Eating Healthier

I always thought that eating healthier meant that the food bill was going to go up. As must as I want our family to eat healthy, our food bill could NOT rise. It simply was and still is not an option. We budget and it comes close almost every month, except this month because of a huge amount of overtime on Robert's end which I am so thankful for as it is will create a nice cushion for us in the checking account. Thankfully, I also can trust Robert not to touch the money as he does not spend anything except gas.

Anyway, so.. recently I began a quest and that was to try to create more things from home. This includes the homemade bagel bites I posted recently, graham crackers (recipe to come), homemaking pasta, and so much more! If I can homemake it, I am going to before I think about buying it.

While doing this, I began to look at the ingredients listed on the boxed/premade items. Have you ever done that as well? Let me tell you, half of the ingredients aren't even food - well not food that you and I will have in our pantry! They are chemically made crap! My favorite is when an item is advertised with fruit then you read it and it says "apple flavor" not where does it say any kind of real apples.

So.. Then began our new grocery buying. Every two weeks I go grocery shopping for items on the meal planning. These are the meats, pastas (until I start to make my own), butter, etc. Then, I go on weeks in between to get milk and fruit produce that does not last two weeks such as bananas, green beans (we go through them), grapes (go through them) etc.
I am LOVING our new eating! It adds up to another $20-$30 a month which we can swing because instead of always eating frozen veggies (which we do still), we have some sides that are fresh veggies. Robert brings 2-3 pieces of fruit in his lunch a day! Thats great! I eat fruit and Caelyn has at least one or two kinds of fresh fruit a day for snacks!

If you can do this, so can I! Start slow. Start buying bags of Granny Smith apples - they are yummy. If they start to go bad before you can eat them all, make some apple crisp. Then, buy some bananas and apples, if the bananas start to go bad, make some banana bread!