Search Results for: cheap meals

3 Easy Ways to Get a Home Cooked Meal on the Table: Save Time and Money

March 9, 2015 By MelissaB 5 Comments

Do you cook at home? If so, how many times a week?

Chances are, your answer will vary depending on whether or not you work outside the home, your age, and your income.

Sure, cooking at home can save you plenty of money, but not a lot of us do it. According to Harris Interactive, “Two in five (41%) say they prepare meals at home five or more times a week and three in ten (29%) do so three to four times a week. One in five (19%) of U.S. adults prepare meals at home one to two times a week, and 11% say they rarely or never prepare meals at home.” There aren’t always easy ways to get a home cooked meal on the table.

In the last several years, my husband and I have made the switch to exclusively eating at home. We go out to eat less than 10 times a year, usually only when we’re traveling. What I’ve discovered is that cooking at home can actually be A LOT of work. Making healthy, low-cost food requires time and energy, and then there is all of the clean up to do afterwards. If I were still working full-time outside the home, I doubt that I would have time to cook as much as I do now.

Home Cooked Meal — Original IMG credit: DSC_0719 on Flickr

However, there are a number of strategies that can help make preparing foods at home easier.

Have a go to meal. Everyone should have a few easy meals that they can make from staples in the pantry when they’re short on time. Choices might include spaghetti, cheese quesadillas, grilled cheese sandwiches, etc. These meals may not be ideal nutritionally, but they’re still better than grabbing fast food, and they’ll save your wallet.

Use your slow cooker. Start the slow cooker in the morning, and when you come home, you’ll have a hot meal waiting for you. To save even more time, prep all of the ingredients the night before so in the busy morning, you can just dump in the ingredients and go.

Utilize freezer cooking. Take one day a month and cook up several meals for your family for the month. This might take you three to four hours, but then you will eliminate much of the cooking you’ll need to do for the rest of the month. Simply take a meal out of your freezer the night before you need it and then reheat it when you get home from work.

There are short cuts to freezer meals, too. Search Pinterest, and you’ll find crockpot freezer meals. Simply dump the ingredients in a freezer bag and freeze. This type of freezer cooking doesn’t require any cooking before putting it in the slow cooker, so you can make a month’s worth of meals in about an hour.

Another idea is to double any recipe you are already cooking and put the second one in the freezer for a busy night.

Don’t be discouraged if you haven’t yet mastered how to eat at home without spending all of your time cooking. As Marion Nestle, professor of food studies at New York University and author of What to Eat says, “Anything that you do that’s not fast food is terrific; cooking once a week is far better than not cooking at all. It’s the same argument as exercise: more is better than less and some is better than none” (The New York Times).

What is your favorite strategy to get a healthy meal on the table quickly?

Grocery Shopping Once a Month – Can You Do It?

September 29, 2014 By MelissaB 10 Comments

My husband and I recently bought a house, and we’d like to plump up our emergency fund just in case we have a large house expense. (Because, of course, when you have little savings, expensive things start to break. It’s the law of nature, right?)

To inspire myself, I reread America’s Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money by Steve and Annette Economides. One strategy of theirs that I latched onto is once a month shopping. The Economides shop once a month for their family of seven and right after shopping day, they make 15 to 17 freezer meals to help them on nights when they’re too busy to cook.

Alright, I already regularly cook freezer meals, so how hard could it be to shop once a month for my family of five?

As it turns out, very tough, at least the first month.

Breaking Bad Habits

I have a bad habit of making a big shopping trip on the weekend and then running to the store for this or that several times a week.

Do you do this, too? From all of the harried shoppers I see at the store at 5 p.m., I’m guessing I’m not alone.

The problem is that each time I run to the store, I buy more items than I initially went to the store to buy. The Economides recommend once a month shopping to avoid this kind of impulse buying that blows up the grocery budget.

Making the Big Shopping Trip

This month, eager to change my bad shopping habit, I scouted the deals and made my big, once a month shopping trip. I spent two days afterward cooking up meals to put in the freezer. I was set, or so I thought.

Turns out, limiting the impulse to stop by the store is more difficult than I thought.

There are a number of reasons why we’re struggling:

My husband likes fresh fruit and veggies. Our family wiped these out after a week, so back I went to the store to pick up some more.
I’m an impulse eater. If something sounds good to me, I want to make the recipe and have it for dinner. I don’t want to wait until my next monthly shopping trip to get the ingredients to make it. (The whim would have passed by then, which is the point, I guess.)
Eating up odds and ends at the end of the month is not fun. Sure, trying to make meals out of what food is left is fun, but the last few days, most of it doesn’t taste good.

