Low-cost healthy family cooking

Some buck-stretching and healthy recipes:
--Split pea soup. A little ham or bacon (or, for vegetarians, one or two dried chipotle peppers--much cheaper than peppers in adobo), a couple of carrots and potatoes, split peas, water, salt and pepper. Soups generally are cheap if they're based on beans and/or lentils, and the varieties are endless.
--varieties on colcannon: eggs with mashed potatoes and whatever greens are in season (and therefore cheap).
--pasta with homemade sauce; if time is an issue, throw all the ingredients in the crock pot and cook it on low overnight. Cool it, then refrigerate and reheat at dinner. It's actually better that way, because the flavors have time to meld.
--we do veggie casseroles in the summer with the endless amount of squash that comes our way. Squash, eggs, cheese, breadcrumbs, onion . . . and yes, a little mayo. More veggies on the side.
--if you have time to put a crust together on a weekend, homemade pizza can be cheap.

Three words: tuna, tuna, tuna. Americans don't eat nearly enough fish, and tuna is a great remedy to this, as well as inexpensive source of both protein and Omega-3's. I generally buy mine at the dollar store (when they have it) at two cans for a buck, but even at regular prices it's seldom more than 75 cents a can. And there are all kinds of recipes for it out there.

You can also try canned salmon and canned mackerel, both of which are fairly inexpensive, and sardines, which are virtually a superfood, are great if you can get the kiddies to eat them. I loved them as a kid, but then, I was a weirdo. I also liked spinach and brussels sprouts.

Turkey meatloaf!

Ground turkey with some de-skinned hot turkey sausage, a large onion, and then throw in whatever other veggies might need to be used up in your refrigerator. I like to throw in some garlic, some diced celery (with the leaves too), some mushrooms if I have them, maybe some green pepper. Then some homemade bread crumbs (sans any added salt), some fresh parsley chopped, salt and pepper to taste, perhaps some oregano, and an egg to hold it together. Mash it up with your hands and put it in a loaf pan.

Then you can add any one of a number of toppings. I like worcestershire on mine, but you can add ketchup, tomato sauce if you prefer, or one recent (higher cholesterol) innovation I've recently discovered is alfredo sauce. I also like to top mine with a strip of bacon, but for non-pork eaters, turkey bacon works or some sun-dried tomatoes marinated in garlic and olive oil.

Cook for an hour at 350-400 uncovered. The whole thing probably costs about $10-12 to put together, and should feed 4-5 quite nicely. As there are only two of us in my household, it gives us left overs worth about 3 meals.

Enjoy!

Use a Crock-Pot for hearty stews.

Yogurt is terribly simple & fast to make and costs only what the milk costs.

How does one make yogurt?

Go check out Laurel's Kitchen from the library -- there is a lot in there about yogurt making. The easiest way to do it is to buy a yogurt maker (you can usually find them on ebay, or in thrift stores- they don't really have moving parts, all they do is hold the milk at the right temperature while it becomes yogurt, so used ones usually work fine.)

1. Yogurt making: get the yogurt maker. Ours holds 8 6 oz. cups, all it takes is milk (any kind, from whole ==> skim) and starter yogurt. The first time you buy a cup of plain, unsweetened yogurt. From then on, you use a couple tablespoons of the yogurt you've made to get the live cultures for the next batch.

2. Turkey drumsticks. I can frequently buy these, usually 3 to a package, for ~$0.70/pound. Throw them in the slow cooker for a few hours, skin and remove the meat. Also good roasted in the oven, I'm just not using my oven in the summer. They are great for any recipe that calls for chopped chicken. Bones can then be used for soup or stock.

Two of the problems for low-cost nutritious cooking are 1) the time it takes to prepare things (peeling carrots and potatoes takes time you haven't got when you face a hungry family at 5:30 p.m.) and 2) the frequency at which you need to shop to acquire fresh fruits and vegetables. I imagine these are high hurdles for many low-income families.

I'm gonna get flamed/laughed at for asking this, but as an ignorant city boy, I need to know. How do I find out what veggies are in season in my local area at any given time? I'd like to blame my lack of knowledge on the fact that I'm not from round these parts, but even when I lived in England, I didn't know.

