~Sorry that I’m a little late with posting this. On Thursday evening when I was supposed to post, I decided to spend a little time chatting with my husband instead. This will be the last eating for less challenge that I post because on Friday, Day 5 of the challenge, we ate out. So I kind of blew my own challenge! {smile}~
Meal for Day 4:
Pancakes with syrup, sausage patties, fried eggs, toast, and orange juice
Total Cost for Meal:
- pancakes 1.00
- syrup 75 cents
- orange juice free
- sausage patties free
- eggs 79 cents/dozen (sale) ~ used 8 eggs at 56 cents
- toast ~ 4 slices at 20 cents
total of meal: $3.00 (actual ~ $2.51)
We love breakfast for dinner around here. It seemed like the perfect week to have it too since we had some sausage patties and orange juice that someone had given to our family. We have breakfast for dinner at least every other week. This meal is very easy to keep affordable. If we don’t have a breakfast type meat, I will usually serve some eggs to get in our protein (plus I have one child who does not care for pancakes). Sometimes we will also have fruit smoothies as our dessert.
What about real foods on a budget?
For a while now, we have talked of transitioning our family to a more real foods diet. Even though we have begun some steps towards a healthier diet, I find it hard to eat that way on a tight budget. I realize that I can’t make all the changes at once. I simply can not afford to do that right now. Maybe one day we will (again) be able to afford that, but for now I have found that I will do the best that I can with the budget that I have. And I pray for God to help me feed my family healthy meals on this budget. As someone recently told me, “It’s not forever. It’s just for now.”
Anyway, this is a good blog post at Food Renegade on eating real foods on a budget. (Here are more links that I found at Musings of a Housewife.) We have begun to make a few changes to our diet so that it resembles a more traditional foods diet. (For a good post about reasons for changing to a real foods diet, click here. Also, here is a good post about making baby steps to better nutrition.)
Some steps we have taken on a tight budget:
- Eat healthier fats. We use butter and olive oil. Soon I hope to have some coconut oil for baking so that we can get rid of the vegetable oil. Every once in a while, we use margarine but I try to avoid it if possible.
- Reduce sugar intake and replace with healthier sweetners. This is a hard one around here. My kids like their kool-aid. We do mix it with 1/2 cup sugar and some stevia. Other than sugar and stevia, I use honey as a sweetener. It (good honey) is a bit expensive so I use it sparingly. I hope to pretty much eliminate white sugar around here. Baby steps…
- Use healthier dairy products. We began using raw milk a while back but don’t use it every week. If I can afford it, I get it. We try to use organic milk if not using raw milk. (Read about healthy milk here.)
- Continue to wean my family off of white flour and replace with whole grains. Those rolls the other night were 1/2 whole wheat and 1/2 white flour. For the most part, my husband, one daughter, and I eat whole grain bread. Everyone else prefers white bread.
Changes that I would like to implement:
- Become a better label reader to avoid HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup), trans fat, and MSG.
- Buy meats and eggs that are grass fed and pastured. (Very expensive to do. I’ve still got my fingers crossed that we’ll get some venison next weekend.)
- Replace white rice & pasta with brown rice & whole grain pasta.
- Drink more water.
There are more steps that our family needs to take. However, I feel this is a good start. We’ll take it bit by bit, little by little until we are eating a healthy diet!
And we will continue to do what we can to eat for less while making the transition to that healthier way of eating.
