Eating Well on a Budget

One of the hardest things to maintain as a poor person is a healthy diet. I have a Facebook group dedicated to depression style cooking which generally involves a lot of starch to make the recipe go further. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there cooking like that.

I think the secret to eating healthy on a budget is to watch the supermarket sales. Buy what's on sale then devise recipes from that. Granted it takes a good sense of food (what goes with what) and nutrition (how to balance a meal) but you can also go to the Food Network website and enter the name of your sale item into the search box. Typing "chicken" into the search box will return 7298 recipes. They have good tools for paring down that search to get a manageable number to browse but the point is that if you can get a whole chicken for $3.50 as I can this week, it's worth the time and effort to find out how to cook it.

I am not yet receiving food stamps (too much in my savings account) but if I did it would give me $176 a month to spend on food. In April I plan to try that as an experiment and see if I can survive on $176 food budget including eating out.

Speaking of eating out, the photo with this post is the new Smartchoice grilled salmon from Long John Silver. It's only $4.99 and there's a coupon offer on their website to get a dollar off. This is two meals for me and even though it's a tad overcooked it's still pretty good.

Here are some of my tips for smarter grocery shopping

Buy chickens whole and cut them up yourself. The more the store does to chicken (i.e. boneless, skinless chicken breasts) the more it will cost you. Save the giblets, back, neck and wings for the stockpot. They make a great soup.

Buy store brands. Over the years I've found very little difference between store brands and name brands aside from the price. If you look in my pantry you will find Albertsons Crispy Rice and Great Value bran flakes instead of Kelloggs rice krispies and all bran.

Go with the season. As Easter nears eggs go on sale and they're very versatile for breakfast, lunch, dinner or baking. Know the seasons for fruits and vegetables and shop accordingly. Better yet, if you have a farmers' market in your area check it out. It's going to be cheaper and the produce will be better.

Bake from scratch. I make my own bread for about a dollar a loaf compared to over three dollars in the grocery store. Cookies can be made cheaply too if you find sales on flour, sugar, butter and eggs.

Drink water. It's cheaper and better for you than soda or fruit drinks.

So happy, healthy and most of all budget conscious eating.