Monthly Archives: October 2011

Saving the Most with Your Grocery List

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If you go into the store without a grocery list to do your weekly shopping you’re likely to spend more and forget a few necessary items.  Eventually, you’ll have to go back for those necessary items and end up grabbing a few more things you may not necessarily need.  Making a grocery list also helps you take full advantage of the money saving power of manufacturer coupons.  Here are a few tips to help you merge your grocery coupons and your grocery list to save the most money on every trip.

Photo Credit: http://www.couponaudit.com

Extreme Couponing

If you’ve ever watched the TV realty series Extreme Couponing, you know that it is humanly possible to walk out of the grocery store with several hundred dollars worth of merchandise for pocket change.  Though the people on the show pretty much coupon full time and a lot of what they get can’t be incorporated into a weekly meal plan, it is inspirational.  Check for coupons online and printable coupons, subscribe to the Sunday paper and get you a coupon wallet to keep everything organized.  You don’t have to go extreme to save money.

Meal Planning for the Coupon Mom

On Sunday, after you’ve talked your kids into clipping out all of the coupons out of the paper’s insert, sit down with your computer and lay out all of the coupons.  Pick out what you can use to make your meals for the week and file the rest of the coupons in alphabetical order for later use.  Search for weekly specials online at your local grocery store and try and find any other online coupons you may need to fill in the gaps.  This way you’re basing your weekly meal plan around the coupons efficiently rather than using one coupon towards a meal that you need 15 non-discounted ingredients to make.

Grocery Shopping Made Easy

When you head to the grocery store you want to have a clean, hand written or printable grocery list, your stack of coupons for that week’s food and stable blood sugar so you don’t deviate from your list due to temptation.  There is no need to carry around coupons that you won’t be using that week.  Remember that buying superfluous items at a discount still costs money, so try and use coupons that help you save on the things you actually need and not use them as an excuse to buy a bunch of unnecessary stuff.

Grocery coupons may seem like a hassle, but once you get the hang of it they really can save you 10-20% a week.  Try these organization methods and see if you can’t save enough money to make it worth the effort.  There’s nothing like free coupons saving you enough over the course of a month to completely justify a night out to dinner!

Three Tips to Help Stick to a Daily Meal Plan

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Sticking to a daily meal plan can be a major adjustment since many people are used to eating whatever they want, whenever they want. Having the specifics of breakfast, lunch, and dinner planned out forces us to pay close attention to what we are eating. This means no eating out or excessive snacking throughout the day. A healthy meal plan or even a 17 day diet meal plan can definitely be hard to follow at first. However, there are a few things we can do to help stay with it.

Daily Meal Plan Strategies

  1. Make a meal plan that is specifically designed and tailored to your weight loss goals. Consult a nutritionist or your trainer to make sure that you’re not taking in too much or too few calories. Then, write down everything you eat in your meal plan to make sure that you’re counting calories honestly and accurately. Don’t to forget to include drinks that are not zero calories when you’re adding up your calorie count for the day. Then, analyze the times when you go over your limit and ask yourself how you can change your behavior to prevent it from happening again.
  2. Prepare breakfast and lunch the night before. Healthy meal plans are sometimes hard to follow because of time constraints. If you have a busy schedule, cooking in the morning and in the middle of the day can be a huge hassle. That’s why so many of us end up grabbing a pastry at a coffee shop on the way to work and eating out for lunch. It’s better to prepare these meals when you have a little extra time in the evening. You can just put them in a Tupperware container and reheat the next day. This can be done every weeknight to help you stay on track with your weekly meal plan.
  3. Find a meal planning buddy. It’s easier to succeed if you aren’t doing it alone. Find a friend who will follow weekly meal plans with you. If you’re married, a spouse can be the perfect person to fill this role, since you probably always eat dinner together anyway. Spouses and friends can start diet meal plans together if they have a shared goal of losing weight. Researchers that study group diet meal plans, like Weight Watchers, have found that people who have moral support from peers with weight loss goals lose three times the amount that the loners lose in the first year and they keep it off, too. Get your friends and family involved and you’ll have more motivation to get and stay fit.
  4. Reward yourself if you’ve consistently followed your meal plan for a couple of weeks. You should give yourself incentives to successfully give up some of your favorite foods and stick to the plan. For instance, you could go to the movies, get a massage, or go shopping at your favorite retail store. Healthy meal planning generally saves you money in the long run because you are not buying unnecessary items at the grocery store. So, you’ll probably have a little bit of money saved up to treat yourself. Don’t, however, reward yourself by eating more! “People generally overestimate the calories they are burning with exercise, and they may reward themselves by eating more,” says lead researcher Tim Church, director of preventive-medicine research at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge. Instead, stick to your meal plan, save up some money, and do something special for yourself.

