Okay, so food is suddenly becoming ridiculously expensive. This is more reason than ever to avoid the highly processed ‘plant-based’ offerings, as they are some the most expensive items in the grocery store.
I’ve done a couple of posts about shoring up our health for the coming lack of healthcare coverage we are facing in the USA. I thought it would be wise to do a post about healthy, nutritious foods that don’t cost an arm and a leg due to the coming cuts to SNAP. Note that two courts have now ruled that the regime MUST fund SNAP in November, though it might go out late. But the hard truth is that if that "big beautiful bill” gets signed into law, SNAP will be gutted anyway in short order. And federal funding for food panties has already been wiped out. So feeding families might be harder for a while.
It’s too easy to sacrifice nutrition when trying to save on groceries. But with more information, more knowledge, more understanding, what we find is that eating healthier and eating cheaper can go hand in hand.
Whole, healthy foods actually cost far less than processed, frozen, ready-to-eat “foods” that are really just flavorful chemicals.
But the good things cost us a little more time. Prep time is more involved, but honestly, not that much longer, and it’s so worth it. We can do a lot of the prep on weekends, or the night before.
The good news to really take to heart is this: The cheapest foods are also frequently the healthiest.
The cheapest, healthiest food of all
Simple. Lentils.
I’m only half kidding. There are remote villages where the main food stuff is lentils. Lentils are a legume, and a “complete” protein, meaning they have the perfect amounts of all nine “essential amino acids,” aka the ones our bodies can’t make on their own. They’re high in fiber, too.
Of course I wouldn’t recommend living entirely on lentils, but the consensus in my circles is that we don’t eat them nearly often enough.
Next week I’ll post my Pumpkin Lentil Soup recipe. It’s absolutely to die for. I’m dying to make again. Might use my Halloween pumpkins.
So buy lentils, dry, in plastic bags. Rinse them and toss a handful into every recipe you make that will simmer long enough to cook them.
Also, in the same grocery store section as the dry lentils in plastic bags, you’ll find various kinds of other dried beans and peas in bags. Get those. Nearby there will be more plastic bags, these ones filled with grains. Get brown rice, wild rice, barley, millet, quinoa (another “complete” protein.) DON’T BUY WHITE RICE.
To cook these grains, I have two methods.
I throw a thoroughly rinsed half cup or so into anything I’m cooking in the crockpot, knowing it’ll have plenty of time to get done.
Throw a cup of rice and two cups of water or broth into a rice cooker with some spices The other grains cook pretty much like rice. (A little more water for the wild.) So those are my methods.
Here are Ann and Jane showing what they’re doing with their whole grains these days!
How to cook dried beans
Rinse beans thoroughly. Put in a pot. Cover with water and a teaspoon of baking soda. Bring to a nice rolling boil for a minute or two. Drain the water. It will be green. Rinse the beans thoroughly, cleansing them of all the green and all the baking soda water. Return them to the pan. Cover them with fresh water. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a steady simmer, and cook stirring frequently, until desired doneness. During this second round of cooking you can add seasonings, shredded onions etc, to flavor the beans as they simmer.
Buy big bags of potatoes
Mash them with soy milk, a little noochie, garlic powder and black pepper.
Bake them whenever you have leftover chili, and use the chili as a topper.
Boil them tender, then slice them thin, season with garlic, onion, salt & pepper and bake or air fry till the edges are crisp.
Cut them into French fry lengths, season and bake until done. Air fry the last couple minutes so they get a little crispy on the outside. (Or bake longer, same result.)
Boil baby potatoes and eat them just as they are.
Potatoes are versatile and FILLING.
Sweet potatoes are even more beneficial and nutritious.
Buy frozen greens
Head to the freezer section for large bags of greens, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. Now that I’m looking for them, I’ve found the cheapest way to buy greens is frozen. And when you buy them in the produce section fresh, they go bad quickly, and often cost more. Today’s freezing methods preserve more nutrients than in the past.
I’m not sure if the broccoli and cauliflower are cheaper fresh or frozen. Get them one way or the other, but don’t buy them with pre-made sauces and seasonings. Just straight up veggies. You can make your own sauces at home.
Buy big bags of carrots
Try to avoid those quick-cooking pre-made veggies where you can. Buying them raw in large quantities is usually a cheaper option.
Cooking carrots from raw: Scrub under running water with a vegetable brush. Chop off the ends, peel with a peeler.
Eat them raw
Slice and steam as a side dish.
Boil them, add salt & pepper
Make carrot dogs
Dice and throw into soups or stews
Grate or shred for carrot cake
Cut into chunks and roast with companion veggies such as broccoli & cauliflower, drizzle with balsamic glaze when done & serve.
Shop the bulk foods section
If you’re near a store with a bulk food section, there are multiple items that will be way cheaper there.
Oatmeal
Many kinds of nuts
Nutritional Yeast
Raisins
Dates
Multiple flours
Multiple grains
Also, if your recipe calls for oat flour, you can dump an equal measure of rolled oats into your high speed blender and grind it into oat flour. Use the smoothie cup for best results. This is WAY cheaper than buying oat flour already-ground. I have done the same recipe both ways to ensure this works, and it absolutely does.
I’m going to try this out with brown rice flour, too. Specialty flours are ungodly expensive.
I am seriously considering great big, food-grade, metal containers so I can fill them with rolled oats, rices, barley, quinoa, dried beans, dried lentils, and noochie. I am thinking too about a second freezer, just to pack it full of exclusively green leafy and cruciferous vegetables, and probably edamame.
You’ll want some fruits too.
In New York State where I live, apples are probably the best bang for your fruit-buying buck. If you have a cool, dry place to store them, (maybe in a picnic cooler to keep rodents from finding a feast and moving in) apples will keep beautifully for months. Buy a half-bushel and stash them.