Alicia, here's a pretty good vegetable soup, made in the crockpot or slow cooker. It can also be made on the stove, if you've pre-cooked your chickpeas or are using canned ones; just bring all ingredients to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook until all vegetables are tender:

1 cup dried chickpeas
Six cups water

(Cook about four hours on "high" or as needed until softened; presoaking the beans isn't necessary but will speed things along.)

Then add:

one to two T. diced onion or one T dried minced onion
2-3 cloves minced garlic
one cup fresh carrot, sliced and parboiled OR about one cup frozen carrot slices
two cups diced fresh potato OR two cups frozen diced hashbrown potatoes
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tsp curry powder (I sometimes up this a bit, because we like the spicy taste)
14 oz. can diced tomatoes in juice
one cup frozen peas
salt and pepper to taste
about four to six cups of additional water or to taste (will depend on how much of the initial water the chickpeas absorbed)

Cook an additional two hours on high.

If you're using a can of chickpeas, rinse and drain them first, add all the vegetables and spices along with the chickpeas, and then use enough water to cover them plus a bit; also, you can add just about whatever vegetables you like to this, fresh, canned, or frozen. I often add some corn or some packaged "gumbo vegetables" with a bit of okra.

Make stock with all bones. Lentil, pea, and bean soups and stews. Even if you are in a city you can have a herb garden. Risottos, with endless variants; Asian style white rice "garnished" with leftover meat or fish, and spiced up with Chinese (or Thai or Korean) bean paste, with or without chile.

Posole, but not from cans-- soak the dried, then cook in broth with meat and dried chiles.

Canned salmon and mackerel are better for you than farm raised, really!

Regular old macaroni can be made delicious with good cheese-- just enough for flavoring.

Read Bittman.

I can give recipes but really they are out there.

Nick, no worries! Usually the things that are in season are featured in the circulars for grocery stores. Right now melons and tomatoes are good. Or I just found this site: www.nrdc.org.

Frugal/healthy rules:
"Buy WHOLE foods"- not the store, the real thing.
Whenever you cut up the meat, cheese, veggies yourself, you save $$$. Boil up the bones for stock while you are cooking something else.

Dry beans are cheaper than canned, but do take more time. Buy bags of rice and pasta, not the cutesy little packages.

You can grow greens and herbs, even tomatoes, in small spaces: a windowbox or pot, a peapatch. People have been doing it in cities forever.

USE the coupons from the Sunday paper or the free ads in the mail. Buy the "loss leaders" at the store. Pay attention to produce prices so you will know when it is "a deal".

Don't throw away leftovers; make soup. If you don't have time right now, throw leftovers and bones into bags in the freezer.(But never put pasta in the soup-pot until the last minute.)

Borrowed from Mary Hunt's Everyday Cheapskate:
"You can, however, combine plant-based proteins to create a complete protein. For example--and this is really amazing--beans with rice. No kidding. Beans eaten with rice (or seeds, corn, wheat or nuts) form a complete protein and for a lot less money than steak, chicken or fish." Free daily low cost tips for everything at http://www.everydaycheapskate.com/

And read her article called " Food Prices … YIKES!" at: http://www.moneyrulesdebtstinks.com/?p=289 where she gives dozens of tips and there are currently 70 comments.

I recommend the "More with Less Cookbook" by Doris Janzen Longacre, who was a Mennonite missionary. It is a 30-year-old classic that only uses readily available ingredients (mostly fresh). Nothing exotic. Emphasis on frugality, old fashioned-cooking.

One thing I'm learning to do is stretch a whole roast chicken over several days:

Day One: roast in the oven, serve with vegetables and/or rice. Make gravy from the pan drippings.

Day Two: sandwiches made from sliced chicken (ideally homemade bread)

Day Three: Cut any leftover meat from the bone to freeze, or serve it that night cut up into little pieces sauteed with rice, eat with black eye peas (biscuits on the side)

Day Four: Make chicken broth: bake the bone/carcass in the oven for an hour, then place in a stock pot with plenty of water. Boil for an hour. Strain and skim off excess fat (save the fat in the freezer for gravy at a later date).

The broth can be used for bean soup, vegetable soup. Or frozen in ziplocks for later use.

Both thumbs up for the "More With Less" cookbook. We used it often in the "commune" I lived in at college.

OK - a few observations before going on to give my own tips.

These recipes are very carb-heavy. Again, some people can manage moderately-low glycemic carbs like beans, lentils, etc. But others simply can't eat them, while others still are going to find a steady diet of legumes still too "carb-y." Looking at these recipes, it is *still* possible for people to gain weight on them. Some include white rice; that has a very high glycemic index and probably should be totally avoided by those wanting to lose weight.

