A lot of people complain that eating healthy is too expensive. It’s not when you know some secrets…
Of course I’m going to tell you. Hold your horses already!
One thing you may not know about me is that I’m cheap. I don’t like spending more money than I have to.
On the other hand, I don’t buy garbage usually either. At least, not on purpose 😉
No matter what my financial condition has been, we’ve always been able to eat well. It’s no secret that I totally dislike most packaged foods. They taste bad. Not to mention that they’re bad for you.
Call me a food snob – but we don’t eat food that tastes bad. Why should we? There’s a lot of ‘foods’ that other people eat regularly that you will NEVER find in my house. ICK, ICK, ICK.
So, how can you eat real food for less money than garbage food?
Become a loss leader shopper. You know – all those great bargains that they use to lure you into the store, knowing that you’ll spend a lot more on other stuff? Except, you’re not going to spend money on the other stuff. You’re going to plan your menus using only what’s on sale.
The other great thing about shopping this way is that there is always something different on sale. You’ll have new menus all of the time!
I’ll take the sale paper from a smaller grocery store in the area since that will more closely match stores in any area of the US.
OK, so – this week we have Americas cut pork chops for $1.89 a pound. Cheap!
A pound of tail on shrimp for $4.99 – that’s a good one too! Shrimp scampi? Yum! Of course, we’ve been known to just pig out on the shrimp with a big salad.
A whole watermelon for $2.99. Early, but for that price, I’ll get one.
Eggs, 99 cents. Can you believe the price of eggs lately? Sheesh.
I only eat organic chicken now – so I skip those sales – but there is a family pack of split chicken breasts for 99 cents a pound. It really only takes a couple minutes to cut it off the bone and skin it.
Lean ground beef for 2.49 a pound? I wonder about that one. I only buy 90 or 95%.
Angus sirloin for 3.99 a pound. That’s good. Throw it in marinade before work and it will be a great fast dinner.
And I always keep spaghetti fixings in the house in case of emergency. No jars! ICK!
And there’s at least one night a week that we don’t eat at home. Either we eat at a friend’s, or go out, or get a pizza and watch a movie.
On to the veggies and stuff!
Red and green bell peppers – 79 cents a pound. That will go good with the marinated steak.
Tomatoes, 99 cents a pound. Always need those.
Ohhh, zucchini. I can make chicken with zucchini and tomatoes. Love that!
Coleslaw – I can make that coleslaw with the pineapple for a change. And pineapple is on sale too. Cool.
Sweet potatoes and baking potatoes are both on sale. I like sweet potatoes with pork chops. Cooked apples too – and there are apples on sale too.
Plus we’ll have pineapple and watermelon and apples for snacking. Oranges are pretty cheap too – $1.99 for 4 lbs. So are baby carrots – $1 lb.
A bag of spinach for salad – $1.50. Onions are always cheap.
OK, that’s enough already!
That’s how it’s done. Of course, it helps if you have my cookbook too 😉
(You can either get the cookbook by itself here – or, you can get it as part of the whole High Energy Eating Package.)
Have fun with your healthy meal planning!
I’m hungry now…
Carole
This is the appropriate blog for anybody who wants to search out out about this topic. You notice a lot its nearly laborious to argue with you (not that I really would need…HaHa). You positively put a new spin on a subject thats been written about for years. Great stuff, simply nice!