Saving Money on Organic Food (Deals, Discounts, and Delivery)

I recently ran across an article on the Internet entitled, How to Eat Organic on a Budget. Since this is the tag line for my Homemade Life workshop, I clicked on over. This article listed 75 ways to save money while eating organically, most of which I already do and a few that caused me to chuckle (get a couple of chickens and hatch your own eggs - really that's all there is to it? and skip the Starbucks -duh). It also listed sites where you could find discount coupons and deals on organic products. I was excited – this is useful information! So I spent the better part of an afternoon exploring these sites. And I learned two things –

If you spend two hours tracking down a coupon for 50 cents off a product, you probably haven’t really saved anything.

Most sites that make big promises are either for products you’ve never heard of and have no need for, or are full of dated information and expired coupons, but plenty of advertising.

And here’s the thing about coupons – they’re only useful if you were planning to buy that product anyway. Otherwise they’ve done exactly what the company had hoped when they hired that fancy advertising genius – they’ve tricked you in to buying their product.

A few of the sites did actually garner real coupons on products you might actually find in your grocery store. Now, I make no promises that your grocery store accepts these coupons. The world of coupons is lost on me mostly because coupons are for processed food – organic or otherwise, and I avoid processed food – organic or otherwise- as a rule of thumb.

All of that said, I will share with you the sites that looked promising because I know I’m an oddity and most people have no choice but to buy processed food (or starve) so I’d rather you bought organic processed food if you must buy processed food at all.

Don't Waste the Mustard (or anything else)

I love mustard. Love it. Especially the sweet-hot kind. My youngest child is also a mustard lover and feasts on the plain yellow kind with a fistful of pretzels most days after school. Being a male of the species, when the mustard becomes difficult to get out of the jars he simply puts it back in the fridge and opens a new one. Thanks to this habit, at any given time there could be 2-3 almost empty open mustard containers in our fridge.


Yes, of course I rant about this. But it falls on def, hungry ears. A better mother would stop buying mustard. But then that would just be punishing myself, right? So we carried on, until I read this GREAT idea for almost empty mustard containers, especially the squeezeable kind. I found this brilliant idea in a free copy of a home cooking magazine, which has long since landed in the recycling, so I can’t give credit where credit is due. It was one of those abbreviated versions of a bigger magazine sent with stickers and a subscription offer you can’t resist. Since I’ve got stacks of magazines on my desk to be read, I could resist. But before recycling it, I did skim through it while waiting for the mustard-eating child to locate his cleats.

Here’s the great idea: when your mustard jar is almost empty, add oil and vinegar and whatever other things you like in your salad dressing and shake. Brilliant! I added garlic grapeseed oil, elderflower-lime-apple vinegar, salt, and pepper. Yum! Simple, easy, gourmet dressing and no more wasted mustard. And when I’m finished with the dressing, the jar is easy to rinse and recycle.

I’m thinking this idea might also work on BBQ sauce bottles too. You could make a quick marinade by adding oil and vinegar and worchestershire sauce or soy sauce and water, plus whatever spices float your boat.

So there you go, my healthy-eating-good-for-the-planet-don’t-waste-anything tip for the day!

One of the biggest excuses I hear time and again for not eating organically is - "I can't afford it." The first step in affording to eat organically (or affording to eat at all) is to not waste the food you do buy. I've blogged about this in the past, but now I'm focusing on this and other ideas for an upcoming workshop I’ll be giving on Eating Organically and Affording It. I’m still a bit stuck searching for a catchier title for the series of workshops I’ve been developing on all the aspects of kid-friendly organic life. I’ve started with Healthy, Happy, Homemade Life, but that’ a mouthful. If you’ve got a better idea – I’d desperately love to hear it.

And if you’re local, mark your calendar for Wednesday October 26 at 7pm. I’ll be presenting at the Paul Smith Library in Shrewsbury and I’d love to see you there. It’s free, of course. Bring your own ideas for eating organically and saving money, or send them to me and I’ll share them. We’re all in this together and we need all the help we can get.

