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Healthy Eating on a Budget: Alternatives to Pizza

This is Part One of Healthy Eating on a Budget and is about healthy, inexpensive alternatives to ordering pizza.

I completely understand the allure of ordering pizza after working all day and getting home late to a hungry family.  For my gang of four it costs about $22 to order pizza and garlic bread. I'd like to think we could get away with no garlic bread but I'd just be lying to myself.  There are the cheap pizzas in the city - Hot and Ready for $8 (mediums, and they advertise $5 but I haven't encountered one of those yet) - and once in a while I get a couple of those as well.  Any way you look at it, it costs me about $20 to get pizza. 

The problem with pizza is that for what you are getting it costs a lot.  Start adding salads and anything remotely healthy and the price goes up.  There are healthier alternatives to ordering pizza, that are almost as quick and easy after working all day.

Eating Healthy on a Budget

Eating healthy on a budget can be really challenging. It isn't easy to stick to a healthy diet, and it certainly doesn't help that food prices, especially for fresh produce, have gone up so much in the last couple of years.  I've actually been working pretty hard at eating healthier these days - I have quit eating candy, drinking pop, and replacing meals with junk food like chips or chocolate. It has not been an easy change; in fact, it's taken about four months for my body to stop feeling like crap without the sugar!  I'm shocked by that, to be honest. I figured it was going to take a few days but it has been much longer. Now that I'm over that hump I feel great, probably the best I've felt in my life. But -- it isn't easy, and it isn't easy to do when you're on a budget, either.

It isn't impossible, though. I have some hints to help you out, some new recipes I'll be posting, and some tips on price-booking when I get the chance.  The first thing to know about eating healthy on a budget is that you save money but sacrifice TIME for the savings.  So while you can buy precut peppers and veggies to save time in the kitchen, you will pay for convenience.  This is true of most things, in fact.  Expect to spend about double your time in the kitchen as you start eating healthier for less money.  If you're an avid cook, or a frugalista already, then you may not end up spending too much more time in the kitchen after all.  If you're a chronic pizza parent, donut for breakfast, McDonald's for lunch type person, then your time is going to dramatically increase. You have the time!! Don't think you don't, even though the extra food prep time in the kitchen may feel like a burden as you start eating healthy. You are worth this extra time!  

If kitchen time feels too much like a burden, then by all means spend the extra money if it means you will actually eat the fruits and vegetables you need. Change is challenging, so do what you can to make that transition easier at first.  

A bit more micro-blogging for now. I just bought a side of beef (split the whole steer with my sister) for $2.40lb which should really help with my $35 week grocery goal. It cost me about $800 for 325lbs, and it has FILLED my freezer to the brim. Insane. More recipes to come to help us all figure out how to save money on one of our biggest household expenses -- food. Happy Holidays!

Hey - microblogging! Just ate a not-so healthy supper of chicken nuggets and french fries. I hope to start blogging about healthy eating on a budget soon. It's not easy, or cheap, but it's necessary, right?

Upcoming

Hi everyone - once again I've had a long hiatus from my poor, neglected blog! 

I thought I would give a quick update, though, to let you know I haven't completely disappeared. First up, the very cool guys and girls at Jerky.com have sent me some incredibly cool samples to review. After a little bit of a roundabout trip to the other Megan O'Neil in my town (thankfully she didn't eat them!), I finally got the jerky delivered to my P.O. Box. Check out the Jerky.com site if you have a chance, it is a really cool place!! And they sell Jerky! I love Jerky!  I have two samples here, one is a pineapple jerky, and the other has been described as a cross between beef jerky and an energy drink. I can't wait to try them both. If you have guys or girls in your circle of people who like to eat jerky, take at look at the jerky gifts that Jerky.com sells.

The second cool thing to update everyone on is a great new project that I am spear-heading with my editor from Et Cetera Magazine. It's called the One Tomato Project, and you can check out more information at www.OneTomato.org. We launched the project on Earth Day this year, and it has grown exponentially since then! We're really excited about it, and hope you'll check out our website. One Tomato is encouraging everyone to eat local and 100-Mile Diet, make an impact on the environment, and to help feed people who need it. We think this can all be done if everyone grew just one tomato each. That's it, one tomato. I'll be back to update you more on it very soon.

More real grocery bills

Well, on a good note, I haven't really been to the grocery store since the beginning of the month! That's probably more because of lack of time as opposed to any real will power.  I have three 'bills' today - one is for Easter, which was a very low key affair at our house this year, one is for a last-class party and the munchies for that, and the last one is the real grocery bill. So I guess I have been to the store, but not for grocery shopping - and I LOVE grocery shopping, so this is a good thing! To be honest though, I did go out for lunch twice last week, after months of good behaviour and packing my lunch. One day was soup from the local awesome soup place, called Spoon Lickins, and the other was a slice of deep dish Hawaiian pizza from the local awesome pizza place called Vinnie's. Both cost less than $5.00, but that's about $9.50 added to my food bill this month.

I spent $44 on Easter candy for my three kids and I. No toys, no bikes, no new wardrobes -- Mr. Bunny is trying to support sustainable holidays and support the very poor people in the world. At least that's what he told me, and I told my kids. I had $50 budgeted for Easter, and I stuck to it. 

My after class party was $14 worth of goodies, and that was too much, really. I just wanted to make sure I got at least one tart of each kind, so I had to buy two packages. My prof's husband made us a chocolate cheesecake though, so the tarts weren't actually needed. I've frozen them and I'll pull them out next time I need some sort of treat somewhere. 

The grocery bill came to $52, and there was some stocking up in there as well. I'll have to figure out what exactly I've come into this challenge with - I've said it before, but I have a very well stocked pantry and freezer. When I separated from my husband I had this media-induced fear of going hungry and I think I've pretty well succeeded in making sure that won't happen!! But I'll save that for another post. $52 for groceries is the important point to remember.

2 more real grocery bills

Okay - two more grocery bills. One was a March 31 last minute run to the grocery store before class. Remember the first rule of grocery shopping on a budget - DON'T SHOP WHEN YOU'RE HUNGRY. Ugh. More on that in a bit. I spent $46.67 at the store, but $17.87 was paper products and household products, which means I spent $28.80 on food. I also had $2.58 in gas receipt coupons, so that brought the total down to $26.22.  Now, the problem with shopping hungry is that I spent $2.33 on cut up vegetables with dip. So essentially I spent $2.33 on what amounts to one carrot and one stalk of celery. I could buy pounds of either carrots or celery with that much money!! But I was soo hungry, and they looked so ... green. And orange. Stupid.

The second rule of shopping is to leave the kids at home, or school, or something! I swear I spend twice as much when they are shopping with me. Today we took a trip to the Farmer's Market in Sarnia, Ontario, and we had a really great time! It helped a lot that the first person in the door gave the kids a sample of cinnamon honey - they thought that was pretty cool. We spent $14.50 at the market, and that was actually a good part of the trip. The kids went crazy for the giant Golden Delicious apples we bought, we at all the cheese curds in the parking lot, and the little beignets ... oh my, the beignets. The troubles came up when we got to the grocery store. I was a bit tougher today, and didn't give in to too many demands, but at least half the bill was junk food they picked out. I spent $19.80 at the store today, and had no coupons to reduce the cost.