A Week of Meals in My House

Before I post the details about my food budget for all who have asked, I wanted to post an example of what we eat. I don't make meal menus because I am a procrastinator and because our food on hand differs each week. We have a few things that we eat pretty regularly and a few freezer meals that I make in advance when I have time. (We ate a lot of freezer meals when we were living in the camper!) If you want recipes, let me know and I can post them. I never follow recipes and am forever modifying them to what I want, but I should be writing things down.

Day 1

Breakfast: Omelets with spinach, onion and a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese (We eat omelets a few times a week and what I put in them always depends on what comes in our CSA box-sometimes spinach, collard greens, peppers, etc.)

Lunch: Raw veggies with hummus, yogurt & fruit, granola (The hummus is homemade, the produce is from our CSA box, and the yogurt is store-bought.)

Dinner: Cabbage Runza casserole (This is cabbage, onion, ground beef, cheese & pastry layered in a casserole dish. It's delicious and it's a great way to get my kids to eat a TON of cabbage.)

Dessert: Pear pie (We have had an abundance of pears this month so I've been using them in everything lately! This is not a healthy dessert when you consider the amount of butter I used, but it was delicious.)

Day 2

Breakfast: Crockpot oatmeal with cinnamon, apples, raisins, flax seed, and brown sugar (I modified this recipe from Kate's blog. I use either steel cut oats and add a bit of extra water, or just use the regular organic oats. It cooks overnight so it's ready to go in the morning and I like to drizzle it with a bit of coconut milk.)

Lunch: Sandwiches with peanut butter and honey, yogurt & granola, apple slices (We didn't can any jellies this year and our supply ran out so we've been using honey more often until berries are in season again.)

Dinner: Leek & Potato Soup with bread (Confession: I had never had a leek until I started making this soup recently. I usually make soup once a week and the type depends on what's in our CSA box. My kids are particularly fond of the leek soup and cream of celery soup. Both of these soups are pureed so they are thick and smooth and very filling. I had green onions a few weeks ago and rinsed them, chopped them, dried them, and popped them in the freezer to be easily added into any meal.)

Day 3

Breakfast: Cereal & fruit (Dry cereal, often Cheerios, is for the days when I'm too busy to make something. On a super busy week when I have to run out somewhere , the box of cereal saves me.)

Lunch: Tortilla chips with salsa, yogurt, fruit salad (We love Mexican food and eat it at least once a week in some form. I make it from scratch so I consider it pretty healthy since it's full of fresh veggies. I buy the organic tortilla chips in huge bags from Costco. The fruit salad is never the same-it also varies based on the contents of the CSA box. Right now it's mostly apples, pears, and citrus fruits.)

Dinner: Thai chicken stir-fry (This is one of our favorite meals! I never make it the same way twice. Last week we had this beautiful veggie in our box-Romanesco broccoli! I added it to our usual stir-fry ingredients of broccoli, onions, and peppers. Sometimes I serve the stir-fry over noodles and sometimes I add in cabbage and omit the noodles. I make the sauce with organic peanut butter and a delicious bottled Thai sauce. There is nothing funnier than watching my kids slurp up long strings of onion and cabbage just like it is spaghetti noodles! Oh, and speaking of spaghetti, we do eat that as a fast meal when I'm in a rush. I like to layer spaghetti ingredients and spinach leaves in a casserole dish and bake it. Yum!)

Day 4

Breakfast: Breakfast bars (This is a recipe of my own creation using oats, Cheerios, raisins, and coconut along with some "secret" ingredients like wheat germ and flax meal.)

Lunch: Sandwiches with almond butter, oranges, carrots (This was our picnic lunch at the park so I grabbed anything portable. The artisan bread book has an amazing recipe for sandwich bread and it's the best sandwich bread I've ever tried. We always used to buy the organic wheat sandwich bread but this is so much better!)

Dinner: Mexican vegetarian mix on tortillas (This was my homemade salsa with tomatoes, peppers, onions, black beans, corn, and cilantro. I rolled it up in tortillas but I sometimes layer it on tortilla chips and melt cheese on top. If we have avocados I will make fresh guacamole too.)

