Fish Soup

Fish soup. It's something I have meant to make for a long time. I am not a huge fan of soup unless I can have it with a giant hunk of warm, crusty sourdough bread (waaah! Sometimes I miss the days when I thought wheat was a health food!), but I loooooove, love, love me some fish! Plus I am always on the lookout for ways to up the ante on nutrient density since our grocery budget is small. Anything that packs a big nutritional punch is worth trying at least once in my mind as long as it's also pretty inexpensive! Enter fish soup! I  used a pre-packaged fish stock, but if you can get your hands on some fish bones and skins and make your own then all the better! The one I found (50% off at Walmart) was high quality though with no unnecessary additives or colors or anything like that. Just fish and veggies went into making that stock! It was very mildly fishy, too, which I appreciated. I'm a huge seafood freak but I  still don't like for fish to taste super fishy.

Sorry I have turned into a phone-photographer. It's a horribly hard habit to break!

Fish has been getting a bad rap lately due to the continuing problem with radiation leaking from Fukushima. But it's really being overblown by the media and scaring people away from something that is still safe and healthy to eat. Here is a good article explaining why it's nothing to be afraid of Fukushima Radiation: Is It Still Safe To Eat Fish?

Like most of the food I make, I didn't use a recipe. I looked at a few to get some ideas but mostly just went with what "felt" right to me. 'Cuz that's how I roll. 

Also you can thicken more "traditionally" with flour if you like, but I wanted this soup to be only moderately creamy, hence the small amount of sour cream and potato starch (plus the whole no-grain thing, you know).

Fish Soup

Makes 4 servings

1 quart fish stock (vegetable or chicken stock would probably be a fine substitute)

1 cup milk*

2 tablespoons sour cream

Lemon juice

Approximately 1 lb mild, white fish (I used 4 whiting fillets) 

2 small-med potatoes, peeled and diced

1 stalk of celery, chopped (I chopped mine into large pieces but it would have been better with small ones)

2 large carrots, peeled and chopped

1 small onion, diced

4-5 cloves of garlic, minced

2-4 tbsp butter

1 tbsp potato starch

garlic salt

sea salt

pepper

cayenne pepper

Combine stock, milk, sour cream, and a splash of lemon juice in a small soup pot. Heat to medium-high heat. Meanwhile, add butter to a skillet with potatoes and cook until lightly golden. Add carrots and continue to cook until they are also lightly golden. Add celery and onion and cook until onion is clear. Add cooked veggies to your soup pot then return the skillet to the burner and toss in the garlic, sauteeing just a moment or two. Add to soup. Add garlic salt, salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste (I like to taste the spiciness of the cayenne without it being really obvious). In a small bowl or cup add potato starch and a little water. Add to the soup and bring to a slow boil. Dice fish into 1-2 inch pieces, add to soup pot and boil approximately 10 minutes. Remove from burner and enjoy! 

P.S. I think a little Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top would be the bees knees! 

*almond milk, half & half, or whatever your preferred "milk" is (heavy cream would be delicious, too, I'm just too tight with my budget to use an entire cup for anything outside of special occasions!)

Too good to be true. Except it is. True I mean.

I'm about to do what I first thought of as "shameless" advertising. I could benefit if you buy the item I'm about to rave about. But then I realized that it would be ever so much more shameful for me not to share this amazing deal with you, than to share it, knowing it could result in a gift certificate for moi. So what is this amazing deal? Recently I noticed that Tropical Traditions put their coconut oil for pets on sale. An entire gallon for $31 (w/shipping)! I discovered upon further investigation that their coconut oil for pets is perfectly fit for human consumption and said to myself, "Sweet deal!" The only difference between this coconut oil and the oil they sell for human consumption is simply hasn't been through the deodorizing process, which leaves it with a "smokey" flavor. "Okay," thought I, "For a total of $31 for a gallon of coconut oil, I've gotta try it!" And I did. Two weeks ago I ordered it, and two days later it shipped. We opened it up as soon as it arrived, very anxious to see what this coconut oil would be like. It is mildly smokey. But you know what I've found? That flavor is truly delicious in many of the dishes I commonly prepare. My oven baked potato wedges are always amazing (yes I did just say that), but being tossed in smokey coconut oil first? OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD! You name the food, it was good! I wouldn't probably recommend baking with it for obvious reasons (mildly smokey cake? No, thank you!), but all sorts of savory foods combine beautifully with this hint of smokiness. Today I noticed that they are now offering a coupon code for free shipping, so you can get an entire gallon for a mere $21! Enter code "123001" and receive free ground shipping on your entire order! But hurry! This free shipping offer is only good until January 30th! And if you're a new customer, be sure to go to their site through one of my links so I can earn a gift certificate!

