Hello. My name is Teresa and I am a new contributor. I am married with two children and have recently moved to a 10 acre farm. My strategy for eating healthy and affordably revolves around 1) making my pantry a personal “food bank”. This allows me to buy in bulk when there is a sale or to ask for a 10% bulk discount for something I know I will use a lot of, 2) growing as much of my food as possible, 3) coming up with a weekly meal plan I repeat for a month or season, and 4) eating poor food for several days so that we can afford to spend more several times a week.

This year I planted many small fruit trees and a big garden. I will have the fresh and preserved luxuries of raspberries, strawberries, herbs, peaches and cherries all year. I may try building a root cellar in the future to store potatoes, carrots apples, and cabbage. I am also raising sheep. Not everyone can do this, but I have made it a priority. Explore trying to provide even a small percentage of your food. It will humble you. Even one apple tree in your yard can be a big boon, providing applesauce and apples all winter and most plants generously and affordably reproduce themselves.

Our menu for April:

Breakfast: rotates between these and a good cup of coffee:

A Plain Yogurt, Granola, Fruit

B Oatmeal, Honey, Milk

C Scrambled Eggs, Ezekiel Toast w/butter

D German pancakes, Jam

Lunch for kids is a sandwich, fruit, vegetable, wheat-free oatmeal & cookie (freeze big batch to slice-n-bake)

Lunch for me is generally leftover dinner, or cheese, bread, fruit

Dinner: Here are three of my favorite poor dinners. With a good beer, they taste divine.

Irish poor: real mashed potatoes, sauteed veg (cabbage, broccoli, kale, etc) and 1/2 a sausage

Latino poor: homemade pinto beans (freeze extra)
homemade red rice, and extras such as shredded lettuce to jazz it up

Asian poor: fried rice or Pad Thai and cucumber salad
(this time of year I buy non-organic English cucumbers)

I buy potatoes, cabbage, onions, apples, sausage or bacon, beans, rice, oats, flour, butter, yogurt in bulk. I freeze the excess sausage and butter. I also hit the pasta aisle and buy the on sale pasta and sauces. At my co-op they bring in so many new brands and eventually many of them go on sale in a big way. Buy extra food instead of putting that money in the bank.

For two dinners a week I have fish/vegetables/rice and steak salad with feta, tomato, onion (1/2 steak per person) since I have eaten cheap the other nights.

A good source for recipes is RecipeSource.com. Let me know if you want any of my recipes.