I have recipes on my blog (in the right hand column, you'll see under categories
Food and Recipes (19)
left click on it and you'll find my recipes and food finds. Budget-friendly dieting is the main focus of my blog because hubby and I are on disability and the food budget is fairly tight.
http://www.3fatchicks.com/diet-blogs/kaplods/
We do buy some organics, but I do not buy into the notion that you have to buy only organic to be "really" eating healthfully. If you search online you will find lists of the most and least contaminated fruits and vegetables (for some fruits and vegetables the difference between organic and nonorganic are minimal).
I follow an exchange plan, which like calorie counting can be easily adapted to any budget. In an exchange plan, I have an alottment of protein, starch, dairy, fruit, vegetable, and fat servings. I have an exchange reference that allows me to look up most foods (and a worksheet to calculate the exchanges for any food with a nutrition label). When I make my grocery list, I take my exchanges into account.
For example, I am alotted 21 servings of fruit each week, but I can use any fruit to satisfy that requirement. The "cheapest" would probably be dried fruit like raisins, but concentrated sugar doesn't work well for me, instead I look for the cheapest fruits that aren't junk food or binge triggers.
I buy apples, oranges, bananas and frozen strawberries most often, because they're usually the cheapest. I look for sales and specials to take advantage of the best prices.
I do the same for my other exchanges. For example, 95 - 98% lean ground beef is very expensive. 75-80% lean ground beef is much cheaper (but higher in fat). So, I combine it with tvp (soy protein - and fat free). I can make a ground beef mixture that has the fat and calories of 98% lean beef, but cost me less per pound than the cheapest ground beef (because tvp is about the 1/3 to 1/4 the cost of the cheapest ground beef per serving).
That recipe is also on my blog. I make the ground beef mixture in huge batches (up to 10 lbs at a time). I brown the ground beef (or ground pork) with dry tvp and a couple seasioning veggies like onion, garlic, celery, bell pepper, diced carrot, mushrooms and water or broth to reconstitute the tvp then freeze the mixture in ziploc bags. "Smushing" the bag around every so often during the freezing so that the mixture freezes into crumbles, rather than a solid chunk. Then I can just scoop out what I need for recipes that start with ground beef (I bought a couple ground beef cookbooks I found dirt cheap on amazon.com and in thrift stores).
I also cook large batches of beans in the crockpot and freeze (also using the ziploc bags and the shake and freeze method so that the beans freeze seperately rather than in clumps. It works for pasta too).
There are tons of ways to save money and eat for health and weight loss. Eating healthy/cheap is possible, but it does take planning and preparation.
I agree that there are very few healthy/cheap/fast options, but there are shortcuts that can give you all three. For example cooking huge batches of beans or tvp/beef doesn't take any longer than cooking tiny batches. So if you make a huge batch and freeze (either in meal-sized batches, or in a scoopable form).
I love the crockpot, because while it takes time to cook, it's not time-consuming. You may spend 5 minutes or less in the kitchen to cook a nice meal. I checked out and even ordered slow-cooker recipe books and wrote down some recipes and also the names of books I want to buy. When I go to used bookstores and thrift stores I look for books on my list or similar to them. Right now I have three low-carb crockpot cookbooks that I checked out from the library. One of them, I've checked out at least three times (it's on my to-buy list, but I haven't gotten around to it, yet).
Am I nuts or is dieting expensive?
