Eating Well on a Budget

My husband and I are working hard to pay off our debts, which means having a super tight budget for groceries.  I have been only been spending $100 a week, and that includes dinners, lunches, breakfasts, personal/household items, and enough food & cat litter for 5 cats! Its been tough but do-able.

Breakfasts: My husband is super easy, and a creature of habit.  He has cereal every morning.  So one staple is milk, obviously, and then cereal.  I either buy cereal by couponing, or if I am able to do it, make a home made granola.  Recipe is here! For me, I tend to get bored easily.  So I either eat the granola, or make pancakes or muffins that I can keep in the fridge or freezer.

Lunches: Again, hubby is a creature of habit.  He eats PB & J EVERYDAY!! So it requires bread (which I am wanting to invest in a bread maker), natural PB (just peanuts and salt), and natural strawberry jam.  Which have you looked at the everyday jellys/jams? They have "high fructose corn syrup" and "corn syrup" listed on there...I think they separate it to avoid showing that there is probably more corn syrup than strawberries.  But anyways, so for me, I work from home.  I eat whatever is leftover from dinners or a PB & J once in a while.

Dinner: In efforts to save money, at least once a week we eat eggs in some sort of way.  Like quiche or scrambled eggs with veggies mixed in.  I try to eat at least 1 veggie based meal a week.  Since it is just the two of us, I cook 3 meals, and usually get 3-4 nights worth of leftovers.

Its been difficult but we are working really hard to keep eating clean, but on a budget.

Double Decker Taco

When I was younger I was an avid eater at Taco Bell.  There was a double decker taco they had that I loved, and ever since my husband and I lived together I have been making these tacos at home.  This time I have made it all clean eating!

 

 

Tacos to me are a very loose recipe, and can be altered to your own tastes.  Here is what I did.

Refried beans (I got the recipe from 100 Days of Real Food and I kept about half of the liquid because I like thinner refried beans)
Get the recipe here

Ground beef
- organic grass fed ground beef
- a mixture of spices ( chili powder, cayenne, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, salt and pepper)

Cook beef until no longer pink, and when the beef is almost done add spices so the flavor gets seared into the meat.

Tacos
- refried beans
- seasoned ground beef
- soft tortilla shells (I like to make homemade ones but had to do grocery store convenience-THESE ARE NOT CLEAN!)
- hard shells ( I used blue corn shells)
- shredded lettuce
- salsa
- plain chobani (or sour cream)
- you can add anything else your heart desires!

Spread a good layer of refried beans on the soft shells.  Place the hard shell on top.  I find if you break it in half you can lay it flat on the soft shell, and it's easier to fill and close up.  Add ground beef, salsa, lettuce, chobani, and whatever else and close up your taco.  Enjoy!

P.S. yes that is a cloth napkin, I'll talk about that some other time!