5 Frugal tips for eating organic

Many people struggle to add more organic foods to their diet, and do it in an affordable way. I have been working on this like crazy the last couple of months, ever since checking out Linda Watson‘s book, Wildly Affordable Organic, from the library. It is a wonderful resource, full of simple yet delicious recipes, and a big plan for cooking your meals from scratch, seasonally.

The author offers ways to do a little or a lot, but all will help you find ways to save money and add organic food to your diet in a frugal manner. Actually, the techniques and strategies in the book will help you save money on food whether you choose to buy organic or not!

Here are some pointers I picked up from reading. This is not a list copied directly from the book, but rather some general ideas that I have found useful.

1. Eat more beans! This is probably the most important strategy in the book. Beans are cheap, nutritious, versatile, protein rich, and filling. And did I mention they are cheap? By preparing my own beans, I have found a way to make the equivalent to a can of organic beans for under a dollar–that’s less than conventional beans on sale! I’m taking the time to cook them mind you, but using the crock pot makes it easy.

2. Cook from scratch. It’s amazing what a loaf of bread costs these days. I mean a high quality loaf of healthy organic whole-grain bread. Baking your own bread is just one example of how making it yourself from scratch can save you a lot of money, and give you a higher quality option. I probably pay less than a third of what a good loaf costs in many stores, for my delicious home made bread. And the same goes for casseroles, pasta sauces, pizza, etc., just to name a few possibilities.

3. Do the bulk of your cooking on the weekend. In the book she offers seasonal meal plans and prep lists for doing the majority of the work on the weekend. I’m not following her plans closely, but this strategy of doing what I can on the weekend has helped to make many things possible, such as making my own yogurt. By planning and taking the time on the weekend, it is easier to do more from scratch. Of course many things can’t be done this way, but giving myself a head start on whatever I can saves me time, and reduces the chance that we’ll have to run out for a pizza during the week.

4. Buy in bulk when you can. In the introduction, Linda talks about shopping on a food stamp budget. She tells of  how much more costly things like sugar and flour are in small packages compared to the prices she is used to with getting things in bulk. I find that even buying smaller quantities from a bulk food store can be cost-effective. But not always! Keeping track of prices and trying different stores certainly help me to decide where to buy, but buying in bulk doesn’t always mean storing sacks of food around the house.

5. Go plant-strong. Even if you don’t decide to eat as many beans as Linda Watson proposes, you can certainly reduce your grocery budget by choosing more grains and veggies, and less meat. I can buy a lot more plant food–even organic food–when I choose veggies, grains and beans over meat. We still do eat meat, but I get more value when I use meat as an addition to the meal, not as the main event.

I highly recommend this book! I checked it out from the library, but then ended up buying it because it was so useful. While I don’t follow her meal plans or cooking plans to a T, I have still found the book incredibly useful, and am trying more of her strategies each week. All of which is motivating me to save more money while eating more organic food.

Super easy sweater mitten DIY tutorial

Hi everyone, I am so happy to have a tutorial posted over at my friend’s wonderful blog, SEWNnatural. She blogs about life, homeschooling, and her wonderful shop of the same name. After reading my tutorial, please check out her beautiful organic kids’ clothes, textiles, toys and decor items, all made with absolute care and attention to detail.

Check out the mitten tutorial HERE!

Super frugal baking: slow cooker sourdough

I’ve been a little crock-pot happy the last few days (with good reason of course: Crock pots are awesome!). After my happy realization that I could cook dried beans using far less energy than the stovetop, using my crock pot, I decided to take another plunge into the world of slow cooker baking.

I made bread in my slow cooker once before (and strangely, that is consistently the most clicked-on post on my entire blog since someone pinned it on Pinterest), but it was a bit strange, with a very hard bottom crust.

But after checking numerous sites, I found out the reason for my earlier flaw: direct contact with the bottom of the slow cooker with create a very thick crust. This is easy to avoid by cooking it in another cooking vessel, inside the slow cooker, and raising that vessel up a tad off the floor of the crock pot.

So I decided to try with my current favourite sourdough rye bread (a spiked “epoxy” dough from Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads book–which means it has some sourdough, some soaked dough, and some commercial yeast added on baking day). This morning I got the final dough together and gave it a first rise. Then, without a final proofing, and also without pre-heating the crock pot, I degassed the dough and put it into a well-oiled pyrex bowl which I then perched on a canning ring inside my crock pot.

I let it bake for about 2.5 hours, until I could see the top starting to firm up (the top finishes last in this type of baking since the heat doesn’t really make it up that high).

Now, bread gourmands would be shocked at this bread I’m sure. It was slightly browned on the bottom, but there was no crackly crust, no maillard reaction, no grigne to speak of. But it was bread. It was even quite good!

The crumb was open and creamy, as it seemed that the proofing happened inside during the crock’s warm-up. It was well-risen indeed. Actually it seemed a touch over proofed, but just a touch. Still certainly enjoyable.

