Welcome, everyone, to our new blog carnival, Real Food Wednesdays! This week our topic is Real Food on a Budget.
Click here to read my entry for this week: An inexpensive and delicious recipe for Pasta with Grass-fed Meat Sauce.
I can get organic grass-fed ground beef for just $4 per pound — so I love making meals with ground beef. It’s also super easy to add a beef heart to ground beef — an easy way to feed my family highly nutritious organ meats — without them even knowing! Read the full post here.
Now it’s your turn. Share your recipes or tips for eating real food on a budget! (Why do it? In case you didn’t know, blog carnivals are a great way to drive traffic to your blog or website. (Read more about it here.)
To participate, post on your blog either a frugal recipe for healthy, real food (click here to see what I mean by “real food”) or an idea for saving money (so you can spend more money on your food budget — on better quality food, organic milk, etc.)
For example, maybe you have a great inexpensive dinner recipe for a stew or casserole? Or perhaps you want to share ideas for making your own cloth diapers or making natural household cleaners?
Just enter your name and link into Mr. Linky below, and please remember to also leave a comment.
Please read the Real Food Wednesdays Guidelines before posting.
And make sure you link back to this post from your blog.
Note: If you don’t have a blog, you can still participate. Just post your recipes and tips in the comments.
GET READY FOR NEXT WEEK! Kelly the Kitchen Kop will be hosting Real Food Wednesdays on January 21st. Next week’s topic: “Healthy Fast Food”. Read more about next week’s topic here.
ALERT: Mr. Linky appears not to be working. I guess he got pooped out. Taking a nap, perhaps? Been into the gin? I don’t know — I can’t find him anywhere.
I’m trying to fix this but in the meantime, please post your entry in the comments. If you posted a link with Mr. Linky and you don’t see it anymore, please repost it in the comments. Sorry for the inconvenience!
UPDATE: He’s back. Thank goodness. I googled “Mr. Linky disappeared” and found lots of other women bloggers having the same experience. Suddenly I was time-warped back to college, waiting for an emotionally unavailable boyfriend to call.
Anyhow, thank God he’s back. I hope he stays this time.
Disclosure: cmp.ly/4 and cmp.ly/5
{ 39 comments… read them below or add one }
I LOVE the topic you chose, everyone can always use more ideas to save money. Thanks, Ann Marie!
OK, where do you get grass-fed beef for $2.60/lb???? I can only get it that cheap when I average out my cost off the bone (i.e. 1/4 cow that I buy). Do share!
Thanks for hosting!
Carrie
http://oreganicthrifty.blogspot.com
Love the topic and recipe idea! I’m really in the middle of a food revelation, and I’m so excited to learn more. The hardest thing for me has been changing the way I cook, so gathering recipes has been a must! Looking forward to everyone’s posts.
Great great idea CheeseSlave, looking forward to all the new recipes in the oncomings weeks.
x
Since my blog is in Danish
- I just thought I´ll give you a quick idea of my blog:
I am writing about tips about eating Low carb/high fat on a budget.
It is in general far more expensive eating LC/HF than HC/LF – cause you don´t eat any (or much)of the cheap grains and beans etc
Meat: fattier meat is often cheaper and better for you than low fat meat.
Buy 1/2 – 1/4 of a calf/beef /lamb and the quality of meat and the price is better.
Cheese: fattier cheese is cheaper than low fat. Harvarti cheese is the cheapest cheese on the danish market and it atse relly good. Buy extra butter when it is on sale – it keep a long time.
Veggies. Grow the more expensive ones yourself. Eat seasonal.
Look for farmers shops – often the price is much better when you buy direct from the farmer. Grow fruit yourself: expensive fruit like raspberries, blueberries and strawberries are easy to grow.
Nuts ( well I buy a lot of them outside Denmark we have a very high tax on nuts and almonds. You can look in etnic shops as well -often their price is better.
Grow nuts yourself.
Eggs; Well keep hens and you get the best and cheapest eggs
- or look for a good farmer.
Fish: try to find a fisher and buy direct from him. Make graved lax at home
- buy 1/2 a side of smoked salmon instead of sliced
Cook your food yourself – make soups, bread (nut) , sausages – salad etc at home and you can afford Organic, nourishing real food – even when it is low carb/high fat.
Thanks for choosing this topic and for hosting!
Thanks Anne Marie!!