General observations about eating more cheaply:

It helps to have freezer space. We have an additional refrigerator in the basement, where we store overstock for fruits, eggs, any milk that doesn't fit into the fridge. The freezer in the second refrigerator is used to store any "bargain" meats.

Someone above mentioned buying rice and beans in big bags. I have not seen those in stores since this "food crisis" stuff started, and I have looked *all over* St. Louis for them. (I am looking for brown rice, NOT white.) I have been noticing whole wheat flour selling out of stores with amazing frequency.

Cooking takes tools and learning ("social capital") as well as cheap raw materials.

Some of what we make around here:

- Whole wheat bread. We go through 1 to 1 and a half loaves a day (and three of us are eating low-carb; if we were all eating bread at the same rate, we'd probably need 2 loaves on a daily basis.) Flour here is about $3.50 a 5 lb. bag but is going up, up, up. I am not in a food co-op and don't want to order flour online b/c of shipping costs. I am always looking for cheaper sources of flour, but it's hard.

- Soup. We make a pot roast with chuck roast (about $3.00 a lb. at the big box store) with potatoes, carrots, an onion stuck with cloves, and a bit of cheap red wine. The leftovers (if there are any) get mixed with half a cup of barley and boiled up for soup.

A hambone (I buy ham when it's on sale and freeze it; I've been paying about $1.29-$1.59 a lb.) The ham goes into sandwiches for those who pack a lunch; the bone gets mixed with a package of lentils (about $1.49 now - double the price from a year ago), any wilted carrots or yucky potatoes from the fridge, an onion, a can of tomato paste (cheap at the big box store), and about six cloves of garlic.

We get whole fryers for about 99 cents a pound and freeze them when they're at that price. They go into the pot with carrots, thyme or other herbs, onions, water, and salt for chicken soup. If I have them I throw in a package of whole-wheat noodles, but I'm cutting those out now, as they're getting too expensive. Brown rice is just as good.

Needless to say, any leftover veggies are fair game for any soup.

- Pizza: We make our own. It is *not* cheap, per se, but cheaper than ordering it out. I am convinced the pizzerias can buy mozarella cheese far cheaper than we can. Five pounds of mozarella from the big-box store can be frozen if you treat it properly (toss it with a little cornstarch and freeze it at once in freezer-proof bags.) I've been paying about $3 a lb. for bulk mozarella, vs. about $5 a lb. in smaller packages. Again, the cans of tomato paste (seasoned with a bit of salt, herbs, garlic, wine) serve for the tiny amount of sauce we use. Pepperoni at the big box store is about $2.50 a lb.

- Milk: My strategy here has been to buy it in smaller quantities more often, and watch it like a hawk. We all drink milk for protein and for our bones; it's a major food expense. Long gone are the days when I'd pour out sour milk. Now I use it in all kinds of recipes.

- Vegetables: The key here is to watch them very carefully for spoilage, and to realize that you generally cannot buy a week's worth at once. (Well, cabbage is an exception.) You save money by actually cooking and eating them every day, rather than letting them go bad.

- Meat: We are very lucky to have cheap meat where I live. Yes, I know this isn't terribly ethical, but I am feeding five "adults" (i.e. high school and college age kids) on one salary, and $10 a lb. free-range meat just isn't going to happen around here. I buy meat as cheaply as I can - I just froze bags of chicken leg quarters for 69 cents a pound.

Fish - forget it, most of the time. I splurged on $5 /lb tilapia today because my son asked for it. The wild freshwater fish around here is inedible because of chlordane pollution, although people *do* fish for it in local rivers and eat it. My fish-loving son and I were wondering what you'd have to do to revive the hippie backyard fish farms.

- Personally, I see nothing wrong with fried food once in awhile. We ate it all the time - my mother had a deep fryer in which she fried her own chicken, french fries, donuts, potato chips, etc. We were all slender growing up. The only reason I don't fry more is the cost of oil.

* * * * * *

Not much of this is probably do-able by a single mother with kids who's living in the city, has no grocery stores nearby, has no car, and is working full time. But we can sure blame her for being a "bad mother" and for having fat kids.

