Frugal Friday: The Simple Diet (3)

If you’re just joining us, we’ve been talking the last few weeks about ways to dramatically cut our grocery budget and eat wholesome, healthy food as well.  To review the journey to this place, feel free to read the Food Stamp Challenge, a project seeking to make healthy whole eating affordable for everyone.  The Simple Diet is just an overview for anyone wanting to take the plunge of reducing that food budget, and feed their families with fresh wholesome food (and do so simply!).  So far we’ve covered:

• Simple Step 1: Eat oatmeal.
• Simple Step 2: Simplify snacks!
• Simple Step 3: Think whole. (Guest post)

Today we’ll be finishing our topic on Simple Step 3: Think Whole.

Now most of us are aware that eating “whole foods” is good for us. The store Whole Foods is making a killing selling us healthy foods (and I love it there!). But, if the goal is also to simplify our budgets and free up as many resources as possible for giving and blessing our families and those around us, we have to be wise in what it means to “eat whole”.  Here are 3 easy components of think whole.

1. Whole Grain:

Again, we all know this, right?  But when there are 27 types of bread out there that all say whole grain, and most of them are mostly just white flour with some bran sprinkled in, it can get complicated and time consuming trying to figure it all out. Plus, the real good healthy bread (think Dave’s Killer–yum!)  is soooo expensive.  So, this is the SIMPLE diet, right? Here’s all you have to do:  Buy whole wheat flour. That’s it. That’s all you have to do.

The easiest way to be sure you consume whole grains is to only buy whole grains. 🙂 Simple, right? I buy only two flour items: whole wheat flour and whole wheat pasta.  Yes, as always, if you have the freedom in your time and budget, have a blast with buying rye flour and spelt flour and a fun variety of pancake mixes and so on and so forth. I could go hog wild at Bob’s Red Mill. But for Simple Diet?  Two items. Whole wheat flour and whole wheat pasta. From these two items you can make pancakes, bread, crepes, spaghetti, mac ‘n cheese, tortillas, waffles…anything you want.  Two items.  At Winco whole wheat flour is $.39/lb. and many shapes of whole wheat pastas are around $.90/lb.  So. Cheap.  And yes, I simply substitute whole wheat flour for any recipe that calls for white flour.

*That oatmeal is another great source of whole grains.  Other delicious, easy, and inexpensive whole grains to keep in stock are brown rice, barley, wild rice and quinoa.  Wild rice and quinoa are more expensive, but great as a special treat.  Brown rice and barley are way cheap at Winco (less than $.50/lb.) and are wonderfully healthy staples. To really keep cost down just stick to whole wheat flour, whole wheat pasta, oats, brown rice and barley. You can make everything you need out of these. (Refer back to bread recipe, bread machine link, and the best bread machine cookbook.)

2. Whole Animal

Beef:: Now I must confess we’re not big meat eaters. You won’t find us buying a whole cow, or even half a cow (but that’s the way to do it if you are a meat-fan!). I buy small amounts of ground beef when it’s on sale (organic, grass-fed), and we don’t eat steak.  No doubt about it–meat is expensive.  So we do what millions of others have done for hundreds of years before us–stretch it. Make it last.  I use very small amounts in recipes, instead adding more veggies and grains.

Fish:: We love fish. We eat a lot of salmon and yes, it’s expensive, but it can be stretched!  As I shared here: Buy the fish fresh and whole, and ask the fish lady (is there a name for people who cut fish?) to fillet it for you and give you the spine and scraps and head (wrapped up, don’t worry you don’t have to stick it in your purse).  Then you can cut the filleted fish into 2-3 oz. servings at home, and freeze individually.  It’s actually very inexpensive like that (about $1/serving).  And having it pre-frozen in servings is great for our portion control.  Then you can dump all the scraps, spine and head into a pot and make fish stock. It’s delicious and wonderful for making seafood chowder (which is a great way to stretch that salmon).

Chicken:: Of course this is where we all live, right?  We eat chicken more than anything else.  Again–the Simple and frugal and healthy way is to buy the whole chicken.  Although I bought whole organic chickens for a while, I’ve recently been buying Draper Valley chickens which are local and raised naturally.  Thriftway runs sales occasionally for $.79/lb. That’s a great deal. Buy as many as they let you (they usually limit that price) and stick them in the freezer. We’ve already talked about chicken stock, so you’re an old hat at that by now.

We don’t buy pork or shellfish or any other kind of meat. Again, if you have the freedom in the budget, great.  But for simplicity sake you can certainly get buy with just these three meat items–and use the whole thing.

3. Whole Dairy:

I know less about this area, simply because we aren’t milk drinkers.  Many people swear by raw milk, but we simply don’t consume enough to make it worth our time and money. So I simply buy small amounts of organic whole milk when it’s on sale, Tillamook cheese when it’s under $4 for a 2lb. block, and organic eggs sporadically.  We buy real butter when on sale for under $2/lb.  Heather talked about this in her article last week.

In summary, a Simple Diet grocery list, for all these items would simply be:

Whole wheat flour, whole wheat pasta, brown rice, barley, oats.  Grass-fed beef, some salmon, a whole chicken.  Whole milk, some cheese, eggs, and real butter.

There’s the grocery list!  Add fruits and veggies (and peanut butter!) and that’s really enough to live on. Simple.

Next we’ll look specifically at Simple Lunch. Happy whole eating!