Okay seriously – where’s the beef? As in, can we get some, or is this because your supplier has a crush on you?!
I get organic grass-fed ground beef for $2.60/pound from Sean at the Organic Pastures Hub store in San Fernando (in the valley).
It’s $4 for 1.5 pounds.
So it’s actually $2.67 to be exact.
Another reason it’s worth it for me to drive up to the valley to buy raw milk!
Here’s the address for the hub store:
http://www.cheeseslave.com/2008/12/20/where-to-buy-raw-milk-cheaper-in-la/
Great ideas, Henriette!
How do you grow nuts? I never thought of that.. Also I never thought about growing specifically things that are more expensive to buy. I should do that. Well, I did plant an avocado tree (very expensive) but it hasn’t given fruit yet. I think it takes a while.
Ever since starting my family on the NT diet over 1 1/2 years ago, I decided that real food cannot be compromised. It is much too important. You have to pay now, so that you aren’t paying for it later, know what I mean? Spending money on good CLO and raw butter is cheaper than spending hundreds of dollars at the dentist for cavities and braces years down the road on the kids.
Last spring I bought 1/4 of a cow (grass-fed) for $2.59 lb. We are still using it up. I try to buy large containers of coconut oil to keep the overall price down. I planted a square foot garden last year and used lots of containers on my deck. I froze, fermented, canned, and dried a lot of produce. I also belong to an organic CSA to support local, organic farmers. This year I plan on doing a lot more of this, especially canning, now that I know how to do it.
I will be sprouting and grinding most of my own grains now that I have a grain grinder. It is much cheaper to buy whole grain berries and grind the flour yourself. Buying dried beans is also much cheaper than buying canned.
When buying chicken, buy the whole bird and cut it up yourself to save money. Save all the fat from your good bacon, or when roasting ducks and geese for cooking and frying. Making almost everything from scratch is much cheaper than buying it already prepared.
Making your own kefir, yogurt, and sour cream is much cheaper than buying them at the store. Kombucha is also a lot cheaper than soda pop.
For the past few years, I have been using washable menstrual pads. I was spending about $10.00/month on organic products. When I learned how much money I could save washing my own, that’s what I started doing. No big deal. Such big savings. With baby #3 on the way, I will also be using cloth diapers. Saving myself $1500.00 was very convincing. Now I am kicking myself for not having done this with my first two.
I have been making my own laundry detergent for a while now. Huge money savings. I box of washing soda, I box of baking soda, 1 box of borax, and 1 bar of Dr. Bronner’s soap. This lasts me a few months. I use vinegar in a dryer ball instead of that expensive and toxic fabric softener. I also gave up dryer sheets years ago. I use the blue studded balls and a ball of tin foil for static cling.
I use baking soda and vinegar for all my cleaning needs. Much cheaper than commercial, toxic products. I only wish I could find a recipe for dish soap that worked well in hard water. I also try to hanging my laundry in the summer on a clothes line to save money.
One day, when we buy a bigger house, I will also be getting a few chickens for our eggs.
What a great topic for Real Food Wednesday! We compiled a few of our favorite general tips, plus tips on how to save on products from US Wellness Meats. Can’t wait to see all the other tips and recipes!
I just realized I posted a recipe similar to Kelly’s — it seems like a lot of people are in a White Chili mood lately! I’ll try to be more original next time.
About growing nuts -well it depends on your climate
I am happy that my mums tree ( at least 60 years old) provide enough nuts for 2-3 families)
I live in a fairly mild part of Denmark
- so I can easily grow walnuts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juglans_regia
It takes YEARS to get nuts- but the tree my dad planted 4 years ago gave us 6 nuts this year
Easier is hazelnuts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelnuts
you get fruit almost the first year after it is planted ( ive got 3 differernt kinds)
In Ca. you ought to be able to grow almonds ( our winter is too tough here)
Whoops, my first link went to last weeks post, sorry, see my second link at #14.
Love this idea!!!! I am getting so many recipe ideas! Thanks for letting me know about this!
