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.

I understand the sticker shock that comes from choosing nourishing, real foods. It can be hard to pay $6.50/gallon for grass-fed raw milk when the grocery store milk is $3/gallon less. It feels crazy.

And, it often makes people give up in frustration before they’ve even begun to incorporate better food choices into their diet. Well, I’m here to tell you it can be done. You may not be able to do it all at once; I know we didn’t. It’s taken us years to get to where we are, and we still make compromises all the time because of budget constraints. So, give yourself a little grace.

There are two components to eating Real Food on a budget. One is learning what foods to prioritize sourcing well, and the other is learning how to manage your kitchen properly to stretch those dollars.

How to Prioritize Food Choices

Without question, this is how I prioritize spending my money:

1. Getting High Quality Fats & Oils — The goal here is to eat a traditional balance of fats by reducing the amount of Omega 6 fatty acids in our diet and increasing the amount of Omega 3 fatty acids. It’s also to eat more saturated and monounsaturated fats, and to reduce polyunsaturated fat intake to less than 4%. You can do that by switching to traditional fats. If buying quality animal fats like lard or tallow from pastured/wild/grass-fed animals is too expensive, consider using more coconut oil, butter, and olive oil in your cooking. Whatever you do, eliminate all yellow seed oils like corn oil, vegetable oil, canola oil, etc. If you’re worried that you’re not getting enough Omega 3 oils, despite your best efforts, by all means buy and take a quality fish oil or krill oil supplement that’s been certified mercury-free, etc. I highly recommend supplementing with fermented cod liver oil, just because of all it’s wonderful nutritional benefits. For online sources supplements, check out the listings on my Resources Page.
2. Buying Raw or Fermented Dairy From Grass-Fed Animals — Obviously, this is a big step, and knowing how to prioritize buying milk or cheese can be difficult. That\’s why I recently started a What To Buy series of posts. If you haven’t already read them, or would like a refresher on how to prioritize your dairy choices according to your budget and what’s available, check out these posts on Healthy Milk: What to Buy and Healthy Cheese: What to Buy. Fermented dairy includes yogurt, kefir, cheese, sour cream, buttermilk, and the like. These all contain healthy bacteria and living enzymes.
3. Getting High Quality Meats, Fish, & Eggs – By this, I mean for you to eat meats from humanely raised, pastured animals or wild caught seafood. Grass-fed beef is nutritionally superior to its industrially raised counterpart, and the same can be said for any pastured meats. High quality eggs are trickier to find, thanks to lax labeling standards here in the U.S. that allow egg packaging to be quite misleading and downright deceptive. Check out this post on Healthy Eggs: What to Buy.
4. Buying Organic Fruits & Veggies — If you’ve done the first three things on this list and still have some wiggle room in your budget, then start buying as many organic fruits & veggies as you can afford. Prioritize buying organic on thin-skinned fruits & vegetables like grapes, peaches, leafy greens, etc. If a fruit or vegetable has a thicker-skin or peel, you can feel safer buying non-organic b/c you can simply peel it and eliminate most pesticides that way.

Please note that buying organic fruits & vegetables is way down on the list. In fact, it’s got the lowest priority. That’s because of all the changes listed above, switching to organic fruits & vegetables will have the smallest effect on your health and nutritional well-being.

How To Manage Your Kitchen Properly

These are tips that I listed before in a previous post on this subject, but they’re worth repeating again and augmenting with a few clarifications. This is how I manage my kitchen:

