AFFORDABLE, Healthy Meals?

I find I spend the least when I stop trying out new recipes and put away the cookbooks and just eat simply. For example, any lean meat (chicken breast, steak, pork) grilled or baked w/ a little seasoning, a bag of frozen vegetables and a baked potato is a pretty inexpensive, low fat, healthy meal.

Cook with beans instead of meat - that is healthy and cheap. I just had a garbanzo bean stew with tomatoes, and sauteed onion, peppers, carrots, and celery and served it w brown rice and a topping of cilantro. Also, I just found this website and it has lots of good ideas: http://www.wholefoodmommies.com/
My husband wants to eat less meat - like only 2ce a week. They have recipes that all look easy and common sense for black bean soup, bean filling for burritos etc. I'll have to make some of these. Also, keep checking the pasta section bc the whole wheat pasta goes on sale every now and then. Also - serve greens often (kale, mustard greens, chard) and big salads as a side.

Check out this blog. She breaks everything down - and tells you how much per person it costs (on average only about $2 per person or less)
http://budgetbytes.blogspot.com/
Healthier fair - check out the recipes section on weightwatchers.com - seriously easy and many look extremely affordable based on what you are already buying - also try substituting ground turkey for ground beef - a nice alternative;)

When we are watching what we eat, we make a lot of the following:

Stir Fry- brown or white rice (just make sure you measure it out if you are trying to lose weight), frozen stir fry veggie mixes or a bunch of chopped up veggies like carrots, celery, onion, broccoli, eggplant, zuchinni, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots- whatever floats your boat. Add some sort of meat or shrimp, and we use just bottled sauces from the Asian aisle (we like the House of Tang brand).

Taco Salad: Fritos (or not), lettuce, black beans, taco meat, onion, tomato, sour cream, salsa, avacado, shredded cheese, olives. Everyone just chooses what toppings, and it is nice too because the leftover items can always be thrown onto salads or used in a soup the rest of the week

Soup. We do soup night once a week. Chicken noodle, potato (using lots of kale, spinach, often sweet potatoes, and cauliflower- I don't use cream or cheese), minestrone, etc. We go heavy on veggies, light on noodles and fat to keep it healthy

Salads- fajita chicken salad, Chinese chicken salad, etc. We go heavy on veggies and light on meat and dressing. Allrecipes.com has some great recipes.

I would suggest checking into Bountiful Baskets. I think they may be in Kansas. It is a food co-op and a basket of fruits and veggies is only $15.00. This is a HUGE basket of generally 5-6 types of fruit and 5-6 types of veggies, and it usually fills up a big laundry basket. You generally end up with $30-$50 worth of produce. Love it, because it saves us a ton of money, we tend to snack on produce a lot more, and we plan our meals around veggies. Anyway, this might help you since you are trying to save money and eat healthier. Their site is www.bountifulbaskets.org, let me know if you have any questions.

BTW Have you ever tried spaghetti squash in place of pasta? I really like it. You can microwave the squash to cook it quickly, and it has long strands of squash that resemble spaghetti noodles. It is a mild tasting so I think it tastes just fine with spaghetti sauce or even garlic, eggplant, Italian herbs, some olives and feta cheese. I freeze the leftovers too for a quick lunch down the road. 1 cup spaghetti squash is like 40 calories, 1 cup of regular spaghetti is around 200 calories, so it is an easy way to cut back the calories.

At our Walmart, one pound of 96% fat free turkey is 2.50 versus one pound of 96% fat free ground beef, which is almost 5 dollars. We do a lot of ground turkey meals...chili, taco's, spaghetti, burox (one of my favorite cheap healthy meals), stuffed peppers....anything you can do with ground beef, you can do cheaper and healthier with ground turkey.

Lentil soup (really only need to sautee a chopped onion, but I also do carrots, celery & garlic with mine)

We do a lot of crock pot meals, or meals that we make over the weekend and freeze so we can just take it out and cook. Meatloaf, we mix with pork, beef and turkey meat. I had enough for 3 meatloaf pans and 6 homemade hamburgers. We also have a convection oven (in the microwave) and I love it, we use it daily. We get fresh or frozen veggies. They make steam bags for the fresh veggies you can toss in the microwave for less then 10 minutes for some good steamed veggies. We shop at aldi's and that cuts down the price of food for us. We also shop at Sams to get some of the stuff in bulk.

we do a lot of chicken, white meats are healthier and less fatty supposedly. I J. do tons of that with the frozen steamer bags of veggies or make veggies and a noodle (those easy dollar things of angel hair pasta with seasoning) or rice. Some mostly chicken, lots of veggies and either a side rice or noodle. My daughters obsessed with salad too so sometimes that as well. My 5 year old would live off of veggies and chicken if I let her. its funny sometimes we'll try and convince her to eat a slice of pizza, sometimes it works...she makes up for the healthiness by eating a piece of candy or ice cream directly after dinner

Oh gosh, you can do any of the major meats healthily. You just have to pay attention to what you're putting on it.