Following a meal plan isn’t always a breeze. If you prepare your breakfast and lunch the night before you eat them, you won’t become stressed about making them when you are pressed for time. Rewarding yourself for not straying from your healthy meal plan can help keep you motivated and convincing a friend or spouse to follow meal plans with you can be a huge help. Next time you’re embarking on a new diet meal plan, keep these tips in mind for ultimate success.

Easy Dinners: Pasta at Dinnertime

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Linguini, vermicelli, spaghetti, penne, and tortellini: however you eat it, pasta is comforting, delicious, and extremely easy to make. That’s why pasta is the perfect base for any mom on the run who wants to whip up dinner with the boil of a pot. There are plenty of pasta recipes that make dinnertime a leisurely event. Simply turn on the burner, salt and boil some water, then check out these quick and easy dinners and tips to cooking up your favorite pasta dishes.

Great Pasta Dinner Ideas

  • Spaghetti with Sausage: Simply remove the casings of Italian sausage, break it up in a heated pan over medium heat, brown it with 1 diced onion onions first, then 1 sliced red bell peppers 3 minutes later, and 2 diced tomatoes 5 minutes later.  Drain the spaghetti and combine all the ingredients with a little grated Parmesan cheese.  You’ll have an easy, flavorful dish that will delight everyone from kiddos to serious foodies.
  • Pasta Primavera: This is one of those easy healthy dinners. Get a pound of any kind of pasta you like boiling in salted water.  In a heated sauté pan brown 1 diced onion, 1 sliced red or green bell pepper and season with salt and pepper.  After about 5 minutes or until they are tender add 1 or 2 quartered and sliced zucchinis and about a minute later toss in a 15 oz. can of stewed tomatoes with ½ tsp. of dried or fresh basil. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer while you get the pasta drained.  Combine ingredients and top with grated Parmesan cheese and serve!  To make this one of those easy chicken dinners, add chunks of chicken breast in the pan before the vegetables.
  • Easy Macaroni and Cheese: This is one of those easy dinners for kids, they’ll love this timeless, comfort food.  Boil 12 oz. or ¾ of a bag of elbow pasta in salted water, but this time only cook the pasta for half time since you’ll be baking it later.  Preheat oven to 400F.  In a big bowl whisk 1 c. sour cream, 2 Tbs. Dijon mustard and salt and pepper, add the pasta and coat.  Pour mixture into a baking dish and bake for 10 minutes.  Remove from oven and take ¼ c. of sour cream and 8 oz. of grated cheddar cheese and fold into the pasta mixture and bake for another 15-20 minutes.  Viola and now you have a creamy, cheesy delight that is sure to please all!  Alternative veggie to add would be broccoli florets and/or a chopped onion.

Easy Pasta Dinner Tips 

  1. Use plenty of water and make sure it’s come to a full, rolling boil before adding the pasta.
  2. Add salt and a touch of oil to the water, which will enhance the flavors of the pasta.
  3. Cover your pot to make the water boil faster and then again once you’ve added the spaghetti or pasta to make sure it comes back to a boil as quickly as possible.
  4. Many people rinse the gluey starches off of the pasta while draining the water. Don’t rinse! Your sauce will cling to the pasta much better if you don’t rinse off the starchy exterior.
  5. When cooking your pasta, think about how long it will take for you to eat it. If you’re eating it in a few days, over cook it slightly.
  6. When pasta sits in the refrigerator it gets a little harder, so over cook if it’s going straight into the fridge so that, when you do get to your dish, it will be soft and delightful.

Pasta cooks faster than rice and potatoes and with so many different kinds of pasta types and styles out there, you can enjoy quite a variety of quick and easy dinners.  Pasta dishes satisfy appetites, save well for leftovers and can provide you with more easy dinners than you could try to create in nearly an entire year.  The best part is that you don’t have to stick to the recipe, if you have extra or different protein and veggies, just add or substitute for you own special creation.