I'll second the More-with-Less cookbook. That and Simply in Season are really all I use. We raise a lot of our own meat and produce, and try to buy local and organic for the rest. You can get things from a co-op or bulk food store very reasonably, and produce in season is cheap--we can and freeze for the winter.

A few other suggestions:

Use meat sparingly--in casseroles, soups, stir-fry, or curry, a little goes a long way.

Skip the breakfast cereals--they're expensive and overprocessed. Eat oatmeal (or baked oatmeal if you can't stand regular), toast, muffins, pancakes, omelettes, etc. with some fresh or frozen fruit.

Slow cookers are great for busy days--I throw a chicken and some potatoes in and let them cook all day, or a roast, or soup...

Get a freezer and buy in bulk. We just bought a quarter of a cow. We got steaks, roasts, and ground beef all at hamburger prices.

Eat leftovers for lunch.

It is definitely possible to eat well without spending much money!

My first rule to feeding my family well on a limited budget is to make a meal plan. Whether it's for a week or (as I do)a month it works wonders. Having an idea in mind before the week begins of what we'll be eating that week frees me up and helps me to shop smart. As a bonus to this, I've found that if there is an unplanned dinner out I appreciate it far more than before I started meal planning

Rule #2 is to shop the sale ads in the paper. I live in a very small town, but there are 4 little grocery stores to shop at within 15-20 miles. Knowing what I'm going to want to make for the week (or the next few weeks) enables me to take advantage of their specials. Make a list and stick to it.

From there - experiment! I try out recipes and keep track of whose my family likes. Cook's Illustrated is great. I've also gotten tuned into Mark Bittmen (Thanks Rod!). Don't start with the gormet stuff - try good basic recipes and master them. Then you can go crazy.

And finally - Love the leftovers!

As Mark Bittman points out in a TED talk that was recently widely linked on a number of blogs, there are increasing overlaps between the eating patterns of gourmets/foodies, the environmentally concerned, and those who seek to recover more traditional food preparation styles -- e.g., "rustic" or "country" French, Italian or English cooking, along the lines of the Rose Prince book I mentioned above.

There is no reason that the budget conscious can't join in that. Finding tasty ways to make use of every bit of a roast chicken is for everyone.

In particular, let's talk about canned tuna. (There may be some environmental issues regarding overfishing and tuna, but I'll ignore those for the moment.) Canned tuna has by now pretty much assumed the status of a classic ingredient in French and Italian cooking. We call it a tuna salad sandwich; the French call it a pan-bagnat. If you can buy canned tuna at the dollar store, that's fine. But if you don't like what you buy there, and your budget permits, you might try the Italian tonnino packed in olive oil that costs a few bucks a can at Whole Foods. That's still pretty cheap if it takes the place of a big piece of meat in your food budget.

I heartily recommend doing the COOK-FOR-A-DAY/EAT-FOR-A-MONTH program... except that I break it into mutliple days.

Here's how it works: you bulk purchase whatever central ingredient is on sale (like, hormone-free, vegetarian fed, free-range, and humanely certified whole chicken(s)).

Then you cut the chicken(s) into breasts, thighs, legs, wings, and make stock from the rest.

Then you make recipes with the chickens... but undercook them.

Then put into freezer bags, suck the extra air out with a straw, and keep in the freezer until you want to cook them.

Do this four weeks in a row, with four different major food staples, and then you have food that is cheaper, homemade, as-healthy-and-as-crunchy-con as you'd want it to be, and able to be cooked fast.

Also called Once-A-Month-Cooking, google OAMC. Also called Freezer-Batch cooking. Google it, and get books from Amazon.

I find that both time and money concerns are dealt with by having a plan. Saturday is cooking day. Three to four hours of very focused production can make enough for dinners and lunches for the week.

When prices went haywire this year, the plan became very simple. Every Saturday we cook:

1 pound whole wheat pasta - firm shapes like ziti, penne or rigatoni
1 cup whole grain such as brown rice or quinoa
OR
3-5 lbs potatoes
2 cups of dried beans
1 whole chicken - roasted in the oven, slow-cooker or grilled AND/OR
other meat of choice, like pork butt or chuck roast - braised AND/Or
a turkey breast, roasted with olive oil AND/OR
sausages from our outstanding co-op meat department
1/4 chicken livers for chopped liver- on a rye crisp (bought on sale) it is a nutritious, cheap snack

We shop during the week for dairy, eggs and fresh vegetables (until the CSA started producing) to make grain, pasta salads or bean salads, all manner of soups, baked pasta with beans, veggies and meat, turkey or chicken sandwiches to take for lunch, bean and meat/chicken burritos, tacos or tostadas, bean spreads, crockpot vegetable stews and such.

