Affordable Healthy Meals

[Guest guest]

What are your recommendations for affordable healthy meals. I am a terrible

cook, when my husband and I decided on the journey to getting healthy we bought

(and still buy) alot of packaged organic foods. I would love to start making

meals. I've tried a few meals but they seem to go way over budget and it ends up

being more expensive to make them. I'll end up making a meal and then the left

over ingredients go to waste. What do you do with leftover ingredients? Do you

make multiple meals and freeze them Right now what we are spending though is

ridiculous, our buget per meal for a family of 3 is around $7 per meal and I

know we could be much healhier by making our own.

[Guest guest]

Also, I was just curious as to what other families here on the traditional foods

minnesota board spend per month on grocceries? For how many people? Is my $7 per

meal realistic? Or is it ridiculously high? What types of meals do you eat?

[Guest guest]

Ah, here's a question I've been wondering too.

As a family of five (husband, wife, 5, 3, baby), we have a fairly tight

budget which leaves us $500 a month for food. (Note to self: do not buy a

house the last year of the inflated housing market ever again.) Weekly

that's $125 for meat, dairy and vegetables. We're primal (no grains,

starches or sugars), so we don't buy bread products or snack foods. Sadly,

that doesn't leave us room for fancy foods like fish, avocados or nuts very

often, or for all of our produce to be organic. But we feel like we eat

well. I wouldn't say that we eat $7 a meal because our dinners tend to be

more expensive than breakfasts (meat vs. eggs). Dinners tend to be a hunk

of meat with tons of veges on the side.

[Guest guest]

Hi,

A pretty good book for cooking basics is " Cooking for Idiots " . I got it for my

daughter who can barely boil water. She was getting sick from not eating the

food she grew up on--funny how that works! She comes home and we make a lot for

her to freeze and take with her too.

For meals I like to always have enough to make the leftovers into something

else. Like Turkey--after the turkey meal, I will make up a lot of pasta based

dishes and freeze some, turkey over toast for lunches, and I have a recipe for

turkey jerky. We shall see about that! I pretty much do the same with any of

the meats I make since they are the largest and most expensive. A roast may be

made into sandwiches or some type of gravy over bread type of thing. Some

things end up in Pizza. When I have a lot of " little stuff " I will make pot

pies and freeze them. Once you find a few recipes you like it gets easier.

We eat grains, I don't know what I would do without them!

Veggies I will save for a little while and make something with cream like peas

and carrots in a cream sauce. Yummy and the kids don't know they are eating

leftovers!

I am lucky enough to have been able to grow or raise most of our food and my

oldest son just got a deer so we have that thing to add into meals. I buy coke

(have not kicked that pop habit yet!), coffee, tea, sugar, and whole grains at

the store. My pop is probably the most expensive thing on the list monthly.

[Guest guest]

I always try to use up all of the perishable ingredients right away.

Even things that last a long time, such as onions, carrots or celery, I'll put

in multiple dishes while I'm washing and chopping- soup, stuffing, pot pies.

Apples can always be cooked for applesauce or put into a pie when they are no

longer good for fresh eating. Organic potatoes will sprout because they're not

sprayed with a retardant.

So I will even go so far as to make extra mashed potatoes and then freeze them

for latkes or to put on top of a shepherd's pie. Yes, especially when you are

buying this quality food, nothing should go to waste! Time, energy or food...

Kathy