Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Whole Wheat Lemon Pound Cake

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healthy_celebrations_med

It’s been birthday week at our house, as our third son turned nine on Tuesday. We now have 13, 10, 9 and 6 year olds at our house (and two 37 year olds but never mind that). 

Birthday week means mom makes a special treat…usually a cake chosen by the birthday boy. I’ve tried to come up with healthier varieties of cakes and treats so that we’re not just consuming empty calories…even if it is a birthday. You can click through this entire section of Healthy Celebrations if you’re interested in finding other healthier varieties of treats I’ve shared in the past. I mean, Lemon Pound Cake is delicious, but sometimes you just need Chocolate. Or is that just me? Regardless, hopefully you’ll find something fun that will please your sweet tooth in our Healthy Celebrations section…and I plan to continue to add to this category as I continue to experiment. If you recall, White Cake and Angel Food Cake are both on the Heavenly Homemakers Recipe Challenge list!

For some reason, two of the last three birthdays celebrated at our house have included a Lemon Pound Cake. It has been fun to experiement with…although the first time I got a little bit carried away with the lemon juice. We were all pretty puckered up by the end of that cake. Whew! A little lemon goes a long way!

lemon_pound_cake

Lemon Pound CakeYum

1 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup sour cream or plain yogurt
1 1/4 cups sugar (I use sucanat and I’m pretty sure honey would work well in this recipe)
1/4 cup 100% lemon juice (from a bottle or from freshly squeezed lemons)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 eggs
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

With beaters, whip butter, sour cream, sucanat, lemon juice and vanilla. Add eggs, one at a time beating well with each one, or until you get tired of adding eggs one at a time…then just crack them all in and beat well. (Sometimes I get so lazy about individual egg cracking…)  Beat in flour and baking powder until the batter is well mixed.

Pour cake batter into a well buttered cake pan (I use a fluted cake ring pan). Bake in a 325° oven for 50-65 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Cool for at least 10 minutes before removing cake from pan and placing on a cake plate. Allow cake to cool completely before pouring Lemon Glaze over the top…

Lemon Glaze

1/2 cup 100% lemon juice  (if that’s too much lemon for ya, just cut the amount of juice down and substitute water)
1 cup powdered sugar (I recommend using unbleached organic powdered sugar or your own homemade powdered sugar from sucanat)

Use a fork (or a spoon or a whisk or whatever is clean at the moment) to mix the two ingredients. Drizzle the glaze over the cake. You can even use a toothpick to poke a few holes in the cake before you start to drizzle so that some of the glaze goes down into the cake!!

lemonpoundcake

So are you a lemon lover? Does lemon make you pucker? Have you ever been one of those parents who have given their baby a lemon wedge, just to see the face they make?

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Excuse Me Ma’am…Are Those Your Handcuffs?

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That’s the question the Whole Foods employee asked me as we were leaving the store Friday night. “Ma’am…are those your handcuffs?”

It’s a routine grocery store question, isn’t it? “Would you like paper or plastic?” “Did you find everything you were looking for?” “Do all of those boys belong to you?” “Are those your handcuffs?”

Or maybe that’s  just me.  Eh, I have four boys…questions like this have been typical for the past thirteen years.

Our youngest, Malachi, is very into playing “policeman”. Or “cowboy”. Or “Cowboy-Policeman-Ninja-Superhero”. Yes, he’s quite well rounded…we’re very proud. 

His grandparents got him some handcuffs with a real key and everything at Christmas time. He couldn’t be more excited. The handcuffs round out his Policeman-Cowboy-Ninja-Superhero outfit very well. He loves them and has them attached to his belt loop (right beside his holster and pistol) at all times – except for when we insist that he take them off…like at bath time or for Bible class. 

Friday night, somehow the handcuffs made their way into the grocery store with us. I was busy trying to find the best deals on chicken and fish…leaving the police work to my six year old. Somewhere between the dairy section and aisle five, the handcuffs got hooked onto the handle of the grocery cart. Then, the Policeman-Cowboy-Ninja-Superhero became distracted with the huge selection of cereal. Said handcuffs were forgotten as puffs of sugared peanut butter in boxes decorated with brightly colored panda bears became much more interesting.

We were through the line and ready to head out the door when a nice grocery bagger near the exit noticed the handcuffs and hollered,  “Excuse me Ma’am…are those your handcuffs?”