We buy frozen chicken backs for broth - we use quite a bit and can't make nearly enough from the chicken we buy to eat.

A split-side of local, pastured beef sells for $3/lb. Granted, you need the cash to buy it and a freezer, but will save hugely for the rest of the year.

Never buy mixes. Pancakes from scratch are easy, as are muffins and corn bread. Bread mix prices were criminally high even before wheat got expensive.

We recently found incredibly delicious pork steaks for $2.99-3.99/lb, with the high end "naturally raised" pork at the higher price.

Leftovers become soup or casserole - hence the need for so much broth.

Don't buy fresh herbs except as plants for the garden if you don't have time to start them from seed. We grow rosemary, oregano, chives and lovage. Next year, thyme, marjoram and sage, if we get around to it.

Mint is not only lovely, it will take over the yard and reduce the need for mowing. Mint tea, mint jelly, mint chutney...

Using this plan, our food expenses dropped as prices rose.

Collect some lunchable boxes. Make own from cold cuts, crackers and cheese. Make the kids some Jello Jigglers too. (google it) They love them.

Sorry for the half a post earlier-- my son was in that deathly quiet zone that indicates something's broke or about to be.

Starting over:I am going to suggest "How to Cook Without a Book" by Pam Anderson. It's all about technique carrying you forth into improvisation. Excellent idea.

Anyway, I have been averaging $125 for two adults and two toddlers the past few weeks at the store. Granted, we do our fair share of snack foods, within limits, such as one Lunchable per week per kid, some baked chips or some cookies out of the Mexican section. We've been good about making a list, though sticking to it isn't always easy. I usually find that shopping with a 2 year old in the buggy and a three year old following on foot usually requires at least some sop to commercialization. I can live with them picking a Disney character soup or something similar, even "Ratatouille" Kleenex one week.

The problem I have is that my kids are at the age that they like to graze, run off, graze, run off, graze, go potty, graze, go torment the cat, etc. Dinner tonight got eaten, but over two hours. Some stuff just doesn't work with that stipulation-- pasta dries out, even in the fridge, and if we do breakfast-for-dinner, everything pretty much sogs out. They like bite size pieces, and they like to use forks, but they also love finger food. They eat vegetables as well as I could ask, though Amos usually ignores brussels sprouts. They love broccoli, especially raw-- salad bars are big hits-- and olives rarely make it to their plates but get consumed in mass quantity from the can. I just need ideas that will last multiple trips to the table and fridge. I'm one of the mean parents who make excessive plate leavings their bedtime snack. [My parents were even worse-- they saved undrunk glasses of milk on the counter and that's what we got when everyone else was having a dish of ice cream or whathaveyou.]

One of the local pizza places is now advertising loaded baked potato pizza. Any ideas?

Our local butcher offered either whole or half ("free-range")hog this spring. The price per pound was cheaper than at the grocery store since we bought in bulk. Since our chest freezer is small, we couldn't go "whole hog", just half, but still for a family of six (soon to be seven), this meat has lasted us a long time. And we only had to make one trip to the store to pick it up. Our 12 year-old wanted to know if we'd get the head, or at least half of it (ugh, no),and since we were reading Little House in the Big Woods at the time, the kids wanted to get the pig's bladder... (again, no). But otherwise, a good deal.

Erin, thanks for the idea about calzones - although right now we're trying to make pizza taste like the pizzeria type. That's OK - our son makes the pizza, so he can do what he likes with it. ; )

Great thread, Rod. Popular too. Clearly, sometimes we Crunchycons enjoy a lurch back to the crunchy side of our personas.

Yay! Interesting...

I guess the simple things to keep in mind are that we need: 1) calories; 2) nutrients.

So quality sources of fats, proteins and carbs are going to come from cheap foods like tuna, eggs, nuts, quinoa, potatoes, etc. Then add herbs that you grow in your own garden (free) and mix in plenty of vegetables that cover the rainbow so you are getting all of the carotenoids. Eat all the colors!

Oh yeah, and I always teach my kids the importance of eating healthy because they are young now and they learn fast. I want them learning the right things!
http://www.talkingtotoddlers.com/total-transformation-program