if I go in with a friend and we each order ten for the freezer, we’re getting an excellent price for superb chickens.
“I’m kind of in love with my deep freezer. If you scope out Craigslist, they come up used all the time. We got a big one for less than $100, and we share it with another family. It has greatly expanded our ability to buy in bulk!”
A big thing that has really reduced our food expenditures is to establish a few “emergency dinner” options that are made from ingredients we typically have on hand, and that can be whipped up in fifteen minutes or so. We took a look at things a while ago, and we realized that while we were eating really well most of the time, there were still a few “panic and order burritos/curry/pad Thai” occasions most weeks. The stuff we were eating was high-quality, but it was also high-cost.
Now we have a few “emergency dinner” options that we all enjoy and use regularly. One really quick favorite is short grain brown rice, sautéed greens (kale is our favorite) with butter and lemon, and a poached egg on top. I might add diced grass-fed bacon, if I have some.
I cook the rice in homemade (and frozen) chicken stock, and use pastured butter and eggs, with lovely bright orange yolks, from a neighbor. The kale probably comes from the garden. It’s quick, but it also feels very nourishing, and tastes delicious!
Another emergency dinner we fall back on is polenta, which is incredibly inexpensive (just cornmeal and water or chicken stock), but also very versatile. We usually add a healthy lump of butter and some cheese (this is a great way to use up any random ends of cheese that might be languishing in the fridge).
We might top it with a dollop of pesto or olive tapenade or some tomato sauce, or we might stir in some odds and ends from the fridge — a bit of leftover sauce from a roast, or some roasted vegetables, or sauteéd greens.
This is a great way to clear those little leftover tidbits from the fridge, and it comes together in about 20 minutes.
TVNT: Do you belong to a CSA? I f so, how does that impact your family’s diet?
Meg: Yes, a few: a vegetable CSA, a meat CSA, and a dairy CSA. This means we have great, reliable sources for the majority of our food, and at a good price. The cost is also predictable and consistent, which makes it much easier to budget. It keeps us from needing to shop often at the supermarket, which inevitably costs more than you expect. (We do a big trip every 4-6 weeks or so, and otherwise just pick little things up as needed at the corner grocery.)
It means we have a steady influx of great foods, and all we have to do is show up to pick it up. I actually really like that it takes some of the choice out of things for me. When we first subscribed to the meat CSA a few years ago, I would get flustered: “What do I do with a top round? What can I make for all of us with a single chicken breast?” But I got into a groove with it, and now I very much enjoy the element of surprise. As someone who loves to cook, I take it as a bit of a challenge. And I love eliminating the stress of trying to decide what to buy every week. Instead, I just work with what I have.
TVNT: Would you be willing to share a recipe that your family loves?
Meg: Pasta Carbonara is another really quick dinner for when there isn’t a lot of time.
Meg’s Pasta Carbonara
For each person (easily multiplied):
2 slices bacon in 1-inch pieces (I usually stock up on bacon ends dirt cheap from our pork farm and dice those instead)
about 1/4 lb spaghetti
chunk of butter
grated Parmesan cheese (real Parmesan is worth it, and goes a long way)
a couple tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
red pepper flakes
freshly ground black pepper
2 pastured eggs
First, cook the bacon in a skillet, then drain.
Meanwhile, cook the spaghetti in salted boiling water.
Reserve about a 1/3 cup of cooking water. Lift the pasta from the water with tongs into a colander over a bowl. Turn the pasta water down to a gentle simmer.
Pour off most of the bacon fat from the skillet, except for a tablespoon or so. Put over medium heat and toss in a lump of butter (about a tablespoon or so). Whisk over medium heat, then add pasta, reserved pasta water, a good handful of grated cheese, as many red pepper flakes as your tastebuds demand, and a generous amount of freshly ground black pepper. Cook, stirring, until thickened a bit. This will take a few minutes.
Add the bacon and parsley and toss.
Finally, poach your eggs. Break each egg into a cup, bring the cup to the surface of the barely simmering water, and slip the egg into the water. Repeat for each egg. Poach eggs 2 1/2 to 3 minutes. Lift out with a slotted spoon and drape languidly over the pasta, two per person.
Top with extra cheese and a little sprinkle of good salt.
