How we eat real food on a small budget

Real food on a budget – how do we do it?

On average i aim to spend about $150 a week for my family of 4 on food. We are gluten free, mostly dairy free (apart from organic butter and a bit of raw milk), we generally don’t eat from packages and i even manage to buy all our dry goods organic (flours, nuts, seeds etc) and 80% organic fruit, with some organic vege and chicken thrown in there too. I know where to save and where to splurge. Here is what i do to keep our food budget down.

Join a food co-op
I am part of a food co-op, we have roughly around 40 families in our co-op and together we make large bulk orders for organic dry goods every month, the stuff I get ranges from coconut flour and raw cacao to olives, gherkins, dried fruit, nuts and cacao butter. We get organic fruit and veggies and even eggs, every fortnight. Plus we also organise other bulk orders for treat foods like Proper Crisps, Good Buzz kombucha, Dr Feel Good ice blocks, we get things like bulk lots of olive oil from a member’s parents, order organic bostocks chicken, franks preservative free sausages and have split up a beast between some of the members too. It’s like a really awesome little food community! Because we are buying in bulk and splitting the food between us, the cost is much less than what you would pay at the supermarket (sometimes even half the price!). Even the veggies, for example, the other week limes were $19 a kilo at my local supermarket and $9/kg in the co-op. For 2.5kg of organic potatoes from the supermarket is $13.99 the same amount through the co-op is under $5. At the moment avocadoes are about $4 each from the supermarket – currently we are still paying $1 something! Not only is the produce organic but much cheaper and is usually picked the day before it arrives, so super fresh. For an even cheaper bargain you can order the ‘juicing produce’ which, sometimes i can’t even tell the difference between that and the eating produce! And it’s about $1 per kilo for things like apples, beetroot and carrots. If you want to know more about co-ops and how to join or start one – you can find that here.

Spend less time at the supermarket
I try to buy as much as i can from the markets and the co-op to reduce the times i go to the supermarket, because pretty much every time i end up there for one thing i come out $40 later! I try to limit my trips there to once a week to top up on toiletries, coconut cream, produce and reduced meat. This is a work in progress though, i still feel like i end up there way more than i need to!

Don’t spend weekly
I don’t spend our weekly budget every week, i allocate $600-$700 (which works out to about $150 p/w) a month for food and try to spend it over the month by buying things in bulk. Some months i might be over budget and some months i might come under but it all evens our over the year. I have money put aside to take advantage of food bargains, reduced meat or if someone wanted to split up a beast i can generally rustle up something from the food money pool at short notice because i know how much it’s going to save us in the long run.

Local markets and fruit & vege stores
Again the message is step away from the supermarket! Only recently have we been able to buy produce from a local market (hooray) extra points because it’s spray free and home grown, with love. I take advantage of the markets and buy anything there that i’ve managed to kill in my garden at home (pretty much everything). Even though the closest fruit and vege store is about 40km away, whenever i am in town (at least once a fortnight) i usually make an effort to go there because the produce is cheaper than the supermarket.

Stock up! (and invest in a freezer)
I stock up on any reduced meat, good specials, and in season produce that is going at a good price. I freeze the meat and produce or sometimes pickle, preserve or ferment the vege. Old reduced fruit or an abundance of in season fruit freezes great for baking.

It’s not what you know but who you know…
When people started realising that real food was important to us, instead of bring scones for morning tea we often have friends and family turn up with schnitzel, frozen chicken, baskets of fruit or bags of meat they have cleaned out from their freezer! Even though i say we spend $150 a week, the value of the meat we get for free is well beyond what we could afford to buy. We also got gifted a large chest freezer from a friend who didn’t need it anymore, and had a family member build us a run that we keep our chickens in. When you let people know that real food is important to you and your family, they are more likely to help you pursue this, than hinder it by bringing cake and cookies into the house.

Make your own, and stick to the basics
Store bought versions of healthy foods are expensive. On the rare occasion i purchase paleo bread or even store bought coconut yoghurt i’m pretty sure can hear my wallet sobbing! Sorry wallet, but *sometimes* an extra $5 is worth the hour i don’t spend in the kitchen! Sometimes being the key word, very occasionally, like less than once a month. But if you are buying this stuff regularly while you are trying to budget, your poor wallet is probably in the midst of a mental breakdown. I make my own version of everything, bread, crackers, dips, spreads, hummus, pate, jams, buns, pizza base, almond milk, coconut milk, yoghurt, bliss balls – you name it, i’ve probably made it! And for the most part it’s not that hard, i spend a whole lot less time in the supermarket buying food so there is more time at home to make it! And if you are buying a whole lot of pizza bases, breads, dips and bars, even if they are labeled with ‘real food’ or healthy ingredients, perhaps it’s time to consider looking back into things that come from the ground or animals (fruit, vege, nuts, seeds, meat, eggs) as the basis of a real food diet. Because as soon as you start trying to recreate cakes, burgers, pizza and pies on a regular basis is when real food actually becomes expensive, and even if you are making your own and not buying it, it costs you more time in the kitchen than you would like. I try not to get too caught up making real food versions of the standard western diet (cakes, pasta, muffins, burgers, pizza) because that’s when it starts getting expensive, and we lose perspective in that ‘real food’ should just be real food there are plenty of delicious things you can do with veggies, nuts, fruits, eggs and meat – Like freezing your ripe bananas and using them to make ice cream! You will not find me whipping up buns or pizza on a regular basis.

