Did you know that it is possible to save money when you’re trying to live as organically as possible? Although eating organically will still take a big bite out of your grocery budget, here are some tips to help you save your hard earned dollars while feeding your family a healthy diet:
First of all, a major way to save would be to know the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen list of fruits and vegetables. If your budget can’t allow for you to buy absolutely everything organically, focus on the fruits and vegetables that use the least amount of pesticides.
Here are the lists:
Dirty Dozen (try to only buy these when they’re organic)
Strawberries
Spinach
Nectarines
Apples
Grapes
Peaches
Cherries
Pears
Tomatoes
Celery
Potatoes
Sweet Bell Peppers
Clean Fifteen (Buy these when your budget won’t allow for these in organic form)
Avocados
Sweet Corn
Pineapples
Cabbage
Onions
Sweet Peas (frozen)
Papayas
Asparagus
Mangoes
Eggplant
Honeydew Melon
Kiwi
Cantaloupe
Cauliflower
Broccoli
Here are 10 more ideas to help you reduce your grocery budget:
Use coupons from The Healthy Shopper
I’ve posted about The Healthy Shopper coupons in the past and I think they could be a valuable resource for you! Sign up and print the coupons that interest you then use them at your local health food store or other stores that have a natural living section. You’ll find coupons for brands such as Simply Natural, ECOVER, Liberte, Natura, Seventh Generation, Sisu, Tom’s and more.
Cook from scratch
Cooking from scratch is always cheaper, no matter what kind of food you purchase. But in the case of organic eating, purchasing individual ingredients to create something that you could purchase already made (convenience items) could save you a bucket of money.
Purchasing locally grown and produced food, cuts down on the cost of transportation and supports your local economy. Buying locally means you’ll be receiving the food soon after it’s harvested, which means you’ll be getting a lot more life out of your purchases, in turn, reducing waste. Items that aren’t grown locally, have most likely spent a good amount of their “life” being transported to stores. Which means, you may find that the items spoil quickly forcing you to throw them away.
Buy what’s on sale
Many large grocery stores are starting to have pretty decent organic sections. Quite often, by looking in the flyers, you’ll see some items on sale that you can add to your shopping list. When you shop the sales, you be able to base your meal plan around these items and possibly purchase the items you use frequently in bulk.
Pick your own produce
Picking your own produce can be fun, especially for kids or a group of girlfriends! For a list of farms where you can pick your own produce in Canada visit PickYourOwn.org.
Try organic gardening
If you have the yard space, why not try your hand at gardening? You could even try container or square foot gardening if your space is more limited. You Grow Girl is a great resource for learning about organic gardening!
Freeze or can all the produce you’ve picked up from your local produce stands, farmer’s markets or that you’ve grown in your own garden. Doing this, you’ll be able to enjoy seasonal items all through the winter! Stop by your local library to read up on canning and freezing methods and recipes. Or, here’s a great online article to help you out!
Shop at your local farmer’s market
Buying directly from the farmer will help you save some dollars. In shopping at your farmer’s market, you’ll also know exactly where/who the produce and other items come from! Find a farmer’s market near you on FarmersMarketCanada.ca.
I hope that this will help those of you who were asking for some tips on eating organically!
Do you have any other tips to share for eating organic on a budget?
Eating gluten free on a budget can be difficult. But here are 4 useful tips to help you stay healthy and eating well on a gluten free diet.
How to Eat Gluten Free on a Budget
The following post is a guest post by Jeanine, from Faithfully Gluten Free! Make sure you check out her fabulous blog!
Whether you’ve been diagnosed with Celiac disease, are gluten-intolerant, or are eating a gluten-free diet for your own health benefits, you will know that it is not a cheap diet to be on. I’m going to try to list some points that helped me to eat gluten-free on a budget.
Eat real foods
Vegetables, unprocessed meats, most dairy, and rice do not contain gluten. By staying away from processed foods, which may contain gluten, try to cook a meal using ingredients in their natural state. For example, use potatoes instead of frozen hash browns.
Buy your flours in bulk
By purchasing your flours in large quantities, you will get a better price per pound than if you buy the small packages of flour.
