Healthy Eating Frugalers: What are your go to meals? (sale, old, price)
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I'm almost down to take suggestions from fellow frugalers. It's hard to try being frugal and eat healthy. I eat alot of sandwiches on wheat bread, like tuna with lettuce tomatos etc.
What do you guys eat? Only the healthy eaters.
It is hard to eat healthy on a budget, I don't care what anyone says. But it can be done. I buy rotisserie chicken (I don't eat the skin) and it gives me several servings. Bag of apples instead of presliced, bananas (which are actually very healthy), oatmeal, lots of salads using whatever veggies are on sale (I make my own dressing - super easy - just splash of olive oil and whatever type of vinegar you like), eggs. I like Amy's burritos which I get $ 5.00 for 10 of them. Shop your local sales flyer for BOGOs. Stay away from organic if you are on a tight budget. Pancakes with whole wheat flour like Kodiak are tasty (with sugar-free syrup or no syrup).
I'm almost down to take suggestions from fellow frugalers. It's hard to try being frugal and eat healthy. I eat alot of sandwiches on wheat bread, like tuna with lettuce tomatos etc.
What do you guys eat? Only the healthy eaters.
Home cooking is both the healthiest and the most frugal way to eat. If you cook from scratch, you have full control of fats, sugar, and salt in your meals.
A local store has whole chickens on sale for 99 cents a pound. That's 6-7 meals for a single person plus homemade chicken stock. Approximately 4 pounds for a big chicken, so about $4 for the central item featured in 6-7 meals.
Legumes are the cheapest protein and there are thousands of bean and lentil recipes from all around the world. You could eat beans every night of the year and never eat the same dish twice. But of course, the big advantage of beans is that you can cook a huge pot and freeze single serving portions for easy delicious microwave meals later.
Chinese stir fry is a good choice. Small amount of meat as a flavor accent, lots of fresh veggies. Concentrate on the cheaper Vegies like broccoli, celery, cabbage, and onions, and just buy a small number of snow peas. Bean sprouts are cheap and good in stir fry and the main ingredient in Egg Foo Yung. Make your own chicken broth if you really want the healthiest meal.
Portion control is important in cost control and health. A 4 ounce burger patty is plenty. No one needs a full pound of beef for dinner. A serving of pasta is 2 ounces not 16 ounces and that makes a pound of speghetti noodles last for 8 meals, not one.
Speghetti, by the way is not a bad choice. Use a sauce of tomatoes, garlic, onion, oregano, basil, all very healthy. If you want meat sauce, go a bit light on the meat. You can use whole wheat pasta if you like it. Cooked pasta and speghetti sauce freeze well if you want a big batch with some to freeze later.
Egg and vegetable omelets. Cheap, healthy, delicious.
Stuffed jacket potatoes. Potatoes are healthy except we use them as a vehicle to carry lots and lots of fat. Bake them and stuff with coleslaw or broccoli cheese. Deliciious, filing, healthy.
Be honest in your price shopping. To me, an eggplant is expensive, but, to be honest, it costs the same as a box of lasagna noodles and I use it instead of the noodles to make my favorite lasagna recipe. Even knowing that, I don't think twice about picking up the box of noodles and I grind my teeth at the cost of the eggplant. Not logical.
Last edited by oregonwoodsmoke; 11-08-2018 at 12:43 PM..
If you have a bakery outlet store, use it for bread that you are going to toast or cook in some way.
I like the freshest bread for sandwiches, but a bit more stale is better for French toast, bread pudding, pizza, even for garlic bread ( not that garlic bread is all that healthy, but it's ok if you limit how much of it you eat, and it freezes well)
My bakery outlet will have the older bread 4 loaves for $1, or sometimes even cheaper. Bread still days away from the sell by date is half price
If you have kids, you can take day old bagels or English muffins ( 3 bags for $1) and make mini pizzas. Bake them just to melt the cheese, cool, wrap, and freeze. Much healthier and cheaper than frozen pizza rolls, and they taste much better. Easy microwave after school snacks.
A big pot of pinto beans cooked with dried red chili pods will make a heck of a lot of frozen burritos. The kids love them and they are both cheap and healthy. They need a little slice of cheese in there for flavor and calcium, but not a lot of cheese.
I have to add this: if you really want to be both frugal and healthy, you must do some meal planning.
A delicious, healthy, cheap omelet can be made with eggs, onion, and about half of a canned green chili. You lose the price advantage if you throw away the rest of the canned chilies and the rest of the onion.
Before you open the can of chilies, you must have a plan about what you will use the rest of the chilies for, within the next 2 days.
For onions, I try to buy the bag of onions that the restaurant supply store calls "boiler onions". They are much smaller than the usual onions from the store and just the right size to use it all in one recipe. If I can't get them, I use half of an onion and the other half goes into a sandwich bag and into the crisper. It then needs to be used within the next couple of days. ( they aren't the pearl onions, which is what I would have thought of when you say boiler onion, but they are about half size and rather inexpensive )
I shop at Aldi. Oatmeal is ridiculously cheap. Roman lettuce, it last and taste great and sometimes when I am too lazy to cut it up, I can just eat the leafs as is. I love rotisserie chicken too. One chicken can last me whole week.
Well, it's not my go-to meal but a co-worker of mine used to eat a can of tuna every day for lunch, along with a free bag of microwaved popcorn (provided by the company).
I do a lot of things that oregonwoodsmoke does. Except, since it's just me, I cook a pan of onions and garlic, peppers, etc and freeze half for another dish when making an egg breakfast. I do tend to eat a lot of bean dishes for their nutrition and fiber.
We've been eating the heart healthy diet and it is most time consuming and more expensive than what we were used to. If you are doing a rotisserie chicken, be sure to boil the bones a bit and make some broth, put whatever veggies you like in and either rice or noodles for a good soup. Most of us just throw away the bones, but remember every bit of food one throws away makes our food bill higher.
Meat is by far the most expensive part of a meal. Use that sparingly. Beans and other sources of protein are less expensive. I find the low sodium part of the diet worse than the low fat part. Just about every pre-packaged food is higher sodium so I'm making just about everything from scratch.
I missed breakfast, but I usually just eat instant oatmeal with fresh berries that I buy at Costco.
So, for brunch I had homemade corn tortillas and a bean/rice/veggie mixture that I make up in large batches and freeze. I added fresh baby spinach I bought at Costco.
For lunch, I had two whole wheat tortilla/wraps I bought at Trader Joe's with falafels that I actually made into patties from a mix I buy at Trader Joes, where you just add water. I added fresh sliced tomatoes and fresh avocado.
For dinner, I had whole wheat rotini pasta and homemade spaghetti sauce that I made a large batch of and canned up.
For snacks at night, I usually pop some popcorn in a little olive oil and add nutritional yeast for flavoring after it's popped.
I usually have wine every night, too.
My budget is around $200/month and I eat very well on it (not including the cost for wine :-) Basically, I eat a lot of tortillas, rice, beans, and veggies, which are cheap and really healthy and low fat.
Meatless is the way to go if someone is trying to save money on food and meals.
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