What to Know Before Creating Meal Ideas for Toddlers

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According to the Childrens Heart Center, how much healthy fat in the form of omega 3 fatty acids a child gets in his or her diet can directly influence his or her brain function later in life. The Childrens Heart Center also asserts that children with diets that are low in cholesterol and fat are less likely to have cardiovascular problems as adults. So, clearly, nutrition is important for your child’s growing body. Teaching toddlers good nutrition habits will set them up for healthy lives as adults.

The most difficult part about planning toddler meals is making the right food choices. There are so many authoritative sources on this subject. Trying to learn and keep up with all these sources can be very overwhelming for new parents. Coming up with meal ideas for kids doesn’t have to be difficult.

Nutrition in Your Toddlers’ Meals

During your child’s early formative years, it’s very critical that your meals for toddlers have a lot of nutritional substance in the form of lean protein, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. Since toddlers are constantly growing, it’s important that you feed your toddler the best fuel so that he or she may grow properly. What tastes good to a toddler isn’t always what’s healthiest. Snacks meant for children are often loaded with sugar and fat and should generally only be eaten in moderation. Parents should focus on providing their toddlers with three healthy, balanced meals a day with a few healthy snacks added in the mix throughout the day.

Breakfast Ideas for Toddlers

In order to start your child’s day out right, he needs an excellent breakfast. Including eggs in your toddler’s breakfast is usually a good idea. Eggs are a great source of protein and chromium, and they can also be mixed in with a variety of other foods. Another great breakfast option is fruit. Almost all fruit can be eaten for breakfast, but bananas, oranges, and apples are probably the ones your toddler will like the most. Pancakes and cereal are popular breakfast choices for toddlers, but they’re usually less healthy than other options. Consider serving your child some whole grain toast topped with organic, all-natural fruit preserves instead of pancakes.

Lunch Ideas for Toddlers

There are a variety of foods that you can feed your toddler for lunch. Since kids’ metabolisms are so fast, most healthy meals for kids can be pretty flexible. Your toddler’s lunch could include some carrots, applesauce, and a turkey sandwich on whole grain bread. Making lunch for your toddler doesn’t have to be difficult or time-consuming. Sometimes some of the healthiest lunches are also the easiest to make. Kids can be picky when they’re younger. So, half the battle is discovering what they like to eat. Experiment with different healthy lunch options for your child, and you’ll be able to discover what he or she likes. What your child likes can become the basis of the lunch menus you plan for him throughout the week.

Dinner Ideas for Toddlers

Some easy dinner meals for your toddler could begin with pasta. Pasta is easy to eat and simple to cook. One healthy dinner option your toddler might like is fish. Fish is the best meat for you; it’s extra lean, and it has been considered a brain food for years because it’s loaded with omega 3 fatty acids. For dinner, it might also be a good idea to include a vegetable in all your meals. Don’t be afraid to season vegetables to make them more appealing to your toddler. Your child may be reluctant to eat raw, unseasoned broccoli. However, your child will find steamed broccoli seasoned with lemon juice and garlic a lot more appealing.

Toddlers may be picky eaters, but that doesn’t mean they can’t learn to love to eat healthy foods. Take some time to figure out what healthy meals your little one likes, and you’ll help pave the way to health for your child as an adult.

Disease and Virus-Fighting Healthy Meal Planner

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In the United States, on average 5% to 20% of the population gets the flu and more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from seasonal flu-related complications. That’s a whole lot of sick time for those of us who get sick. Yes, getting the right amount of sleep and minimizing your stress levels are the keys to some aspects of your health, but ultimately it boils down to what you eat when it comes to determining your physical and mental health. The first step to a healthier you is making a meal planner, then filling it with superfoods that will help you ward of disease.

What is a meal planner?

A meal planner is a device that helps you plan out all of your meals. You can make a calendar or written meal planner if you feel more comfortable writing out your meal plans. If not, try finding a free downloadable meal planner online in which you can fill out your favorite superfoods and superfood meals.

Superfoods and Supermeals for Your Meal Planner

If you want to create a healthy meal planner that helps you keep your immune system strong, put some of these great, go-to superfoods on your grocery list:

  • Almonds: According to the University in California, the fiber in nuts may prevent the body from absorbing fat while speeding up weight loss. Almonds are also high in antioxidants, which may help reduce the risk of cancer. Put sliced almonds on your salad to create the ultimate supermeal.
  • Sprouts: This veggie has plenty of vitamin A and vitamin C. Additionally, sprouts offer a phytonutrient that can help clear carcinogenic substances out of the body.  Put sprouts on your sandwich to add some greenery and some phytonutrients.
  • Strawberries: Make sure to include strawberries in your meal planner, too. These berries are anti-inflammatory, anticancer, and heart-helpful. Strawberries also guard against rheumatoid arthritis, liver cancer, atherosclerosis, and other diseases and ailments. Make yourself a yogurt parfait with sliced strawberries or just eat them whole as a snack.
  • Garlic: Studies suggest the same sulphur compounds that cause odour may also stop cancer-causing substances from forming in your body, speed DNA repair and kill cancer cells. I guess we can live with stinky breath if we’re taking in cancer-causing garlic! One 2003 review of several garlic studies concluded that some compounds derived from garlic “have been found to retard the growth of chemically induced and transplantable tumors in several animal models. Therefore, the consumption of garlic may provide some kind of protection from cancer development.” Implement garlic into your healthy meal planner by putting it on pizza, cooking with it, or infusing your olive oil with roasted garlic cloves.
  • Broccoli: Health experts constantly discuss the health benefits of broccoli. “Broccoli is the best source of this particular compound,” says scientist Jed Fahey of broccoli’s sulphoraphane count. Sulphorane may reduce cancer risk by detoxifying harmful substances and operating as an antimicrobial agent by attacking various bacterium. Additionally, the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research contend that broccoli and its sister veggies are most protective against cancers of the mouth, oesophagus and stomach. Eat broccoli in a casserole, salad, or as a side with grilled chicken.
  • Exotic Berries: Berries like acai and gogi berries are full of antioxidants, which have disease fighting compounds that scientists believe repair or prevent the stress of oxidation, a process that occurs naturally during normal cell function. Therefore, antioxidants may reduce chances of heart disease, neurological diseases, and even cancer while increasing immunity. Implement antioxidants into your healthy meal planner by putting gogi berries and acai berry powder (below), and other berries in fruit smoothies and drinking them up for breakfast.

Eat these supermeals with disease-fighting superfoods to stay strong and healthy. These superfoods will make great additions to your healthy meal planner and may even cut down on your sick days.

Get Organized with a Grocery List Checklist

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Perhaps it’s pride, or maybe just laziness, but nine times out of ten we end up grocery-store bound without a checklist. However, according to surgeon Atul Gawande, author of The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, operating without a checklist is inefficient and illogical. “I introduced the checklist in my operating room, and I’ve not gotten through a week without it catching a problem,” Gawande said in an interview. “It has been really eye-opening. You just realize how fundamentally fallible we are.”

Grocery shopping is, by no stretch of the imagination, a surgical procedure, however, we could learn something from Gawande’s advice. Bottom line: we mess up from time to time. A grocery list check list can make it so that nothing slips through the cracks, eliminating one stressor from our lives. While making and completing a checklist may feel like a waste of time to some, it’s extremely helpful and fast, and it allows you to get home from the grocery store with all the necessary ingredients to make a great meal.

Making the Perfect Grocery Store Checklist

While it may sound a bit silly, crafting the perfect, fail-proof checklist takes time and a bit of effort. Now there are plenty of grocery list checklists online that you can customize and print. Whether you’re making a list by hand or you’re customizing one on the web, keep these key factors in mind when making your checklist:

  • Size: Do you want an enormous checklist that you won’t lose in a huge purse? Or do you prefer a bite-sized list that you can throw in your pocket? Generally, bigger grocery lists, the ones that don’t fall out of your purse, pocket, car, or cart, are better for shopping purposes. An 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper is ideal for most.
  • Font: That cutesy font may look fabulous on the computer screen, but it may not be functional as you’re juggling children, cereal boxes, and a grocery cart, all while trying to read your list. Opt for an easily legible font, preferably in a dark color, like black.
  • Grouping and Flow: Consider grouping your items according to grocery store layout, or even order of occurrence within your grocery store. Thinking about the design of your store while making your list could save you some time when wandering the numerous aisles.
  • Quantity: Many people don’t include quantity when they’re putting items on their grocery list, but we suggest thinking about the number of each item you need before you step out your door, taking your recipes or meal plans into consideration. Dictating quantity ahead of time could prevent food waste and save you a buck.
  • Make it mandatory: Grocery lists don’t work unless they’re enforced. Put your grocery list on the refrigerator or post it up on your front door so that you don’t forget your list before you leave the house.

Your schedule’s probably jam-packed with a million things to do. You can make your life a little less disorganized by arming yourself with a grocery list checklist next time you go shopping for groceries. It will save you time and money at the store, which will make it worth the extra effort.

