One Snarky Chica with Issues

When people start talking about eating healthy you tend to hear two different things. There are people that proclaim to eat healthy and that it ends up saving them money. Then there are those that proclaim to eat healthy but complain about the cost - these are the time-savers.

I know a lot of people that have a different definition of “eating healthy” that I have. To clear that up, I define eating healthy as such:

More fresh fruits & veggies, less packaged/processed items, and a conscious effort to eat low sodium as well as trying to avoid high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

So, let’s look at time-saver “healthy” eaters. I know a lot of people like this. These are the people that used to sit down with a big bag of Doritos for a snack but now eat a 100-calorie pack of Cheetos instead. Since they are consuming less, regardless of the fact that it is crap, they consider themselves to be eating healthy. I consider that just eating less crap in one sitting. Time-savers are also big on “healthy” frozen meals. Nevermind the fact that they could make the same thing from scratch and possibly eat it with some nutritional value. When asked “Why not make it yourself to really make it healthy?” they respond “I don’t have that kind of time!” Hence my dubbing them “time savers.” These time savers can often be heard complaining about the high cost of eating healthy.
I admit it - I used to be a bit of a “time saver” myself. I ate a lot of those “healthy” frozen food items that are chock full of sodium. When I started reading more about health and nutrition and realized how out of whack the sodium content was on things like canned veggies, soups and frozen meals I started experimenting in the kitchen.

Now I fall into the other category. I have started eating healthy and am just amazed by how my grocery bill and gone down. And I rarely get to use coupons for savings as most of the things that I buy are fresh. I have started making more and more things from scratch. I make everything from pizza to cakes to spaghetti sauce from scratch. Sure, it takes a bit longer to make your pizza crust from scratch as opposed to using a 99-cent pack of Betty Crocker pizza crust mix. But you know what? A 5-lb bag of flour is only $1.84 and I only need 2 cups of flour for the whole crust! See those cost savings. Sure, a few more items go into the pizza crust, but you get the point. Just last night I made some cake brownies from scratch. The box of Duncan Hines mix I used to buy is $2.33 in the store. The recipe I used called for 1.5 cups of the aforementioned flour as well as a few other things. It was well under the $2.33 - plus it made twice as much! And it was healthier. I plan on tackling bread making next!

My household used to spend an average of $400 a month for two people on groceries. That was a lot of processed crap! Now we average around $200 - and that is buying a LOT of fresh fruits and veggies each week!

Recently, I bought a 6-lb roasting chicken on sale for almost $5.00. We ate chicken pretty much for every meal for about a week straight and still ended up tossing some meat due to poor planning. That was a bummer. Here is how we stretched the chicken:

• Night 1: Roasted chicken with veggies
• Day 2 day: pull off all meat, then put carcass in pan with water, onions, spices to make broth
• Day 2 lunch: Chicken and swiss sandwiches with salads
• Day 2 dinner: soup from the broth
• Day 3 lunch: sandwiches again
• Day 3 dinner: soup again
• Day 4 lunch: soup again
• Day 4 dinner: chicken taco salads
• Day 5 lunch: still more soup!
• Day 5 dinner: chicken sandwiches again
• Day 6 lunch: the end of the soup
• Day 6 dinner: chicken sandwiches again

By day 7 it was getting to where it needed thrown out. What I should have done was made chicken and rice with some of it or even stashed it in the freezer for later. And remember - that chicken did not even cost $5.00!

See, healthy eating is really not expensive. It all depends on how you define healthy.