If you are in Canada, you can save money by purchasing the large, unopened bags of gluten free flours and starches at Bulk Barn. Since the bags are still sealed, you don’t have to worry about cross contamination.
To extend the shelf life, you can store the unused portion in sealed containers in the freezer or fridge. You could also team up with others that have to eat gluten free, and divide the large bags between the group, assuring that you always have fresh flours on hand.
Learn to cook & bake
When you are on a gluten-free diet, eating gluten-free is usually a life long commitment that you have to make to keep yourself feeling well. Since it is not just a phase, you might as well learn to make the best of it!
By learning how to cook and bake, you open your kitchen up to endless opportunities.
The gluten-free doughnuts, bread, granola bars and muffins that you can buy in the store may be good for convenience, but that is about it. Nothing beats home baking! With some practice, you will be able to replicate nearly all your favourite gluten-filled goodies using gluten-free flours.
You will just have to trust me on this. I have been eating and baking gluten-free for nearly 3 years now, and I am definitely not “living without”.
Plan ahead
When you go out for the day, you should take a gluten-free snack along from home. Some gluten-free crackers, nuts, and dried or fresh fruit are all some ideas. Once you are out and about, you may not be able to find a suitable snack for your diet. Having something to munch on is better than going through a drive-through for French fries.
These tips, combined with all the great menu planning and grocery shopping articles provided on Simply Frugal, will help you to eat gluten free on a budget so well, that you won’t feel like you’re missing out.
Jeanine Friesen authors Faithfully Gluten Free, a blog dedicated to recipes for those on a gluten-free diet, because she believes no one should have to go without.
Last week I went over my favourite ways to save money eating out. This week I hope to show you how easy it is to make restaurant meals at home, for cheap! There’s something satisfying about creating a meal that tastes really similar to your favourite dish at a local restaurant. It costs way less, the quantity is much larger and well, it tastes great!
One of my favourite recipes that I make is a copy cat recipe for Panera Bread’s (an American chain) Broccoli & Cheddar soup.
5 cups broccoli florets
6 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 cups milk or half & half
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour
2 – 3 cups grated cheddar cheese
bacon, cooked and chopped (optional)
Steam broccoli until tender, about six minutes. Chop finely. Set aside. In a large saucepan combine broth and milk. Slowly whisk in flour. Cook over medium to medium high heat stirring frequently. Cook until it starts to thicken but not too thick. I usually do it until it just starts to boil. Add chopped broccoli. Reduce heat to med low. Continue to cook about 5 minutes. Add cheese stir until cheese melts. Serve. If using bacon sprinkle each bowl with a little.
Another way I like to create restaurant meals is by making my own pizza! By the time you finish ordering your take out pizza, the cost can be pretty pricey. What I like to do is make up the dough, divide it into two, make one entire pizza then freeze the other half of the dough to have on hand for the next pizza.
Grocery Store Tricks they use to get you to spend more
Did you know that grocery stores have some super sneaky tactics that they use to entice you to spend more? Now, these tactics are great for their business and actually quite smart, but not so good for those of us who would like to decrease our grocery bill!
These grocery store tricks work because so many of us are impulse spenders. How many things do you come home with every time you go grocery shopping that you didn’t intend on buying when you were still at home? I’m guilty and I’m sure almost all of us are!
Here are 7 grocery store tricks you may want to avoid to save money:
Buy 1 Get 1 Free
Everyone loves getting something for free!
You may be wondering what’s so bad about this? To be honest, nothing… if you were intending on buying that product anyway.
If you weren’t intending on buying the product, you do get a free item, but you’re still spending extra money that may not be in your budget to get the initial item so you can get the deal.
Free Samples
One word…Costco.
Free samples are down almost every aisle at Costco. Combining the smell and taste of these samples, they’ve pretty much got you.
Those tasty treats will be haunting you even if you don’t purchase them at that moment. You might see them on sale somewhere and suddenly they’re in your shopping cart.
Costco isn’t the only grocery store I’ve seen free samples at though, Costco just stands out in my mind. My advice? Don’t buy, just consider them a nice snack or perk for shopping. (Unless of course, you had intended on buying that product anyways!)
