Eating Healthy on a Budget Part 1
Welcome to a series I am really excited about! Eating healthy on a Budget is not always the easiest thing to do so I hope this series will really help a lot of people. If you have some good ideas for our Eating Healthy on a Budget series or you would like to be a guest blogger and submit an article or post please feel free to message me through our facebook page and let chat!
Today I am going to focus on one of the ways I make our grocery budget stretch the most. I like to call it being creative with my leftovers but you can call it whatever you like. Mainly it is taking one meal and adding to it to make it stretch into at least another meal. You will see this a couple time throughout my blog posts.
Today lets take this simple and easy to make dish- Easy Twice Baked Potatoes.
Potatoes are really cheap and they are filling. I like to find the big bags of them and I use the large potatoes in the bag for baked potatoes and the small ones for soups or roasted potatoes.
For the broccoli part of this recipe you could use fresh broccoli or frozen. Whichever you can get more of at the best price. If it is frozen you may need to thaw it out so you can use it easier in this recipe ( you have to finely chop the broccoli in that recipe).
So you start out with your cheap meal (the Twice Baked Potatoes) and you look at that and see how you can make it stretch. The first thing I would do is make it a meal, not a side item. The simple way to do that would be to pick a larger potato and make the recipe. To make the meal more filling I would saute some onions, peppers (green tend to be cheaper than colored), and mushrooms and add them to the mixture that you are going to stuff back into the potato. Onions,mushrooms,and peppers are pretty cheap and they will add fiber ( it will fill you up more) and will add overall nutrition as well. Another option is to add black beans. That will add fiber and some extra protein as well. Canned beans are pretty cheap ( just make sure to rinse them well) or save even more money and cook your beans yourself. I do this and then freeze them in small baggies. It is pretty easy to do.
Another way to make that meal stretch is to take the leftover mixture that you couldn’t fit in the potatoes and make a soup out of it. This would be a perfect quick lunch for the next day. It might not make enough for the whole family but that would be a good lunch for at least one person in the family. To make the mixture into a soup all you have to do is add broth. I prefer vegetable broth in mine. Just add broth until it is the consistency you prefer. Let it simmer for a few minutes and then you can add whatever spices you prefer. I don’t add any becasue the ranch dressing gives it a really good flavor.
That is what I would do to make that meal stretch but consider this option too. For those of you who eat meat- if you eat more of your side items (which tend to be cheaper to make) then you can buy less meat. Most of the time your meat part of your meal is going to be the most expensive part of your meal so buying less will help your budget, and eating less will help your health.
I will be sharing a couple more meals that you can take and stretch like this one over the next couple of weeks for our Eating Healthy on a Budget series. I will also be sharing some other great posts and article that will show you how to really make your money go further including a guest post on how to use coupons for a healthier lifestyle. Keep coming back to our Eating Healthy on a Budget page for more and if you really liked this post and found some real value in it , feel free to share it with your friends and families by using our easy share buttons at the bottom of this post!
So what are your tips and tricks to eating healthy on a budget?