Top Ten Reasons We Can

I had a hot date with my hubby last night. It got pretty steamy and altogether messy. We canned tomatoes until the wee hours. It’s that time of year. Twenty pints of pizza sauce and nine quarts of tomato sauce. And still the tomatoes keep coming.

We’re taking a break and moving on to peaches today. Bought a huge bushel of seconds peaches ready and ripe. This weekend’s date will involve skinning the luscious beauties and squeezing the pits out of them before we cook them in to peachsauce (just like applesauce only peaches and no sugar!), peach Barbeque sauce, and maybe some peach jam or syrup. It will definitely get sticky.

Canning can be a solitary endeavor, but it’s much more fun with company and music (and some wine). Sometimes when I’m elbow deep in the mess I wonder why we do this. It would be so much easier to buy tomato sauce at the store. And even if the price of organic tomato sauce can be dear, I’m fairly sure my time is worth just as much.

Inspired by my son's excellent blog, How To Kill Your Characters, (It’s all manner of musings on Dungeons and Dragons on the surface, but underneath it’s pretty philosophical and just plain good writing. He puts me to shame.) which is filled with Top Ten Lists, I present:

The Top Ten Reasons why I can each summer:


1 Popping the lid off a jar of tomato sauce in the dead of winter returns summer if only for a meal. All the flavors of five different heirloom tomatoes in one jar is divine. No can from the store, no matter how exclusive and expensive the brand, can compare.


2 My youngest child considers homemade peachsauce such a special treat, he opts for it over all manner of junk food.


3 Instead of empty calories and chemicals in store bought pancake syrup, we slop on homemade blueberry syrup any time of year not just special occasions.


4 Once you grow accustomed to homemade applesauce it’s pretty much impossible to eat that mealy mush they sell at the grocery store.


5  I feel connected to my mother and grandmother and all the women before them as I “put up” healthy, homegrown food for my family.


6 I can’t stand to waste anything. And I can’t stick to one kind of tomato or cucumber. How else could I keep from throwing all the extras on the compost pile?


7 I like cherries, blueberries, and peaches too much to eat them only a few weeks a year and I can’t bring myself to buy (or pay the price for) produce shipped from the other side of the globe in the dead of winter.


8 It may consume my time in the summer, but it saves me time in shopping trips to the store the rest of the year. We always have sauces, fruits, veggies, and jams on hand year round.


9 I get incredible nerdy satisfaction from hearing the jar lids “pop”, writing the contents on the lids, and lining them up neatly on the shelf.


10 It’s one tiny step I can take toward living more self-sufficiently. If I had my way we’d live off the grid on the side of mountain, but thankfully (for my kids at least), I married a man who enjoys the marvels of modern conveniences. Although he makes a damn fine lumberjack, I must say.

I hope you’re inspired to get canning yourself! If you need some tips or ideas check out some previous posts

Canning foibles, canning basics, canning tomatoes, applesauce , more canning ideas

Or locate a copy of the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving – it will tell you everything you need to can anything. Canning isn’t rocket science, I promise. You can do this!

Nothing Free About Free Range

I ordered our turkey last week from the same Amish stand where I got a wonderful fresh turkey last year. This was supposed to be a quick errand. Stop in at the market and order another turkey, 18 pounds. When the sweet little Amish woman in her bonnet asked if I’d like a “free range” turkey this year (for just a dollar more a pound!), I was dumbstruck. Here I was, all along, thinking that my fresh Amish turkey was already pretty much “free range”. I couldn’t imagine the Amish cramming hundreds of turkeys in to a turkey house to fatten up on chemical laden foods while stepping on each other and fighting for air. I assumed (and we know what assuming does to you and me) all Amish turkeys had humane living conditions. I assumed that cute little children in black suspenders and straw hats chased them around the yard, much as my children take pleasure in herding our chickens. So, I was stopped in my tracks by the Amish woman’s question.