1. I prepare our own meals – Eating out is a luxury. And contrary to what KFC claimed in their infamous $10 Challenge commercial, it really is cheaper to cook your own food at home.
2. I don’t buy packaged foods — This is a huge money saver! (And it does wonders for your health.) There’s a reason why my first Newbie Tip is to Become A Label Nazi. After all, even so-called “organic” packaged foods can hide unhealthy ingredients.
3. I buy in bulk, and directly from local farmers when possible – I pick up bulk grains and beans and natural sweeteners from my local grocery store (or in buying clubs with like-minded friends & neighbors), and I also plan large once-a-year purchases of pastured beef and poultry. This saves a lot of money. It is considerably cheaper to buy grass-fed meat in bulk than to buy it by the cut, and (with the exception of ground beef) I beat grocery store prices for industrially raised meats for just about every cut of steak or roast out there. I know that having freezer space is an issue for many; it was for me for years. But I kept my eyes peeled for free or low-cost freezers on Craigslist and Freecycle, and eventually ended up getting one when I moved into my new house. Considering that I’m probably saving $850/year in meat costs alone, even buying a new freezer would pay for itself quickly.
4. I eat fewer animal products (and more veggies) — While I believe animal products are far healthier for me than the diet dictocrats would have us believe, I’m also a vegan for about 40% of the year thanks to my religious principles (Orthodox Christian). And, even when I’m not keeping a vegan fast due to pregnancy or breastfeeding, my family still only averages about 2.67 lbs of meat per week over the course of the year. The trick here is to make meat only a part of the meal, rather than the centerpiece. Instead of serving one chicken breast per person with some sides, we’ll cut up the chicken and put it in a casserole or soup or on top of a giant salad.
5. I don’t waste food — We save up unused vegetable parts and uneaten leftovers to make hearty broths and soups each week, use chicken guts to make gravy, use the carcass for a gelatin-rich broth that’s oh-so-good for your joints. This way, I can generally get four meals out of each chicken!
6. I make my own convenience foods – Breads, salsas, salad dressings, condiments. It’s all healthier and cheaper when you make it at home. Check out this recipe for making homemade mayonnaise.
7. I try not to double up on expensive animal proteins in any given meal — This means I rarely pair meat with cheese, eggs with cheese, meat with eggs, and the like unless I’m cooking up something special. I save lasagna and quiche for when I have company.
8. I eat in season & locally, when possible — This can also save you a significant amount of money. Inevitably, there is always a week at the Farmer’s Market when everyone has tomatoes. When that happens, they’re surprisingly cheap! I’ll buy a whole case of them and can them for the winter. The same goes for any other fresh fruit or vegetable. Buy it when it’s at the peak of its flavor, and you’ll not only pay less, your food will taste so much better.

In other posts when I’ve gone into the details of how much I spend on any particular food item, I’m always amazed by the diversity of people’s comments. What I’ve learned is that food costs vary greatly from place to place. You simply need to do the best you can with what you’ve got.

With time, you’ll start feeling comfortable spending a little more on food and cutting out other expenses that seem less necessary. If you’re not there yet, don’t worry. Just do your best!

I will conclude with this thought: I feed my family of four nourishing, real foods on far less than the federal food stamp allotment for a family my size ($668/month). It takes a lot of thought, planning, and detective work to eat this way, but I do it.

This post is part of today’s Fight Back Fridays carnival. For other stories, recipes, anecdotes, and news related to finding, eating, and preparing Real Food, check it out!
(photo by aarrgh)

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. Healthy Foods: What to Buy
2. Real Food On A Budget
3. Low-Carb Eating Tips

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.

Okay, so those $10/lb boxes of cereal are the so-called “organic” or “natural” whole grain granolas and muselei. You can usually find a box of knock-off Honey Nut Cheerios for as little as $4/lb.

But my point still stands.

Cereal grains are usually quite nutritionally empty — particularly when compared to grass-fed beef. Let’s take oats, for example. Oats are one of the most nutritious of all grains, and rolled oats are generally the cornerstone of any self-respecting breakfast granola.

Here’s the nutritional value information for a 100g serving of oats:

And here’s the nutritional value information for a 100g serving of grass-fed ground beef:

Compared on a macro-nutrient level, the grass-fed beef wins in just about every category. It has twice as much fat (the good kinds!), considerably more cholesterol, and 2 grams more protein. (And lest you still question whether or not cholesterol is good for you, check out this post.)

On a micro-nutrient level, grass-fed beef wins, too. It’s rich in Omega-3 essential fatty acids, higher in B vitamins, and also contains CLA (the strong cancer-fighting fatty acid only found in grass-fed beef). Plus, the iron in grass-fed beef, being a heme iron, is considerably more usable to our bodies as well.

Now consider this: oats are also high in phytic acid. Phytic acid is an anti-nutrient that binds with minerals and vitamins in your gut in order to keep you from fully digesting them. It’s the protection mechanism common to all seeds, grains, nuts, and legumes that helps the seed clear the digestive system of the animal eating it so that we’ll deposit it somewhere else where it can germinate and grow. Granted, our digestive system is particularly acidic when compared to most animals, so we can do a better job digesting seeds than your average chicken.

But the point remains: Even though dry oats may contain the nutrients above, there’s no guarantee you’ll be absorbing them all. In fact, you’re guaranteed to have a hard time digesting them. Traditional oat eating cultures hidden away in mountain valleys have one thing in common — they soak their oats in an acidic medium before eating them. It’s how we got old-fashioned porridge — you know, that delightful dish prepared by soaking oats in yogurt overnight before cooking them in the morning.