Dessert: Bubbly Pear cupcakes (It's a long story, but I had this old bottle of champagne that had been sitting around for years. When googling recipes for pears cupcakes, I found one that called for bubbly in the mix. I decided to go for it and I made the most delicious, moist, pear cupcakes. They had a cream cheese icing. I couldn't believe how good they were!)

Day 5

Breakfast: Oatmeal (on the stove) with honey and raisins (My dad got us hooked on this oatmeal. I love trying new types of honey-right now it's blueberry honey from a local farm. I have never had a problem finding delicious, raw honey wherever we live. Perfect for oatmeal on a chilly morning!)

Lunch: Peanut butter & honey sandwiches, yogurt, fruit salad (I always mix it up by adding different things to the oatmeal. Brittany gave me the idea of using chia seeds as a topping for yogurt and oatmeal.

Dinner: Omelets stuffed with the last of the Mexican mix (Jason calls these "MVF omelets" because we've seen similar omelets on Man Vs. Food. These particular omelets were filled with my salsa and veggies, black beans, a bit of shredder cheese, and sour cream. They were oh-so-good in a bad sort of way.)

Dessert: Grapefruit Morning Cake (This was a recipe I had never tried and was considering using it when I have guests over next week so I wanted to test it. The cake uses the fresh juice of 2 grapefruits and oatmeal, among other things. Then you top it with the grapefruit wedges and a bit of yogurt. Tasty!)

Thursday is the day my CSA box shows up. For those wondering, this is what it looks like.

Day 6

Breakfast: Grapefruit morning bars (These were the leftovers from dessert.)

Lunch: Hardboiled eggs, yogurt & blueberries, veggies & hummus

Dinner: Pizza Night!!! (For the past several weeks we have been enjoying the most delicious pizzas ever. I've tried some interesting ones-like caramelized onion & Gorgonzola cheese- and some traditional ones-like cheese pizza or pineapple pizza. We usually have it with a fresh salad and some raw veggies. The bottom line is that the homemade pizza crust is what makes it so awesome.)

Dessert: Chocolate Lava cakes (In case you haven't noticed, I have a sweet tooth. We usually have dessert a couple of times during the week and sometimes I just feel the need to make something really sweet. The chocolate lava cakes were a fast recipe and I made them the size of mini cupcakes so they were a small portion.)

Day 7

Breakfast: Caramel Pecan Sticky Rolls (To die for. Seriously. The recipe was from the artisan bread book. I picked up some organic pecans from the bulk section of the store where I buy my wheat. The kids told me I was the best mommy ever. The rolls were that good.)

Lunch: Grilled cheese sandwiches, salad, fruit (I like to add things to the sandwich-like avocado. Some of the kids prefer tomato. The salad is mixed with whatever veggies we have on hand-spinach, carrots, cucumber, red onion, tomato, etc.)

Dinner: Chili & bread (I did not eat chili until I was in my twenties and even then, I'd only eaten it one time in my life. I had never cooked it until recently. Now chili is one of my favorite meals. I make it with very little meat or without meat at all and I use fresh, organic produce. Sometimes I hide things in it (like pureed squash-I hide that in spaghetti sauce too) and I use flax meal to thicken it up. This is a perfect freezer meal.)

There you have it. That's what we ate last week. You also have to remember that what we eat varies by season. I am finishing up a post about how much I spend on food each month. Everything we ate during this week was organic except for the Thai sauce. The meat for the 3 non-vegetarian meals was locally pastured. All of the produce came from the CSA box-except for the beans, which were canned. I think our meals are pretty "normal" when compared to what most Americans might eat. (I am not really sure what "normal" is though!) I didn't include what we drank because we are boring and only drink water. I also didn't include snacks because I rarely prepare anything for snacks. I let the kids grab a piece of fruit, some crackers, or veggies & hummus. They'll eat whatever is in sight so it's pretty easy. That's it-food for 8 for a week.

I'd love recipe ideas so please feel free to share what your family loves to eat!

