Hi Sweet Friends,
Ever since I started sharing my journey from Hot Pockets to whole foods, I’ve often heard that it’s difficult to afford a healthier lifestyle. I won’t argue with you there. Real food is pricier than processed food made in a lab or a factory. And you will certainly see a jump in the grand total on your grocery receipts. But over time you’ll get the hang of it, and I promise it will become more manageable. There’s always a silver lining, my friends—and the price “jump” can be more of a baby bunny hop.
Today I’m sharing my top tips for saving money on nourishing, plant-based foods. But before I dive in, I hope to inspire you with this one statement:
Do your best to invest in yourself today, your future depends on it.
Even on a limited income, we can each make small upgrades that have a massive impact on our health. And get this, your body will be so grateful that it will reward you tenfold. It will literally move mountains when you give it the slightest improvement. Now let’s get started!
Here are my go-to tips for nifty, thrifty plant-happy shopping:
1. Budget and meal plan.
First step, set a comfortable budget. Then, examine your fridge and pantry. I bet you’ve got a lot of goodies in there. Next, map out your menu with my easy meal plan. Don’t skip this step, hot shot. Kitchen champions succeed not because they are the best of chefs, but because they plan their arses off. With more experience, you’ll get the hang of it.
2. Buy bulk.
While navigating the grocery store head straight to the bulk bins and stock up! As your bulk food staples grow, you’ll have shorter shopping lists and an arsenal of inspiration for your home-cooked meals. Added bonus: Display your beautiful beans, grains and spices in mason jars throughout your kitchen. Home-decor, Crazy Sexy style!
3. Shop local: Farmers markets and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).
Farmers markets are a great place to buy organic foods on the cheap. In-season produce is almost always going to cost less, so try to be flexible and cook with the harvest. A CSA is another thrift-tastic way to eat with the seasons. If a CSA half-share seems like more veggies than you could eat or afford, see if a friend wants to go in on it with you. You can also freeze a portion of your haul for later or make a green juice! Here are some great websites for finding a market or CSA near you: Local Harvest, Eat Well Guide, Farmer’s Market Online.
4. Learn the Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen.
If you can’t afford a 100-percent organic lifestyle, don’t sweat it. Check out the Environmental Working Group’s lists to determine your priorities for organic purchases. They even created an iPhone app. Now that’s handy!
5. Stock up on the essentials during sales.
I know it may seem like I’m giving you mixed messages, but if you arrive at the supermarket and there’s a big phat sale on organic bananas, snag those babies! They may not have been on your meal plan, but you can cut them up, freeze ‘em and pop them in your smoothies or soft serve ice cream later. The same goes for dry staples like grains and beans that aren’t going to go bad in your pantry.
6. Grow your greens.
As you’ll see in the coming weeks, we’re starting our first vegetable garden (I’m so excited!). It’s exponentially more economical to grow your own food. Whether you live in a studio or a McMansion, there’s always room for a few pots of greens. A two-dollar packet of mixed lettuce seeds will support your salad habit for months. If you’re a city gardener, check out You Grow Girl, Garden Girl TV and Urban Homestead. For country folks like myself, check out The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible and Four Season Farm.
7. Cut back on restaurants.
Aye, Chihuahua, do those restaurant bills pile up! Rather than escaping to the local Denny’s, make your kitchen the new hot spot. Fabu cookbooks, romantic dinners at home, potlucks, picnics and rowdy get-togethers all make dinner a family affair. I’m not saying that you should never step foot in a restaurant again; just try to limit your visits.
8. Make your food last and get creative with leftovers.
Wash and store your produce in Debbie Meyer Green Bags (they extend life expectancy). And when your produce looks like it’s about to go south, resuscitate it in a delicious stew. How about leftovers? Don’t toss them. With a little TLC, leftovers can be transformed into fresh new meals. Batch cooking is another way to save time and money. Double or triple your favorite recipe and freeze the leftovers for a quick and healthy meal when you’re in a pinch.