(All photos in this post are by Meg and her family)
Thank you to Meg as well as Rachel and Kara for all of their ideas. Stay tuned for another installment next Tuesday!
Eating Great on the Cheap: Part 2
September 7, 2010 at 6:00 am
The following is the second in a series of interviews on eating well on a budget.
This series began in talking with my friend Rachel (featured here) about saving money while making eating nutritious foods a priority.
Although we share a first name, Kara, who you are about to meet, is way cooler than I could ever hope to be. She is a high school English teacher, poet, and electric bass player. Her husband Reza is an instruction librarian, and their daughter Azadeh, who is 2 1/2, “enjoys fairy tales and running in circles,” Kara says.
TVNT: How would you sum up your family’s food philosophy?
Kara: We eat locally often, organic when affordable, and vegetarian at home. I try to feed the family healthy, affordable food that nourishes us, the community, and the earth.
TVNT: Do you purchase convenience foods? If not, what do you try to make at home (cookies, crackers, pretzels, etc?)
Kara: I do — all the time! My husband likes Wheat Thins, my daughter likes goldfish crackers… I make meals from scratch, but I purchase most of our snacks. Perhaps it would be different if I didn’t work full-time.
TVNT: Do you like to cook from scratch? Do you plan for baking and cooking? How do you make time for that, or does it just become part of your routine after a while?
Kara: Yes, although I often supplement with pre-packaged products. It ends up being sort of a blend for most meals. I buy pasta, but usually make my own sauce. I buy baked tofu, but make stir-fry and rice.
“I also have recently started making my own bread and jam and canning tomatoes. It has a definite impact on the budget. For example, I recently picked 20 lbs of tomatoes from a you-pick farm, canned them (and made them into marinara), and made a bunch of tomato jam to give as gifts. I spent $8 on tomatoes and about the same on jars, but we’ll have what would be about $70 worth of tomato products if we bought them at the store.”
Also, I used to buy pre-made pizza crusts, which cost about $3. Now I make my own pizza dough, and the cost is probably less than $1, as all it takes is yeast, flour, and a touch of sugar, salt and olive oil.
I plan for baking and cooking — I usually give myself an hour or so to throw dinner together. If I know I’ll be home late, I use the slow cooker or plan for something fast, like a stir-fry. It’s just part of our normal routine.
While I’ve been on vacation, I’ve been baking bread more often, and I’d like to continue that while I’m at work, so I think I’m going to try the “bake bread in five minutes a day” thing.
TVNT: What are some things that you always buy organic?
Kara: Always organic? I don’t know that I could say “always” to anything, but milk, eggs, apples, grapes, strawberries… usually the thin-skinned fruits whose peels we eat, and the items on the “dirty dozen” list. I do, however, sometimes buy from local farmers who spray, but try to do so responsibly.
TVNT: Are there certain foods that you rarely buy organic?
Kara: Yes. I’ve read that there are certain things that, because we don’t eat their peels/rinds, don’t really absorb pesticides, like bananas.
TVNT: Do you buy in bulk? How does that help your food budget?
Kara: Yes. I typically buy Cheerios, whole wheat pasta, Amy’s soups, and Egg Beaters at Costco.
In “baking season,” I sometimes also buy butter, flour and sugar there. We get rice in a 50 pound sack at the Asian food store. (My husband is Iranian and requests rice for dinner frequently.)
TVNT: What tips would you give someone looking to eat well but not spend a fortune?
Kara: Get to a farmer’s market if you can. Buy seasonally. Grow a garden (a $1.50 packet of lettuce seeds got us more salad than we could shake a stick at this year). Buy dried beans and bulk grains.
If you have the time and don’t mind cooking, you can get a lot more food for less money. For example, our “Mexican night” (see recipes below) probably costs a few dollars to feed three of us on refried beans, tortillas, rice, salsa, and guacamole (avocados are the biggest expense, at about $1.25 each). If you purchased pre-made salsa, beans, etc., you’d easily triple the cost.
TVNT: Are you part of a CSA? If so, how does that impact your family’s diet?
