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Weekly Newsletter Archive >
How to Eat Healthy on a Budget - Part Four
How to Eat Healthy on a Budget - Part Four
Mar 25, 2010
Well here are the last five tips for eating healthy on a budget. I hope you have found them to be practical and of benefit to you and your family. Please share your thoughts on this series with me. OK, let’s get right to the last five:
16. I mentioned several times using grains and beans in soups. Soups are a terrific way to make a little meat or poultry go a LONG way by extending it with lots of vegetables and some healthy whole grains! Stews are another awesome, one pot (delicious) meal extender. You can buy the cheaper cuts of meat and using a small amount, round it out with cabbage, potatoes, carrots, onions, celery, garlic and any other vegetable you have on hand and serve it over brown rice, barley or quinoa. Just the thought makes me hungry!
17. Along with making soups and stews, don’t forget to dust off your crock pot! You can put all the soup or stew ingredients in there, set the temperature and forget it for a few hours or all day, and you’ll have tender, delicious meats and an easy, affordable dinner – in one pot. It makes wonderful roasts when they’re on sale and you can use the cheaper cuts of meat and still end up with tender meat.
18. Where I live in New York we have several bread outlets. These stores sell brand name breads, but at deep discounts. If you have any of these near you – be sure to take advantage of being able to buy excellent quality, whole grain breads at very low prices.
19. There are two parts to this tip. I keep mentioning you should watch for SALES. That alone is a huge tip – there are 5 stores in my immediate area that put circulars in the Sunday newspaper. I spend the 30 or 45 minutes it takes each week to go through the circulars and plan my meals around what is on sale that week. Rarely do I go over my weekly food budget and that’s usually only when there’s a special occasion meal involved that week. The next part of this suggestion is to take advantage of any coupons you can WHEN those items are on sale. If your store offers double or triple coupons, even better! I realize most coupons are for processed, packaged foods and honestly I don’t use most of them. I do however use the ones for paper goods like toilet paper and tissues. You can find coupons for yogurt, peanut butter, eggs, pastas, cereals, stocks and broths that make great soup/stew base, beans, canned tomatoes and sometimes I’ve found some for meat and produce as well. Just take the time to carefully go through them.
20. Have a plan. Make a master list of the basic items you use so you can keep track of what you run out of and can take full advantage of sales and coupons. This is a good way to plan meals as well. You can revolve your meals around certain staple items that go on sale regularly. For example, there are thousands of healthy ways to prepare chicken! Make it a different way each week. Ground meat on sale, whether turkey, lamb, beef or chicken, can be extended with grated zucchini, pureed beans and spinach and made into meat loaf, burgers, meat balls and even chili or pasta sauce. Buy on sale, prepare and freeze, and you ALWAYS have a nutritious, inexpensive meal on hand.
Here’s your BONUS, but it’s really the foundation of it all: PRAY. Pray over your food. I can’t begin to stress the importance of speaking God’s blessing over your food and eating it in an attitude of peace and gratitude. It will not only do wonders for your digestion, but it will improve the quality of whatever you are eating. I have written before about Dr. Emoto Masaru who did experiments on how water crystals responded to written and spoken words. Briefly, he took pictures of his results, which are breathtaking. When angry, fearful, negative words were spoken over containers of water, or even written on the containers, the water crystals became ugly and disordered. When words of love, blessing and prayer were spoken or written, the water formed beautiful, symmetrical, crystals that looked very much like snowflakes. Water is the major component of most foods as well as of our bodies. If words of blessing and prayer can so dramatically affect water in a container, think what it does to your food and body! This tip costs nothing and will make all the difference in the world. Also, pray over your budget, shopping list and time! I do this every time I shop – I ask the Lord to help me to make wise choices, to stay within my budget and to redeem the time – He has never failed me yet and He won’t fail you either.
The bottom line is this: disability, disease and illness are MUCH more expensive than buying the best quality, healthy food you can afford. Pharmaceutical drugs, health care, health insurance and loss of pay because you are too sick to go to work are all costing this country billions of dollars. I encourage you to consider this money you spend on nutritious food and resources to be a wise investment in your most valuable commodity: your good health.
It’s a fact that the most important thing you can do to improve your health – including reversing some serious conditions – is to improve your diet and lifestyle. I hope I have been able to convince you that no matter what your situation or budget – eating healthy is doable!
I hope you will take a moment to let me know what you thought about this series of newsletter articles and if/how it impacted you and your family. Until next week, as always, I wish you abundant, overflowing health, joy and peace and I call you BLESSED (empowered to prosper and excel).
Ann
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