Soaking oats in an acidic medium overnight breaks down the phytic acid in the oats and renders the oats far more digestible to us.

So, when you’re walking down the breakfast cereal aisle looking at those $10/lb boxes of organic granola, are those oats properly prepared by soaking before being processed and turned into your favorite cereal? The answer, of course, is no.

And as you stray away from the granolas with their added sweeteners and venture into other so-called “whole grain” cereals, you encounter the same problem. None of these grains has been properly prepared either. And, on top of all that, the grain was probably extruded and chemically treated in order to shape it into those cute little rings and tiny little balls and fun little flakes that so delight your children.

Taken as a whole, breakfast cereals are a nutritional loss. Sugar-laden, carbohydrate heavy, full of artificial ingredients, devoid of natural vitamins and minerals, improperly prepared, and bearing an ingredients label that reads like a college level chemistry course, how can anyone feel good about paying $5-$10/lb for it?

But people do. Every day. All the time. And then they complain about the high price of grass-fed beef, pastured poultry, or eggs from pastured hens.

This post is part of today’s Real Food Wednesday carnival, hosted by Kelly The Kitchen Kop.

(photo by tavopp)

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. How To Eat Grains
2. Easy NT Friendly Cold Cereal/Instant Oatmeal
3. Soaked Zucchini Bread Recipe

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.

And what better way to plan ahead than to cook ahead?

It’s called batch-cooking, and it’s how I keep myself from going crazy.

The trick is to just double or triple recipes as you make them, then set the extra portions aside for later use (usually by freezing in serving-sized portions in something like a plastic freezer bags).

Making a loaf of bread? Why not make 2? Or 4? Or 6?

Making a pound of taco meat for dinner? Why not make 3 or 4 pounds and save the rest for quick and easy use later?

Making a casserole? Why not double it?

Making a week’s worth of yogurt? Why not make 2 weeks worth? It keeps remarkably well.

You get the idea.

Batch cooking means that you’ll have a freezer full of meals ready to whip out when you’re too exhausted to cook, that you’ll be able to easily give a meal to someone recuperating from an injury, that you’ll have more time to do other things because you’re not spending so much time in the kitchen.

Hey, it works for me.

Speaking of which, this post is part of two blog carnivals — the Works For Me Wednesdays at We Are THAT Family and Real Food Wednesdays at Kelly The Kitchen Kop.

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. 4 Meal Planning Tips For Busy People
2. Make Ahead Frozen Meatballs Recipe
3. Michael Pollan on Cooking As Soulcraft

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.

That’s why this Monday I’ll be posting a menu plan for the week. And, to make it easier for myself (and you), I created a weekly meal planner. Feel free to download it here.

So, I want you guys to take a moment this weekend to print up the download, grab a pen, sit in a comfortable chair, pull together your favorite cookbooks for inspiration, and join me in planning next week’s menu.

If you feel too busy to prepare traditional foods 7 days a week (even with planning), here are some tips to get you started:

The Meal That Keeps Giving — Cook one main course recipe that can be used for different meals. For example, I may cook roast beef. It’s dinner one night. Sliced thin, it becomes sandwich meat later in the week. And shredded, it becomes the base for a delicious soup.  If the roast had a bone, it gets used to make a scrumptious beef bone broth. You can do the same thing with turkey, chicken, or even a large batch of ground beef.

The Freezer Is Your Friend — If you make taco meat one night, why not triple your recipe and freeze the rest in single-serving containers? Later that month, you’ll have several ready-made meals.  Or marinate pork chops in a sesame honey glaze, store them in freezer bags with as many as you would need to feed your family for one night contained in each bag, and keep the bags frozen until you’re ready to use them. My go-to cookbook for freeze-ahead meals is Don’t Panic: Dinner\’s In The Freezer.  The ladies who put that book together have another one coming out in April called Don\’t Panic: More Dinner’s In The Freezer, and I’m excited to see what recipes it contains.

Plan Some Quick & Easy Meals — You know, the ones that take you 15 minutes from start to finish.  Kelly The Kitchen Kop has a whole list of quick traditional food options here.

Leftovers Rule — Plan how you’ll use your leftovers. If you made tacos for dinner, use the leftovers in omelets the next morning. If you have multiple small portions of miscellaneous vegetables leftover, put a week’s worth together in a hearty soup. You get the idea.

(photo by feministjulie)

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. Weekly Meal Plan
2. How to Save Time with Batch Cooking
3. Weekly Meal Plan

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.

