Terrific Tuesday

I ran onto a U- tuber that calls herself the dollar tree gourmet.    She cooks amazing food from the dollar tree.   Now, she cooks 2 portions, and they are not cheap.   Sometimes as much as seven dollars. You do have to consider that some things are not used up and available for another dinner.    I would not condone buying all your food from the dollar tree unless you had no choice.   I have read where people have lost their independent grocery store and there were no other stores without traveling to another town.   In that case, I would get the flyers from those grocery stores amd plan a stocking trip once a month,   Carpooling with a friend or neighbour would help defer the cost.   You probably would be a lot of money ahead just getting RBP on staples.    My SIL and I used to kea e the children with husbands when they were little and go to the next town for groceries.   They had really good prices.  

I am dehydrating yellow squash today.  The neighbor gave me five small ones  that were very ripe.    I sliced them in the mandolin while my husband finished up dinner.    I didn't want to be up all night, so I'll put them in the dehydrator this morning,    I bought screens for the trays.  They came too big, so I am cutting them down.  

We are having shrimp salad for dinner.    Easy Peasy.  

No coupons worth having in the Sunday paper except blue bunny ice cream.   Yum!   They have small ice cream cones that are low in carbs but are not sugar free.   Just the right size.    Goldilocks size!  

I make bread with a bread baker, and I make pizza dough with the bread baker.   I did find another recipe that you do with the kitchen aid and sometimes I make cold rise bread that comes out more like sourdough.   You can buy bread as cheap as a dollar at the dollar store or at Winco, but it isn't the same,    Homemade bread has a few ingredients and none  of them are preservatives.    Basically flour, salt, sugar. Olive oil and yeast.  The recipe we like calls for Parmesean and pepper.    I like the bread machine because I don't have to stand and knead the dough and it's a low non passive cook.  

Cold rise is no knead, but it takes 24 hours.   It's not real time consuming, but it takes attention over a long period of time.  

Both have to be eaten soon or they go stale.  

Taking preservatives put of food as much as we all would like our food to be  preservative free, is,nit practical.   It would be expensive and you would have to go to the market daily. Organic food is the same way. The last I heard, only four percent of the farms in America are certified organic. Organic food spoils fast.  Four percent of the farms can't produce 100 percent of our country's needs, let alone export to other countries.  It's not practical yet.  

That being said, a lot of things can be made from scratch easily and you can avoid a lot of them.   Somewhere , there is a happy medium.  

It's not easy for busy families with working mothers.    I always worked part time when the children were in school until they were teenagers and worked themselves.    It meant that my social security is lower and I worked a lot for non profit and small business so I didn't have the benefit of a pension.   I'm paying for that now.    Money isn't everything, and we are comfortable.    We have a lot to be
thankful for and I get to see my granddaughter everyday-- complete with the ups  and downs.   She duded up with arm pads, knee pads. Helmet , and her roller skates and took off with her mom to the park, skirt flying.    Guess there was no rock climbing  that day!   LOL.

To wrap up, I guess the short term solution to organic --until someone figures out how to produce mass amounts and get them to keep at least a week and lower the price to realistic levels for the masses, is to wash your vegetables with vinegar water.   I have a designated brush.   Things with thick skin are better and I hear not necessary to buy organic to get the benefit.   I have heard that buying organic bananas is a waste.    Ditto watermelon.   I don't buy watermelon but once a year, it's about the highest in the glycemic index.    In other words, it's full of sugar.  

My part for a healthy diet on a minimal budget is to :

Wash vegetables and fruits where appropriate with vinegar, and peel if appropriate.  

Avoid excess salt.   We don't for the most part buy junk food snacks.   Nuts are good for you, but try to get less salty ones.   Don't salt everything you cook.

Avoid excess sugar.   Try for fruit instead of baked goods for desert.   We don't have desert every night.  

You can buy inexpensive protein without a lot of trans fats.   Ground meat can be purchased as low as 7 percent fat and then you can de-fat it  to reduce the fat more.   Olive oil boosts your good cholesterol, not all fats are created equal.  

Avoid hydrogenated oils.   Only safflower , canola and olive oils are not hydrogenated.   Most fake butter has hydrogenated oils.   Now they are saying that butter does not clog your veins.  My nutritionist  says a skim of butter is better than a pat of margarine,   The less dense a spread so, the better it is for  you.   It goes without saying, margarine, lard and shortening is not the best choice for fats.   We all need some fat on our diet.   The operative word is some.  

I'm not an expert on this, I only know what I read, and have tried to read a lot of different articles and look at how credible the author is.  

Fake anything is fake.    It's an alternative.    They have found that fat free products make you fat!   Obese I think is the preferred word.   Sugar free products with some artificial sweeteners make you obese too.    They fake sugar is not recognized  by the body and sticks to your fat cells making them "fatter" .  

Only time will tell if all the fad diets out there will prove to be healthy or not.   I'm too old.  I'll stick to the tried and true,   Eat a variety of foods. Eat balanced from the USDA pyramid. Eat in moderation and eat the best quality you can afford.   Cook clean, don't cross contaminate, and pay attention to things like rice and beans and meat that may be past it's safe zone.    Nothing is worth making your family sick.  


Thanks  for stopping by.   .  Please share.  

Groceries on the cheap is looking at the "put the meal on the table train" from  a different perspective. 

The emphasis is on purchasing good shelf stable or frozen food  for a RBP in quantity - enough to last you until it goes on sale again or to keep a controlled non-perishable stock of the things you  use  on a weekly basis. 

This means that instead of shopping daily or weekly for just the things you need to cook your meals for the week. You go to two stores and buy :
1) a protein that is a RBP - enough to make that meal for x number of days. (I.e.: if you eat it once a week, buy enough for 4 meals.)
2) produce and dairy you will need to fill in the meals for the week. 
3) a stock item, if you need to and it is on a RBP - enough to fill in to your self imposed stock level. 

You often are paying 1/2 price for your food.   This allows you to put well-balanced meals on the table consistently on a four dollar a day per person budget.   You spend more time on the locomotive ( planning and shopping ) end of the train, and less time in the caboose ( kitchen j) by cooking more efficiently. 

 Four dollars a day is the target amount for people on snap.   My premise is that of you can do it on 4 dollars a day, spending more is not difficult and you still get more nutrition for your buck.