Low Calorie Meal Plans: The Volumetric Diet

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Bottom line: the only way to lose weight is to establish a calorie deficit. This means that if you’re trying to lose weight, you must establish a low calorie meal plan, or at least a meal plan that contains less calories than your current caloric intake. Establishing this calorie deficit may, however, trigger some not-so-comfortable feelings, like hunger. So what if we want to lose weight, but avoid those debilitating hunger pains? Tactics like “volumetrics,” or eating higher-density foods, can help you eat more but weigh less. Keep these low calorie meal plans and density tips in mind if you’re trying to lose a few.

Volumetric Low Calorie Meal Plans

Volumetric dieting is based on the idea that people like to eat, a universal truth as we all can attest to. People tend to eat the same amount of food per day, whether the foods they choose are calorie-rich or not. Volumetrics is all about getting more mileage out of what you eat. Therefore, according to this philosophy, the best way to lose weight is to eat healthy foods that provide low energy but high volume. With these low-calorie foods, you feel full without filling yourself with high amounts of calories. For example, fruits and veggies have a small amount of calories, but they are very high in density, making them great choices for any diet. Raisins, however, pack a high amount of calories into a tiny package–about 1/4 raisins has about 100 calories. Grapes, unlike raisins, have the same number of calories for an entire cup, making them a better choice if following the volumetric diet.

Other foods that fill you up may include fruits, vegetables, soups, popcorn, puffed rice, egg whites, shrimp, and chicken. Plan your meals around volumetric philosophy by filling half a plate of veggies, one quarter with whole grains, then a small serving of lean protein. A great volumetric meal is anything with fibrous veggies, like a lentil bean soup, which will leave you feeling full and satisfied, or a grilled chicken salad with lots of greens. These meals will not only make you feel fuller because of their high volume, but they’ll also make you chew more, which will send signals to your brain to stop eating sooner. This chewing fact has been confirmed by researchers at Reuters, who found that chewing food 40 times instead of a typical 15 times caused study participants to eat nearly 12 percent fewer calories. Another mind trick? Use smaller plates and spoons! Brian Wansink, a food psychology professor at Cornell University said, “We eat with our eyes, not with our stomach” after performing a study that showed that people tend to eat 25% more when using a bigger plate.

In short, volumetrics and the volumetric ideology can greatly aid anyone’s weight loss goals. Next time you’re trying to create a low calorie meal plan, make sure to plan meals that are high volume and low calorie for great results.

Family Meal Planning for a Wonderful Family Barbecue

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Barbecue doesn’t just satisfy the appetite. It brings a smile to everyone’s face! That’s why it’s important to rally together the family for an outdoor BBQ every once and a while. Family meal planning can help you get everyone involved in cooking, and eating, your family BBQ. Whether you’re cooking a 4th of July feast or you’re just having the immediate family over for an impromptu dinner, take these tips into account before your next BBQ, family meal planning venture:

  • Coordinate a pot luck so that you don’t have to cook all the sides. Have aunts, cousins, and nieces each bring something: a coleslaw, fresh fruit salad, pasta salad, fresh greens salad, potato salad, and desserts! If no one wants to take dessert duty, just set up an ice cream sundae bar with bananas, whipped cream, hot fudge, sprinkles, and, most importantly, vanilla bean ice cream.
  • Get your family’s input when choosing a cut of meat. St. Louis ribs (pork spareribs that have been trimmed of rib tips, skirt meat, and point), baby back ribs, country-style ribs, Skirt steak (lose grain and intensely beefy, diaphragm muscle of the steer, used in fajitas), and pork spareribs (taken from the belly of the hog and cut close to the rib to leave the belly intact).
  • Divide up the responsibilities: Try making a meal plan, that lists each person in the family and their individual task. If one person can’t cook, they’re on dish duty. Other responsibilities may include going to the butchers and buying the meat, making the grocery list, or manning the grill.
  • Keep steak tips in mind when cooking up steak: Different cuts of steak cook at different times, so just make sure you look up the best way to cook up your steak. Some cooks rely on the “touch test.” According to Saveur magazine, “A rare steak is supposed to feel like the fleshy triangle of skin between the thumb and index finger of a relaxed hand; that same spot on a fist matches the firmness of a medium steak; if you want it well done, compare it to the feel of the tip of your nose.” While this may be a great option for some, get an instant-read thermometer if you want to judge the “doneness” of the steak.