I put up an older post that discusses the cheap deliciousness/realness of soup. This is a topic I cover a lot and thought I would share some things I already have out there. I would also direct people to this post where I parse out our general budget and discuss the need to shift priorities in the overall household budget to make room for better food. Though it is useful to talk about ways to afford good food, for the most part Americans spend too little on food. In the past we have spent closer to a quarter of our budget on food, now we only spend close to ten, and almost half of that is food eaten outside the home. On the whole we spend too little on each food item, but we buy too much food on the whole. And the food we do buy isn’t really contributing to our overall health so we pay for other expensive body care products and medicine when we could just put a bit more money to have a better diet. So I think it is wise to look at the full picture of where our money goes and what we really need to be spending more and less money on overall. The strategies in Nourishing Traditions of soaking and fermenting is a great way to get more bang for your buck nutrient-wise. (Just as a note the post I put up talks about eating less dairy, which is not the case anymore- at least we don’t eat dairy that doesn’t come from grass fed cows and except raw milk dairy that is not cultured in some way.)
Thanks for bringing up an important and timely (and delicious!) topic.
The best way to save money is to buy a freezer! Cook in bulk when stuff is in season. Freeze vegetables and cook sauce and soups. Since it’s just the 2 of us (empty nesters) I invested in loads of containers which I reuse. Right now I have 2 portions sizes of the following soups (we’re in NY): chicken, vegetable, split pea, and lentil with chopped spinach. Tonight we are have tomato sauce (cooked and frozen from the summer) with frozen grilled chicken (leftover from a barbeque) and pasta. It’s easy to heat something from the freezer and have a quick nourishing meal. Also I make 3 meatloaves at a time (husbands favorite) and cut each into 8 slices. I wrap each slice and put them all in a zip lock bag (I reuse the ziplocks too).
Great subject Ann Marie!
Thanks, Nancy,
You are so right about the freezer. It saves SO much money. Also, I love freezing leftovers — that way you don’t have to eat them the same week (and get sick of them).
Christine, can you post your recipe for laundry detergent? I have one I use but I want to see if yours is the same.
Also, what kind of cloth pads do you use? Where do you keep them before you wash? Do they wash out clean? I’ve been thinking of getting some. I hate using disposables — bad for environment and expensive.
I do use the reusable Diva Cup which I love.
Hi, Sage, you bring up such a great point.
To quote Michael Pollan:
“We only spend 9 percent of our (per capita) income on food. When I was a kid, in 1960, we only spent 18 percent on food. It’s fallen in half in those past 45 years. In that same period, the amount of money we spent on health care has gone from 5 percent to 16 percent of our income. I can’t help but think that if we spent a bit more money on food, we might spend less on health care.”
Wow, that’s such a great quote, isn’t it? I should put that on my sidebar…
Your invite to this carnival prompted me to start my food blog. I don’t expect it to be as involved as yours, but it’ll be there. I posted quite a long list of real food on the cheap tips. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and now it’s all down on paper, er, on my blog
Thanks for hosting!
Hi! I just realized Mr. Linky isn’t working!
I’ll repost my entry for the week, which is for how to make whole-grain (gluten free, if necessary) waffles : 12+ waffles for under $1.00!!!
http://oreganicthrifty.blogspot.com/2009/01/real-food-on-budget-gluten-free-waffles.html
As for Real Food on a Budget, that’s sorta the theme of my whole blog, so I invite your readers to visit my blog for weekly menu plans, tips, and recipes that are Thrifty and “Oreganic”
Thanks, Ann Marie!
P.S. You are so lucky to live near that Hub Store!!!
Thrifty Oreganic,
Mr. Linky must have been “down the pub” having a pint — he’s back now. Whew! I guess he works on his own time.
Alyss,
This is fantastic news! I always love all your posts on DNT and Flickr! YAY!
I’m going to add you to my blog roll. Yeah, that blog roll that isn’t up right now b/c I moved my site and haven’t had time to reconstruct it… now, because of you, I’m inspired to get right on that!
Great idea, saw your twitter and wanted to contribute in some way. Submitted a friends Squidoo page and will add trackback also. Good job!
Thanks for hosting this week Ann Marie!
I love the topic! I posted two recipes – a lentil loaf and a Korean soup that I feel compliment each other well.
I’m going to go read everyone else’s ideas now. Budget is wonderful!
One thing we do is use a lot of heart – we can get grassfed bison heart for $1.49lb and that definitely helps our food dollar! I grind it to use with ground beef recipes.
Not sure if anyone has said this yet as I haven’t read the comments but eating seasonally really makes a difference on the produce costs, at least up here in MI!
Thanks for hosting this carnival! I’m a little late, but here!
