“Frozen foods, microwave dinners, junk food--anything that's packaged and prepared for our convenience is not only more expensive than something you cook from scratch, but also most likely less healthy. ”
Cynthia Belanger

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Time?

This morning I was going to go to the gym, but as I was taking my rent check to the apartment office I changed my mind and decided to swim.  That meant I had to wait a little while before the pool opened for laps. I went inside and started to turn on the computer to waste a little time while I waited, but instead realized that I could do a couple of things with some food.

I had two cucumbers, so I cut them up, peeled and sliced some onions, added tomatoes and herbs and stuff and made cucumber salad. That took five minutes.

I had some pineapples, so I peeled, cored, and sliced two pineapples and put the slices in the dehydrator.  That took ten minutes.

I washed all the tools I used to do those things.

I am going to run out of bread today, so I mixed up a batch of bread dough with whole wheat and put it out to rise.  That took five minutes.

20 minutes to do all that.  That’s about the same as a coffee break.  Less than the amount of time to watch a segment on a TV show about how the mother is spying on the daughter who is having sex with her teacher.   And much more profitable and edifying.

And I still have time to kill before going to the pool.

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Don’t Eat Too Much

Real Cheap Food is not about paying less money for the same food you’ve been eating all along. It’s about how to get complete nutrition with real food for very little money. For many people, this means making a change in the kinds of food they eat. It’s not simply a matter of getting enough calories. In some cases people are getting too many calories while still not getting the right amount of many important nutrients – and they are spending a lot more money than they would need to compared to the cost of eating healthy.

One way to spend less money on food while eating to be healthy is, in many cases, to eat less. If you eat the right amounts of all the foods you need to be healthy, then you don’t need to eat as much of the unhealthy food you’ve been eating. Eating more than you need is a waste of money, and costs additional dollars in health problems, lost work, crappy attitudes, etc., etc.

I think a lot of people will be shocked to see what proper serving sizes actually are. It is not unusual for people to be eating more than two or three TIMES the amount of food they need to be healthy. When that’s the case, then just eating the right serving sizes will mean an instant fifty percent or greater reduction in your food costs. And at the same time it will mean getting healthier.

You might not know what a proper sized serving of food looks like. And it would be no wonder, because portion sizes have been increasing over many years. Really, it’s kind of amazing to look at what real portions are supposed to be.  Even if you’ve looked at them before, it’s a good idea to look again.

If you’ve never really checked out what the sizes of your food portions are supposed to be, you really, really, really need to check this out.

The Mayo Clinic provides a very good slide show Guide to Portion Control.  (It’s specifically for weight loss, but still, even if you’re not looking for weight loss, this is important information).  Take a look at:

MayoClinic.com: GUIDE TO PORTION CONTROL

Here are some other links on the same subject:

Portion Size, Then and Now – what sizes used to be compared to what they are today.

Portion Distortion – Serving Sizes are Growing.  ”Most marketplace portions are at least two times, and sometimes as much as eight times, greater than standard recommended serving sizes…”

Perfect Portion Sizes.   You may need to retrain your eyes to get used to this.  It might look wayyyyyyyyy too small at first, which means that you have been eating wayyyyyyy too much!

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Green Falafel (Sort Of)

I had garbanzo beans I soaked over night. I put them in the food processor with onion, kale, red rice, and flax seeds and whrrrrrrrrrrrrrrred it up till it was mashy. (Mashy?  huh?  uhmmmm… like the cosistency of mashed potatoes?) Then I made patties out of it and fried them in an iron skillet with some olive oil.  I like tomato, so I put some homemade “ketchup” on…  it’s tomato paste with lots of added stuff. Awfully thick… way thicker than any store ketchup.. and no sugar in it, so it’s tart and tangy. Oh, maybe if we call it Tomato Chutney that will make it classier.

My green falafel was delicious and nutritious.  And it was “sort of” falfel. Here’s an ACTUAL FALAFEL recipe from Epicurious.com

Here’s a different green version of falafel – Herb and Pistachio Falafel!

Falafel with kale in it is kind of unusual, but Spinach Falafel is a thing!  This article at Kristin’s Recipe and Food Blog has nice step-by-step pictures.

 

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Overcoming Objections: Skills and Time

Two of the biggest objections to the assertion that you can eat healthy for little money are about skills and time. “Sure,” the objectors object, “you can buy nutritious, healthy food for less than the cost of eating out or packaged convenience food —  but what if you’re not a trained chef and you have a life that includes long hours at work and taking the kids to harpsichord lessons and trapeze practice?”