I have to admit, it was very light and fluffy, which I would love to attribute to my amazing kneading skillz, or the crock pot proof, but I think it was probably because I ran out of my usual stone-milled whole wheat and supplemented with some supermarket “whole” wheat stuff that is really just white bread with a bit of bran thrown in. Blush.

Some tweaks

For future experiments–and I will be doing this again, oh yes–I plan on finding a better baking vessel, maybe a coffee can? I would like something with straight sides, as with my bowl method the dough actually rose up and touched the inside of the lid, which meant some condensation got on the bread which made some really nasty gummy spots.

I might also try preheating the slow cooker while I proof the bread a bit outside the oven, to see if I can get it “baking” a bit sooner and lose the over-proofed yeasty taste.

In any case, I’m excited for summer baking. I can put my slow cooker on my balcony and enjoy fresh bread without heating up the house! And it also gives me hope for another summer plan: solar cooking! Stay tuned . . .

Saving time and money with crock pot beans

I finally did it! I finally cooked up a giant batch of beans in my crock pot. For the same effort I have been taking to cook up 1 can-worth, I made I believe six cans worth of beans. And by using the crock pot I am sure the energy used was either equivalent or even less than what it was taking me for one can worth.

The set-up

You will need a crock pot, a bunch of beans, and some water. Rinse and pick through your beans then put them in the crock pot and cover with water. The water needs to cover them deeply and generously with plenty of headroom. There should be several inches of water above the level of the beans because they will expand–a lot.

Soak them overnight or even a bit longer, changing the water if you go more than 12 hours.

Cook ‘em up

In the morning, rinse them and cover with fresh water. I also like to add an unpeeled garlic clove or two and a couple of bay leaves for a bit of added flavor.

Then turn on your crock pot and walk away. Now, as for timing, you want them to simmer for about an hour, so perhaps 2-3 hours on high, or 5-6 hours on low, but you will have to play with these numbers, checking them after a couple of hours.

Storing for use

Once your beans are cooked, you can put the whole crock in the fridge to chill for several hours (leave it outside for a bit–with the lid on of course!–before putting in the fridge to lighten your hydro bill a little bit).

After my beans were chilled, I used my handy-dandy scale to weigh out 19 ounce portions of beans and their now-gelled liquid together (I used chick peas) which is the size of one can of beans.

I froze my six portions, and was so thrilled to see them lined up in my freezer all convenient for me.

Using the frozen beans

Now whenever I want to make hummus the next day, I just take out a baggie of beans the night before and let it thaw on the counter. The frozen beans are nearly as convenient as canned, but much much cheaper.

I can’t promise that the freezing won’t affect the texture of the beans, so you might want to experiment a little. I just know that my chick peas are working perfectly for hummus. I’m not sure about other types of beans, or other uses. You might not want to use them in a dish like a salad where their texture will be highlighted.

So there you have it

Beans have always been healthy and cheap. Now they’re even cheaper, and almost as convenient as canned!

A look at meal planning: how it can save you money, improve your health and streamline your eating

What if there was one thing you could do that would save you a lot of money, improve your health and save you time as well? And what if it didn’t require a huge investment of time, money or effort? Would you do it?

In case you didn’t read the headline, what I’m talking about today is meal planning! And it really can save you time and money–and improve your health too!

How Meal Planning Saves Me Time

Currently I take about an hour a week to plan our meals and write our shopping list. Maybe a bit less. Sure, this seems like a lot of up-front time, but that saves me time during my week in many ways.

- I plan thoroughly and shop once a week, so I don’t have to dash out to the store for last minute items

- I plan many meals that can be worked on earlier in the day which allows me to play outside with the kids in the later afternoon, and then spend a minimum amount of time getting things on the table for dinner.

- And to be honest, I enjoy my meal planning time. By setting aside that hour or so, I let Daddy spend some time with the kids, and go up to the quiet bedroom, maybe with a cup of tea, and really focus my thinking on what we’re going to eat for the week. This is much more pleasurable than scrambling each day to figure out what to put on the table.

How Meal Planning Saves Me Money

- By thoroughly planning my grocery needs and writing out a comprehensive list, I only need to shop once per week. This definitely saves me money because I simply don’t have the chance to buy those extra items–I’m not in the store!

- I don’t know about you, but when I have just a few items on my list, I often get the feeling, “Wasn’t there something else I needed . . . .” With a long list, doing the weekly shop is satisfying enough that I don’t feel the need to fill it out with extra items.

- I can plan my meals sensibly, making sure to provide leftovers for my partner’s lunches at work. This saves our family thousands–yes, THOUSANDS–of dollars per year.

- By making sure to include special yummy meals once in awhile, it limits the desire to treat ourselves. We can have that special meal at home!