I’m looking forward to checking out everyone else’s posts.
I entered to view the Carnival show, but I could not find where it is.
Ummm, won’t your family Know about your organ meat spaghetti after they read your post?
sorry I’m so late. Today was grocery day- it’s an hour drive.
Thanks for hosting! What a great help this will be!
My recipe for laundry detergent: 1 large box borax, 1 large box washing soda, 1 large box baking soda, and I bar grated castile soap (ie, Kirk’s castile, or Dr. Bronner’s). Mix all together in a large container with a wooden spoon. Use 2-4 tblsp. per load.
The pads I use are by Many Moons. When you are done with one pad, you immediately soak it in cold water, changing water everyday. Sometimes I am not very diligent changing the water daily, and so stains do set. I would think something similar to cloth diapers. I just wash them in the washer with my regualr laundry soap, sometimes I add baking soda to the soak water. You can soak in any old bucket in your laundry room, but I bought a very nice hand made clay pot with a lid and spout specifically for this purpose. It is also helpful to hang dry in the sun for the stains (discretely in the backyard so nosy neighbours won’t think you’re weird!) Also, if you let them soak too long, the snap buttons will start to rust.
http://manymoonsalternatives.com/category.php?cat_id=9
As far as the Diva Cup goes, I really want to try it. But, I am not convinced that it is good for us to have silicone or rubber inside of us for 5 days at a time. How do we know for sure if there is nothing in the cups that is leaching into our bodies? What is everyone’s thought on that?
Christine –
I use Glad Rags, a Portland OR company that appears to have virtually identical products to Many Moons. I love them! I also have a lovely handmade ceramic pot with a lid that sits on the bathroom counter for a couple days each month
I’ve been using them about six months and kinda want to shout out from the rooftops how great they are… so here I go. I freakin love my Glad Rags!
http://www.gladrags.com/
Alyss’s last blog post..Tips for Real Food on the Cheap
Those Glad Rags look identical to Many Moons! I love mine too. I have been using them about 4 years (with 2 pregnancies in between). Some of them are starting to show signs of wear. But, still so much cheaper than disposable pads. I noticed those sea sponges as an alternative to tampons on the website. Those look much more natural than the silicone cups, and probably more comfy. Anybody tried those?
HELP!!!
PLEASE COULD ANYBODY GIVE ME SOME IDEAS ON HOW TO MAKE MY RECIPE LESS GOOEY/RUNNY. IT IS SPREADING ALLOVER THE BAKING SHEET!!
I am the author of Mr. Linky number 4 (Bubble and Squeak) and I have tried my own recipe for Digestive biscuits several times now and I do not seem to be able to rectify the problem – let’s call it ‘work-in-progress’ STILL! The problem is that I soak the grains in creme fraiche/yogurt overnight to break down the gluten, but this makes the mixture very dry yet it spreads to amazing proportions when it bakes. The reasoning behind this would be to put more flour in it, but then I would need to put more creme fraiche/yogurt in too. Has anybody had any experience with ARROWROOT? This could make up a part of the dry ingredients (say 1 cup) but does not need to be pre-soaked.
I am sure there are many people out there with more experience than me with baking!! Short of putting the pastry into a cupcake mold, I do not know what to do next!
thank you x
Lune’s last blog post..falling away
Hi Lune,
I recently made soaked granola bar type cookies that turned out too wet and sticky to shape into bars, so I did sprinkle them with arrowroot powder and it worked great. Also, have you ever made the almond or peanut cookies in NT? Besides the crispy nuts, that is the only other flour in the recipe. I think arrowroot would solve your problem, and no need for soaking it.
Hello,
Great post. I save money by cooking from scratch and menu planning. I have been posting this week what I have been making.
Hugs,
Elizabeth
Elizabeth Quigley’s last blog post..What’s On Daddy Turtle’s Table
Ann Marie, wow, the comments here have gone wild!
Since I don’t see Mr. Linky again, I thought I’d add my link:
http://kellythekitchenkop.com/2009/01/real-food-on-a-budget-real-food-wednesdays.html
I recently added a link there to a good article by my friend, Anne, called “Eating Healthy Shouldn’t Cost You An Arm & A Leg”
Kelly
Kelly the Kitchen Kop’s last blog post..Overwhelmed With Eating Healthier – Another Random Reader Question
some great ideas in the comments. For me, planning is EVERYTHING.
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