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Visit a Farmers Market when u can. Most flea markets have a designated Farmers market area once a week, and some areas have year round farmers markets. Often you can negotiate price. If not, there are often choices for a good price, it may not be your first choice; you may be eating turnips instead of squash, but as long as you are flexible and just keep your options open you will find decent produce ata good price.
The farmers market = inexpensive comments are baffling to me too.
I've shopped at them in Dallas, Richardson (TX), San Diego, and Los Angeles. The one in Santa Monica with the $11 quarts of OJ was the most expensive, but none of them were bargains. You go there for beautiful selections of expensive produce, in my experience.
For the OP, I'll add to the beans brigade. You can use a 1/2 pound (or less) of smoked or italian sausage to flavor a 1 pound sack of black or pinto beans (add an onion and a couple chiles too). This makes an enormous pot of food, so you will want to freeze it in 1-4 cup portions so you don't get sick of it.
One night you make it into burritos/tacos/tostadas, another night you can eat it as chili with sour cream on top, another night you can put it over rice.
Find an hispanic woman who is feeding five kids and several cousins on a landscaper's salary and ask her to teach you how she does it. I'm guessing it's beans and rice, burritos, tamales... Find out where she shops for her groceries and shop there.
Find a woman from India and ask her to teach you how to cook. Buy spices, etc. from the store she shops at. Learn to cook curries, etc.
Find an Asian market and shop there. Our local Asian mark has cilantro 2/99 cents, for example.
You get the picture. Women from other countries have been feeding large families for generations using affordable, healthy ingredients.
It's funny - I've heard a lot of people say this, but while we do have a Farmer's Market in our town, the prices are CONSIDERABLY higher than the produce I can get at the store. I'm thinking it's probably a difference between a large farmer's market in say, the city, where access is easier, versus our small one in our train station parking lot 35 miles away from the city.
Buy frozen vegetables and fruits. Flash-frozen close to where they were harvested, they are every bit as healthful as "fresh" ones that may have seen a week or more between the time they were picked and the time they appeared on the shelves of Whole Foods or other places that claim to sell nutritious items.
I get giant-sized boxes of baby spinach and kale at Costco. They're about $3 and twice the size of the supermarket boxes that cost $5.
I have a $99 NutriBullet and I make myself a nutritious half-vegetable, half-fruit drink every day. It doesn't make any difference what the items I put in there look like, so I can buy bruised fruit or over-ripe things that can be purchased cheaply. Anything I bring home that doesn't look nice goes into the freezer the minute I get it in the house and eventually gets pulverized in its frozen state. It makes my smoothies cold and delicious.
My big smoothie is one of my three meals. I add chia or flax seeds for antioxidants and if I need protein that day I add Greek yogurt and/or sliced almonds (which I also buy in large bags or tubs at Costco). I eat a whole grain cereal with fruit and skim milk for another meal.
Whole grain bread with peanut butter is a quick, low-cost, filling, nutritious main dish. As others have pointed out, home-made soups and pastas are nutritious, low-cost meals. I roast a turkey breast often and use it for more than one meal. Costco sells frozen ones year-around. They also have large bags of chicken breasts with the bones and skin removed in their freezers. Far cheaper per pound than the supposedly fresh ones sold in the supermarket (which were invariably taken out of their freezers and thawed out before they were put out for sale).
If time is an issue for you, a pressure cooker that also slow-cooks is a cost-effective purchase for making vitamin-filled meals where cheap cuts of meat are an asset rather than a detriment to taste. I tried to sell a practically new one for 75% off at a garage sale a couple of weeks ago and I had no takers. I even included a recipe book.
Popcorn is a cheap snack food that's reasonably good for you and dark chocolate is the thing to eat if you crave a sweet. Get the big bars at Trader Joe's and break them up into pieces. Or use a coupon to buy dark chocolate Hershey Kisses at your local supermarket.
By the way, local libraries are filled with cookbooks. You will definitely find ones that feature low-cost nutritious meals.
Last edited by Jukesgrrl; 11-04-2015 at 03:02 PM..
Reason: added info
Some cheap healthy foods: Brown rice, whole grain bread (some on sale all the time), chicken (cut off fat and try to stick w/ white meat), Cod (cheap fish, but healthy), broccoli, bananas, apples in season, potatoes, egg noodles, pasta (cook al'dente, healthier), peanut butter (heart healthy and cheap), oatmeal (buy generic brands--all same), olive oil in large quantities (I get mine at Trader Joe's, it's cheap), canola oil.
If possible buy your fruits and vegetables from a farmer's market instead of the grocery store. This past weekend I bought a whole pineapple ($3), 3 zucchini ($1) 2 heads of romaine lettuce ($2), 4 oranges ($1), green beans ($1) and 2 peppers ($1) all for $9. These same items would have cost me about $20 at the regular grocery store.
I wished our farmers market had prices like that
the organic tomatoes were almost 3.00 each the pineapples were 12.00 and everything else was very high priced
if you do catch the timing right,,,im sure they do have good deals
Some cheap healthy foods: Brown rice, whole grain bread (some on sale all the time), chicken (cut off fat and try to stick w/ white meat), Cod (cheap fish, but healthy), broccoli, bananas, apples in season, potatoes, egg noodles, pasta (cook al'dente, healthier), peanut butter (heart healthy and cheap), oatmeal (buy generic brands--all same), olive oil in large quantities (I get mine at Trader Joe's, it's cheap), canola oil.
These are a few things that I can think of.
Chicken leg quarters, followed by thighs and whole (cut up) are usually the cheapest in my area.
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