Is It Possible To Eat Healthy While Maintaining A Limited Food Budget?

This is the question that I have been asking myself a lot lately.  While living in upstate NY, we had settled into a grocery routine and had bulk food shopping down to a science.  However, since moving to Texas in September and living in a city, I became lax in my pursuit of bulk food shopping and have made many more trips to the grocery store and health food store just because it is conveniently located in the same town  and not far from my house.  Our food budget is $600 a month for a family of seven.  I still make most things from scratch and have some favorite blogs that I get my recipes from and even get a menu mailed to me each month from one of my favorite cooking blogs, Stolen Moments.  She also has a blog at Stolen Moments Cooking.  That being said, I have been encouraged to look for places to order in bulk and save money.

This morning when I woke up, I decided to write out a spread sheet of all the food we regularly purchase, how much we go through in a year, and how much everything cost.  The next thing that I did was to brake it down by the month.  I divided that number by 12.  Finally, I broke it down even further and divided that number by 4 giving me the total for the week.  When it was all done, I was amazed that I had still had around $100 extra each month that I could spend.  Wow!!!  I encourage you, too, to do the math and see where your money is going and how far you can stretch it.

Here is a break down of what I did:

• Nuts- $59 a month
• Meat- $141 a month
• eggs- $48 a month
• Dairy- $80 a month
• Bulk food order from Azure Standard- $175

         Total Spending = $503 a month


Recently I discovered that Azure Standard has a delivery stop in my town.  Boy, did I ever rejoice when I found out!  My nuts come from Braga Organic Farms in California.  This is a family owned business.  I order the nuts and dried fruit in bulk, get a 10% discount from Heavenly Homemakers, and only pay $10 in shipping.  This morning, I ordered 100 pounds of nuts and dried fruit and payed $708 with shipping.  Also, a friend recently told me about a nearby farmer who sells beef, pork, chicken, eggs, lamb, and goat.  His animals are grass-fed and are well taken care of with no hormones and plenty of sunshine.  His farm is in Lubbock, but he delivers all over Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado.  He has a delivery stop here in town each month.  The name of his place is Paidom.  His egg prices are between $3.50 to $4 a dozen.  Plus with all the other meats he sells our order with him will average around $1700 a year.  We plan on buying 3 dozen eggs a week, 24 chickens, half a cow, and half a pig.  Our bulk food order will come from Azure Standard and will cost around $175 a month in the beginning and then average out to around $100-$125 a month.  Our dairy will either come from Braums Ice Cream and Dairy or from a private farmer (hopefully this will be the case).  Vegetables will come from our back yard.  I also plan on ordering my herbs in bulk from Bulk Herb Store and this is a place that I highly encourage you to visit soon if you have not already.  The service is superior and the product is beyond amazing.  The shipping is fast and the herbs are super fresh!  Plus if you order from my side button, I get store credit.  All the more reason to order from them.  Olive Nations is also a great place to order things like olive oil, vanilla beans, and such.  If you order through Heavenly Homemaker you can get 10% of your total order and shipping is always free.

This year we also plan on having our own garden.  A friend recently loaned me The All New Square Foot Gardening.  I will be using this method of gardening while using Heirloom seeds.  Hopefully my garden will grow well and we will be able to harvest quite a bit of vegetables from it this year.  This will be my first garden ever and I am very excited about it.

So to answer the question about eating healthy while maintaing a limited budget- YES it is possible.  Just  look around and ask others.  Eventually, you, too will be finding lots of places where you can save money and eat healthy foods.  Before I found Azure Standard, I shopped a lot at Natural Grocers.  Their sales prices are amazing.  I still plan on shopping there.  In addition, there are farmers markets in the summer.  Last of all, there is Swag bucks (points that you get just for searching the internet that translate into gift cards or prizes) that you can use to purchase groceries and other things at Amazon.  If you sign up for their subscribe and save program, you can save 15% more.  Plus you can save 15% more if you sign up for Amazon Moms.  How do you save on your grocery budget while eating healthy?

Thursdays: From Scratch (Week 4)

Making things from scratch has become an everyday part of my life.  Just about everything that we eat is made from scratch.  I am thankful to Sarah for leading us in this challenge.  It has been a learning experience and challenging at times.  There have been times when I have been stressed out because of all the time involved in making everything from scratch.  Many days we have just done school work in the kitchen on the floor while waiting on something in the oven or something rising.  The children have learned how to cook right along beside me.  In fact, 2 of my five children now have homemade aprons made by me.  It makes me feel like a proud momma when I see how excited they are about cooking and about wearing their aprons with confidence.  Just this week, my seven year old daughter made scrambled eggs with turkey for breakfast and my nine year old son made pancakes.  Our youngest loves to sign cook with her hands and knows right where her apron and step stool are being kept.

