Frugal Healthy Meals
Who doesn't need more ideas for saving money these days? These tips for serving nourishing frugal meals will help!
When deciding how to budget your money, you may as well spend it on food that will nourish the body you've been given, so that it will carry you happily into old age without going broke on health care costs. I'd say that's a pretty good way to prioritize your monthly cash flow.
Check out my posts on the topic of eating frugal, healthy meals:
- More ideas for how to use grass-fed ground beef!
- Frugal side dishes/salads/dessert recipes
- 12 Tips for Eating Healthy on a Budget
- Real Food on a Budget – many great ideas from all of you in the Real Food Wednesday blog carnival
- Eating Healthy Shouldn't Cost You an Arm and a Leg – a very informative article written by my friend Anne for the Weston A. Price quarterly publication, Wise Traditions
- See this post about pesticides for a link to the “dirty dozen” – it will tell you which produce is important to buy organic, and which ones are fairly “clean” and you don't need to pay the extra money.
- Cowpooling saves money – featuring my local friends!
- What Joel Salatin says about the cost of nutritious foods.
- Overwhelmed with the cost of real food – with more great reader tips!
- Frugal Nourishing Meal Ideas for ONE
- The Real Food Rookie Version of Dave Ramsey’s Money Principles
- What if the Financial Gurus Have Led Us Wrong Just Like the Conventional Diet Gurus Have
- How We Vacation FREE {And Save More $ for Real Food}
Some frugal main dish meals:
- Lyn's French Stew – this has so few ingredients that it doesn't cost much to make
- Healthy Egg Recipes – eggs are always an inexpensive meal, yet SO healthy
- Pesto Chicken – another one with very few ingredients and simple to make
- “Chicken Hurry” – ditto
- “Ketchup Soup” & Grilled Cheese – frugal AND kid-friendly!
- Frugal side dishes / salads / dessert recipes
Random money-saving tips:
- More Random Money Saving Tips Beyond the Kitchen from Kimmi (Need a New Bargain Vacuum?)
- More Money & Time Savers with Kimmi: Spring Potting Tips!
Photo by writerferris
Simple…offer them a place to lay their head…..and give them a list of restaurants nearby!
Add properly soaked grains and beans to dishes, or more sides cooked in broth. Make a couple of soups, chili, pancakes, biscuits or rolls at meals. Oat meal (or any other low cost brkfst grain. I add some chopped apples and cinnamon, i also temper a couple of raw eggs and add back to the pot to up the protein). Bean and rice burritos/burrito bowls. Rice or noodle casseroles. Veggies, eggs, and diced or shredded potatoes baked like a souffle. Sloppy joe with beans, rice, and veggies in the meat sauce. We do not eat a lot of grains and beans but when i have to stretch meals for big gatherings i add those items to the menu to stretch the meal.
I wouldn’t have any problem asking them to contribute. That is a lot of extra cost to your grocery budget. If they are coming in by plane, they can hit a local grocery store sometime while they are visiting. It may not be up to your standards, but for such a short time, I would not make an issue of it.
I second the soup, stew, and chili ideas here, plus oatmeal (overnight slow cooker or baked oatmeal is nice) for breakfasts. Pasta and rice dishes stretch food out too.
When my family gets together every family unit is responsible for dinner one night…can you delegate some cooking? Also, I do a lot of soup/stew when we have lots of company. And eggs.
Pasta, soups, chilis, potatoes and rice. All these things will stretch a food budget.
Beans are your friends. You can stretch a pot of chili with a LOT more beans then you normally use. Bean Soups are great too. Soups of any kind make great meals. Casseroles are great ways to stretch, especially egg based ones.
Maybe encourage them to bring a few of their favorites, like breakfast foods or snacks. That way you aren’t spending as much money on food your family won’t eat and they are able to bring things they know they will like. I usually bring food when we go places so nobody has to worry about what we will or won’t eat.
Kelly, my husband thinks I’m crazy with your blog, but there is so much to glean from here when trying to figure out a cheaper way to do it. The meat is a real issue for me. Our local farm is hilal in addition to being grassfed, so I have to drop close to $2k for half a cow, which is really the way to buy it because it ironcally saves a lot of money and I get the bones and fat if I want it. Still trying to figure out the cheapest way to eat healthy meat. It’s not going well 😀
@Allyson,
Tell your hubs to hang with it and soon he’ll be feeling so good (or continuing to feel so good) that he’ll be thankful that you became a foodie freak, too. 🙂
I’ll use part of your comment for a Facebook post soon and we’ll see if we can find more tips for you. 🙂
Kelly
Hi Maureen, this is a great article, and is a great addition to this post – thank you!
Kelly
Hi! I have been looking around your site here and there when I get the time–you have a lot of info to look at!
I LOVE the real food notion–refreshing and there are not enough of us out here supporting it!
I thought this article would interest you and your followers–Hunt and Gather Organic Food on a budget.
http://blogcritics.org/tastes/article/hunt-and-gather-organic-foods-on/
Thanks for your blog!
Maureen Jeanson
Hi Julianne, I’m so glad you found your way here. 🙂 Hopefully I’ll get to hear more from you in the comments as you make your way around to my old posts!
Kelly
Hi Kelly, I stumbled onto your website. I was so excited about what I was reading. Another like-minded person in regards to food. And then I saw Westin A Price, and I knew I was home. Thank you so much for this blog/website. It looks like you have a lot of great information. I get Wise Traditions, but I look forward to poking around.
Thanks again for spreading the “politically Inocorrect” nutrition information out!
Julianne