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. Winter Recipe Corner
2. 5 Cookbooks I LOVE
3. Top-Five Thursdays — This Week’s Best Real Food Links

I confess. I had an addiction to Dr. Pepper.

It seemed innocent enough at first. I was a college student in desperate need of caffeine. My husband — then boyfriend — had a case of Dr. Pepper made with real cane sugar (no HFCS!) in his closet.  He offered me one. I accepted. I was hooked.

Over the next ten years, I periodically tried to wean myself from the soda. I gave it up for Lent more than once. I told myself how evil it was, how bad for me, how disappointing it was to drink. I couldn’t knock the habit.

What finally cured me?

Kombucha — the fizzy, mildy sweet and tart, health drink that works wonders detoxing our bodies.

It satisfied my cravings for a fizzy energy boost without the sugar crashes that accompanied my Dr. Pepper drinking. A 16 oz. bottle of organic raw kombucha costs around $3.50. Multiply that times several family members and a couple of glasses per day, and it adds up quickly.

If you could brew your own flavored kombucha for as little as $1.50/gallon and about ten minutes of your time, why wouldn’t you?

Here’s how I do it. This makes 2 gallons.

The Players

• 2 gallons of sweetened tea
• 2 kombucha mothers (AKA “scobies,” or “mushrooms”)
• 2 large 1 gallon glass jars
• 1 thin kitchen towel
• 15 oz of fruit juice
• 6 quart sized jars with lids (any size bottle or jar will do, so long as you\’ve got enough to hold 75%-80% of your brewed kombucha)

The How-To

Some Important Notes Before Beginning:

First — assuming you didn’t grow your own scoby, you’ve got a week to ten days to start this process from the day you receive the kombucha starter or “mother” to ensure the freshest and most healthful product. If you let the mother sit too long in your refrigerator it will make the kombucha stale. (For reputable, online sources of kombucha starter cultures, be sure to check out the listings on my Resources Page.)

Second — each mother comes with at least a half a cup of liquid with it.  That is important  stuff so do not pour it off.  You’ll actually use that in your first batch of tea. I recommend buying a bottle of Kombucha from the health food store to help your first batch, but this isn’t needful.  If you choose to do it, you’ll want to buy Organic Raw Kombucha without any fruit sweeteners added.

Finally — the starter is a bit strange and takes some getting used to. Handling it and placing  it on top of the tea just takes a little practice and a sense of adventure … it is pretty disarming initially.

One final note — EVERYONE will tell you something different. Brewing kombucha is just like making any other dish. There are hundreds of variations and recipes out there, each one somebody’s favorite. Everyone will swear doing this or that particular thing will make the beverage more healthful for you — and often the advice is contradictory. My point? Relax. Just do it. Enjoy it. Experiment and see what works for you.

Day 1 / Part One : Make Sweetened Tea (boil water and steep tea with sugar)

Boil about 2 gallons of fresh water on the stove top.  Once water is at a full boil, remove from heat and add tea bags or family-sized tea bag and steep for 5 minutes.  You can use cheap, plain Lipton tea for this, or experiment with other black or green teas as you desire.

Remove tea bags and add 2 cups of sugar stirring vigorously until it is dissolved. (This is the only thing in my house we use refined sugar for.  We tried brewing kombucha with natural sweeteners like sucanat, honey, or agave nectar, but they all made the final brew take longer and taste sour.  There’s no need to fear this refined sugar because it’s basically just food for the yeast.) Let the sweetened tea sit on the stove top until it has cooled to room temperature. This usually takes about 2 hours.

Day 1 / Part Two : Add the Mother to the Sweetened Tea

Once tea is cooled down transfer to glass jar or jars with a wide mouth. (The kombucha doesn’t brew as well in metal or plastic containers. You can use a large glass bowl, glass pitchers, or a large glass sun tea jar –  anything glass that will hold your tea.) Pour the half cup of liquid that comes with the mother into the sweetened tea.

Carefully place the mother on top of the tea mixture.

Cover your glass containers with a clean kitchen towel and place away from direct sunlight. I secure the towel with large rubber bands.  The kombucha needs oxygen to ferment, so you’re using a towel rather than a lid to allow air to circulate.  The rubber band secures the towel to keep out flies, insects, or other contaminants.

