Healthy Eating at $65 per week : Meal Plans and Update

It's been a while since I've updated on this series. January was an especially difficult month to stay on budget. Mostly because Becket can't eat the same as the rest of the family and I weaned him and he is consuming TONS of food. That kid can EAT and EAT and eatandeatandeat!!

Boys are SO different than girls in the eating department.

I'm watching this very sad Superbowl game and if you know me ... you know WHY it's SO sad. Hint: No Packers. But my FIL is in Seattle so... I guess it makes it a little interesting.

So, I figured I need to seize this moment and get back on track with my budget for February. We were over by $60 last month! YIKES! I mean its actually only an extra $15 per week which sounds about right for Becket's food needs but... it can't stay that way. So... I just need to be a bit more careful and cut in other areas. I'm also thinking I may need to pull back on some organic splurges... We shall see...

I did buy these at Mississippi Market Co-op for 0.30 each! Since they are generally over-priced there, 

this WAS an awesome deal! On sale for $2.30 and I found them with sticker coupons for $2 off each!

I'm pretty pumped about this weeks menu, thanks to Pinterest. Feel free to check out my pinterest for recipes. I will put a star by each recipe on Pinterest... but of course I will not follow them exactly and I will swap some ingredients for others or omit them. I basically look to recipes for ideas and ingredients. But I look at them as spring boards ONLY for my own creations.

Sunday: (beware NOT healthy) Homemade Alfredo/Mac 'N Cheese, Broc/Org Green Beans, and Organic Apple Slices
Monday:Thai Coconut Lime Curry Soup*
Tuesday: Pork Egg Roll in a Bowl*
Wednesday: Chicken Cordon Blue Quinoa* and Frozen Peas
Thursday: Leftovers
Friday: Homemade Goat Cheese, Veggie and Artichoke Whole Wheat Pizza
Saturday: Egg Broc Quiche
Sunday: Homemade Falafels with Greek Yogurt and Whole Wheat Pitas
**Baking: Chocolate Chip Granola Bars

Breakfast: Wild Blueberries and Maple Syrup Oatmeal, Banana/Orange/Berry Smoothies with Flax Milk, Cereal, Peanut Butter Toast and Oranges, Granola Bars and Kiwi

Lunch: PBJ and Leftovers

Becket: Ground Turkey Patties, Salmon, Rice, Quinoa, Veggies, Fruit, Oatmeal, Pastured Bacon, plain Pork, Tillapia (I set aside parts of other meals I've made last month just for Becket so I have single servings for him only. He would eat Oatmeal every meal if I let him... I try to focus on healthy fats as well. He just finished off the last of my last Costco trips Organic Beef.)

And, of course, Fermented Cod Liver Oil for everyone... Except me... It's nasty.

Because we were sick and our nanny was sick I saved $45 in childcare money and decided to put it, temporarily, towards some stock up items, My plan is to pay that money back to our nanny budget from my grocery budget this month. So I just went to Costco yesterday and took $40 cash and refused to spend a penny more!

Costco: $37
Frozen Organic Green Beans
Organic Strawberry Jam
Organic Maple Syrup
4lbs Frozen Wild Blueberries (I decided to not get them organic since my Dirty Dozen list says only Domestic Blueberries. Not going Organic gave me a whole extra pound and they are delicious and so nutritious!)
Bunch of Bananas

Trader Joe's: $15.50
Organic Celery (FREE, I got a bad bunch last week and asked if I could exchange it. I used some of the good stems for meals and broth last week, so I feel pretty good about it not being a total waste.)
Rice Milk (Costs slightly less at Costco but I'm hoping to get him nutrition tested again soon and don't want to get stuck with a bunch of rice milk if it's a problem.I'm also planing on taking this and the salmon purchase out of my "baby supplies" budget.)
Brown Sugar/Maple Shredded Wheat (Jeremy's cereal) x2
Wild Caught Salmon in a can 
Can of Coconut Cream
Olive Oil (According to my parents Consumer Reports magazine Trader Joe's sells the best value Olive Oil. We've been going through a lot since Becket's only safe oil is Olive.)
Chocolate Chips

