FitDay or Daily Plate or a similar site will really help. You can list your foods for the day and see how it matches up to the RDA. It was really helpful for me.

Check out the cabbage thread too. That's another high impact food - good vitamins, very filling, usually inexpensive

Ladies-

I really needed this thread this morning! Thanks!

Re: the dairy, we buy our milk from a local farm and I'm paying $6.50/gallon. I'm not ready to give this luxury up yet, grocery store milk just can't compare. So we only use the fresh milk for drinking, cereal, etc. For cooking, I always substitute dry milk. It's easy, if the recipe calls for a cup of milk, I add a cup of water and 1/3 cup dry milk. The difference is not noticeable. For sauces and cream soups, I use canned evaporated skim milk. It makes things taste richer and more creamy than regular skim milk or dry milk, and I keep a few cans in the pantry so I never have to worry about running out.

I cook my dry beans in the pressure cooker, very quick and easy.

I freeze as much as I can in the summer when produce is cheap, and switch over to the frozen once the farmer's market closes. When I run out, I go to grocery store frozen.

If you have an Aldi's nearby, their cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt, and eggs are much cheaper and good quality. I love their nonfat yogurt as much as I love Greek. I have a yogurt maker and make my own sometimes, but I only do this now when my expensive local farm milk is getting elderly. It's cheaper to buy the Aldi's than make it with local farm milk.

I make lots of soup too, very inexpensive and filling. I make a veggie soup with whatever veggies I have on hand and need to use up. It makes a great and filling veggie snack during the week and always turns out good.

zeff, when you tried the dried milk trick, did you let it chill overnight before drinking? The flavor improves, although I have done it with 1/4 dried, not half, they notice that much. It tastes pretty yucky right after mixing.

I may get brave and give the dry milk another try for yogurt. I have this childhood memory of my Mom always forgetting to mix the milk until right before dinner and it being warm and lumpy. Still don't drink milk.

Schmoo - I did let it chill....maybe I just made the ratio too much for a first timer. I've heard it also tastes better in a glass container.

I do use evap. milk in baking and soups....much cheaper that using a cup or two of milk. I especially love it in my tomato soup which calls for heavy cream - the same amount of evaporated milk still makes it very creamy and good, but fewer calories!

I'll have to give dried milk another shot...use less this time. Has anybody found organic evaporated milk? It kind of defeats the purpose to buy organic milk and then mix half with regular milk.