If you keep these tips in mind, you’ll have a great BBQ filled with family fun. Give your family some bonding time this summer with a wonderful barbecue dinner complete with Southern-style sides and a dessert for an event to remember.

Three Types of Meal Planning Software

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We now spend almost half of out waking hours either online, on the phone, or watching TV according to a recent survey. This technology makes our lives extremely more efficient, even for domestic tasks, like meal planning. Meal planning software can help you with several aspects of your meal planning, whatever your specific needs may be. Here are three different types of meal planning software that could help you:

Meal Planning Software with Online Capabilities

There are plenty of reasons why you may need meal planning software that plugs into the cloud. If you’re social and like to exchange recipes then you may need to look at meal planning software that connects you to other users online. The software can, in some ways, act as a social network for meal planners — an online forum where members can chat, give feedback, rate and post meal plans, and give advice to other members. Online capabilities could also come in handy if you like to access your meal planning software from multiple locations or devices, like from your phone or tablet in addition to your desktop or laptop.

Meal Planning Software with Default Diet Plans

If your goal is to lose weight or trim up, you may want to look into meal planning software that caters to these needs. Meal planning software can have default meal plans to lose weight, low fat meal plans, and even a body building meal plan for those that want to bulk up or build strength. These default plans should be constructed using the best resources on the particular subject, namely, statistics and data gathered by physicians and doctors. If a user does not like one of the default meal plans, they can at least use them as a starting point to develop their own meal plan.

Meal Planning Software with Nutritional Stat Tracker

If you’re not getting the right amounts of nutrients then a meal plan with nutritional data may be a great asset. Try seeking out meal planners formulated by dietitians and experts in the nutritional field. Make sure you’re getting enough calories and a balance of different nutrients to keep you energized and healthy. Also keep your eyes peeled for meal planning software that allows you to track your exercise, whether it be climbing the stairs at work or walking your pup.

Whatever your meal planning needs, make sure that your meal planning software caters to your individual, lifestyle. A meal planner could help you achieve your goals and get organized.

Making Cheap Family Meals: Getting Organic for Less

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Do you buy your apples organic? A recent screening from the U.S. Department of Agriculture found pesticide residue in 98% of apples, the highest rate of all the produce it examined. The numbers are shocking! To us, it’s clear: organic is healthier, safer, and overall better for us, our families, and the environment. While we would prefer to feed our little ones apple slices that aren’t contaminated with pesticide residue, organic isn’t exactly the thriftiest option. However, there are ways to get organic for cheaper. You can still make cheap family meals with organic ingredients. All it takes is a little bit of  brain power and prioritizing to make organic fit into your budget-friendly family meal plan.

  • Shop seasonal: Shopping seasonally will give you the most bang for your buck when it comes to organic, and you can often find seasonal ingredients on sale, too!
  • Go for the off-brand: Both regular and all-organic supermarkets frequently provide organic versions of big-name organic products. When you’re at a supermarket, pick the store brand over big-name organic products.

  • Shop at farmer’s markets: Most of your buys will be cheaper and fresher at the farmer’s markets. If you don’t see a sign that says organic, be sure to ask. Most farmers at the markets are making the transition into organic farming, but haven’t earned the necessary funds to get officially certified. Just because they’re not considered organic by the USDA, doesn’t mean that they’re not farming using organic, sustainable, and healthy practices. The best thing about farmer’s markets? You can haggle! Try to land a deal with the farmer for misshapen produce, or for bulk purchases. With a little bit of swindling, you could land yourself a deal.
  • Buying clubs: A buying club is a great way to get the organic food you want for cheap. Buying-club members purchase food and other organic products in bulk and then split the stash. In a buying club, you may be able to get 30 percent to 40 percent off the retail price.
  • Grow it yourself: We may not all have a green thumb, but growing small herbs, fruits, and veggies could give you a little bunch of produce for a fraction of the retail price. Best of all? It’s right in your backyard! If you’re a beginner, try growing a small indoor garden with plants like spinach, carrot, kale, basil, and rosemary, which will give you plants all year round.

Know what you should and shouldn’t buy organic: You don’t have to buy everything organic, necessarily. Plants with a husk or thick rind often go unpolluted by pesticides because of their thicker skin. Produce that usually goes pesticide-free includes avocado, pineapples, cantaloupe, kiwi, watermelon, grapefruit, and onions.

If you’re trying to keep your meals cheap but healthy, keep these tips in mind! When you buy organic you’ll taste and feel the difference, while feeling better about the meals that you’re serving your family.