Love Your Life

Who knew that eating whole and organic meals would not only nourish me but also help to save us money? It’s true what they say: Less is More.

This was me then: My problem is that I’m busy; I eat to savor, but mostly with my crazy schedule, I eat to survive the day. I don’t plan our meals and decide on a whim what to eat.

And when I get hungry, I don’t care what I put in my body. I’ll stuff muffins, bagels, crackers, cookies…. whatever, get some food in me NOW!  Since I don’t plan my meals in advance, I buy when I am starving. It’s 11 AM, and I’m hungry. Who will deliver now? I’ll pay any amount of money to make the hungry pangs go away.

Lunch? Delivery, please. Easily $17-24 a pop. (I live in Manhattan, remember!) Then dinner rolls around. My husband and I look at each other. What should we eat? Too tired to cook now. Which restaurant will do the trick?

“The important thing to remember is that if you get great quality meats and fish, it may seem to be more expensive from the outset, but if you cook it right, the quality speaks for itself and you don’t need a lot of extra ingredients to dress it up. Less is more!“

This is me now: I eat grass-fed steak, antibiotic-free and organic chicken, wild Alaskan salmon, and gluten-free pasta. I make sure to buy whole foods (which I’ll talk about in a later blog), and I rarely – if ever – eat out or order in. And I’ve saved around $2000 on my monthly food bill! How?

1. Plan your week’s menu
Planning the week’s menu sounds like a hectic and overwhelming project, but I’ll show you how you can do it to save yourself time and hassle.

What you want to do is decide on your weekly core meals.  For example, every week, we eat one fish dish, two or three meat dishes (chicken, turkey and steak), and then a gluten-free pasta dish. Then you plan around that… everything is just a variation on these core meals. Make enough for leftovers and you have a fantastic lunch for the next day.

The important thing to remember is that if you get great quality meats and fish, it may seem to be more expensive from the outset, but if you cook it right, the quality speaks for itself and you don’t need a lot of extra ingredients to dress it up. Less is more!

2. Put your core list onto a spreadsheet according to stores
This is a huge time-saving tip. You can add or subtract to it according to your recipes for the week, but at least you have your core items here as your anchor. You can also compare pricing very easily and adjust accordingly.

Our spreadsheet looks like this:

3. Declare and dedicate one morning to do your shopping
If you can declare one day in the week when you will do your shopping (I like Saturday or Sunday mornings), this will not only help you to save a lot of time during the week, but it will also give you a sense of order and rhythm. If you can go in the morning, you will also save a lot of time because there are fewer people in the stores.

You will also save money by doing this because you can take a quick inventory before you go shopping to see what you need or don’t need. This helps you to not duplicate what you may already have in the fridge.

I like this sense of rhythm that I’ve established because I know that there’s one day a week when I’m going to take care of myself and fuel my body up with the necessary energy to perform at my optimum.