Ideally our Paleo/Primal/Zone diet would only include Organic goodies with free-range, grass-fed, outdoor reared meat. For us, the realities of running a new business on top of the day jobs leaves us both time and money short. Here are some ideas we’ve found that help us to eat clean on a tight budget.
Plan ahead
Before you go shopping sit down and make a meal plan. When choosing your meals bear in mind ways to save some money, such as cooking a big meal to last two nights or using the leftovers of one meal for the next. For example Roast Chicken followed by Jambalaya (Double up on this Zone recipe for 2 nights) – that’s 3 meals for 3 out of one whole chicken. Use the meal plan to write your shopping list. Double check your fridge, freezer and cupboards with your list to make sure you’re not buying anything that you’ve already got.
Eat with the season
Most products are available all year round on our supermarket shelves but when a product is in season the price comes down. Different fruits, veggies, meats and fish will each have their moment of abundance and therefore cheapness. You can usually spot these through supermarket multi buys or special offers; but to swot up in advance check out Eat The Seasons.
The freezer is your friend
If you’ve got time to go shopping every few days to stock up on perishables then great but for us frozen fruit and vegetables are lifesavers. They’re frozen as soon as they’re picked so the nutritional value is still high.
The freezer also allows you to take full advantage of special offers on meat. The 3 for £10 offer that most supermarkets are currently running on various meats is a great way to save money. One whole chicken, a kilo of steak mince and 8 pork chops can do up to 7 evening meals for us (2 adults and a toddler). E.g.
- Roast chicken
- Jambalaya
- Jambalaya
- Chilli Beef Soup
- Chilli Beef Soup
- Pork Chops
- Pork Chops
If there’s not enough date on them to last the week then we can stick them in the freezer until we need them.
Another great way to use your freezer is to cook a big batch of a meal and then freeze some for an easy meal at a later date.
Special Offers
I always go shopping with a list but I have some flexibility too. I’m happy to rearrange my meal plan if I see something at a price too good to pass up. Forget about your craving for steak and go with salmon instead if it’s on a half price offer.
A caveat – if something is on multibuy only buy the extras if you’ll use the additional items before they go out of date. A second bunch of broccoli at half price is not a bargain if you end up throwing it away at the end of the week.
Don’t forget to check the reject shelf where the fresh produce is about to go out of date. The prices can have massive reductions and this stuff can go in the freezer or you can put your meal plan back a day to use it that night.
Avoid pre-packaged and ready-prepared where possible
Supermarkets charge a small fortune for someone to cut your broccoli into florets and put it in a pretty box. 6 apples already in a bag cost 30% more than you putting 6 apples in a bag. And when you choose them yourself you can pick the nicest ones.
Downgrade the cut/type
Here are some switches we regularly make
- Pork mince instead of Beef mince
- Pollock instead of Cod/Haddock
- Pork chops instead of Lamb chops
- Chicken thighs instead of Chicken breasts
and some things that are always good value
- Tinned Tuna
- Packs of Chicken drumsticks and thighs (roast these and store in the fridge for really easy lunches)
- Eggs (Hard boil a half dozen eggs to make more easy lunches) Free range, organic eggs is one thing I won’t skimp on. The small difference in price is so worth it. Just look at the recent egg recall in the US.
Over to you
These are things that have worked for us and I hope you find them useful. If you have any good ideas please share them in the comments, I’d love to hear from you.
Tesco’s “Value Lamb Mince” is actually quite good quality mutton mince. It’s more flavoursome than their more expensive lamb mince, especially for recipes like meatballs, which would traditionally have used mutton anyway.
Wild food is a great way to supplement supermarket food, and stick with the season eating theme. At the very least, we could all be getting at least 1 carb block a day from fresh blackberries, this time of year, and of course you can freeze any excess. Anyone wanting to go a bit further should pick up “Food for Free”, which is very UK-focused. There are plenty of leafy spinach-like vegetables available year-round in parks and woods.
Homegrown food — don’t bother with all that backbreaking potato-and-marrow nonsense, grow some high-quality, low-effort food like strawberries and raspberries. Even a windowbox is enough to get a bit of a home harvest.
Cheapest reasonably healthy protein source I’ve found, generally, is cottage cheese — which can be a bit bland by itself, but combined with those fresh berries, and maybe a bit of pineapple, is a real feast.
Tinned wild salmon is another good cheap one — not great by itself, but quite tasty in omelettes or fishcakes.
Great advice, Karen & Ian.
My advice is to keep away from the supermarkets. It’s worth hunting around for a good, friendly local butcher and greengrocer (hard to find in inner city environments, I know).
Most of the smaller butcher’s shops round our way have family meat packs, retailing for about £20, which will last a small family a week or so. Greengrocer’s also often have family veg packs.
These only ever contain things which they have a surplus of and thus are mainly seasonal. If you get to know the proprietors, they’ll allow you to exchange less favourable things for healthier/more favourable stuff. If you’re loyal to them, they’ll look after you, so shop local!
Great information, I just bookmarked this.
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