9. Buy used.
Buying a new juicer or blender may not be in your budget, but what about a used one? Craigslist, eBay — even your friends and family — might have an affordable, gently used model. In the meantime, you can still juice with any old blender and strainer (cheesecloth or nut milk bags work great!).
10. Skip the bells and whistles.
If you’re like me, you definitely have budget leaks, aka knee-jerk spending at Amazon, Target, Starbucks and on all those raw food goodies. Identify where you can tighten your belt and invest in your company (you are the CEO of your health after all), not someone else’s. Don’t let transforming your plate be intimidating or cost prohibitive. As always, you don’t need to upgrade everything all at once. Make a plan and pace your bank account.
As you can see, there are tons of ways to make a plant-powered plate work for your wallet if you’re ready to use a little elbow grease.
When my food expenses start creeping up, it’s usually because I’m being a bit of a slacker, not because of my veg-inspired diet. I’m not planning my meals. My apron is dusty. The takeout menus get more play than my ukulele. Make new habits by trying one of my tips per week. You can do this!
Your turn: What are your savvy, money-saving solutions?
Peace & prosperity,
Dear Kris,
I think it´s intresesting that so many people says they can´t afford to eat organic or healthy (clean food) when they do afford to smoke or buy alcohol and even go out and eat lunch every day.
I guess it´s just an excuse to continue to by fast food or food that doesn´t support your body; unhealthy food.
There are people, for examples students or people that don´t have possibility to work full time, that actually have limited possibility and maybe eat spaghetti with ketchup 5 times a week.
But for example root fruits are very cheap and a great food. Much better than spaghetti and ketchup
Another thing I would like to ask you are if you know about Milk thistle or Silymarin?
I have used that for my liver for many years and it supports it very well ( I have an auto immune liverhepatit ). I have eaten cortisone for 25 years and milk thistle do that I don´t need to eat as much cortisone.
Do you know anything about this herb?
Thanks for your great cookbook. I love your crab cakes made of palm hearts and also your great polenta.
I wish you the best.
Bliss
Madelaine Eriksson
Sweden
I plan a weekly menu! I include at least 4 main meals. Like you, I double up on the recipes for left overs. Then I include fruits and veggies for the week. If I forget something oh well, time to improvise! I have gotten very good at making items up on the spot. The one big thing I have learned is eat the perishable items first! I even post the menu for my family. They love to look at the Weekly Menu and know what’s for dinner.
I also recommend making smoothies instead of juicing if you’re on a tight budget. A little produce goes a looooong way in a smoothie! 🙂
Love your tip for growing your own greens and wanted to share with you a fantastic way to grow the best lettuce you’ll ever taste! I had seed to salad in 7 weeks using an aeroponic garden tower. I am growing 20 plants vertically w/o dirt in a very small space. Perfect for those in the city with balconies or even inside with a grow light.
I’m so impressed that I decided to rep the product.
great post, timely and smart!
I am a leftovers queen and tend to always have some left over from the night before or a few days ago which I can jazz up or just heat up for lunch at work. In terms of going organic, the best way I have found is a combination of bulk buying the dried stuff, though some things I get tinned and pre-cooked, e.g. chickpeas and getting a farmer’s box delivered to our door every second week. With only two of us in the house and one of us having the luxury of fully subsidised lunches at work (not me!) we don’t consume that much.
When first considering signing up to the farmer’s box scheme, I looked for a company that allows me to swap things in the boxes that I don’t like or won’t eat, to avoid it going to waste and a company with as much attention to their own footprint, recycling and packaging as possible so that the costs were reduced from that point of view as well.
I have specific staples I always use and then always have a trawl through the offers to see what they have in the way of bulk, specials or seasonal offers and usually go with one of those. I have set up weekly email reminders to help me to remember to actively review my orders before they are delivered, to make sure I am not getting anything I would not use. I love getting farmer’s boxes, it is like the anticipation and surprise of Christmas and I can have great fun learning how to cook something new or interesting or seasonal.