And if you have the money and love your little pet, why not buy him a gallon while you're at it? ;)

Special Price! 1-gallon - Organic Expeller-Pressed Coconut Oil for Pets

An Inexpensive Christmas

There are tons of blogs out there giving tips on how to have an inexpensive, but still merry holiday season. I won't try to out-do any of them, because I know that I can't. I have limited ideas and at the moment limited time, so I'll just give a couple quick tips that I've employed myself to help keep the holidays as budget friendly as possible!

Make your own gifts.
This isn't possible for everyone on your list most likely, but for those you can? Do! This year I made Socktopuses for my younger nieces (which they all seemed to like!), homemade liquid hand or dish soap for a variety of friends, and I also plan on making some body scrub (probably like the scrub I made here) for others. For my sisters and their husbands I made Andes Mint Fudge and No-Bake Oreo Truffles (which I can say here because we already "did Christmas" with my side of the family!).

Shop at dollar stores!
For much younger children, a dollar store can be a great source of fun but inexpensive toys and personal care items (toothbrushes, fun wash cloths, hair clips, brushes, etc). They can also be helpful when attempting to fill stockings for older kids or even adults (again, toothbrushes, combs, small candles, clip-on booklights etc).

Don't go overboard with the food.
I know the holidays are considered by most to be a time for constant feasting but trust me; you'll enjoy those cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning a lot more if you haven't been living on junk for for the entire month already! Pick a few special items to have through the season and make them last! Sure, 10 cookies in one setting taste yummy, but your budget and waistline will thank you for stopping at 2 or 3 instead.

Reuse and recycle!
There's no need to spend a TON of money to make your home look cheery this holiday season. All the latest lights and decorations simply aren't necessary. Instead consider decorating with things like paper snowflakes (a great project to do with your kids; everyone will have a great time and there's something even more special about hanging decorations you made with your own hands!), or turn an old tomato cage upside down, wrap it in lights, and viola! You have a perfect lighted tree for your home or yard for the cost of a string (or two) of lights instead of $20+ for the "real deal". Also consider making your own ornaments, using old T-shirts in holiday colors, cutting into whatever shape you desire and stuffing them with cotton balls and gluing together with fabric glue, or making cut-out ornaments with applesauce and cinnamon (which happen to pull triple duty; great holiday project with the kids, fun gift to give, or beautiful on your own Christmas tree!). Also consider bundling up and taking a nature walk with the kids. Gather up sticks, pine cones, etc., paint with a thin coat of watered down Elmer's glue and dust lightly with some white glitter. Once dry, place together in a pretty bowl for a simple holiday centerpiece!

Here's a photo of our tree and mantle area -- all these items (including most of the ornaments!) were either bought after Christmas at seriously reduced prices (think 75+% off!), were hand-me-downs, or gifts. Even the tree was purchased several years before I married David for something like 80% off the original price!

Here's an ornament I made with my MIL a week or two ago, using little ornament forms (99 cents Hobby Lobby), torn up Pier 1 catalog pages, and high gloss glue: 

Life on a Budget II

In my last post I wrote about how I manage to feed my husband and myself for $30 or less per week. "Great," you may think. "I can do that too, if I want to live on cheap TV dinners, right?" Wrong! In this second installment of Life on a Budget, I'll tell you about what we actually eat.