More than a few customers looked up from picking out the prettiest apples to see what in the world the gal meant and who pray tell she was talking to.

What? That question isn’t a typical produce section question they’re used to hearing? 

The key to the handcuffs was (of course) nowhere to be found…but if you’re smarter than a six year old (or at least as smart as a Policeman-Cowboy-Ninja-Superhero), you know how to use the little “handcuff-release-gear-thingy” to open them up. Incidentally, it only took me two weeks to figure out that the cuffs had such a feature, after finding them hooked onto kitchen drawers and dining room chairs a few too many times for my liking. By the way, speaking as a common criminal at my house, I can attest to the fact that it is not easy to type with  handcuffs on. Nor is it easy to reach the “handcuff-release-gear-thingy” on the left hand with a cuffed right hand. 

Anyhoo…it didn’t take long for the other Whole Foods customers to figure out to whom the handcuffs on the cart belonged:  The woman with a big grin and four handsome boys following her out the door.

It’s a good thing the rubber snake didn’t fall out of my purse right at that moment. Now THAT might have created a scene.

In case you’re interested…we had a delightful time at Whole Foods, using a few free gift cards we had earned through Shop it to Me  referrals! Thank you so much to all of you who signed up. I hope you not only signed up, but also have been referring your family and friends so that you can earn free gift cards too!!

We were able to get chicken and tilapia and yogurt and butter and cheese (and some snack bars that got eaten on our way home!) for just over $20 out of pocket by using some in store coupons and our Shop it to Me gift cards. We were heading to Omaha anyway for Asa’s basketball game, so we were excited to make a Whole Foods run! I can not wait to eat that Tilapia!! (It was half price that day!)

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Heavenly Homemakers Recipe Challenge

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One of the most frequently asked question that I hear from many of you through emails is, “Laura, do you think you could come up with a healthier version of _______?”

It would appear that you have become aware of how much I get a kick out of experimenting and coming up with new, healthy recipes in my “spare time”! Yes it’s true. I love playing with ingredients.

Your past requests and challenges have resulted in fun new recipes for Poptarts, Pancake Sausage Muffins, Chewy Granola Bars, Corndog Muffins, Hot Dog Buns, Dressing Mixes, Taco Seasoning,  Funnel Cakes, and many other cool recipe ideas that were inspired by YOU. I love taking family favorite ideas that may normally be unhealthy (like a poptart), and fiddling with the idea until I come up with a recipe that pleases the fam and is healthy(er) too! (It never hurts when the recipe is easy to make and saves money too, huh?)

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Each time one of you sends in a recipe challenge or an idea, I add it to my list of foods to experiment with. You all come up with so many great ideas!! Yeah, that’s my way of saying…wow my list is really long.

I decided that it would be fun during 2011 to share part of my list with you and have you offer input for your top choices of recipes for me to try. Then all during this year, I’ll play with ingredients and get lots of honey and tomato paste and butter on my face (though not all at the same time) as I experiment to come up with some new favorite recipes to share.

Here is my list of items you’ve requested for me to come up with a “Healthier Version” of:

  1. Tater Tots
  2. Twinkies
  3. Ketchup
  4. Mayonnaise
  5. Corn Tortillas
  6. White Chocolate Baking Chips and Butterscotch Baking Chips (like these Homemade Chocolate Chips, only white chocolate or butterscotch)
  7. Fig Newtons
  8. Teriyaki Sauce
  9. Ritz Crackers
  10. Onion Soup Mix
  11. Bleu Cheese Dressing
  12. Cereal Bars
  13. Angel Food Cake
  14. White Cake (which we’ve already discussed that if using whole wheat flour and sucanat, this cake would really be tan…)
  15. Chocolate Milk

I’m sure I’ve forgotten some of the requests that you’ve sent in, so please feel free to add those ideas if you’d like. And now…I’d appreciate it if you’d all leave a comment letting me know your top two or three recipe choices from the list above so that I know where I should start with this challenge!

And now, if you’ll pardon me…I’m going to go put on my apron and start grinding some flour. Let the Heavenly Homemakers Recipe Challenge begin!

