Healthy on a Budget: Is It Possible?

Yes, it is.

But there are two sacrifices to budget cooking: Planning and Time.

They can be interchangeable at times.

Planning involves things like knowing your family’s schedules, following sales flyers, tracking what your family does and doesn’t like, knowing what you have or don’t have on hand, etc.

Time involves not only cooking the food, the Planning time, cooking more from scratch (which can take longer), the prep time and cleanup, etc.

And a third thing I’ll add that is basically my opinion, is that you REALLY need to know what your family likes, dislikes, and what they will “tolerate”. Because, honestly, if you’re going through all the trouble to make a meal and your family hates most of the ingredients, it’s not going to work out very well.

Example, if your family doesn’t like ANY kind of beans, then you’re not going to be doing much good making dishes that are bean-centered. It’s not super helpful when I make recipes that use ground meat when my sons don’t like the texture. They’ll eat it if they absolutely have no other option, but it’s not their favorite and they’ll look for anything else before eating it.

So. Planning. For healthy on a budget to REALLY work, you’re probably going to have to plan ahead. Not in a militant way (unless you absolutely want to), but at least to give you an idea of what’s coming so you get the most from your meals and budget.

I wish I could give you an EXACT formula or strategy to follow, but honestly, your planning is going to look different based on your family’s needs.

For me, planning involves:

Basing our meals around what’s on sale for the week, and filling in the gaps when we have to. So, if chicken, pasta, and pasta sauce are on sale one week, I’m stocking up on extras while they’re on sale, and I’m probably having at least ONE meal (with leftovers) that is a Chicken Parm or other baked Chicken Pasta dish.

Basing our meals around what our activities are for the week. We are gone a lot so, dinner can be crazy. It might be a quick meal like tacos or burritos when we’re in and out, it might be grabbing sandwiches on the go or heating up leftovers and bringing them with us to a sporting event, or a regular meal when we have the time to cook.

Remembering to set items out to thaw. This one is one of my worst issues. I don’t set reminders and then forget to thaw whatever meat (if we’re having meat) for that day.

Meal Prepping, which can be done many different ways. Again, this is going to be based off what works better for your family. We usually make large batches of certain items for the week, and then do our meals from there. For example, my husband will make a crockpot of chili-style pinto beans (west Texas guy). Then we use those beans all week in different meals – tacos, quesadillas, rice bowls, huevos rancheros, etc. Or I make a huge batch of ground turkey and use it in different ways throughout the week. For your family it might look like freezer meals you make in advance, having ingredients ready for the crockpot or Instapot, or containers of food premade and ready to warm in the microwave.

Next….Time. It feels generic to say that budget and healthy cooking require time, but it does. I already mentioned the time to plan. Then there’s the time to shop. The time to prep. The time to actually cook.

Convenience foods are more expensive, usually. So to save money or stick to your budget, it might mean you’re making things yourself. Homemade chicken tenders or chicken bites. Homemade fajitas. Your own stir-fry or fried rice. Lasagna, bread, and salad.

Making these meals from scratch (like not pre-made frozen or from a meal kit) will take more time, but you can save a lot of money. And you can bulk some of your meals out with cheaper items (veggies, beans, rice, grains, etc.) to stretch them further.

And as I stated before, Knowing Your Family is going to play a huge part in how this works for you. If you and your partner both work, how do you divide up the planning/prepping/cooking process? Maybe your kids are more involved in cooking with you. If you have picky eaters, you’re going to know best what they will and won’t eat, and you can find the best ways to work around that. Like I said, if your family doesn’t like beans, there’s no point in stocking up on loads of dry beans and going through all the prep required to make them, if no one besides you will eat them.

This is going to be where my favorite word, EXPERIMENTATION, comes in.

Moms, as much as I wish I could, I can’t tell you EXACTLY what to do. I would, if it would make your lives easier. Experimenting with what works for your family is going to be the best investment of your time and resources. As you figure it out, you’ll be able to expand and grow your healthy, less expensive, but still delicious meals.

Keep going. You got this.

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