Giant Shopping Carts
All grocery stores provide shopping carts for your convenience.
By providing shopping carts of the gigantic variety, they’re hoping you’ll fill your cart to the brim with stuff you “can’t live without”.
Make sure you bring a shopping list to keep yourself on track. If you’re needing only a few items, leave the cart or shopping basket at the door.
Store Layout
All you need is some milk. But since the milk is all the way in the back of the store, you happen to stumble across some great deals and you remembered you could probably use some bananas.
While you were intending on spending only $5 or so for the milk, you ended up paying close to $20 with all your extras included.
The grocery store didn’t place the milk at the back because they weren’t sure where else to put it… they want you to walk through as many aisles as possible so that you buy as much as possible!
You’ll actually notice that all the daily necessities are placed in far, out of the way locations. Same idea here, they want your eyes to see all the great things they have to offer in hopes you’ll be enticed to spend above what you had intended in the first place.
End Caps
End caps are the shelves at the end of every aisle.
On the end caps, you’ll find new items on “special” that the manager would like to bring your attention to. More often than not, these products profit the store, and not you, the consumer.
Clearance bins
Looking through the items, you’ll find something you never knew you needed since it’s now on sale! Score!
When you bring the item home you may realize you really didn’t need it and spent money needlessly. (I’ve been there! Ugh.)
One final thought on the clearance bins, the sale price might not actually be a steal. Double check the regular price to make sure you’re actually getting a significant discount.
Checkout stands
Checkout stands have high-profit impulse items like chocolate bars, gum and magazines placed around and near them.
While we wait our turn in the checkout line, the store has a captive audience and know if they place as many different products into this area as possible, they’ll earn a large amount on impulse sales.
I’m fairly certain that there isn’t one of us that hasn’t been tricked into spending more than we intended at the grocery store. I know for a fact that I’m guilty!
Have you been suckered by any of these grocery store tricks? Are there any other sneaky ways the grocery store will entice you to spend?
Here we are at the final installment of Eating Healthy on a Budget! This week it’s all about Cooking it Slow. By that I mean, using your slow-cooker to make dinner! This is one of my all time favourite ways to cut costs on my grocery bill.
Not only does a slow-cooker use less electricity to heat than an oven, but since it cooks slowly using low heat, it’s perfect for tenderizing less expensive cuts of meat! Love that!
Another reason I love Cooking it Slow? It’s super easy (I can’t mess up!) and there’s no maintenance! Many times I make a recipe using some meat and a sauce. I put the meat in the bottom then cover it with an easy sauce that will make it taste delicious! Then I go about my business for the rest of the day knowing that dinner is basically making itself.
I’ve also noticed that I use less meat in a slow-cooker meal. The meat seems to go much farther then when I prepare it in the oven or stove top.
Below, you’ll find a bunch of our favourite slow-cooker recipes:
Part three in the Eating Healthy on a Budget series is all about buying items in bulk!
I find that buying items I use often end up being cheaper in the long run when I purchase them in large quantities. Most grocery stores sell large batches of certain items at discounted prices. For example, ground beef or those giant bags of flour. Another example would be a 10 pound bag of potatoes. But in our case, since it’s just my husband and I, I skip the big bag of potatoes and settle for a smaller one to avoid waste.
I figure I’ll buy everything I can in large quantities if we can finish it in a reasonable amount of time or I can freeze it. Here are some things that freeze well:
Meat (either cooked or uncooked)
Flour
Fruit (strawberries, peaches, cherries)
Vegetables (beans, corn, tomatoes…etc)
Butter
Breads, pastries and baked goods (cookies, muffins)
Cooked rice
Anything I’m forgetting?
Since chicken goes on sale about every 6 weeks around here, I tend to stock up at this time then freeze it into packages of two. Works great! Also, we live in the land of orchards so whenever fruit is in season I go crazy and buy tons so I can freeze it for smoothies, desserts, or just to eat in the winter! We’re not jam eaters so I haven’t canned anything other then salsa and pickles. Canning is also a great way to preserve large quantities of items!