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Gratituesday: History Lessons

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I am dealing with a head cold, which has resulted in laryngitis, which is why it is amazing that you can all hear me telling about what I’m grateful for this week. ;)

It’s very difficult to parent your children when you can’t really talk to them. Even just giving them a small command like “Come eat” is difficult…much less trying to offer them advice or break up a squabble. I’m thankful that my voice is starting to come back. I’ll be singing and reading and loudly breaking up arguments in no time, right?!

One big problem with not being about to talk is the fact that I generally read aloud to my kids a lot during each school day. Matt has happily stepped in and done all the reading today, but here is what I recognized:

I had full permission and some very real excuses to take the day off and go hide and read and be by myself all day while Dad took over school time. The very idea sounded lovely and appealing and I fully intended to do it. 

But then I realized that I didn’t want to miss out on what was being read. If Matt and the boys did all the reading without me, I would have missed all the chapters read today and the transcontinental railroad had almost made it all the way from New York to California. HOW could I possibly miss the part where the railroad finally came together?!

So Matt read to all of us today…even the Mama, who has finally, now that she is all grown up, decided that she loves history lessons. I know I’ve said it before at various times, but I was reminded again today about how much I enjoy homeschooling our kids and how much I want to be a part of their education. Learning has become such a joy, and while I love watching my kids learn, I just LOVE what I’m learning too!!! History never made sense to me as all the reading I had to do as a student seemed so dry. I only read it so that I could get a good grade on the test, never with the intent to actually learn (if that makes any sense at all).

I have gained a much bigger appreciation for the people of our past now that I am seeing how history played out in the big picture. Through books like Susan Wise Bauer’s Story of the World series and Joy Hakim’s History of US…I finally feel like I get it now.

I’m grateful to be able to share that History Lessons are really, really cool. Now, if I could just get my full voice back so I can get back to reading out loud. :)

What are you thankful for this Gratituesday? Write about it on your blog, then come link up with us here. If you don’t have a blog, be sure to leave a comment letting us know what you’re grateful for!

If you are linking up a blog post for Gratituesday,
please copy and paste the following sentence into your post! Thanks!

Join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!

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Cooking Week Recap (Complete with Ugly Corn Dog Pictures)

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Well, I got a lot of cooking done last week. I don’t have a lot of food to show for it, as we did our fair share of eating last week too. But, eating is a good thing, and I was able to stash a little bit in the freezer for quick meals later on too.

I am happy to report that I was able to make everything on my list (except for the Ranch Dressing), plus a few extras. What I’m not so happy to report is that with some of the cooking…I got a little bit lazy.

Take for instance these Corn Dog Muffins. They’re so easy to make and are great to have in the freezer for a grab and go meal. My problem though came when I just didn’t feel like taking the time to cut the hotdogs to the right size. I was in a hurry and just cut them all in half (instead of into thirds). This means that the dogs did not fit into the muffin cups at all and instead just sort of sat on top of the cornbread. 

Thankfully, my family doesn’t mind eating ugly little Corn Dog Muffins, but let’s just say these fellas wouldn’t win any prize at the fair.

Nor would my Honey Whole Wheat Bread this time around. Want to know what happens when you’re too lazy to knead your bread for as long as you should knead your bread?

It get’s all funky in the oven and comes out looking like this:

Again, my family doesn’t mind funky looking bread, especially if I slice it before they notice. While making our bread, we took a little extra time to make some loaves of Cinnamon Swirl Bread – always a favorite. My kitchen helper loaded it up with cinnamon…the more the better right?

And again, I have to say…if the bread is ugly, slice it up before anyone can see it. It doesn’t look nearly so ugly when it’s toasted and has butter melted all over it…

For a snack while the boys were having an art lesson (because drawing and eating at the same time is a great way to creatively sketch animals), we had Cream Cheese Apple Dip with sliced apples. That stuff tastes SO good.

I made six pounds worth of Turkey Sausage, browned it and bagged it up for future use with Pancake Sausage Muffins and Easy Breakfast Casseroles. I can’t tell you how nice it is to have pre-made Turkey Sausage on hand to grab out of the freezer for a quick meal!!

Of course, while I was at it, I went ahead and made two batches of Pancake Sausage Muffins. We ate a batch the next morning and froze a batch for later.

Again, my lazy side took over and instead of making Mini Apple Pies, I made one big apple pie and an apple crisp. The boys decorated the top of the pie using cookie cutters with the leftover pie crust dough.

