Eat Better = better health--lower weight, fewer blood sugar peaks and valleys; lower blood pressure and on and on.
Eat Cheaper = more wealth! It's that simple. Sometimes, though, it can be challenging to eat well while eating on a lower budget. The grocery store and kitchen are two of the few places where we can actually directly impact our household budget in a meaningful way on an on-going basis.
I don't know about you, but I work full time and have a very busy family life, even though we have all adults (4 total with another one here on the weekends often) in the house now. While I would still like to cook and bake from scratch, I don't have the time or energy these days. So I've compromised, adding home-made, from scratch meals with some that are made partially from canned/boxed ingredients and even a few "convenience" foods--though I keep an eye on the sodium and calorie content of those.
Yesterday I thought about what I wanted to fix for dinners this week - it's so much less stressful to have a plan AND to have items all ready to pop in the oven or microwave when I come home after a long day!
I went through my coupons, my weekly Kroger sale flyer and pulled out Once-A-Month Cooking by Mimi Wilson & Mary Beth Lagerborg. I really like this cookbook because all of the recipes are designed specifically to freeze well.
These are the meals I decided to make from Once-A-Month Cooking for dinners over the next couple of weeks: Chicken packets, Chili Verde, Savory Beef (I substituted stew beef because it was cheaper than the round steak called for in the recipe), Linguine A La Anne, Wild Rice Chicken, Poulet de France, Baked Eggs.
I also bought a Kroger fresh made Pizza marked down to $4.99 and some Home Style Barbeque chicken from the deli, marked down to $5.99 (for 8 pieces). Tonight we had the pizza with a salad for dinner and I prepared the Savory Beef and we'll have the chicken tomorrow night so I can fix a couple of the other dishes for later.
This afternoon I made a batch of blueberry pancakes with some blueberries that wouldn't have lasted more than a couple more days. Those are stacked with wax paper between them, in a freezer container and in the freezer for breakfasts this week-needing only a few seconds in the microwave. I also made some sausage biscuits using breakfast sausage (in the roll - not preformed patties) and baked refrigerator biscuits.
This evening I also baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies (from a roll of Kroger brand cookie dough) and a 13x9 pan of brownies. Our week is off to great start and I love that I won't have to think about what to fix for dinner every night-or worse-stop by the grocery store on the way home and spend more money than necessary.
What are some ways you have started Eating Better and Eating Cheaper?
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