Healthy Eating Without Breaking the Bank

I can't even count the number of times that I have had someone ask me how we can afford to feed a family of eight on one income. One military income. And what they don't usually know is that we eat fresh, organic, healthy foods and I rarely use coupons. How do we do that on such a limited budget? Because we are basically locavores.

A majority of what we what our family eats each week arrives on my doorstep on Thursday mornings in a brown cardboard box. It's always like unwrapping a special gift when we look inside our box and see what foods we'll enjoy in the next few days. Where does this mystery box come from? From a CSA. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and it's a beautiful thing. All across the country, farms of all sizes offer their bounty to local customers who pay for a share of the crops.

CSAs support local farms and are better for everyone involved, from producer to consumer. Instead of buying produce that's been trucked or flown across the country, we get fresh, local produce that was grown right in our area. This also means that we eat foods that are in season. Right now we are eating a lot of root vegetables, apples, and pears. It's a throwback to our past, when families grew and gathered their own food and had to eat what they could store through the winter.

Eating local foods is better for the environment because the foods require less energy to pack and transport. Local foods are also better for the families eating them because they are fresher and don't have to be artificially ripened (which is a scary process) and most have been minimally treated with pesticides and other chemicals because these foods are being grown during their natural growing seasons and not mass-produced for year-round consumption.

In fact, all of our produce comes from our CSA box or our local farmer's market. And it's all organic. Our CSA box has enough fruits and vegetables to last us an entire week and I can pick up anything else I want at the farmer's market or even have it added to our CSA box. Most of what we eat is produce! It might sound crazy, but my kids love vegetables. Brussels sprouts, spinach, broccoli, sunchokes, parsnips, kale, beets, beans, and cabbage are the foods of choice right now. Yes, my kids eat kale and they love it!

I grew up eating boxed macaroni and cheese and frozen fish sticks. I didn't have my first taste of salsa until I was nineteen. I had never tasted chili until I was in my twenties. My idea of vegetables was frozen corn or carrots. I didn't know any better and this was what I thought was good for me. When I had kids of my own, everything changed. I remember another new mom telling me that she fed her kids a raw diet and they didn't drink milk. I started reading and learning about diet, nutrition, and "green" living. I stopped using harmful chemical cleaners and started eating healthier foods. I have read a lot of books about natural living, but one of my favorites is a new book called "The Conscious Kitchen." It goes over (in great detail) the reasons for choosing local, organic foods and has tips for finding sources for them. It also discusses the healthy ways to cook the foods and keep a green kitchen. (Teflon-coated pans? Ick! How about a nice cast-iron skillet instead?)

Another key to keeping our food budget low is eating meatless meals several nights a week. We're not vegetarians, although I was one for 8 years. (I started eating meat again when I was pregnant with Matthew. It was Jason's fault, of course.) We eat meat a few nights a week. Meat is more expensive than produce and so we limit it.

The meat that we do eat comes from CSAs and the farmer's market. Next year we will have a 1/4 share of a cow (already butchered and wrapped) to stock our garage freezer. Right now, I buy smaller amounts of meat and store it in the freezer. The meat that we do eat is local, grass-fed beef and organic, free-range chicken or pork.

We don't buy meat in the grocery store. (In fact, I buy less than 25% of what we eat at the grocery store.) Grocery store meat terrifies me. Why? Feed lots terrify me. Have you ever seen a feed lot? I have seen them in real life. Cows stand in their own feces with their bodies crammed together in wide, brown expanses of dirt without a trace of grass to be seen. That is not how cows are supposed to live. Cows are meant to eat grass, not soy or animal by-products like they are often feed in feedlots. Feedlot cows have to be treated with antibiotics because they get sick living under those awful conditions. Antibiotics scare me too. (C. Diff, anyone?) But that's a whole other post... someday I'll write about how antibiotics nearly killed me.

Besides the obvious benefits of eating meat that is free of hormones, antibiotics, and pesticide residue, the meat just tastes better and is better for the environment. Grass fed beef has a delicious flavor. I love acorn-finished pork. Free range chicken even looks more appealing than the bleach-dipped, chlorine-smelling chicken sold in the grocery store. (Blech!) We love buffalo and yak too, although we don't have those locally here in Washington.