I made a batch of Whole Wheat Hamburger Buns, which is probably one of my favorite foods to have in the freezer! They’re great to have ready to pull out for Sloppy Joes or Ranch Burgers or just plain sandwiches. 

Because I had talked about stretching one chicken to make six meals…I decided I’d better cook a chicken to prove it to myself and to experiment with the best way to get six great meals from one chicken. After eating some of the chicken and broth, we still have some chicken and broth in the fridge for future meals. I’ll be working on the “How to Stretch Your Chicken” post, and in the meantime, I hope you are all picturing us in the kitchen with a raw bird, seeing how far we can stretch him…kind of like a tug of war. Just kidding…don’t picture that.  And please, whatever you do, do NOT give my children any ideas.

I made Warm Vanilla Soother one morning to go with our breakfast, so with the leftover egg whites, I made a batch of Coconut Macaroons for a friend who can’t have wheat. We did a little “quality control” before sending the cookies off, and we declared that the cookies were certainly fit to eat.

The Poptarts finally got made toward the end of the week…and there is exactly one left. These Poptarts are a hit…and I’m just sure they freeze well…but in my house, they have yet to make it to the freezer.

So what do you suppose is the loudest activity in our kitchen? Give up? It’s making Homemade Peanut Butter. Peanuts flying around in a food processor is really, really loud. Of course, then it gets even louder because my kids tend to like to try yelling over the noise. It’s a highly effective way to communicate.

With our fresh Peanut Butter, we made some Healthier Rice Crispy Treats for snacking. Then we made more (loud) Peanut Butter to fill our jar for the fridge.

So let’s see…what did I learn from my week of cooking? Don’t be lazy. Cut the hot dogs smaller, knead the bread dough longer. Don’t try to draw animals while eating apples and dip because you’ll end up with a very sticky horse. And never tell your kids you’re going to see how far you can stretch a chicken, or they’re likely to grab the bird and yank the legs off.

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Menu Plan for the Week

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One thing I forgot to mention in my Ways to Stretch the Real Foods Grocery Budget post is MEAL PLANNING!! I have found it so helpful for my sanity and for keeping the budget down if I try to stay organized and make menu plans each week. 

I’ve mentioned before but I’ll mention it again, if you’re new to meal planning or would just like a little  help with menu planning organization, Say Mmm is a great FREE resource!

Here is our menu plan for the week. If you’d like to come over for some of the Cinnamon Swirl Toast pictured above, we’ll see you Thursday morning! :)

Sunday, January 16
Oatmeal, bananas
Potluck – taking Fudge Brownies, Cream Corn Casserole
Chili with shredded cheese, raw veggies

Monday, January 17
Snowman pancakes
Popcorn chicken, ranch potato wedges, peas
Italian pasta bake, tossed salad

Tuesday, January 18 -Elias’ birthday choices!
Donuts
Homemade corndogs, carrot sticks (yes, I added those myself – we needed at least one veggie today!)
Hamburgers, french fries, homemade lemon cake

Wednesday, January 19
French toast, blueberries
Tilapia, tossed salad, fruit-kefir smoothies
Egg and sausage casserole, orange muffins, apples

Thursday, January 20
Scrambled eggs, cinnamon swirl toast, oranges
Chicken noodle soup, carrots
Venison stew, whole wheat sourdough biscuits

Friday, January 21
Mini breakfast pizzas, applesauce
Tuna salad on toast, cottage cheese and peaches
Bean and rice bowls with salsa and kreme fresh, fruit salad

Saturday, January 22
Homemade honey oat crunch cereal (found in our Breakfast ebook)
Leftovers
Taco Potatoes

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The Real Foods Grocery Budget Week Wrap-Up

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Thank you all SO much for the wonderful interaction this week during the impromtu Real Foods Grocery Budget series! I usually have a plan for the week for what I will be writing about, but somehow, with all of your comments and questions after I wrote about our 2011 Real Foods Grocery Budget, I got off course and just kept talking about food and money. :)

What I loved most about this week is how so many of you were reading through each other’s comments and offering suggestions of what works for YOU. While I can write about what works for ME and for our family, I don’t live where you live or have the same food sources you have. It was great to see all the comments coming in from those of you willing to help others find great sources for food in your communities. Isn’t the internet cool?

As I wrap up the week and the series, I just want to encourage you all to be prayerful about how you feed your families and to do whatever you feel God is calling you to do. HE can make it happen!