Aldi: Goal Under $40

Cabbage 2
Frozen Peas x3 2.70
Swiss Cheese 2
Lime .50
Broccoli 1.50
Eggs 2
Garlic Powder 1.50
Goat Cheese 2.50 (TJs is 2.50 so I'm hoping Aldi is same/cheaper, if not I'll get Mozzarella)
Breadx2
Carrots
Kiwi 1.50
Oranges (4lbs) 1.99
Chkn Breast 1.79lb (I buy non-org chkn breast once a month since organic chicken breast is too expensive!)
Brown Sugar
Tomatoes?
Mushrooms?

If anyone is still reading this, I'm sorry, I'm kind of doing this for my own processing tonight while my two year old is on my lap coloring my receipts with markers. Hee hee. :-)

Wish me luck!

Oh, and I forgot, I'm picking up rice noodles with a gift card at Cub this week too! And I bought 2 items at Walgreen's last month that, with coupons, were "money makers" so I have $12 in "gift receipts" that I'm hoping to get a good deal on diapers with to help offset my baby supplies budget this month. Sometimes you give to get. :-)

Wow! Close finish to the game! I hate watching a close lose/win. :-(

$260 groceries for the month...

So I know I started the $65 per week thing but it's actually $260 for food for the whole month. So, yeah, longer months require me to stretch that buck even further! So this week was what I would consider my stock up week.

I know this picture is not about food... but he is licking his lips AND I could just eat him right up!

I was on an "I'm so sick of the same old thing" kick and even though I had a meal plan for the week starting Sunday I thought I'd probably be making changes... and I did. I figured I'd wait until Wed and include my Aldi visit. Well, I was in Minneapolis on a freezing day this Wednesday and I thought ...

What better than make a quick trip with all three of my kids in this insane arctic weather to Costco. I'm ONLY going to spend $20. (cue laughter)

I LOVE Costco (even with three small kids chasing the samples like treasures around the store!) I love their prices and organic products. The only kicker is at the checkout you kind of want to yelp... "But I only got a few things! How is this $70??"

So I stocked up on:

Butter (4lbs)
Organic Ground Beef (4lbs) (After I bought it I realized it is not grass fed. BOOO hoo! So sad.)
Garbanzo Beans (their canned are cheaper than buying the dried beans in stores and canned garbanzo beans make smoother hummus)
Ground Sausage
Cuties (my kid's treat for being so good)
2 Jars of Organic Strawberry Jelly
A huge bag of Frozen Organic Green Beans

Ok, so I got more than a few things... I think.

So between my $45 Trader Joe's visit and my $12 Aldi visit... I have $35 for the rest of the month. That will be plenty to buy fresh essentials to go with my stocked up items. ie. Milk, Eggs, Fruits, Veggies and Bread.

So here is my menu plan for this week:

Sunday: Chili and crackers
Monday: Homemade Chicken Pot Pie (it was AHHHMAZING!)
Tuesday: Asian Cabbage Salad with Sesame Sticks and odds and ends
Wednesday: We basically ate supper at Costco aka sample side plus cuties and veggies at home
Thursday: Ham, Broc, Coconut Quinoa and Grilled Cheese
Friday: Ham Carbonara and Green Beans
Saturday: Olive Garden Zuppa Toscana (see in my pinterest board)
Sunday: Spaghetti Squash with Thai Peanut Sauce, Garbanzo Beans and Rice
**I am having a Norwex Party on Sunday and will be making Pumpkin Cheesecake. Don't you want to come? You are invited!**

I also made yogurt on Monday and Bone broth on Tuesday. I used the bits of chicken from the bone broth drumsticks in the pot pie and it was truly amazing. My MIL has the easiest and yummiest pie crust recipe. Ever. I might just be a pie maker after all! (See in future post!) Also, while I made it from scratch otherwise with no recipe I used Trader Joe's organic frozen veggie mix and it was really good. The sweet corn in it was like fresh off the cob. I will definitely do that again. It solved my food blahs and I'm back to feeling inspired by food. That and I am now obsessed with Master Chef Jr. Man those kids can cook!

