consciouseating
in recipes or thawed from the freezer on our morning oatmeal.”
for under $5. Many responded, sharing their tips and tricks at
SlowFoodUSA.org/5Challenge. Here are some favorites.
EATING WELL ON A BUDGET
by Judith Fertig
In tough economic times, many families include food in their spending cuts. How can we tighten our budget and yet still eat well?
S
ix months ago, Josh Viertel threw down the “value meal” gauntlet in a major way. The Slow Food USA president challenged cooks around the country to create a family-friendly feast
Setting a Budget
Five dollars per meal for 21 meals a week, plus snacks, neatly totals the $125 weekly food budget set by the Leake family, of Charlotte, North Carolina. Lisa and Jason Leake, parents of two young daughters, first explored what it would be like to eliminate processed food from their diet, which they describe in their blog at
100DaysofRealFood.com. Their success led to the additional challenge of eating real food on a budget. “Having a realistic weekly budget is helpful, because you can’t go too far over budget before you realize you are in trouble,” advises Lisa Leake. To make it even easier to stay on track, she makes it a habit to shop near home and uses cash instead of credit.
Seasonal Shopping
“If we shop for seasonal produce and freeze or can surplus from our local farmers’ market, we can eat well all year and still eat frugally,” advises Rebecca Miller, a macrobiotic and healing foods caterer from Overland Park, Kansas. “When fresh blueberries are $3 a cup at the grocery during the off-season, for ex- ample, we can still enjoy canned berries
Eating Down the Fridge
Seattle-based Kim O’Donnel, author of The Meatlover’s Meatless Cookbook, blogs about family meals for USA Today. “I regularly emphasize what I call ‘eating down the frig,’” she says. “That means making use of what we’ve got on hand, like generations before us that also went through food shortages. We’re just out of practice.”
One way to help ourselves learn, says O’Donnel, is to stock a “smarter” pantry. Staples include different va- rieties of dried beans; lentils; quick- cooking grains such as quinoa, bulgur, couscous and purple barley; garbanzo beans; brown and black rice; and a few BPA-free canned goods like tomatoes, black beans and chickpeas.
“If we take our time and watch for good deals, we can build a pantry at a low cost,” she says, because such ingre- dients are basically “blank slates.” As just one example of a low-cost, pantry-based meal, O’Donnel might start with cooked
40 Collier/Lee Counties
swfl.naturalawakeningsmag.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72