You've probably heard it said many times before that when you're trying to eat healthily you should shop the outside aisles of the store. This is a good general rule of thumb you could follow as most grocery stores include fresh produce, dairy, and meat on those outside aisles. The center aisles are where you usually find things like Hamburger Helper, crackers, potato chips, cereal, bread, and all the other highly processed foods that do not offer health benefits and in fact are almost always detrimental to your health.

There are certain foods that we always avoid which eliminates a huge portion of our options, the biggest being grains. Neither David nor I have celiac disease, nor are we "gluten intolerant" according to average standards. In fact, I can eat a bunch of crackers or a bowl of cereal and feel nothing (except happy)! But there are many silent problems with grains, which you've probably already read a little bit about elsewhere on the internet. The gist is that gluten is only one of many problems with grains so it's best avoided entirely (if you'd like to read a little more about the problems with wheat check out Dr. William Davis's article "Name That Food"). That means no cereal, crackers, cookies, pasta, bread, donuts... nothing. Gluten-free replacements for these foods are made with ingredients like soy flour, potato starch, and rice flour, which all have their own problems as well, including spiking insulin higher and faster than regular wheat based products (which itself is worse than table sugar). This may be why you so often see someone decide to go "gluten free" and then blow up like a balloon. The replacement foods are often just as problematic as the foods you're trying to replace, so again, it is better for your health and your checkbook to just eliminate those foods entirely and learn to eat a more natural, whole foods diet, which is what we were designed by God to thrive on.

"So what do you eat?" You may be asking impatiently by now (sorry I get so wordy sometimes!). The truth is I feel like we have so many options I barely know where to start! You might think that eliminating the largest food group from the average American diet would mean there's nothing left, but that is so far from the truth. We eat 2-3 meals per day and each meal is different (usually) and thoroughly enjoyed. We eat:

Meat: Chicken, pork, beef, seafood, turkey, buffalo, venison. You name it, we'll eat it! We tend to eat beef and seafood the least often because it is always more expensive (though it happens to be my two favorite sources of protein!). We mostly eat chicken, turkey, and venison. The venison my husband and father have hunted in Texas and is fantastic. We're nearly out now though, and I really hope we can stock up again this November! Also in November when we go home to visit my family for the holidays, their local grocery store sells whole turkeys for $0.25 per pound. We stock up and get as many turkeys as we have space for, as one turkey will last us around a week and a half, depending on how we use it. We also try to eat beef liver now and then as it is super packed with nutrients -- a little goes a long way!

Vegetables: I won't bore you with a list of every single vegetable we eat because we pretty much eat any of them, if the price is right! Regulars are things like frozen green beans, frozen "California blend" (broccoli, cauliflower, carrots), carrots, potatoes, frozen stir-fry blends (sugar snap peas, carrots, peppers, onion, broccoli, etc), squash, and zucchini. Most of those frozen veggies can be got for just over $1 per pound, especially if you're careful to shop sales. Occasionally I get "lucky" and find them for even less than that though. Remember, frozen vegetables are picked ripe, which means more nutrient-bang for your buck, too!

Fruits: We don't eat much fruit. It's expensive. I try to pick out one type of fruit per week, or if there are good sales, I'll choose two or even three and in the summer we eat more fruit than during the rest of the year. More often than not though, you may find just a couple peaches in my fridge, or a bag of frozen blueberries from Sam's club ($9.78 for 64oz). Apples used to be my "go-to" fruit because they could usually be got inexpensively, but they made the very top of the "dirty dozen" list this year, so I've chosen to avoid them for the most part, unless I find organic apples on sale at a price I can afford (I realize my inconsistency here though; I avoid apples, but not several other items on the dirty dozen list).

We also allow ourselves dairy, but only keep a little cheese on hand (in the freezer to be sure it won't mold!) and fresh raw milk for making kefir with. Eggs are a staple that I'm (almost) never without! We can easily go through 2 dozen in one week if we eat breakfast each morning that week.