- We avoid expensive last-minute take-out meals.

- And by planning in at least one particularly low-cost meal per week, I am saving our budget on a regular basis. I can even plan for lower-cost eating over a longer period if we need to save money for something in particular. Meal planning puts me in charge of how much we spend in our grocery budget.

How Meal Planning Improves My Health

- This is by far the biggest factor: By planning all our meals, we do not resort to fast food take-out. Everyone knows how unhealthy and expensive fast food is, yet there were more nights than I’d like to admit when our kids were little babies that we ran out for pizza, a grocery store bbq chicken, or even burgers and fries. Now we plan for healthy, low-cost, and many times low-labour meals and don’t need to rely on take-out. Well, almost never.

- Being in charge of the meal planning for the week gives me an overview of what we are eating. This allows me to alternate meaty meals with vegetarian ones, and rotate our grains so we’re not eating too much of one thing.

- This is a big one for me: meal planning reduces stress, which has a big impact on health. I never have the 5:30 panic attack of “Oh my goodness, what am I making for dinner???” I don’t miss the daily stress of figuring out what to make for dinner. And as a further benefit, as I mentioned above, I enjoy my meal planning!

So, this is my motivation. Time, money, and good health: three things we can never have too much of. And if there are other benefits I haven’t listed here, please add them in the comments below!

Frugally yours,

Colleen

A Super Easy Way to Start Saving Money on Food

Before you read the rest of this post, go and take a look in your fridge. Don’t forget to come back now!

How many containers of moldy leftovers did you find?

I’ve got nine.

Nine fuzzy smelly science experiments that used to be delicious–and expensive–food.

Sigh. It happens to the best of us.

But that is why I am delighted to have discovered the number one step in meal planning.

What is it?

Taking Inventory.

This simple step is guaranteed to save you money, and might even inspire you to culinary greatness. But the best thing about it is how dead easy and completely satisfying it is to do.

How to take inventory

1) Look through your fridge, freezer and pantry and first clear out all of the yucky moldy slimy stuff to make way for some delicious food.

2) Make a list of all the food that needs to be eaten up ASAP. Look in all the little jars and containers, drawers and shelves. I like to imagine the food as dollar bills, loose change and rolls of coins. Yes, this is crazy. But I really don’t want to throw it out!

3) Write your meal plan, making sure you include all those foods you listed above in the first couple of days. You might doubt me, but I’ve found it’s incredibly fun creating meals to use up those found treasures in new delicious ways. I will write a post on this soon, but think soups, salads, omelettes . . . mmmmm.

4) Even if you don’t do a weekly meal plan, a weekly inventory will probably spark your creativity and put at least some of your week’s meals on auto-pilot. This really will save you money and get you started in the mental process of meal planning. I find myself instantly inspired when looking at, say, a bunch of roasted broccoli from dinner. Presto! Broccoli Pita Pizza for lunch tomorrow.

Clear Benefits

Looking through your fridge can probably save you from trudging out to the store (where there is a 90% chance you will spend more than you planned). Using food you already bought means you don’t have to buy more food. Yup. Rocket science.

Taking inventory regularly will keep your fridge and pantry shelves less crowded so it will be easier to see what’s in there. This will make taking inventory–and using up what you’ve got–even easier.

It will also get you into the habit of thinking about your meals on a weekly basis, which is the first step in doing a full-on weekly meal plan. I will be blogging more about this fascinating subject in weeks to come but for now, trust me: it’s the cat’s ass as far as kitchen frugality is concerned.

And I don’t know about you, but I find that EVERYthing seems just a tad more appetizing when it isn’t surrounded by blue fuzzy rice and hairy black jam.

Now, off to do my inventory. So, which yogurt container has yogurt in it and which is that chili from three weeks ago? Help!

Foraging Friday: Burdock Root

Last Friday I went out foraging for Burdock root. This edible weed grows everywhere in the city. You can recognize it easily as it looks just like rhubarb, only its leaves are fuzzy and the stems are green rather than pink or red.

Armed only with a tiny spade, I went to work on digging it out. I dug and dug. I dug some more. I encountered rocks, roots and earthworms, and still I dug. I dug down nearly a foot! And that isn’t even a big one–I’ve seen online pictures of burdock roots nearly 3 feet tall!

I finally released my root from the earth and celebrated with a little dance and photo op. I took it home and stuck it in the fridge while I decided what to do with it.

In the end, I decided to slice it up and stick it in the dehydrator, as it is recommended as a herbal immune booster. I will read more about the medicinal qualities before trying it, but I am quite excited as its list of benefits is quite extensive.

On the downside, both the taste and the smell are . . . well, awful! Very bitter and astringent. I’m not sure if burdock is supposed to be so awful tasting, as it honestly doesn’t taste “edible” to me. Once again, more research is required!

But at least, for now, my curiosity about harvesting burdock is well satiated.