This journey has been a tremendous help when it comes to saving money.  All you need to do is buy the basic staple items and be amazed at what all you can make with just the basic items.  I would like to give you an example.  My mother-in-law brought lots of trix yogurt for the children.  I have been making our own yogurt for some time and looked at this as an opportunity to stretch the yogurt and make it last a lot longer.  I have a yogurt maker and I poured 7 of my  glass containers full of milk and brought it to a boil where the milk was coming up the sides of the pan.  Then I let it cool down to 110 degrees and took out about 1 cup of the milk and mixed it with 1 of the 4 ounces of trix yogurt and then poured it back in the pan.  Next, I mixed it and poured it into the individual cups and let it warm at 110 degrees in the yogurt maker for about 10 hours.  When it was done, I screwed on the lids and put it in the refrigerator and ate it for breakfast the next morning.  I now think that I have 8 cups of trix in the refrigerator which will made 56 cups of yogurt.

Chocolate oatmeal cake and stromboli were also big hits for our family this week.  I found the recipe for chocolate oatmeal cake over at Phoebe's blog and the recipe for stromboli was Grandmother's bread that I just rolled out and added american cheese slices and turkey slices.

Thursdays: From Scratch (Week 3)

This week I have found my true passion in making things from scratch, baking.  This was my week in pictures.

The bread that you see pictured above was from grandmother bread.  The first loaf was a regular loaf of bread for sandwiches.  The second loaf of bread was for french toast.  The third loaf of bread was rolled out and had american cheese slices inside it.  Making bagels and cinnamon rolls was also a lot of fun.  

Grandmothers bread needed to be baked longer.  I pulled them all out of the oven thinking they were done and sliced it all.  This was a mistake because the bread was doughy in the center.  We ate it anyway  and ended up with tummy aches.  So, the next day when I served the bread again, I sliced it down the middle and tried baking it longer and found out that it only got harder.  Learning from experience is how I learn best.

Sewing- I was also able to work on one of my son's apron.  It is almost finished.  Maybe next week I will be able to post a picture of the completed apron.

Cleaning supplies- windex.  Using one cup of vinegar, 1 teaspoon of dish washing detergent, and 3 cups of water I was able to make an entire spray bottle of window cleaning solution.

Don't forget to head on over to Sarah's blog and check out her progress and all the others who have joined her.

Thursdays: From Scratch (Week 2)

This weeks from scratch journey led me to making brown sugar muffins, 2 batches of whole wheat hamburger buns, 4 loaves of cinnamon raisin bread, cinnamon raisin bread french toast, dried cranberries, 2 batches of yogurt,  part of an apron for Joshua,  learning to patch holes in jeans, and window cleaner.  I will be posting pictures at a later time.

My dried cranberries were an utter failure.  I had the crazy idea to set a pan with waxed paper and cranberries cut in half on top of our wood stove.  When I saw that it was too warm, I set it on the counter for a while and then in the oven at 200 degrees for a few hours.  Needless to say, I burned them!  After talking with a friend whose mom dried all their fruit, she said that she put them on a pan and set the pan in the attic for a few days because the air was drier up there.  I will persevere and keep trying until I get them right and then I will try my hand at drying grapes.  The idea of making my own dried fruit is very impressive to me because of the high cost of dried fruit.  If anyone else has had any luck drying your own fruit without paying for a food dehydrator I would love to hear how you did it.

Making things from scratch saves a lot of money and is totally worth the time.  The children love it just as much as I do and they are learning right along with me.  This week I plan on looking for a recipe for homemade ravioli. If anyone else wants to share of their journey in making homemade pasta, please share.  Also, I would like to venture out and start sewing more, but I have not yet figured out how to fit that into the schedule more then about once a week.  Any suggestions?

Don't forget to hop on over to Sarah's blog http://8-muddyboots.blogspot.com and read how others  journey from scratch went this week.  She would love to have more join her on her journey.  It does not have to be a lot of work.  One recipe a week or one thing made from scratch a week is a big help when it comes to becoming a frugal mom.

Thursdays: From Scratch

This week I took on a challenge from Sarah over at http://8-muddyboots.blogspot.com/ to make as many things from scratch as I am able and then post about my progress every Thursday.  For the first time ever this week I made homemade whole wheat hamburger buns.  My family liked them so much that I made them 3 times this week.  I also made whole wheat buttery pan rolls (with the little bit of butter I had left), whole wheat tortillas, and navy bean and ham soup.  My sewing machine was also brought out this week.  I decided that it would be a fun thing to make aprons for all of my children.  The only apron that I was able to finish this week was for my oldest daughter.  I used material that I had left over from the curtains that I made for the girls room several years ago.  I am still planning on stitching on her name.  This is my favorite material.   Lastly, I am learning how to patch jeans.