Days 1-5: Ferment Tea (allow starter / mother to “eat” the sugar and produce acids & enzymes …) You will allow the tea mixture to set out in the dark corner of your kitchen for 5 days.  You can forget about it or you can peek.  Either way on the morning of day 5, remove the mother and set it aside on a plate, pouring about a half cup of the fermented tea mixture over the mother to keep it moist.  Put it in the refrigerator. Every other batch or so, you’ll be able to separate the old mother from its “baby” which will have grown on top of the old mother. (It may separate on its own, or you may just pull them apart.) When that happens, the baby will become the mother for your next batch of kombucha tea.  The “old” mother can be passed on as a gift or discarded.

Day 5 / Part One: Ferment With Fruit Juice (allow kombucha to ferment with juice for a tasty finish)

Pour clear fruit juice (no pulp, it causes much stringy nastiness!) into the smaller glass jars or bottles you’re using to bottle your kombucha. I use about 2.5 oz. of fruit juice per quart-sized jar. You can use any size bottle or jar, just be sure to adjust the fruit juice accordingly. You’re looking at a cranberry apple juice blend.

Pour kombucha tea on top of the fruit juice, allowing about an ounce of breathing room at the top of the bottle, close bottle tightly.  Be sure to save at least 10% of your brewed kombucha to use with your saved mother in your next batch. To ensure a consistent brew, I save about 25% of mine.

Place bottles back in your “fermenting place” for 48 hours and cover with a kitchen towel so they avoid exposure to direct sunlight.

Day 5 / Part Three: Begin Your Next Batch

Repeat the process for Day 1, Parts One and Two, and use the mother you set aside earlier as the mother for this batch of kombucha tea.

Day 7 : Finish

Put bottles in the refrigerator and chill completely before opening.  Do not shake.  When you open, remove the thin film of new “mother” that accumulated on top during the fruit juice fermentation phase.  Contents will be bubbly.  Enjoy the fruits of your five or ten minutes of labor.

Some Final Notes:

Periodically, you may notice your kombucha changing flavor in a way you don’t like.  When that happens, I usually add a bottle of Organic Raw Kombucha into my fermenting sweetened tea to restore the balance to the yeast and bacteria.  If you don’t want to do that, this website has a helpful index for “fixing” problems with your kombucha culture.

Also, your kombucha mother may turn brown, or bubbly, or do all sorts of strange things. None of these are problems.  The only thing you want to really look out for is mold, and if it molds it will look like the mold on bread – fuzz and all.

These instructions are assuming that the room temperature where you’re brewing your kombucha is around 75 degrees.  (I’m in Texas, what can I say?)  If the temperature is considerably warmer than this, it will take less time to ferment.  If it is considerably cooler than this, it will take more time to ferment. As such, people find that during the winter in cooler climates they may let their kombucha ferment for up to a week longer than they do during the height of summer. How can you tell when your kombucha’s ready to be bottled with fruit juice? When it’s mildy sweet and mostly tart.

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. How To Grow A Kombucha SCOBY
2. Fresh, Natural, Healthy Lemonade Recipe
3. Is Kombucha Safe When Pregnant or Nursing?

To make kombucha (see my instructions for how to do that here), you only need two things:

1) Sweetened tea, and 2) a SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony Of Bacteria and Yeast), AKA “mother,” or “mushroom.”

Coming by kombucha mothers is easy if you’ve got friends making this “immortal health elixir.” Kombucha mother colonies periodically reproduce, so people brewing it have a constant supply of scobies to give away.

But what if you’re a lone wolf, daring to make kombucha on your own?  Where are you supposed to get a good SCOBY?

The most reputable online stores can charge anywhere from $15-$35 per kombucha mother.

YIKES!

So, I thought I’d show you how to grow your own for about $3.50.

The Players

• 1 bottle of Organic, Raw Kombucha
• 1 glass jar
• 1 kitchen towel
• 1 cup of room temperature sweetened tea

NOTES:

1. You can buy the kombucha at just about any health food store. I get mine from the health food aisle of my local HEB — a large chain grocery store local to my area.  If you can’t find it near you, you can buy a bottle of the stuff online. Make sure it’s organic, raw, and unflavored with juice. You just want the plain, original beverage.
2. The sweetened tea can be as simple as a cup of black tea, sweetened with a tablespoon of sugar.

The How-To

Pour the bottle of kombucha and sweetened tea into a glass jar.  Cover it with a towel so it can breathe but be protected from insects and other contaminants. Let it sit.

THE END.

It’s really very easy, isn’t it?

With time, a new SCOBY will start to form on top of the liquid. It will appear first as a thin film, then slowly fill in and thicken up.