Did I want free range? Well, of course I did. But then my skeptical self starting taking over and I began to wonder if these noble looking Amish people were just taking advantage of the ignorant “English” people who shop their market. No one ever calls the Amish stupid. But a line was forming and I needed to make a decision, so I considered the facts. It’s Thanksgiving and this is the only turkey I buy each year, and even more importantly, this is the year my husband is certain he can beat the Germans! So I sprung for the extra buck and next week I’ll pick up our free range turkey who I presume is flitting around the range as I write this.

We have a collection of friends and relatives that numbers upwards of 20 people most holidays. Everyone pitches in and brings something, but we share the turkey preparations with some dear friends from Germany. This has become our tradition ever since we introduced them to the concept of an American thanksgiving the year we met them. They bring a deep fryer and we make a spectacle of the “great turkey drop” each year and the kids ohh and ahh as the turkey is ceremoniously lowered in to the pot. (see picture) As the years have gone by, a quiet competition has developed between my husband and our German friend. Sadly, my husband’s oven roasted turkey is good, but never quite as good as the deep-fried one. Maybe it’s the spectacle. Much is determined by expectations.

I returned to the Amish stand because last year’s turkey cooked up deliciously and it was the closest we’ve come to beating the deep-fried bird. My husband is determined to cook a superior bird. He schemes for months, changing his plan regularly. He reads helpful articles my mom sends his way about cooking the perfect turkey and he surfs the net looking for a recipe for the perfect bird. Seems a bird injected with spices and dropped in to boiling peanut oil is hard to compete with. But last year’s bird came really close. It was delish.

The plan this year is to smoke the turkey, literally. Over the weekend we had a practice run with the biggest chicken my little Amish lady could come up with. It was enormous and after slowly cooking it at a very low temp in the oven, it was smoked over hardwood, chemical free chips and turned out spectacular. I’ve never tasted a moister chicken. So now the challenge is to replicate the results with a turkey.

Much is resting on the turkey I ordered, so I’ve been reconsidering my bird ever since. I even did a little research on the internet. I wondered if beyond price, there was any difference between a “free range” turkey and the frozen butterball mass you pull out of the grocer’s freezer. Of course, the difference between the two depends completely on who you ask. I tried to be discerning and opt for sites that didn’t have a stake in the outcome.

Turns out turkeys are a sensitive issue. Some people get pretty worked up about the taste of a “heritage” turkey and others are simply not going to pay “a hundred bucks” for a turkey that doesn’t taste any different. Nutritionally, I couldn’t find a whole lot of difference, at least when it comes to the actual turkey meat. I did learn that a butterball is not just turkey. Its ingredients list states that it contains: “turkey, water, salt, modified food starch, sodium phosphates, and natural flavorings”. There are plenty of companies that sneak MSG in to their products by calling it “modified food starch” or “natural flavorings”, so I feel somewhat justified in my decision to steer clear of the store-bought variety.

Of course I lean towards the bird that was treated humanely, as we work hard to provide our own birds with luxury accommodations and I can tell when those birds are happy and content or miserable and grumpy. I’m sure that affects their ultimate taste (oh, let me have that one, I’d hate to waste valuable time finding a study to back me up).

There was one fact I read that gave me pause. Several sites stated that free range turkeys are leaner and should be cooked slower. And free range birds have more dark meat. Seems the traditional bird is bread to have abnormally huge breast meat and, as a consequence, these birds can’t really move around much. Physically they can’t free range, even if they were given the option. Hmmm. Now I have to figure out how to break the news to my hubby that I may have handicapped him from the start this year.

I think that making the decision to buy organic or free range or sustainably grown comes down to the issue of trust. I’m paying extra because I believe you when you say this turkey was raised free range, without antibiotics and hormones. Because really, there’s no way for me to know this and there’s no federal agency that’s checking up on a little Amish Farm that sells to it’s surrounding community. So I just have to trust that I’m not being snookered. And what if I am? Well, I guess that’s just the price I pay to help keep our countryside rolling in buggies and windmills.

