I'd like to harness the creative energy and wisdom of everyone who may be reading my blog to solve my food problem. I enjoy making and eating good, healthy food. But it takes time and money to do that. Any suggestions for how I can accomplish the following goals?
- Cut down my monthly food budget
- Get in 5-7 servings of fruits/veggies a day
- Eat less meat but still have hearty meals for 2 people with high metabolism and energetic lifestyles (Abe is always hungry after any meal that doesn't include a big hunk of meat)
And for the more ambitious:
- Come up with an efficient system for storing recipes I like, adding new recipes, finding a good combination of recipes each week when I plan out meals, and generating shopping lists from those recipes
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7 comments:
No good ideas, but I can't wait to hear what you come up with.
Sure. Here's what you do: get food stamps; plant a garden; buy Michigan peaches by the bushel and can them; eat eggs.
I almost didn't suggest this because it can be so time consuming, then I realized that's something you have a lot of. There are a number of women in my ward who swear that http://www.pinchingyourpennies.com/ saves them hundreds on groceries.
I invested in a chest freezer (not as big as mom and dads) and buy some things in large quantities like meat when there's a good sale.
Start every dinner with a green salad. I don't know, we struggle to get lots of fruits and veggies.
I use google docs for recipes and shopping lists so that I can add to it whether I'm at home or work.
I thought you guys might be at the point now where you were spending a negative amount on food? Here are 2 suggestions from a girl who rarely cooks:
-The Ann Arbor farmers market. I have actually never been, but I always hear about the great deals that people get there. It is so much closer than Randazzos!
-I agree about the chest freezer. They are not too expensive, but make it so much easier to buy meat when it is a great deal. I did not realize how much I was buying, but our last month in Michigan, we ate the meat that I had bought on sale over the previous months. It turned out to be a really cheap food month with great meat!
Erin, I am all for investing in good cooking products... ie a bosch/pressure cooker/wheat grinder/etc. A pressure cooker is a great way to start and can cook food in minutes in stead of hours. Than you can start using food storage stuff...like making your own refried beans etc. Merrill and I have starting making our own bread and I think up front it is expensive but over time it can become more reasonable. Practice gardening, but to be honest it gets expensive and lots of failure...so maybe try an herb garden and then you can dry it and make seasonings. One thing I want to start doing is using what I have more... casseroles are great ways to use up left overs. one thing I did was to get the ads and than make recipes around what is on sale... I used to do weekly menu planning on Wednesday for the next week after the ads came out. But that can get time consuming... but could save money...this is really long winded, sorry. Buying things in blulck is really handy too and than storing... I jar my own meat so when it is on sale I stock up and spend all day jarring it.
Tell Abe to drink a bunch of water before dinner.
I've been trying to use a lot more beans for protein. The kids actually love them in soups, salads, or with rice. I also tell myself that if I'm hungry late at night (say, after 8:30pm), I can only eat fruits or veggies. It's amazing how good they can taste!
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