Taking Baby Steps Moving Forward

While it would be easy to give up on the idea of once a month shopping, I haven’t yet because I know it can be a big money saver. Instead, I’m going to back up and move to twice a month shopping. This will allow me time to plan out our meals for two weeks, making sure we have all the ingredients we need. Many fruits and veggies stay good for nearly two weeks, so my husband will have the fresh fruits and veggies that he wants.

I don’t know if I’ll ever fully implement once a month shopping, but if I am successful with twice a month shopping, I will still significantly reduce my impulse shopping trips and improve my grocery budget.

How often do you grocery shop? Are you a multiple trip, impulse buyer like I am (was?), or are you a grocery store ninja?

Think You Can’t Afford the Paleo Diet? Ways to Make It More Affordable

July 1, 2013 By MelissaB 11 Comments

The Paleo diet is gaining popularity, and it can be a good choice for people who have to avoid gluten whether because of a gluten intolerance or Celiac disease.

Sure, if you’re gluten free there are many great options available like gluten free pasta and breads, but those can be very pricy. Sometimes it’s cheaper to just avoid those kinds of substitutes.

Long Term Savings from Following the Paleo Diet

If you’d like to follow a Paleo diet but think you can’t afford it, keep in mind a few things:

1. A Paleo diet can lead to weight loss.

The savings here won’t be immediate, but over your lifetime, the savings is significant. I began following a Paleo diet last September, and in the 9 months since, I’ve lost 75 pounds. All of my numbers for cholesterol, blood pressure, and sugar count have improved. I know I’ve saved myself on medical expenses in upcoming years than if I hadn’t taken the weight off.

As another point, I don’t know how many hundreds of dollars I spent on Weight Watchers over my lifetime. With a Paleo diet, I eat until I’m full, and I don’t get hungry again for several more hours. There’s no struggle, so weight loss is easy, and I don’t have to count calories or points or pay for the latest weight loss fad.

2. You’ll save hundreds by not eating out.

Of course, you can eat out on the Paleo diet, but we just don’t eat out as much. We’re easily saving at least $200 a month on meals out. Now we go out to eat only when we’re traveling or for birthdays.

3. You won’t spend money on processed foods.

You might think chips and candy and other processed foods are cheap, but when you buy them in quantities that most Americans do, they add up quickly.

So, keep in mind these initial savings once you switch over to a Paleo diet.

How to Save Money When Buying Paleo Groceries

If you do decide to follow a Paleo diet, here are some ways you can cut costs on groceries:

1. Buy your meat directly from the farmer.

Ideally, you’ll want to buy grass fed and pastured meat. We buy 1/2 side of grass fed beef from my cousin’s husband. We get ground beef, steaks, roasts, etc. The meat averages about $5 a pound. There are also several grass fed and pastured suppliers near us, and we stock up whenever they have meat on sale. We have a deep freezer to keep all the meat.

2. Subscribe to a CSA.

A CSA (community supported agriculture) allows you to buy organic produce straight from the farmer. This year, for $850 we subscribed to one that gives us 1 and 1/9 bushel of vegetables a week for 19 weeks. There are enough vegetables each week to feed our family of 5 copious amounts of vegetables and some extra for us to freeze and use in the winter.

3. Grow a garden.

I like to grow things that are expensive to buy in the winter like collard greens and kale. We blanch them and freeze them to add to soups in the winter for an extra nutritional punch. However, grow anything you like to eat that grows well in your area.

4. Buy produce on sale and stock up.

If you live near a farm, consider going to the farm and picking the produce yourself. Last year we bought 50 pounds of organic blueberries. We froze 30 pounds and made jam and jelly with the other 20 pounds. It only cost us $130. However, within 8 months we ran out, so this year we plan to buy about 80 pounds to last us through the year.

Likewise, Whole Foods recently had organic grapes on sale for .99 a pound. I bought 25 pounds and froze them so we’ll have grapes and grape smoothies in the winter.

Initially, buying Paleo food can seem more expensive. However, there are many future costs you are eliminating by eating a healthier diet. In addition, there are ways to save, especially if you’re willing to buy in bulk and preserve your food.

If you’re following a Paleo diet, how do you save money on groceries?