You can get oranges cheaper in large bags too, but it isn’t worth it unless you’ll use them before they go bad.
Bananas are often less than a dollar a pound—good value!
Of all the berries, blueberries are both cheapest, most plentiful where I live, and highest in antioxidants of all the berries.
Frozen berries are also an option. Sometimes they’re cheaper, sometimes not. Price them out.
Shop smart
Get whatever produce is on sale and in season. It will go bad fast, so pay attention. Trial and error will help of course. Buy BIGGER. It’s nearly always cheaper. Don’t buy pre-cut and shrink wrapped chunks of melon, buy the whole melon and cut it up at home. Don’t buy pre-trimmed, pre-washed, equal sized stalks of celery, buy the bunch of celery, wash and trim it at home.
I don’t refrigerate peaches or bananas, as they tend to turn brown. I long for a walk-in root cellar with perfect temp and humidity for storing fruits and veggies.
But for now, I leave peaches and bananas and mangoes and tomatoes in baskets on the counter, but inside flour-sack produce bags. I check them daily, and use the ripest.
If I need a fruit to ripen faster, I put it into a brown paper bag and fold the top over. The gasses released from the fruit speed its ripening.
Berries are fine in the fridge, but you really have to pick through them daily, beginning the instant you get them home, to remove any moldy ones. I like to take them out of the container, peel out whatever plastic moisture thing is glued to the bottom, then rinse the container, dry it, line it with a folded paper towel (bamboo, unbleached) and then put the berries back in. If I do that on Day 1 and check daily, we use them up before they go bad.
Shopping Sources
Consider restaurant supply stores and bulk chains such as Sam’s Club and Costco and BJ’s Wholesale Club. They have memberships, but if they’re a reasonable distance from you, they’ll pay for themselves in savings.
Think about creative ways to store bulk foods for longer periods. Buy bigger packages
Get into the habit of repackaging your groceries when you get them home.
Aldi is a fabulous, no frills grocery chain that saves me $20-$30 a week and the only thing I buy there is produce. Their organic strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries are cheaper than the grocery store’s non-organics. Their broccoli and cauliflower are often better, and so are their bunches of celery. I also get my russet potatoes and sweet potatoes there, and when they look good, peaches. I get golden kiwi and mangoes there every week.
It’s a self-checkout, self-bagging, no-frills chain where everything is way cheaper. There might be something similar in your area, if you don’t have an Aldi there.
Other veggies, of course, and as wide a range as you can, but get what’s on sale and compare prices between fresh and frozen.
Build your meals for health
Start with a filling complex carbohydrate, one of those grains we mentioned or pasta or a potato.
Include additional protein (though the whole grains themselves have a bunch) by choosing a bean, lentil or other legume. Lentils and edamame (soy beans) are super great, but any beans are excellent, as are peas and black-eyed peas.
Add in a green leafy or cruciferous vegetable as an ingredient or side in every single meal. You cannot get enough of these. If you finely chop leafy greens you can embed them in every pasta sauce, soup, stew, or chili in addition to heaping them on sandwiches and in salad bowls.
Fill in empty spots in the meal with your choice of other veggies & fruits.
If you have a whole grain, a legume, and a cruciferous or leafy green for most meals, you’re doing really well. Throw in a fruit, fresh or frozen, and another veg and that’s even better.
Try to avoid canned fruits, as they are often canned in “their own juices” which is code for reconstituted condensed fruit juice. Not on the plan—if we want fruit juice we just eat the fruit. (And never buy them in light or heavy syrup.) If you can only get them in “their own juices” then rinse them before serving. Sometimes (rarely) you can find fruits canned in water, and that’s always the best option for canned fruit.
Ditto that rinsing process, btw, with canned vegetables. Always rinse them to reduce the sodium, even if you got low sodium varieties.
Again, we can save a lot of money by shopping at the big bulk stores or Aldi, by buying whole grains and beans dried and cooking them ourselves, and by buying big bags of greens and other veggies frozen in bulk, too, and especially by repackaging when we get home. And by sticking to the fresh fruits that are in-season and on sale, if possible.
An Experiment
I’m experimenting with growing greens and herbs indoors this winter. I have some grow-lights from the mostly-failed garden tower project. (The only plants that grew well in it were tomatoes, but they bloomed only a little—possibly aware there were no bees around indoors, anyway.) So I’m trying again with the lights we bought for that project currently mounted on two sides and above the plants in my bay window.
It’s so bright and cheerful in that breakfast nook area now! I have a few houseplants, a large parsley I’ll have to keep trimming, and I’ve planted a pot of dill seeds. I put Swiss chard in a big square pot, a seed in each direction. In a round one, I put 3 collard green seeds in a circle. Those greens grow big, so they’ll need plenty of room. I’m keeping them moist and hope for germination soon. I so want to be able to just go to the window and cut the greens I want for the day! (Though that would take a LOT of greens.)
Anything you can grow at home will be one less thing you have to buy. Start small, no pressure. Even growing herbs and spices is a huge money saver, and those are relatively easy.
Your expertise
How do you save on groceries? What are your tips and tricks to make meals go further?
For example, when the soup in the crockpot gets a little too low for one more full meal for two of us, I often toss in a package of soba noodles to make it go further. With goulash, if it’s not quite enough I’ll throw in leftover macaroni (I always cook too much) and another can of tomatoes to stretch it out.
What are your money saving, grocery-stretching methods? Share them in comments! Everyone needs this right now. Prices are rising for everyone, across the board, but we can all get through this together.
SUPER FOODS to eat frequently
(The final 3, daily!)
Lentils
Quinoa
Sweet potatoes
Cruciferous vegetables
Green leafy vegetables
Turmeric
Escape and feel good again!