Most of our family's diet consists of produce, but we do eat our fair share of eggs and yogurt as well. I have been known to have an omelet every morning some weeks. Sometimes we'll have omelets for dinner and I'll make them with spinach and onions and sprinkle them with (organic) cheese. Our eggs come from either the CSA, the farmer's market, or the grocery store, depending on how quickly I run out of eggs between shopping trips. The eggs are always free range and organic. I wish I could be like my friend Michele and have my own fresh eggs in my backyard, but I deal with enough poop already, so that isn't happening right now. My kids eat (organic) yogurt almost every day and we buy it in bulk-plain so that we can flavor it with cinnamon and granola or fruit.

Our family does not each much cheese (although I love cheese) and we don't drink milk. What cheese I do use for cooking is organic and often local. I do use milk for cooking and the kids have it several times a week with their cereal or in hot chocolate. I buy organic (usually local) milk, although we have used raw milk in the past. Despite what the advertisements might make you think, humans do not need cow's milk to survive. How absurd is that? To think that humans would have to rely on the milk of another species for survival? It just doesn't make sense. Human babies need human milk, and yes, I'm one of those moms that nurses my babies until they self-wean. Most of my kids had never even tasted cow's milk until they were 2 years old. (And they didn't eat any food until they were a year old, but again, that's a whole other post.) We do not eat soy of any kind. We limit milk and consume cheese in moderation.

The rest of our food comes from whole grains and the herbs, spices, and oils that we use for flavoring. I love freshly baked bread but don't have a bread machine anymore, so I am guilty of buying bread (organic) right now. I use organic, whole wheat flour for all of my baking and I make almost everything from scratch. I do use store-bought pasta because honestly, who has time to make their own pasta? Anyone? I love cooking with quinoa and a household staple- rice. We have oatmeal several times a week, which I buy in bulk (I love Costco for that!) and the organic, steel cut oats are perfect with apples, cinnamon, and coconut milk drizzled on top. I also like to hide ground flax seeds or wheat germ in just about everything I bake and in oatmeal. Even Jason can't tell the difference! (I hide veggies sometimes too.) I buy herbs and spices from the farmer's market and if they are fresh, I freeze them. I also use a lot of organic olive oil for cooking. I even use an olive oil sprayer to spritz oil on my iron skillet when making omelets or when baking, so I never need to use cooking sprays or toxic, non-stick pans.

Many (most?) of you probably think I'm crazy. Or if you've been reading my blog long enough, you already knew that. But I promise that there are good reasons for eating local, organic foods and it's not as difficult or expensive as you think. In fact, I feed our entire family of 8 for around $400 a month. I just prepare the meals myself, using as few pre-packaged ingredients as possible. The local farmers are my best friends. I get excited when I score some delicious raw honey or when something new shows up in my CSA box (like sunchokes) and I have to try out new recipes. I say that I hate to cook (and sometimes I do) but I love to eat. And I'm committed to eating the healthiest foods I can find.

My own mother does not agree with the way we eat. She won't even eat the food in my house. She will actually pack her own food (plastic fruit cups, bags of fake mashed potatoes), etc. when she comes to visit. I'm not one to judge someone else's choices, so I keep my mouth shut. It kills me sometimes though. She definitely thinks that I'm insane. She won't change her ways, but I would give anything to get her to read "The Conscious Kitchen." Maybe someday...

Check out LocalHarvest for information on CSAs in your area. Many farmer's markets are not active in the winter (unless you live somewhere like Arizona-how I loved the farmer's market there!) but find out about your local farmer's market. Find other families in your area and split a share of beef with them so that you can fill your freezer with good, fresh meat from a local farm. Take your kids to see a nearby farm where the food is grown. My kids have more respect for food after visiting so many farms and seeing where our food comes from. Forget clipping coupons and challenge yourself to go a week (or month, or two) without using any canned or pre-packaged foods. Try a vegetable that you have never had (or even heard of) before. You will probably be surprised at how cheap (and easy) it can be to eat healthier foods.