Speaking of what kids can cook never underestimate what your kids might EAT. My kids begged for Apple Slices, Garbanzo Beans and Milk for breakfast. So that's what they got. Talk about some power food. In case you were wondering. :-)

Food at $65 per week: Make your own yogurt!

In my real food switch I started buying organic whole plain yogurt at Trader Joe's for $3 a large container. My Augustine devoured it and it would be gone in a day or two... then came Gianna... it was gone in a day... It makes a great baby food. I had wanted to try making it for a while to stretch a buck, but it needed to be EASY and fool proof. I have to many memories of my mom's runny homemade yogurt. However, I have good memories of it... warm with cherries mixed in! Yummy! 

I found a recipe I love and fits in my busy life... and I'm here to share it with you! 

Pour 1 gallon of whole organic milk into my large crock pot around 3 or 4pm when my first kid wakes from naps.

Turn crock pot on high for 2-3hrs.

At around 2hrs milk should be 180*. (This depends on crock pot.) Heating kills of competing bacteria.

Take off cover and let it cool to 115*. (Don't let it cool lower than this or your yogurt won't be as thick.)

At 115* stir in 1 cup of plain yogurt with live active cultures. (With each batch I make I freeze 1cup of yogurt for the next batch and the gift keeps giving!)

Put on lid. Wrap entire crock pot, plug and all, in a big towel and put the whole thing in a dormant oven. I don't want to question your intelligence but, well, make sure the oven is NOT on. I also put one oven rack on my stove to remind my forgetful mind not to turn the oven on and make late night cookies! 

Leave for 8-12hrs. Overnight basically. In the morning you have thick and creamy yogurt!

The next step that I do is to make greek yogurt. I fell in love with Greek Yogurt before it was even cool. I went to Greece years ago and was served real Greek Yogurt with honey at all our bed and breakfasts. Oy yum! Now I can make it!

Greek yogurt is yogurt strained (in a cheese cloth) to remove whey and allow for a thick and high protein dessert er... food. Strain to desired thickness. Then use as breakfast, snack, dessert with raw honey or jelly/jam. I also use it for sour cream in recipes and as toppings as well as dips and it even passes for cream cheese if you strain it to long! (Oh happy fault!) I only strain about half of my yogurt. The kids eat the regular stuff, it lasts longer.

Now how about those health benefits? Yogurt with live active cultures is a great source of pro-biotics. Key to staying healthy during cold season. Feel free to google for more details! My personal testimony is that (knock on wood) I have not gotten sick for a couple months now despite the fact that my germ pool children get colds continuously. I am only this healthy when I am pregnant. And no, this is not a pregnancy announcement. ;-) The most recent change to my diet has been homemade yogurt. That's the only thing I can match it to. I usually catch almost everything my kids have to offer except perhaps their puke-- in the bucket I'm holding... inches from their face. Eck!!! So, this is pretty unusual for me and I am now completely sold on my yogurt kick!

Speaking of being sold...

A whole gallon of milk makes enough yogurt for a full week (or two) of yogurt eating here. I buy my milk for 5.99 at TJS using their organic store brand. It's even cheaper at Whole Foods but not worth the extra trip right now. Besides that I don't have to buy sour cream or cream cheese! Also, DON'T throw away the whey that you strain off of your greek yogurt. We use it to make smoothies and it has a great tart flavor. You can also freeze it for later use. Or experiment with fermenting veggies. I'm not there yet, but hopefully soon! I think it lasts for a couple weeks or so. 

**Also, as a side note. Based on my research I do not think low-fat is the healthy option. It's not natural and the body needs good healthy fats and so do our kids. Lower fat dairy goes through extra processing effecting it's health benefits. Also, the right fats help us absorb vitamins. I could go on and on but I'm not a scientist nor am I writing a research paper. I do encourage you to research it though, you might be surprised! Look at holistic and naturalist writers.** 

Here's to hoping for better health to all!