2009 Turkey Drop

I don’t think my dilemma over the price of free range turkey is unique. We are all making this decision on a less complicated scale on a daily basis. There is much we must take on faith. We will make ourselves nuts if we insist on absolute certainty before we make a decision. There comes a moment when you have to just follow your heart, or your gut, or the coin toss.

Many times the media and our society and maybe personal experience teach us that you can’t trust anybody. I personally think the world is a little too scary when you no longer trust. I’d rather err on the side of being a sucker than a skeptic. There’s very little we can ever be sure about when it comes to choosing what to eat. It seems there is a scientific report or internet site that can promote or refute just about anything you come up with. So it comes down to learning all you can, trusting you instincts, experience, intuition, and maybe, your neighbors. I don’t know who runs the Butterball operation, but I do know my turkey’s grandma and she’s seems honest enough.

Five Cheap and Easy Plants Worth the Time and Effort

Five plants worth buying, even if you don’t have a “real” garden:

1. Basil (you can also easily start this from seed) – summer recipes always call for fresh basil and it’s silly to buy it when you can have some growing in your flower garden (they have pretty white flowers) or in a pot growing on your porch or in a sunny window. A packet of seeds (will last for years) or one small plant will cost you less than one bundle of fresh basil in the grocery store. Basil is an annual, so unless you cultivate it indoors, you’ll have to start over each year. But basil is so easy to grow it’s no trouble. You can freeze basil (pureed with a little water and frozen in ice cube trays works great, then you can just drop an ice cube in sauces or soups) or dry it to use throughout the year. There are lots of different varieties of basil out there – I really like Thai basil for the little kick, but cinnamon basil and lemon basil are also fun. And here’s the added bonus – Basil repels insects! I like to put some in my flower pots on the porch to keep the bugs away. (most strongly scented herbs repel bugs – thyme and lavender also work well, and of course, citronella). Harvest basil as soon as the leaves are large enough and it will keep producing all summer.

2. Silver Dollar Eucalyptus. Bet you didn’t know you can grow eucalyptus! It grows as annual in my time zone, but it does that beautifully. One small plant (I bought mine in the herb section of the nursery today for 1.99) will turn in to a huge bush that produces lots of fragrant stems. I grow it and cut some all summer to scent the house. When cold weather threatens, I cut the whole thing down and dry it in the basement before refilling several stashes I have around the house to keep it smelling nice. Note: in warmer climates Eucalyptus can be come invasive and harm nearby plants, also its bark is very flammable, so it’s not a good choice for fire prone areas.

3. Dusty Miller – if you want a cheap splash of bright white that lasts all spring, summer, and fall, choose dusty miller. It’s really just white leaves that give the color, but it can be counted on through heat, drought, and even the first few frosts. Last year mine was still blooming when the snow hit. It looks gorgeous as a border or add individual plants to your baskets and pots to add variety and dress up herbs.

4. Zinnias – the happy, bright flowers bloom summer in to fall and right up to the first frost. You can cut them to create beautiful bouquets and they come right back with even more blooms. One packet of seeds will create an entire garden of pretty blooms. They like sun and are forgiving when you forget to water them. I like the Cut and Come Again variety, but they come in all shades and sizes. Great flower to get kids started. It’s also incredibly easy to save their seeds for the next year. Wait for the flower to truly die (turn brown) and then cut them off and put them in paper bags to dry. When they are dry, just shake out the seeds. One packet of good heirloom seeds could last you a lifetime!

5. Zucchini – you really only need one seed to grow enough zucchini for the neighborhood, so one packet will last you for years. These squash grow practically overnight. They create a nice-looking “bush” of giant leaves and yellow flowers, followed by more zucchini than any family can ever eat. Zucchini is a great vegetable to hide in your kids’ food. It sweetens when it cooks and is pretty much undetectable in pancakes, brownies, chocolate cake, spaghetti sauce, and salsa. I puree it so no one finds the telltale green skin or heaven forbid – a lump! A zucchini among your foundation garden will look exotic. This is a great one for kids to grow.