AND DON’T GET DISCOURAGED!! Some of you have mentioned that you are very new to the Real Foods way of eating. If you’re interested in making some changes that’s great, but changing everything at once can be very overwhelming, as can the idea of increasing a food budget. You may find that you can make Real Food changes and not increase your food budget at all…or you may find that you need to slowly figure out ways to at to your food budget to fulfill the desire you have for feeding your family a Real Foods diet. 

Take small steps.  Don’t feel like you need to change everything at once. Read through my Simple Steps to Healthy Eating posts for some ideas on where to start. There is no order to these steps and no right or wrong way to make changes. Just pick a step and take it! (And guess what, by the way? I really do plan to add to that series soon, even though I haven’t posted a Simple Step in a while!)

simplesteps

Also, if you haven’t read through Our Journey to Healthy Eating, please click on over so that you can find out more about why my family chooses to eat the way we do and what our journey looked like along the way. 

Just so you know, we’re still on the journey! There’s still a lot I need to learn and some other changes I need to make and shucks…sometimes I still get hungry for Nacho Cheese Doritos. With a beef hotdog.

Anyone else feel like sharing something “not so good for you” that you have a hard time giving up?!

Thanks again everyone for your participation in this week’s series!!

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Ways to Stretch the Real Foods Grocery Budget

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strawberries

Today I am (finally) going to share a few ways our family has made our grocery budget stretch as we’ve been on Our Healthy Eating Journey. My husband and I strongly believe that if you truly desire to do something for your family, through prayer and hard work, you can make it happen. There are creative ways to save, creative ways to earn, creative ways to come up with food sources. Nothing is too weird…think of some ideas and give them a try!

I loved this comment that Cery left on my Very Limited Income for Real Food Purchases post:

I am a single mom with 2 teenagers and haven’t worked a “real” job for a year and a half. Since then I have done mostly cleaning and odd jobs, so I don’t really have a monthly budget, since income varies. I pay the bills first (electric, rent, and house phone) and then buy food. I bake all my own bread and barter that with friends for organic, grass fed beef and free range chicken (it’s cheaper to buy baking supplies than meat, and I use a sourdough starter). I have also recently started selling baked goods. I am blessed with friends who have fruit and berries and allow me to pick all I want to can, and another friend who keeps bees and gives me honey in exchange for cleaning. I have a garden in the summer and can and freeze as much as I can. I even have friends that buy fruit and veggies in bulk at the Farmer’s Market and let me have half if I will can it for them! I am truly blessed! Strangly enough, I think we eat healthier now then we did when I worked 60 hours a week and had a grocery budget. God is good!

I love how God works and I love how being creative and working hard can provide your family with exactly what they need. How inspiring!

Here are some of the ways we have found to stretch our grocery budget:

  • I make just about all of our food from scratch. Occasionally I buy something “pre-made” if I’m in a bind (and for the record, I feel like there are certain seasons in our lives where boxed/packaged foods can be a lifesaver, if used sparingly). But if at all possible, I make our breads, tortillas, cookies, muffins, noodles, sauces, pizza, dairy products, peanut butter and salad dressing from scratch. It saves loads of money to do this and is much, much healthier. Even organic processed food isn’t the best nutritionally and WOW is it pricey! Making homemade food REALLY isn’t hard, and it tastes SO delicious (except for when I burn things, but let’s not talk about that.)
  • We garden. We’re blessed with a large yard – one that’s big enough to handle soccer games and a garden too. We grow tons of tomatoes so that we can make all of our own tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, tomato juice and tomato soup for the year. We also grow and freeze a year’s supply of green beans and peppers each summer. We eat up all of the lettuce and spinach we grow, but that sure saves money in the late spring!
  • We keep our ear to the ground and have formed many wonderful relationships with people in our community who have an abundance of produce and other items they’re willing to give away or sell at low cost. This is how we have been able to acquire so many delicious berries and peaches and apples and pears that we freeze and preserve. This is also how we’ve gotten our hands on venison. Sometimes the meat has been free, sometimes we’ve paid for processing…either way…what a fantastic deal on great meat!
  • We’re willing to work hard and go about finding food sources non-conventionally. We love that our kids are learning that food comes from trees, animals, farms, gardens, fields and bushes….not just from the top shelf at the store. Yeah, sometimes our food comes off of a truck, but you know what I mean.
  • We’ve done what we needed to do to stretch and grow our income. I’ve almost always done something (from home) to supplement my husband’s income. We felt this was extra important once we decided that Real Food was a high priority even though it would increase our grocery budget. When there wasn’t any wiggle room in our regular budget, any money I could earn from home went to help buy healthy groceries. One summer I sold baked goods each week at our local Farmer’s Market, earning enough to buy our Nutrimill Grain Mill, fresh produce all summer and quite a few of our other grocery needs. (In case you’re wondering, these Soft Pretzels were a huge Farmer’s Market hit!)  I’ve had babysitting jobs, mended clothes for people, sold Stampin’ Up! products…just about anything I could do to help add a few extra dollars to our single income. Starting this blog and writing ebooks three years and a half years ago was another way I decided to try for a little supplemental income. I sure am glad I did…otherwise I wouldn’t have met you! (That sounded cheesy, but I really did mean it.)  Deep down from depths of my soul.  (That added bit of cheesyness was on purpose and written just to make myself sound ridiculous.)  Be sure to read this post for more ideas on great ways to earn extra money for your family’s needs!
  • We’ve turned our Swagbucks and Shop it to Me  “earnings” into groceries. These two are great because it doesn’t cost anything for anyone and you can earn points toward gift cards by referring people. I’ve been blessed to share these with you here on my blog, and through referrals have been able to earn some lovely Amazon cards and Whole Foods Gift Cards. While I could have turned my points in for other fun things…I really just wanted to be able to buy organic groceries. Does that make me a geek, do ya think? Don’t answer that. I highly encourage signing up for Swagbucks (a search engine that helps you earn points that can be turned into quite a few things – I just always turn mine into Amazon cards to use for groceries, or books if it’s school time). You can read more about Swagbucks here. AND…Shop it to Me  is a very fun (and free) way to earn gift cards. I’ve turned mine in for Whole Foods cards because who could pass that up? Not me, because I’m a food geek.

What other ways have you found to creatively save money or earn money to stretch your grocery budget?

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Do You NEED to Cut the Grocery Budget?

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lettuce

Thank you all for adding suggestions and sharing your various circumstances in my last Real Food Grocery Budget post, Very Limited Income for Real Food Purchases. I think it’s great that we’re all helping each other think of new ideas for saving money on good food.

What I’d like to address now is that while I think it’s great to learn ways to cut down on food costs when you’re going through tough financial situations, I also feel like it is very important to make sure our families are getting the nutrition they need. Again, we are investing in our bodies when we spend money to eat whole, real food. Some foods we can cut back on, but there are some things we really, really need to be eating so that we can stay healthy.

That’s why I had such a hard time sharing what I’d cut back on or cut out of our diets. I have a hard time recommending that many people NEED to cut down their grocery budget. If you’re spending money on processed foods or splurging all the time on specialty items and buying food that isn’t in season or buying stuff to eat that will simply fill a hole but not offer any nourishment…then we need to talk about ways for you to cut your grocery budget.

But if you have $X amount in your grocery budget and you’re carefully spending that amount on real, whole foods that are nourishing your family…I think you should keep doing what you’re doing. Sure, let’s keep trying to find fair prices and good deals and shop wisely so as to be good stewards of what God has given us to take care of our families. But if you have the money for plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables or any of the high quality healthy foods you feel convicted about eating…buy them for your family. Don’t cut out necessary nutrition just so that you can say that you’ve lowered your grocery bill.

In addition – and I’m guessing that I probably don’t really need to be saying this to any of you but I’m going to say it anyway – before you talk about needing to cut your Real Foods Grocery Budget, please make sure you’ve cut every other un-necessary item out of your budget first. My family has always done without cable TV and expensive cell phone plans and frequent eating out and going to movies and expensive clothing and all kinds of other things I can’t think of because we don’t spend money (or rarely spend money) on them so I probably don’t know what I’m missing.  I’m NOT saying that you shouldn’t ever have or do these things. If you have cable TV, I’m fine with that and will probably even enjoy watching the Food Network with you when I come for a visit. I’m just saying that you really shouldn’t complain about not being able to “afford” real, whole food…and then turn around and fill your grocery cart with frozen pizza, soda, twinkies and chips, 24 new pairs of high heeled shoes and a big screen TV for your bathroom. Kapeesh?