Happy First Snow: Meal Plan and Real Food Hot Cacao

Well, Praise the Lord we have a play written for our Christmas show! A stellar cast, director and team... I am already in the Christmas Spirit or in the Exmas Spirit? See the show and then tell me. :-)

Interested in getting tickets for "Christmas in Niatirb" click the link! But don't wait because we do sell out early especially for our Christmas show!

My picture is not uploading correctly... let's just say this is from Becket's perspective. :-)

Today was the first snow. And I know for some that is dreaded news but... It is November and its pretty fitting for this area. The first snow is pretty magical for me. Exciting and fresh and new. It quickly wanes after that. But I'm embracing today and with it comes excited kids who scramble to get dressed and out the door to play in the snow!

Eager little morning faces peaking out their window at the fresh white world. All my Winter's and Christmases come rushing back to me in a warm wave of cool rush on my face and the scent of cookies, hot chocolate and red cheeks.

I make my own "real food" hot chocolate for my kids instead of the nasty packaged stuff and it's oh so good, simple and really chocolaty!

Homemade Hot Chocolate:

1 cup of warm/hot whole Organic Milk

1/2 tsp Organic Cacao Powder (more for me less for the kids to avoid a caffeine rush) 

1 tsp Organic Powder Sugar/or Regular Sugar/Honey/Real Maple Syrup

Stir and serve with homemade whipped cream or mini marshmallows. That marshmallow part isn't so "real food" but my kids love marshmallows and I got 6 bags for $1 this summer so it's a fun treat. 

Menu for the week:

Sunday: Cashew Chicken Fried Rice

Monday: Beef and Mushroom Stroganoff

Tuesday: Tater Tot Green Bean Casserole

Wednesday: Hummus, 100% Whole Wheat Pita Bread and Veggies

Thursday: Spaghetti and Veggie

Friday: Tilapia, Coconut Quinoa and Broccoli

Saturday: Black Bean Chili and Crackers

Trader Joes: Total $22.30

Maple Shredded Wheat

Joe's O's

Button Mushrooms

Whole Wheat Pita Bread

Organic Gold Potatoes 4lbs

Organic Grape Jelly

Canned Coconut Milk

2 Bananas

Whole Organic Milk

Aldi: 

Tilapia

Boneless Pork Roast for pulled pork (next week)

In case you haven't noticed I plan to be under budget each week to leave room for special deals I come across. I also leave wiggle room since our grocery budget actually means our food budget. So if we go out to eat or grap a french fry to share or for Sunday donuts... that ALL comes out of my precious limited food budget. So I like to be spontaneously prepared!

Augustine has been skipping his daily nap most days and so that means he is consuming a LARGE mid-afternoon snack. He is SUCH a skinny boy and SUCH a big eater! He ate 3 bowls of buttered bone broth brown rice AND 2 slices of %100 whole wheat bread with butter. (He eats a lot of raw fruits and veggies so I let him eat reasonable snack requests of carbs and protein.) Gianna on the other hand eats like a little bird. She eats about 1/4 of whatever I give Augustine. So if he eats 2 PBJs, an apple and 4 carrot spears for lunch she eats 1/2 PBJ, a 1/2 apple and 2 carrot spears. And that is me MAKING her finish her food. It's quite a difference!

Becket is extremely allergic to eggs we recently found out. It was all pretty scary! But he is eating bone broth brown rice, ground turkey, beans, green beans, and even cheerios. He is the most peacful in his highchair surrounded by finger foods and he picks them up perfectly in his pincher grab. It is just darling. He is so quiet there I almost forget about him! What a darling!

Survival Mode - Food for now.

Ok, so... Its one of those weeks where I want to throw in a frozen pizza for every meal. My dear husband is completing the writing of our Theater's Christmas show and is basically "out of town" in so many words. The show is going to be AWESOME but it requires some sacrifices on our end. Don't all good things? Not seeing much of Daddy in the house is purely exhausting.