Ready, Set, Garden!

I started the garden this weekend. What a great feeling. I planted eight rows of lettuce (which is crazy I know so make plans to stop by for salad in June), a row of hot purple radishes, 2 rows of spinach, 2 rows of carrots, one super long row of sugar snap peas, and one row of swiss chard (which I’ve never planted before and hardly ever eaten, but the picture in the catalog was too much to resist and swiss chard is supposed to be good for you so I’m going to learn to eat it.). The onion and broccoli plants have a few more days to adapt to real sunlight before they will be installed, but they’re moving in this week.

I haven’t been able to clip the wings on one of our roosters and yesterday I caught him in the garden digging up and eating the seeds I’d just planted! Hugely righteous anger. The kids got water cannons for Easter from their grandparents so I appropriated one to keep on the porch so that I can shoot the rooster whenever he makes his way to the garden (which is twice so far this morning). I’m not sure you can train a chicken, but I’m certainly going to try. All the chickens have been sentenced to living in the chicken pen once again since the garden has begun. It’s a tough adjustment after 7 months of free range life. Some are able to fly over the fence (yes, chickens really can fly- but only about 5-6 feet up and they do much better if there is a hill to give them a running start and a gravitational advantage.) To remedy this problem, we clip their wings which doesn’t hurt and isn’t even visible (their “flying feathers” are hidden behind their “standing around looking like a chicken feathers”). Only problem is none of us can seem to catch the big rooster. It doesn’t help that his spurs are huge and he just looks mean. He’s never hurt anyone and he has the wimpiest crow around, but still. I’m going to try to do it tonight when he’s sleeping.

How do you know when to start your garden? The weather’s been beautiful and it’s very tempting to start tucking in all your seeds. For sure there is still cold weather to come so I wouldn’t chance a tomato or a pepper yet and the soils not warm enough for cucumbers or squash. Seeds need the soil to be about 55 degrees to germinate, some need it warmer. Lettuce and peas like it cold. Tradition says you should plant your peas on St Patrick’s Day, but we were still under snow cover on St. Patty’s day this year.

Another good way to know when you can start planting is the texture of your soil. You want your soil to be like chocolate cake not chocolate fudge. So that’s basically it – chocolate cake that is about 55 degrees and you’re good to go with lettuce, carrots, radish, peas (all kinds), spinach, broccoli, onions and any other seed whose packet lists “as soon as the soil can be worked” or “early spring” as the planting time.

If we get a forecast for a serious frost and freezing temps overnight, I sometimes cover my rows with plastic. But sometimes I forget and they do just fine. Here’s a few other tips for planting that I’ve learned the hard way.

The distances between plants suggested on the seed packets are for real. Sometimes I read them and think they’re being overly cautious. I always live to regret this and end up stepping on plants as I try to weed and performing acrobatic feats just to water the veggies.

Mulch or cultivate the soil between rows on a regular basis. This is how you keep weeds from getting ahead of you. A great tool for keeping the weeds in check is a stirrup hoe (looks like a stirrup on the end of a stick). There is no shame in mulch. If you can save leaves in a pile each fall to use for this task you’ll save money. Straw works OK too, but things creep in. Newspapers are good if you can get them weighted down with water and maybe some stones until they start to disintegrate. (Check to be sure your paper uses vegetable based inks. For you locals – the York Daily Record does use vegetable based ink.)

Don’t plant too deep. I’ve committed this crime many times. It usually happens when I’m planting a lot of seeds in a hurry and use a hoe to fill the row back in. The general rule of thumb is to cover the seed with soil as deep as the seed is big. Most seeds are pretty small. You don’t need much soil over them. The best way to do this is by hand and carefully, patting down the earth over the seed as you go. If you plant too deep you’ll wait much longer to see any action and some seeds won’t make it at all.