We do a lot of chicken. I love the French's fried onions as breading. The calorie and fat intake is actually pretty low once it's made. Same with Shake/Bake - for either chicken or pork.

Make the beef a lean cut. I buy ground beef that is 95% lean and then drain off the fat when you cook.

If a recipe calls for cream of chicken or mushroom soup - make it the Healthy Choice version that is 100 calories per can.

You can eat everything you normally do, just cut calories with the ingredients. (PS: Whole Grain pasta is the way to go, so that's the one area where I do pay the price for healthy.)

How about a slow cooker? You could put in a roast, carrots, potatoes and an onion for around $10-13 and have enough for leftovers for lunch or dinner the next day. Or any kind of meat and veggie. There are websites that show you how to prefreeze healthy meals then dump into a crock pot(google it). You can eat healthy for less. I went to Sprouts the other day and got a bag of baby carrots, 2 bell peppers, head of cauliflower and broccoli, 2lbs of red grapes and 2 apples and spent $9 and cut it up and snack on it thru the day. I also got boneless, skinless chicken and I will cook it up, cut into strips and then freeze it to pull out for a salad topper or for a roll up sandwich-I use flat out bread.

Not for pressure cookers, but we recently tried and loved this one, as we try to experiment with different kinds of whole grains:
http://www.weightwatchers.com/food/rcp/RecipePage.aspx?re...
(if it doesn't come up, google- weight watchers vegetable barley casserole)

I altered as follows according to our tastes and the comments on the page. Not that you have to do it this way, but the point is that it alters well (not all recipes do...). We used the leftovers and some leftover chicken, tortillas, etc. to make a sort of burrito another night.

-used less corn
-used spinach instead of kale
-added 1 can of black beans
-used a little more cheese than they did, I think (probably 3/4 cup?)
-used plain tomatoes because it was what I had
-and therefore added somewhere between 1/3 -1/2 cup of salsa
-skipped the cumin
-avoided the canola oil by using dried onion (the liquid from the tomatoes and spinach was enough to 'activate' it)
-added a small blob of sour cream to my bowl (the rest of the family declined and loved it plain; I liked plain but loved it with sour cream)

Look into going vegetarian. It is actually much cheaper (not that I do this). Cook with a lot of beans, rice, lentils. Tofu is a great, inexpensive kind of protein. Bountiful baskets sounds wonderful, or look to see if you have a local fruit/veggie store around. Soemtimes an Asian or Latino market will have good fruits/veg cheaper than a standard grocery, and they are cheaper than processed food. Whatever you do don't get sucked into feeling you need to buy specialized "diet" or "premium-healthy" food at 3x the price of normal. Most of that stuff is a crock and half the diet stuff isn't even really good for you. Simple food focused on whole ingredients is both healthy and cheap (and mighty tasty!)

Well I agree with substituting ground turkey for ground beef. We also make taco salads with Stacy's pita chips instead of fried chips and it tastes awesome! It's still crunchy a little salty and is slightly better for you! I also have made spaghetti sauce (spaghetti squash was also a good suggestion) with turkey as well as lasagna (with whole wheat noodles of course!;)

I also put a whole chicken in the crock pot with some veggies. It's really cheap! Whole chickens are usually a lot cheaper, just take out the insides (which are usually in a little baggie inside the chicken), season it and throw in some carrots, celery, whatever and it's done in 8 hours!

My kids love when we do Chinese at home and you can do that pretty healthfully too. Buy whole chicken breasts and slice them yourself, it's cheaper, and then stir fry with some veggies. You could also bake the chicken, steam the veggies and then add them together at the end for less fry and more of just a "feel" of stir fry. You can buy bags of edamame in the freezer section for a couple bucks and my kids will eat the entire bag! They do like to dip it in Kosher salt though. Add some brown rice and you're set!

Zatarain's makes red beans or black beans & rice. I cut up pieces of smoked turkey sausage, and it makes a quick, delicious meal. My 4 year old loves this dinner. Also, watch the sales & download coupons for Buitoni pastas. Just boil the ravioli or tortellini and heat up some pasta sauce. The whole wheat version was on sale yesterday at my Price Chopper in Brookside for 2 for $6.00. Potato soup is also cheap and I use skim milk to make mine. It does take a little time, but well worth it. You could make it on a Sunday and re-heat it on Monday evening. There are also lots of fish items that aren't as expensive as you may think. Last night, my daughter & I had (one each) large crab cakes that I buy at my store for $1.39 each. One totally fills me up. What about turkey soup?? Same routine as the potato (make on Sunday), but you can use a turkey thigh that is cheap and some veggies...delicious. Search the internet too for cost efficient meals.