Kara: I actually recently cancelled my CSA. I’d been a member for years and I appreciated the organic veggies, the variety, the challenges to my cooking, and the connection to the farm. However, I ultimately decided I would waste less if we could choose what we got. For example, my husband doesn’t care for eggplant, beets, or turnips, all of which we got a lot of in our box. The box was $18 a week. At the farmer’s market, I spend $25 to $30 a week, but I also get fruit (which rarely came in my CSA box), so I cut down on some of my grocery store costs. I think it evens out. And of course, I’m never stuck with a crisper drawer full of rutabagas.
TVNT: Would you be willing to share a recipe that your family loves?
Kara: I adore my Mexican night! I make refried beans in the slow cooker, and we come home to the smell of dinner already ready!
Kara’s Refried Beans
2 cups dried pinto beans, sorted
9 cups water
1 medium onion peeled and halved
1 jalapeno, seeded and diced
2 Tbs salt (seems like a lot, but you pour some off)
1 tsp cumin
Throw it all in the slow cooker on HIGH for 9 hours. Pour off all but a few tablespoons of the water, then mash the beans with a potato masher. Serve hot. (We love it over rice with homemade pico de gallo and guacamole.)
Perfect Guacamole
2 ripe avocados
2-3 cloves minced or grated garlic
Pinch salt (sea salt is nice)
Lemon juice (approx. 1 Tbs, or half a ripe lemon)
Mash it until it is still lumpy, but incorporated
Please join the conversation by commenting below! How do you eat well and stay on a budget?
And please come back soon to read about a family that has reduced their grocery bill 40 percent during the past two years.
Eating Great on the Cheap: Part 1
August 31, 2010 at 6:00 am
The following is the first in a series of interviews on eating well on a budget.
This series began in talking with my friend Rachel (featured below) about saving money while making eating nutritious foods a priority.
Rachel is mom to three boys, Isaac, 10, Adam, 4, and Noah, 3. Her husband Alan is a 5th grade bilingual teacher.
Rachel is an amazing volunteer and a very generous friend, who doesn’t mind being interviewed the week school starts. She is also a writer and someday hopes to return to her previous career in social work, but her current focus is on her family and what they are eating.
TVNT: How would you sum up your family’s food philosophy?
Rachel: My personal food philosophy (which in turn has become my family’s) is that foods should be eaten in as close to their natural state as possible.
As I learn more and more about how food is produced, I find more and more things I want my family to avoid eating (GMOs, meat, conventionally produced eggs and dairy, fruits and vegetables saturated with pesticides, etc.)
It can honestly make me a little crazy and I’m still working on finding a balance so my food philosophy doesn’t run our entire life. I think it’s important to have principles and to stick to them, but when it comes to eating in this country where so many things fall into that category of things I want us to avoid, to hold on to some semblance of normality sometimes I have to let go.
TVNT: Do you purchase convenience foods? If not, what do you try to make at home (cookies, crackers, pretzels, etc?)
Rachel: No, I don’t buy many convenience foods. (It can be a little embarrassing at times when we are around other people with something simple like a bag of pretzels and my kids gobble them down like they’ve never seen such a thing before.)
For me it’s not that I have anything against these foods as much as it is that I find them too expensive for my budget. Convenience snack foods don’t fill us up, they are mostly empty calories because of that, it’s hard to stop eating them which in turn makes them seem more expensive to me because they never last long!
We make our own cookies and granola. (I’ve stopped buying cereal because of the cost and the kids have homemade granola instead now.) I’ve never ventured into the cracker or pretzel making arena but would like to try sometime.
TVNT: I know you do things like bake bread and cook your own beans … how does that help your budget? Do you plan for baking and cooking? How do you make time for that, or does it just become part of your routine after a while?
Rachel: Oh I wish I was organized enough to say I plan for baking and cooking! I don’t at all unfortunately.
Cooking beans does take some forethought because of soaking time. Usually I pull out the beans sometime the day before to remind myself to soak them that night, then the next day I stick them in the crockpot all day and wah-lah, a cheap healthy form of protein.
Yes, this helps my budget a lot. Dried beans are a lot cheaper (and healthier!) than canned and making my own bread sure beats the price of buying it.