Put up big signs. You think you will remember where your rows are. You think you will be able to see the little popsicle stick markers. You assume that digging the seed packet in to the soil at the end of the row will help you remember what’s planted there. Here’s what I know – my memory is fading (I don’t know how old you are, but odds are you are no longer a teenager, so yours is on the downward slope too). Popsicle sticks quickly become camouflaged by the dirt, upended by the trampling feet of children and pets, or blown away when the soil begins to dry. Seed packets disintegrate almost overnight and the wind tends to blow them away. You need big signs – I use scrap wood and paint stirrers (free at the hardware store!) and use paint pens to label them. My daughter and I like to write inspiring things on the backs of these signs too. (See my post April 15, 2009 “Planting Seeds and Inspiration”). If you don’t label your rows well, you may mistake newly sprouted lettuce for a weed (lettuce basically is a weed so this is understandable).

Stay on top of the weeds. Don’t wait for them to overwhelm you. Pull a few EVERYDAY and it won’t seem too bad. If you enlist your children’s help (and you should), supervise their weeding or you may lose more than the weeds. Personally, I haven’t had a whole lot of luck putting the kids to work. They are happy to pick, but weed only under duress for large sums of money. Wish I could tell you different, but I have to be honest.

Plan your walkways as carefully as you plan your planted rows. You need to have somewhere to walk – remember that tomatoes get very bushy and pushy, cucumbers and squash can sprawl all over, and carrots and onions will keep nicely to themselves (but don’t handle being stepped on very well). I’m hoping to make some homemade stepping stones this year with the kids using small pizza boxes and a bag of cement. We don’t order out pizzas, so we’d love some donations from those of you who do (hint, hint).

Put up posts on all the corners of your garden to keep the hose from being dragged over your plants. After all that hard work and diligent weeding, it would be a shame if a hose snapped your almost ripe red pepper plant in two. This is a MUST do. We put four foot tall metal fence posts on the corners (shorter stakes tend to do more damage to my shins).

I’m sure there is more to say, but I’m watching a rooster making his way towards my pea row, so I’ve got to fill my water cannon. Happy gardening!

The High Cost of Eating

Do you know how much you spend on food? Details are not generally my thing when it comes to just about anything except our budget. Early in our marriage, paying the bills and managing the piles of money (ha) became my job. It stressed Nick out to know what we spent on pets or clothing or food or other unnecessary items (unnecessary in his mind at least. He never had an issue with what we spent on beer.). So I claimed this task and began tracking it on my computer. I got a strange thrill from categorizing each expense and generating reports with just a click of the mouse. The pie charts were kind of fun. So I can tell you exactly what we spent on food (or anything else for that matter) for the last 13 years.

For the purpose of comparing our food budget before and after we “went organic”, I am only looking at the last four years. In 2005, organic meant only a term in chemistry class to us. In 2006, our youngest son developed Alopecia Areata and we began our quest to cleanse our diet and our life. In 2007 we were a bit militant about organics and in 2008 we finally hit our happy medium of local, organic, whole foods. We were gardening throughout all these years, but the serious canning began in 2007 and in 2008 consumed our summer.

A little more background – we have three kids. Kid #1 is not a big eater except for Cheezits (he requires at least one box a week). Kid #2 eats less than the birds that wait patiently at my bird feeder that I rarely fill (except when my dad visits because he’s the “birder”). Kid #3 eats anything, all the time, preferably something with lots of meat and fat. All three of these kids have only gotten bigger during my comparison period, so you would expect that they are eating more (except maybe Kid #2, I think she eats less if that’s possible. Her food preferences become more restrictive each week. We’re down to macaroni, cheese sticks, and strawberries.).

The price of groceries has gone up dramatically. A fact that is not lost on you, I am sure.

So bearing all of these factors in mind, I’m now going to share with you our food expenditure for the last four years……drum roll please…….