Otherwise, I visit a few different local supermarkets to stock up on other stuff, again paying attention to deals on organic and seasonal stuff AND, I have a small veg patch downstairs with lettuce, giant mustard, garlic, herbs and some other greens which I am trying to cultivate to see if I couldn’t keep us in some of our greens throughout the year without having to buy. We will see, first season of trying this out, certain of the greens, the pak choi, rocket and kale are not liking the weird weather we have had here in the UK and some have bolted into flower before bulking up on the juicy leaves..but anyway, it is all trial and error after all! Will try courgettes and stick with lettuce, chicory, kale and cabagge for my next attempt!
I don’t meal plan. I am a very fluid cook and tend to make things up as I go along but love the satisfaction of being able to see that I have finished that head of lettuce or broccoli, or that I didn’t throw out those slightly sad looking sweet peppers but instead whizzed them up to add to a lovely pasta sauce.
For produce that freezes in the refrigerator:
1. Make sure it doesn’t actually touch the sides or the back
2. See if turning the cold setting to a bit warmer helps
3. If your refrigerator is old, the best defense is storing your veggies that freeze in rectangular
Tupper-ware type containers with lids..
4. Make full use of the doors, all condiments like mustard, almond butter etc store there.
5. Make full use of the pull out drawers. Tender veggies that need to be kept coolest like basil do well in the ‘meath and cheese’ drawer.
6. Put fruits in one pull out and veggies in the other if you have that configuration.
7. Change the spacing between shelves, ususally there can be one very ‘short’ shelf for flatter items, allowing you to have not just the very top shelf but at least one other with enough height to it to be able to stack food and fit the larger items (like a whole watermelon).
I am a single person and a vegeterian. To ensure that I can come home and have a quick healthy meal, I like to prepare then freeze legumes in mason jars. I like to use dry blackeyed peas, lentils and black beans. Each is so different they give me different types of meals. For example, with black eyes peas, I may give them an Italian flair. I will put rinsed black eyed peas with bpa free canned tomatoes, several bay leafs, garlic (easy-from a jar), basil, salt, cayenne, frozen onions or even dried or fresh depending on time, maybe a spoonful of tomato paste, cover it with distilled water in my crock pot and go to bed. Early the next morning its done, so I take the crock out of the electric unit, and so it can cool. Before I leave for work, I put the whole thing in the fridge with a lid (on a kitchen towel just in case its still warm). I come home that evening, pour servings in to mason jars (half way so it can expand) and freeze. I do the same process with whatever legumes I like. The result is a fridge full of wonderful main dishes that I can set out in the morning to let it thaw and it is ready to do when I get home. All I need to do is make a salad, etc. and I am good to go with a healthy meal. Hope someone finds this useful!
aw, thanks The adicve from your blog has been tremendously helpful, and even if the letter of some of it isn’t really a fit for me, I take the spirit of it and apply it and it seems to work.That was the most amazing feeling, taking that book out of the box it came in and holding it my hands. I always planned to do paperback but was a little afraid of the learning curve. But it really wasn’t that hard, and the book came out beautiful! Definitely worth doing, if just for the thrill of holding the actual book
Hi Kris! I found that when I finally got free of my addiction to frozen, blended coffee drinks, I could suddenly afford those large cartons of fresh, organic blueberries (etc). Seriously! I was in denial about how much I was actually spending on that scary stuff. Thanks for the helpful post.
Great tips, Kris!! My mantra is that what is on the end of my fork that is going into my mouth is my Health Insurance Policy in action….
Good News! I grew up in a 30 acre avocado grove and owned a grove with cherimoyas. We had carrot juice in glass bottles years ago, now I own a nutribullet and Jack La Lanne juicer. Health is Wealth! My thryoid condition has me concerned so my daughter and I eat the best we can afford.