My point ultimately is that we all need to be as careful as possible with how we spend our money…but I think that spending money on good, whole food for our families is wise and even necessary. It’s an investment in our health for today and for years down the road. Good food costs money…but I think we need to caution ourselves against feeling like, “ugh, healthy food is SOOOOO expensive.” Is it…really? I don’t look at it that way anymore. I look at healthy food as…healthy. And the price that comes with it?

Well…I’d rather not pay the price of eating cheap, empty food. To me…that is what is costly.
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Off and on all week I’ve said that I would share about some creative ways our family saves, earns and comes up with great sources for food. I’ve sprinkled some of that information throughout these posts, but really and truly I have a whole post devoted to sharing ways to stretch and grow your grocery budget. Other topics keep popping up this week as I’ve written this series, but I promise (probably, mostly for sure, I think) that I’ll post tomorrow about stretching the budget. And sometime soon…I’ll even post about stretching a chicken.
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What are your thoughts about the “cost” of nutrition-void food?

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Very Limited Income for Real Food Purchases

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Apparently I have declared it to be Real Food Budget Week here at Heavenly Homemakers. There’s just a lot to say about real food and money…so I just keep going with this subject. :) If you missed the other posts, be sure to read Our Real Food Grocery Budget 2011 and No Grocery Budget Comparing Allowed.

Several have asked me to offer suggestions for how to eat a Real Foods diet while cutting back on the budget because of a super low income. This is a hard question for me to answer because I feel that it is very important to invest money in good food. Very important.  If you recall, I used to be a Coupon Queen and spend only about $100/month on groceries back when we had only two kids. I’ve come a  long way since then, learning about real food and health. I now understand that food is NUTRITION for our bodies…and we need to be careful and intentional about what we feed our families. It costs money to eat well, there’s no way around it…more money than it costs to feed our families food that contains little or no nutrition. 

At one point during our family’s Healthy Eating Journey, we were making less than $29,000/year (with no benefits) for our family of six. We were still able to eat a healthy diet, because we made it a priority and because we were creative and because God is good and provides…all the time.

For some of you, $29,000 sounds like peanuts…for others,$29,000 sounds like a fortune. If you’re barely making ends meet, what are you to do?

The question has been presented to me from a reader with a very low income and a family of five:  How would you eat a whole foods diet on only $50/week?    What would you cut out? What would you keep?

First let me say that whole foods or not…it would be very hard to feed five people with $50/week and I would encourage you to find a way to supplement that budget if at all possible. In my next food budget post (because this truly is turning into a little series!), I’ll talk about food budget creativity and share how I was able to help supplement our family’s grocery budget when we needed to spend more on groceries but didn’t have the cash flow!

For now I will address, as best as I can, what I would do if I was only able spend $50/week on groceries….

Food I’d Keep:

  • Eggs – free range if possible
  • Raw Milk – though we’d likely cut back to 1- 2 gallons a week
  • Butter
  • Fresh fruits and vegetables – in season and rationed – and I’d look high and low for free sources and I’d garden like crazy
  • Venison – hunters often love to hunt but don’t always like the meat
  • Beans – I’d likely get much more creative with my bean recipes!
  • Rice
  • Potatoes
  • Wheat to grind and make my own flour

Food I’d Cut Way Back On:

  • Meat – which is tough because we LOVE meat and feel like getting good protein is very important! I’d likely focus more on buying chicken than beef, because I can stretch a chicken to last six meals if need be. Or I’d skip the ground beef and buy soup bones and oxtail so I could make rich beef broth and stews.
  • Cheese – this would have to be a special treat

Food I’d Cut Out Altogether:

  • Sweets – these would be VERY limited – birthdays and Christmas only maybe?
  • Purchased snack food – I hardly buy these anyway, but occasionally I splurge on a bag of chips or a box of Cliff Bars for a trip. 
  • Juice – again, I rarely buy juice anyway, but if I only had $50/week to spend on groceries, this would never make the list.

I know I’m not doing a great job of making these lists and there are a lot of holes. What about oil? Spices? All kinds of other things I’m leaving out? 

In my next post, I’ll address some creative ways we save, earn and come up with great sources for food. In the meantime, help me round out these lists!! What would you keep, cut back on and cut out altogether if you had about $10/person/week to spend on groceries?

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