Has remained just about the same each year, give or take $100 either way. Bizarre, I know. Even as we have transitioned to organic, local, whole foods we have managed to keep our food expenditures the same. Considering the growth of our family and the state of our economy, you might even say we lowered our food bill. Proof positive that you do not need to spend more to eat organic. You do have to be creative and resourceful and you can’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. I know I’ve said much of this before, but here’s how we do it:

1. We stock up on staples, especially if they are on sale, reducing the number of trips to the store.
2. We buy in bulk – mostly loose bulk from a natural food grocery store we are blessed to live reasonably close to.
3. We buy our beef and pork by the cow and pig.
4. We raise our own eggs.
5. We garden like lunatics and can, freeze, or dry everything that’s not moving.
6. We avoid buying processed food and make our own bread, yogurt, cookies, etc.
7. We pack lunches.
8. We buy directly from farmers and love to “pick and pay” all summer long.
9. We cook and eat at home almost every day, eating out only on rare occasions (we’d rather splurge on seafood and cook it at home where the wine is cheaper and better and the bread is fresh).
10. We eat “planned overs” (never call them “leftovers”).

And we eat well. No way this would work if that wasn’t the case. I love to eat. Last night we had pulled pork sandwiches, baked beans, and fresh local asparagus. Tonight we’ll have homemade pizza with caramelized onions and roasted red peppers with a fresh salad and homemade ice cream for dessert. So if your excuse for not eating organic and healthy is that you can’t afford to, take a look at your budget. It’s a matter of priorities.

I’m not one to preach (most of the time), but what you put in your body and your kids’ bodies should be the very best. Nobody gets a second chance to be healthy today. It’s an investment, like any other. Maybe you can’t raise chickens in your backyard (although you’d be surprised….), but you can find ways to cut your budget and eat healthier. Little changes add up to big ones. Just don’t say it can’t be done.

It's What You Put In, not On

Yesterday I made my monthly trek to Trader Joes. As I made my selections it did occur to me that some of the food I was choosing cost significantly more than a similar version in the grocery store. But the food I selected was pesticide free, hormone free, additive free, preservative free, and in many cases certified organic. Organic food costs more. I won’t tell you any different. I will extol all the ways you can spend less through your own efforts, resourcefulness, gardens, and preserving, but the bottom line is it may cost you more, especially in the beginning. This should not be a deterrent because this is life or death we’re talking about. Feeding your family healthy food will protect them for a lifetime. There is no cost too high for avoiding things like cancer, heart disease, autoimmune disorders, and diabetes. And you’ll never know if you dodged these bullets because you ate and lived well or because you are lucky. Science has yet to connect all the dots, but we cannot afford to wait. Trust your instincts and common sense. And eat things that you recognize. Best not to take chances on your health.

So how do we afford it? Well, maybe we need to take a long hard look at the budget and figure out how to save in other areas. When I confessed to my mother-in-law that I was shopping at Goodwill these days (and that’s a whole other post – have you been there lately? As my son would say “It’s the bomb.”), she said that makes perfect sense to her. She pointed out that you should care about and spend more on the things you put in your body than on your body. Amen.

Choosing to live a healthier, more planet conscious life will cost more in some ways and less in others. You can save money by making and growing much of your own food and by cleaning with simple inexpensive products. But there will be some things that cost a premium. It's a balance you have to find for your own budget and your own life. If may be "cheaper" for you to pay the high cost of an organic item versus make it yourself. Your time is worth money too. As the world has finally begun to get onboard, I truly believe the cost of organics will go down as the options increase.

We find ways to afford the things that are really important to us. It comes down to priorities, and maybe a little creative bookkeeping. So I shop at Goodwill, swap books with friends or use the library, and wait for movies to hit the $2 movie house. Meanwhile, my family eats grass fed, organic filet mignon, local hormone free milk, and organic pesticide free strawberries. Seems like a fair trade to me.