Even though he is gone... I am resisting the temptation to eh hem ... eat garbage for a week.

In fact I even threw bone broth in the crock pot tonight as I fed my kids peas, carrots, apples and PBJs. We will do better tomorrow. On a side note school went great today! I guess there is a trade off?

Here's a past peak on last weeks meals:

My experiment last week was trying Kerry Gold butter to see if that should be our next real food switch. It's made in Ireland from grass-fed cows and is supposed to be better for you. We switched from margarine (my ex-favorite) to real butter at least a year ago and I haven't looked back. Seems like a pretty straight forward real food switch. I stocked up on like 20lbs of organic butter for $1,99 per pound a while ago and I'm on my last pound. Getting close to the Holidays I'm hoping Aldi starts carrying butter closer to the $1.60 (?) I think that it was last year. Until then we will just stick with conventional butter.

This week I'm going to try to make a switch to organic eggs. It's so hard for me to pass up eggs for 0.99 a dozen but from what I've read it's probably the next most logical step. More on that....

1- Organic Spinach/Beet/Walnut Salad with homemade super healthy poppy seed dressing, Grilled Cheese, and Broccoli

2- Some kind of pasta

3- Organic Kale and Salisbury Steak with Organic Rice in bone broth

4- Grilled Tuna Sandwiches, Chips, Carrots and Apples (I didn't make this last week.)

5-Cheeseburger Soup w/Bone Broth and Buttered Toast/Crackers

6- Sausage/ Peppers/ Organic Potatoes in Crock Pot

7-  Whole Wheat Tacos with Guacamole

Shopping List this week:

I actually don't need the corn or any of the other items on my Aldi list just thought I should stock up on sale items. I might just skip Aldi and buy booze and chocolate at TJs....I'm going to need it this week!

**I just went to Trader Joe's and the prices were slightly different than my estimate... those Org eggs - yikes - expensive! I got organic celery instead of corn and -- Beer. No, not booze, beer of the root variety. I'm having a root beer float as I type! Total was slightly over $19.**

If Deals were Drugs... I'd be high.

Is that title kind of racy? Am I going to get tagged by government spies for mentioning drugs? (That alone tells you what a naive goody two shoes I am!)  Only to disappoint the snoops with info on sausages and free juicy juice boxes??! Although if they saw my behavior last night they may question my sanity. More on that...

Ok, so I'M not one of those crazy "extreme couponers." While I love the show (if I had cable) I think the excess of it all is pretty crazy! I could only justify that excess if I was giving it away to the poor. Now that sounds appealing! With that disclaimer in mind I DO get a rush high when I get a good deal! It's pretty fun!

Tell me if this sounds weird. I drive up to a dark street at 7:30pm pull over in front of a house I've never been to before... get out and grab a white bag from the front porch and rush back to my car and speed away.

Totally normal, right?!

I swear the bag was only filled with unopened boxes of juicy juice and that they came from a safe reliable source... Even if I didn't really know the people well... Or... At all... All in the name of free juicy juice boxes! Hey, I tested them first before giving them to my kids. :-)

Then today I took a wonderful trip with my kids to target to get these for $.64 each pack! Yes, I'll take a high five!

Click here to see how to get the same deal!

Beyond that it was just an amazing day with my kids in the sunshine at the park. They give me the biggest high of all. Sometimes I crash pretty hard too but my kids really do fill me with an insane amount of joy!

I mean look at this sunshine (and by sunshine I do mean this face!!)

Receive the blessing from little Saint Becket

While all my kids were scrumptiously adorable today Becket got all the cute pictures. He does this little tongue waggle thing and I just want to eat him he is so cute. He is not the typical crawling baby on the go. He really loves to sit with me and hug me. His crawling comes in handy since I am on the move and he needs to follow me everywhere! I so treasure these days since I know they are fleeting.