Great tips. I get that comment/ question fom others when the subject of what I’m doing to get better comes up including my (now) juicing (thx Kris) and ficus on organic meats as I’m not vegetarian – yet. I try to offer similar tips but many if us here understand its hard when your dealing with serious health challenges to add the challenge of changing your food…it can seem just too much at times. It’s so worth it though. I make sure to read and listen to inspiring stories each day (the Gerson site has some great ones) and send out compassion for those still struggling because we’re all in this game together right? Also take baby steps and try a different recipe each week and or new plant food to manage new costs. Make friends with neighbours/ coworkers who have gardens and swap if you have one or swap non foods if needed. Kris’ books are great but if you cant afford hers or others new (I’ve been there where every dollar counts) look for used or go half with a friend or relative. You’ll end up saving money if you start avoiding processed and restaurant food and feel better.
Happy Memorial Day to all my American neighbours…eh! : )
I save the “milky” looking crinkly produce bags and keep my greens in them but first I blow into the bag (with the greens in it) until it blows up like a balloon and then while holding the open end in my fist I squeeze the air out and quickly nip the open end closed. I may use an elastic or tie it closed. This replaces the oxygen with CO2 and so will slow down the oxygenation of the produce.
I bought two medium sized rectangular white plastic baskets with openings all around the sides (so i can easily see what is in them without having to pull it out every time), from the dollar store. These sit in my fridge on the top and second self where the air circulates the best and I keep my CO2-filled bags of greens in these baskets. These were hard to reach areas of my fridge and now I can just pull out the basket to see what is taking up the space, especially at the back of the fridge.
My greens now last WAAAY longer. 🙂
You can see a picture of the inside of my fridge and my dollar store baskets here http://www.facebook.com/healthyfoodrevolution
Yes, really great point! Finding ways to have fresh food last longer is a must to save money. If you can also get in the habit of saving scraps for soup broths (onion skins, peels etc) or juicing ( tougher asparagus and cauliflower/ broccoli ends) and what’s left for composting to add to your gardens (save on store bought) you’ll save even more.
Great post this week, Kris! I think these tips can actually apply to just about anything you are trying to afford. They are universal, which I love. I would also suggest shopping at different stores. For example, I do my weekly grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. Trader Joe’s tends to be the cheaper of the two. However, for items they don’t carry, I go to Whole Foods. It’s a great way to save money and support multiple healthy grocers.
Kris, this is a fantastically timed blog post! Thank you for giving us that local harvest website. I had no idea there were that many CSA’s in my area! I’m gonna try to convince my family to participate. I love the whole idea of it!
Great article thank you.
I agree planning is key and some healthy food is more expensive than less healthy food.
People who complain that eating healthy is so much more expensive than eating processed food should remember that calories are not equal. Compare the price and nutritional value for example a banana to that of a fast food burger.
Compare nutrition value and not price.
As always, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! Blessings to you! So grateful, I found you!
I wanted to see the pdf of the clean and dirty foods so I clicked on it. It took me to a place to download it. They wanted your email before you could download. And before you could even look at it to see if you wanted to get an app, they wanted to have you click on the app. So I clicked on the app to download it then it went to a screen where everything stopped and wouldn’t take any clicks so I never did get to view the dirty and the clean foods. Now they have my email address and I have nothing.
Hi Becky,
You can view both lists without entering your email address here: http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary.php
Best,
Corinne
Creative Director at KrisCarr.com
Shop for organic fruit and veggies at Trader Joe.
They have a good assortment of organic salads, fruit and veggies and a very reasonable price!
there is a dirty dozen app for android too.
Thank you . Excellent tips. I absolutely adore you. 🙂
Charles Hubbell – No real clue what your favs are, but I know which ones are MINE!1. The three of you sitting and snmiilg in front of the log.2. You guys sitting in front of the log and tickling Carl.3. The two of you sitting, looking at each other and Kris is holding Nick’s head.Maybe I just like the log? Lol you two and three are amazing. Love the pictures! Can’t wait for next summer!