Farmers' Market Finds

Our local farmers' market launched a terrific program this summer for kids.  Just for signing up and showing up each Saturday, kids ages 4-12 get 2 free wooden tokens worth $1 each, good toward any produce.  The best part is that the kids get to keep the tokens from week-to-week and save them up!  I take Jacie with me every Saturday that I'm in town, and so far we've gleaned summer squash, eggplant, and green beans -- all farm-fresh and chemical-free -- for free!

Last night's chicken-crust pizza boasted all veggie toppings as a result.

(The summer squash missing on this one; I forgot to take a pic before we devoured it!)

I followed this recipe for our green beans

and paired them with Conroy's famous jerk-sauced chicken! (Both dinners adhere to my low-carb living life-style.)

Yay for farmers' markets featuring local produce!  And yay for finding free healthy-eating deals!  

Food Frugalities, Pt. 2

Last night's meal:

Baked chicken legs and thighs -- Perdue has hormone free, healthier  chicken, so I feel pretty good about this recent switch.  10 lbs. lasts us almost two weeks and costs about $11 or $12.  I simply season them with a garlic herb mixture, and Conroy adds his famous Jamaican Jerk sauce concoction.

Stir fry cauliflower and broccoli --  I heat these frozen veggies in a skillet, drizzled with coconut oil and seasoned with whatever I have on hand  - Mrs. Dash, Oregano, Seasoned Salt, Garlic/Onion Powder, etc.

Instant Brown Rice -- a staple for my husband, as well as the one item that Jacie will always eat if she eats nothing else.

Commentary:  Perhaps even cheaper than the tuna patties, this meal rings in somewhere between $3 and $4 total, figuring the chicken at $1 per meal and bags of frozen veggies which can usually be found for $1 each.  The instant rice is $1.50 a box, as mentioned in my last post, and we use only about half a box or less per meal.

Food Frugalities

In an ongoing effort to live within our means and allow me to stay home the majority of the time with our daughter, Conroy and I make a consistent effort to trim and tweak our grocery budget since that's one of the few areas that we can control (as opposed to rent and other set bills).  Summers especially call for a little budget-tightening since we temporarily lose some of our "cushion" income during these months.  Our conversation just yesterday combined with seeing yet another post on money saving tips for living frugally prompted me to this post.

Contrary to some who protest that eating healthy is more expensive, I've found it to be quite the contrary.  Perhaps this post may lead to its own page or series, we'll see.  Over eight years of marriage and, in recent years, the additional process of eliminating processed foods from our diet, I've found several tried and true meal plans and shortcuts that make it possible for us to eat on about $50-$60 a week, even with 2 international students, making 5 of us total.  I'm still and ever on the hunt to perfect and improve, so I'd love to hear interaction and feedback on this subject!

Last night's meal:

Tuna patties -- eggs, tuna, oatmeal, salt, pepper and whatever sauce you have on hand (I used soy sauce)

Sweet potato fries  -- cut one large sweet potato into thin strips and pan-fried in butter or coconut oil, sprinkled with nutmeg and cinnamon.  (YUM!)

Instant brown rice 

Commentary:  My family raves about the tuna patties, and they are so cheap!  Even my picky three-year-old eats them (with a dollop of ranch)!  At 68 cents a tin (I used 4), you can't beat this price for dinner!  The sweet potato costs a dollar, and it fed all of us with leftovers.  I used half a box of the rice ($1.50 a box), and we had leftovers of that, as well. So the 4 of us ate for $5.50 altogether!  Can't beat that!

What's your best tried-and-true, healthy, cheap meal?

Colossians and Cravings

Two recent shaping forces in my inner life of late --- an online study of Colossians and a personal read of Made to Crave by Lysa Terkeurst.  The Colossians blog renewed my desire for writing/ blogging and for studying God's Word (nothing better than combining the two!).  Not sure what direction that renewed desire will take but this post is one step to get back into blogging.  Perhaps reinventing my blog approach is in order as well. As far as group study goes, I'm looking forward to doing the Good Morning Girls Advent study with a small group of ladies from my church.  So excited!

Made to Crave struck a nerve that the skeptic in me had tried to downplay.  This book slapped the "I've heard it all before" attitude right out of me and brought me to my knees in humility.  Two convicting concepts from the book:
1. "To him who knows what is right and doesn't do it, it is sin." No amount of chalking my failures up to lack of discipline or lack of strength can sugarcoat the reality that I am choosing to sin since I know how I should be eating. I've read extensively on the subject and understand the dangers of unhealthy eating.  Not liking to cook = choosing to be lazy instead doing what I know is right.  Consuming that sugary treat  = sin if its not in my calorie count/ budgeted eating.  Hard stuff, but it's truth smacking me upside the head.
2.   My struggles are my reality.  God chose to place this particular struggle in my life, knowing I'd either be self- indulgent or unsympathetic to others' struggles if I didn't have to work hard at maintaining a healthy lifestyle.  Just as it's wrong for me to look at other women with envy who don't struggle with infertility, it's wrong for me to be jealous of those who don't struggle with weight issues.  God's plan for my life is just that -- His plan for me -- unique, individualized, and shaped to produce the exact work He wants done in my life, a work that could be completed in no other way, through no other means. So food/weight issues are His gift to me? Sure, in the same way that my infertility is and my singleness was God's gift, specially and specifically crafted to transform me into the image of His Son.

So here am I am, struggles and all, stripped of excuses.  The question remains, what will I do with the truth I've been given?