Once it’s about 1/4 inch thick, it’s ready to go. You can let it sit longer and get even thicker, but that’s really not necessary. This SCOBY is about 1/3 inch thick and took me about 3 weeks to grow. In the summer, I can grow it in half that time.

If you still hesitate to grow your own, or would like the assurance of starting with a proven culture, check out my Resources Page for kombucha starter culture listings.

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. How to Brew Kombucha — Double Fermentation Method
2. Kombucha Health Benefits
3. How To Make Buttermilk

Tasty Egg Drop Soup

It’s fast. It’s nutritious. It’s Egg Drop Soup.

My kids love it, and it’s a tasty way to get quality animal proteins into our diet without spending a fortune. We have it with lunch or dinner about once a week.

It also has the added benefit of being primal.  You know — the kind of thing our ancestors might have eaten 10,000 years ago.

And if you make it with a hearty bone broth, then it will be even more nutrient dense!

So, enough praises. Here’s the recipe.

The Players

• 1 medium onion, diced
• 2 stalks of celery, diced  (optional)
• 1 Tbsp butter from pastured cows
• 8 cups of chicken broth (or well-salted water)
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger (fresh if you have it)
• 1 tsp soy sauce (unpasteurized and unrefined)
• 1/4 tsp sesame oil
• salt to taste
• 3 Tbsp arrowroot powder (or corn starch) + 3 Tbsp water
• 6 eggs from pastured hens

The How-To

Dice onions and celery. Melt butter over medium heat.

Saute onions & celery over low heat until they turn soft. Stir in broth.

Add ginger, soy sauce, and sesame oil. Bring to a boil. Add salt to taste.

Mix arrowroot powder or cornstarch with water until smooth. Pour into soup and cook until thickened.

Whisk your eggs together and pour intermittently into soup. For beautiful, ribbony eggs be SURE to do this step AFTER the soup is already thickened!

Voila! The soup is done. Enjoy!

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. Southwest Mussel Chowder
2. Smoked Gouda Creamed Vegetable Medley
3. Make Ahead Frozen Meatballs Recipe

Come Join The Fun!

Today I’m joining a host of other bloggers writing about Real Food on a Budget. Most are sharing recipes, but I’m sharing tips.

I’ve listed these tips before, but they were buried in a post about Spam (of all things!) so I wanted to give them the attention they deserve.

I feed a family of 3 adults (assuming that the combined diets of my two sons equals what I eat) on $80/week.

Here’s how I do it.

1) I prepare our own meals. Eating out is a luxury. And contrary to what KFC claimed in their infamous $10 Challenge commercial, it really is cheaper to cook your own food at home.

2) I buy in bulk, and directly from local farmers when possible. I pick up bulk grains and beans and natural sweeteners from my local grocery store, and I also plan large once-a-year purchases of pastured beef and poultry.

3) I eat fewer animal products (and more veggies). While I believe animal products are far healthier for me than the diet dictocrats would have us believe, I’m also a vegan for about 40% of the year thanks to my religious principles (Orthodox Christian). And, even when I’m not keeping a vegan fast due to pregnancy or breastfeeding, my family still only averages about 2.67 lbs of meat per week over the course of the year. The trick here is to make meat only a part of the meal, rather than the centerpiece. Instead of serving one chicken breast per person with some sides, we’ll cut up the chicken and put it in a casserole or soup.

4) I don’t waste food. We save up unused vegetable parts and uneaten leftovers to make hearty broths and soups each week, use chicken guts to make gravy, use the carcass for a gelatin-rich broth that’s oh-so-good for your joints. This way, I can generally get four meals out of each chicken!

5) I make my own convenience foods. Breads, salsas, salad dressings, condiments. It’s all healthier and cheaper when you make it at home.

6) I try not to double up on expensive animal proteins in any given meal. This means I rarely pair meat with cheese, eggs with cheese, meat with eggs, and the like unless I’m cooking up something special.  I save lasagna and quiche for when I have company.

This post is part of the Real Food Wednesday blog carnival hosted by Cheeseslave. If you’re interested in saving money, go check out the other interesting recipes and tips carnival participants are sharing!

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. Do Economic Woes = Fake Food?
2. Eating Real Food On A Budget
3. Why Packaged Foods Are Evil

Frugality isn’t asceticism. It’s sensualism. It recognizes that the truly great feasts — the ones worth having — come after fasts.

Confused? Here’s

Liked what you read? You may find these other posts interesting:

1. How to Save Time with Batch Cooking
2. Real Food Link Love
3. Interview with Sherri Brooks Vinton