Even in the best of economic times, we’ve always had a rather small budget for food. When my husband and I first got married, we were both full-time students working part-time, minimum wage jobs at $4/hour. There were months when I fed both of us for just $15/week!

Granted, it wasn’t particularly Real Food, but I mostly mention it to say: I’ve been there, folks. I’ve been dirt poor trying to do the best I can with what I had.

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The farmer I buy my pastured chickens from charges $3.25/lb for a whole chicken. The rancher I buy my pastured beef from charges around $3.80/lb for a butchered, processed, and packaged side of cattle.

To some, this seems expensive. Afterall, supermarket sales regularly sell chicken or beef for as little as a dollar per pound.

Yet, these are the same people who are willing to pay almost $10/lb for a box of breakfast cereal.

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When talking with others about my eating habits, one of the first questions they ask me is: “How do you have time to do it all?” Granted, it sounds like a lot. Everyone would love to prepare nutritious, wholesome, nutrient-dense, traditional foods for themselves and their families, but who has the time?

First, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Are you ready? It doesn’t really take that much more time at all. Making kombucha, for example, represents about 5 minutes of real work a week. The rest of the time, I’m just waiting. The same goes with any traditional food preparation technique. Most don’t require a lot of time doing things; they require a lot of time waiting on things. They require planning.

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Once upon a time, I began each week with a meal plan.

It was an amazing little thing — a simple sheet of paper with hand written notes outlining the week’s meals. It also made doing traditional foods preparation a lot simpler.

If I planned sandwiches for lunch on Tuesday, I would make a note to bake sandwich bread Monday night. I’d note when to make mayonnaise, ketchup, or dill pickle relish. I’d tell myself when to marinate meat or start the crock pot. When to sprout grains or legumes.

I’ve fallen out of the habit, and our meals have suffered for it. Now dinner is what I feel like making when 6 o’clock rolls around — and I often have no idea what to make. No meat is defrosted. I’m hungry and tired. It’s a recipe for disaster, and we usually only barely escape it.

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Okay. Now for some really exciting news. Drew over at How To Cook Like Your Grandmother has created an all-new, color, illustrated version of his cookbook.

And he’s giving away three copies!

Drew is the guy who taught me how to render beef tallow (among many other interesting and handy kitchen skills I didn’t pick up from my own grandmother).

Plus, he’s the author of my all-time favorite French Onion Soup recipe.

Knowing Drew, you can bet that this cookbook is not just your average cookbook.