Grow your own or hunt and gather
Ok so i’m a bit preachy with grow your own, i currently have a tub of baby spinach dying in my sun room and a capsicum plant hanging on to dear life which for some reason has survived, but i’m pretty sure it regrets its existence. I even managed to have my wheatgrass turn brown. I have kale skeletons in my garden (result of a grizzly green caterpillar escapade) and 12 brown tomato plants that i harvested about 6.2 tomatoes off this year. I totally get points for trying right? We did get some strawberries, blueberries and cranberries this year though (right, that’s it i’m starting a berry orchid!). And i cannot seem to kill herbs, phew. So if you are game, start a vege garden, grow in pots, plastic tubs, a hole in the ground, a big black sack full of soil – whatever you want because they might just die anyway! Or they might flourish and you have easy fruit and vege cheaper than the supermarket. If anything though, indoor salad greens are awesome, they are always super expensive and probably highly sprayed from the supermarket. Unless an army of slugs traipses into your indoor growing area in the dead of the night and devourers all of your salad green seedlings every time you plant them for three planting cycles in a row (yep, it happened) then you should be sweet.

Having chickens comes under this too, now, chickens are quite the opposite of our vege garden, we have had 3 chooks for nearly 6 years now, they have survived 3 house moves and numerous dog attacks, the geriatric girls are no longer laying us eggs, but we don’t have the heart to move them on, so they are now company for our 7 new girls, currently about 3 months old. We managed to raise them from 1 day old with no fatalities! They even came to the beach batch for the weekend on holiday with us. Yep, 7 chooks … in the batch .. how is that for real food commitment? They will hopefully be ready for lay very soon and then we will never have to buy eggs again! We have a fairly large section and our birds are free range in a portioned off area. Just 2 birds don’t need a whole lot of room, especially if you are happy to let them out for a roam then lock them up in a hutch at night. We feed a mix of pellets and scraps and it really doesn’t cost us a whole lot at all, much less than the price of eggs! They also make really cool pets, don’t shed fur all over the floor, crap in a litter tray inside the house, or steal your bed space at night. So, chickens for the win!

On some rare occasions, the Man of the house has been able to go out hunting, and has come back with a freezer full of meat for us. If the opportunity crops up, it’s a no brainer, i will happily stay at home all weekend wallowing in the sorrow of children i don’t get a break from, in exchange for some wild and free meat.

Be thrifty!
I often go to op-shops to scope out the kitchen appliances, you can find all sorts of treasures there, George Forman grills, blenders, food processors, slow cookers, waffle irons, donut makers, cast iron pots and pans. Sometimes it’s the best stuff, the stuff my parents had – that was actually made to last a lifetime, for mere dollars. I recently scored a juicer for $10 – hello fresh juice! Not that you actually need all the latest appliances, but some things are nice to have – a food processor and slow cooker is certainly helpful and i use our hand-held blender more than we use the toaster! Then there are luxury items, like stand mixers, juicers and waffle makers – but if you are buying them for $10 they become a lot more affordable and give the option for some interesting homemade kitchen creations.

Choose the cheap cuts
Sometimes, if i can’t afford an organic chicken, I will buy organic, free range bones, so at least i can make our broth from a chicken that was once happy and free to roam outdoors, which i’m pretty sure makes happy broth! Same with beef, sometimes i buy grass fed beef bones (from green meadows) to make broth – but we cannot always afford to buy the actual meat. I often buy a whole roast, opposed to smaller cuts, which per kilo end up costing a lot more. And things like chicken wings, thighs and nibbles seem to go a lot further than chicken breasts. Casserole steak cooks up awesome in the slow cooker, and is just as good as an expensive sirloin.

BULK up the beef
The boys of the house (so everyone except me) are big eaters. Actually i can pack away a fair bit for my body size too. So we are a family of ravenous pigs, we eat a lot of food. Ashton and his Dad in particular, eat ridiculous amounts. I often add rice or potatoes to our meals so they don’t eat my portion of food – or the part i was envisioning for my lunch or breakfast the next day! Being cheap, staple items, this also helps to keep costs down. I bulk our mince out with grated vege, and sometimes lentils, to make it go further. I add chickpeas to curries and eggs to salads and stirfrys for them. We actually don’t need a whole lot of meat – a palm size is usually a pretty good portion guide, so keeping that in mind helps to keep consumption (and cost) down, and bulk the rest of the meal out with veggies, and some healthy fats to keep everyone full.

Be flexible
I love good food, delicious food is important to me, and if we have money leftover at the end of the week that doesn’t need to be saved or spent, then i might use it to buy something we wouldn’t ordinarily afford, like a nice steak, or some little island coconut ice-cream (yum!). Sometimes i also have to be flexible in that, we are running low on funds and running low on food. I might need to choose to put $10 less petrol in the car that week because i’d rather buy some fresh vege. Sometimes i choose to wear shoes with holes in them or buy my clothes second hand, so i can get little extras like Beef Gelatin for Felix, and i’m totally cool with the sacrifice because it’s about what is important to me, and what i wear is not, what my family and I eat, is. When Felix was at his worst and being admitted to hospital last year, i had a big decision to make, do i continue to go to work and do a half ass job there, and a half ass job at home. Have the money to buy good food, but not the time to prepare it, or spend with the kids. Or do we choose the backseat, a life with less stuff, less money, but more time. I chose time, because time is invaluable. It’s also when i realized that setting my children up for a healthy lifestyle, providing them with the best possible thing i could ever do for their health and well-being was important to me. I saw them suffer from what food can do to them, and it’s my job to also use it to make them thrive. That means less money to spend, but more time to use. So pretty much, i quit my job so i have time to spend preparing and organizing real food for my family… A decision I do not regret!

I’m sure there are heaps of other things I do that have just become second nature to me now (like saving ridiculous tidbits of leftovers which i either feed to the toddler for snacks or re-purpose for my lunches). Would love to hear everyone else’s tips and tricks too!