You don’t have to know much. You don’t have to do everything just right. You’re better off never having seen any TV shows that make you think you can’t cook if you aren’t a pro.  Can you put water in a pot and turn on the stove?  You’re halfway there, already!

Tara Parker-Pope, at The New York Times, tells us about how Tamar Adler is spreading the word about simplifying the part of our lives that involves food.  Read her article:

A Recipe for Simplifying Life:

Ditch All the Recipes

What’s the first step toward cooking and eating better this year?

Perhaps you should start by learning how to boil water.

When you ditch the idea that you need to follow exotic recipes step-by-step and have an architectural and engineering degree to put dinner on the table, you begin to understand that preparing your own food is actually LESS time-consuming than going through the drive-thru lane for slide-thru food and working extra hours to pay for it. It’s less stressful, too.

Susanne MacDonald, at CanadaEast.com, relates a bunch of tips that will help you realize that it doesn’t have to take a lot of time to eat healthy.  Check out what she has to say in her article:

Healthy eating on the run

If your goal is to eat healthier this year, a hectic schedule doesn’t have to derail your plans

 

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How to Eat Cheap and Healthy

Keep healthy staples on hand so you don’t feel like you have to go out to eat, or order pizza, or use highly processed “convenience” foods.  Don’t eat at restaurants very often.

Eat a variety of foods every day, including leafy green vegetables, vegetables of other colors, root vegetables  (such as beets, carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes and so on), beans, lentils, whole grains, fruits, nuts, and fish. Learn about all of the vitamins and minerals recommended for you to be healthy, and be sure to get them in the foods you eat.

You might have some foods that you eat mostly as a functional item just to be sure you’re getting enough of a certain nutrient. For instance, I eat a few oysters most days just to be sure I’m getting zinc. I open a can of boiled oysters at the beginning of the week and eat a few of them each day for several days.  I eat a little liver now and then for the B12.  Some people drink milk every day to be sure of getting calcium and vitamin D.  There are other, different ways to get these essential nutrients, so you don’t have to do what I do or what other people do, as long as you’re sure you’re getting all of the nutrients your body needs.

Eat enough, but not too much. When you get all of the nutrients your body needs every day, you won’t feel as much craving for food. That is, you’re body won’t be crying out for nourishment.  (You may still have emotional issues with food, but at least you won’t have the physical need for nourishment.) Without exaggeration, there have been times in my life where I literally ate three times the amount of food I needed to be healthy. Obviously, in that situation, I was spending at least three times the amount of money I needed to spend on groceries.

Cook your own meals at home.  Take food with you when you are away from home for several hours.  Take your lunch to work or school or hiking or biking or daytripping.

Eat kale and collard greens.  They are extremely good for you, and they cost very, very little.

Make bread if you can – and really, I think you can.  But if you aren’t ready to do that, just cook brown rice or other whole grains.  Eat oatmeal. Or buy 100% whole wheat bread with as few weird chemicals as you can find.

Don’t buy mayonnaise… at least, not very often.  Mustard works, it’s good for you, and it’s probably the cheapest condiment there is… and it’s not fattening.

Speaking of that mustard instead of mayonnaise thing, I think it’s important to understand that you can train your tastebuds.  Maybe you’ve trained yourself to like unhealthy food for a lot of years, and it might take a little time to learn to like real, healthy food.  People can learn to like what’s good for them!  Really!  And besides, even if you don’t like it, eat it anyway!!

Figure out your own values.  Is being healthy physically and financially important to you?  Is it more important to you than the greasy fat wasteful pig-grunting pleasure of stuffing a double-cheese pizza with everything through your in and out holes every few days?  Is it really?  Really??   Only you can answer that.  Once you know what’s truly most important to you in life, a whole lot of decisions become easier than they used to be.

If you actually make the decision eat healthy food and spend very little money while doing so, you can figure it out and learn and practice and improve as you go along.  You’re a human being, you have the intelligence.  So, I guess the first and most important “instruction” in how to eat cheap and healthy really is this:  Decide to do it.

Food sources of vitamins and minerals

Foods with vitamins and minerals that a lot of people don’t get enough of

Non-dairy dietary sources of calcium, if you’re not into milk.

How to train your body to crave healthy foods.

Training your taste buds to enjoy real food.

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