“I used to throw the ingredients into my bread machine and let that do the work. Now I prefer the act of making bread. I find it soothing to knead the dough, comforting to have a bowl of yeasty dough rising, waiting for me to punch it down. I love the entire process. I think that’s key with all of this– it helps tremendously if you enjoy making these things. I love baking and cooking but I don’t know if I could do half the things I do in the kitchen if I didn’t! “
Though I do think these things can grow on a person over time so I would say that someone who hates cooking and baking could learn to love it with time.
TVNT: What are some things that you always buy organic?
Rachel: I always buy anything with soy (like tofu) organic, as well as milk and fruits and vegetables off the dirty dozen, like strawberries.
TVNT: Are there certain foods that you rarely buy organic?
Rachel: I don’t usually buy my grains or legumes organic, unless I can get a good deal or the price difference is negligiable
TVNT: Do you buy in bulk? How does that help your food budget?
Rachel: Yes, I love buying in bulk! I do think it makes a big difference with things we eat a lot of, not so much with things we don’t. (Something I just learned… if we don’t eat it a lot, it’s not worth getting in bulk.)
I mentioned earlier that I make my own granola so buying a fifty pound bag of oats allows me to buy them at 38 cents a pound, rather than about 75 cents a pound. Over time that makes a huge difference! The same is true with flour or yeast.
TVNT: What tips would you give someone looking to eat well but not spend a fortune?
Rachel: I have three tips for eating well and not spending a fortune:
First is cook! It is expensive to eat out and those restaurant dinners and fast food lunches add up fast. Sometimes I splurge and buy something that costs more than we usually buy– portobello mushrooms or something and make a meal that costs more than our usual meals but then I like to play the game of figuring out how much such a meal would cost in a restaurant. It’s always amazing to spend what seems like a lot of money but then realizing that everyone is eating for 2 bucks a plate. So the first thing you have to do is start cooking yourself!
My other tip is that eating low on the food chain makes a big difference. My grocery bill dropped dramatically when I stopped buying meat. I’ve found the most expensive grocery bills are not the ones when I buy all organic as much as it is on how high on the food chain I’m going. Dairy adds up fast.
The last tip is to try to stay out of the grocery store as much as possible! I buy way too much at grocery stores. I prefer buying through a dried food co-op once a month (where I can buy grains, beans, and sweeteners) and then doing my weekly shopping at a tiny local fruit and vegetable market, and then going to the grocery store once a month.
“I make a rule for myself that I’ll just make do in between grocery store trips. This forces me to be creative and use up that stuff that wouldn’t get used if I didn’t have any other choice!”
TVNT: What are some of your children’s favorite school lunches that you pack?
Rachel: My oldest has packed his own lunch for a while, but now I’ve got a second one in school needing a lunch every day. Their school has a microwave and last year my oldest often brought dinner leftovers. Otherwise peanut butter sandwiches with raw fruits and vegetables and a homemade cookie are pretty standard fare. The kids bring water to drink.
TVNT: How did being part of a CSA this year impact your family’s diet?
Being part of a CSA has forced more creativity with meal planning. I’m in a pick your own CSA though so I did have control over what I was bringing home. In weeks with surpluses I was able to freeze things and I’m looking forward to tapping into all the fruits and vegetables I’ve frozen this winter.
TVNT: Would you be willing to share a recipe that your family loves?
Rachel’s Zucchini Boats
(to put use to those ridiculously gigantic zucchini that pop up at this time of the year)
1. Cook brown rice (I always make 2 cups).
2. Chop 1 onion, add onion to some oil in a pan with some garlic (1-4 cloves to your family’s liking), a couple of tomatoes or you can use a can of them or some sauce, cook, then add cooked rice.
3. Peel zucchini (this is optional but recommended as the skins get tough) and then cut into halves, thirds or fourths depending on size of zucchini. Cut those in half and hollow out the insides, scooping out seeds.
4. Stuff the zucchinis with the brown rice mix, top with Parmesan cheese or Parmesan substitute (I use a mix of toasted sesame seeds ground up with nutritional yeast and a little salt). Breadcrumbs are optional.
5. Bake at about 375 for about 20 minutes or until zucchini is tender.
Please join the conversation! How do you eat well and stay on a budget?
And please come back soon to read about a family that has reduced their grocery bill 40 percent during the past two years.
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