In our constant efforts to maintain our budget and still eat healthily in a world where food prices are skyrocketing, we've also recently been looking into traditional methods of preparation for foods like brown rice and beans. Brown rice has some similar problems to the cereal grains, but if you soak and ferment it first, those problems are eliminated. Metabolically, David and I are both able to handle rice (that is the higher carbohydrate content), so we've begun to incorporate a little rice into our diets, as well as traditionally prepared beans, and peeled potatoes (the anti-nutrients in potatoes are in the skins). We soak, grind, and ferment the rice and beans and have been baking them into little "pancakes" that work well to replace things like tortillas and flatbread.

The only items I buy organic for now are carrots ($1 per pound at Walmart or $1.56 or so for 1 pound of baby carrots), potatoes ($0.96 per pound at Walmart) and onions ($2.99 for 3lbs at Price Chopper).

Partially because we don't buy all organic foods, and also because we know that food isn't the only source of toxins, we try to always maintain at least a mild detoxification protocol, whether that means taking chlorella 3 times per day, or using the infrared sauna several times per week.

Life on a Budget

Two posts in three days? I know. If I don't stop the insanity the world may well stop turning, and that would be a terrible thing indeed. Don't worry. I'm almost positive there won't be another this weekend, as it looks to be a busy one!

I thought I would sit down and share very frankly with you all about what our budget looks like. Specifically our grocery budget. I know this is a tough and stressful subject for many of you out there. I know that personally I often come home from trips to the grocery store feeling defeated. We have so many options but what do we choose, and how can we possibly manage to feed our families healthily while maintaining a budget that doesn't break the bank? The good news is that you can do it. I cannot promise you that it will be easy. That you won't occasionally leave the store with a mostly empty cart. But it can be done if you're willing to make some sacrifices!

Before I get into how we manage to eat healthily on a small budget, keep in mind a few points and make adjustments for your household accordingly:

1. We have no children yet. So when I say we spent "X dollars" one week, or a certain item lasts "so" long, remember that I am talking about feeding two average height, trim, but mostly inactive (I know, tsk, tsk!) adults.
2. We live in an area of the country where food prices are low, compared to areas like the east and west coasts. Of course, average income is also higher in those areas, but you get my point! Take this into consideration and adjust accordingly.
3. We usually eat a relatively low-carbohydrate diet, which due to it's higher protein, higher fat composition improves satiety and somewhat reduces food cravings. For this reason and others, we rarely snack during the day, but may occasionally grab a couple slices of home-dehydrated banana, or a few nuts to "hold us" if we do get hungry between meals.

So now that we've gotten that out of the way I'm going to tell you right now, when I say we eat on a tight budget, I mean tight. I've found that in the past when I tried Googling tips on grocery shopping on a small budget, most of the blog posts, message boards, and other websites I find which claim to be all about eating well on a small budget felt like a joke to me. Their idea of a "tight" budget is usually $100 a week or more. Let me tell you right now, if I had $100 a week we would be dining like kings every night! We do our best to spend just over $100 per month on our groceries (my ideal maximum weekly amount is $30 but I try very hard to come in under that). It varies a little from week to week and some weeks it is impossible to stay under $30. So what do we eat then, on such a tight budget? The answer is really too varied to type out! Here is a list of tips I've found to be indispensable in my effort to spend less while still eating well.

1. Buy sales. Don't go to the grocery store with a pre-written list of all your "must haves" (aside from true essentials, such as toilet paper -- though I would protest that even toilet paper doesn't have to be an essential), or with a "We'll see what sounds good" attitude. Go with a completely open mind and buy the meats, veggies, and fruits that are on the best sale that week. In recent history American's have had it so easy that it has become natural for us to go to the grocery store thinking, "What am I in the mood for?" instead of, "What can I afford for my health and pocketbook?" In order to keep your budget where you want it, you must break this habit and learn to enjoy whatever that weeks shopping trip brings. We've been surprised to discover some really delicious "new" vegetables this way!
2. Make the most of what you have. Most of us buy a whole chicken, bake it in the oven, eat the breast, thighs, legs, and wings (and maybe those tender little "oysters" on the back), and dump the rest into the garbage. What a waste! Instead we should be consuming the majority of the meat and then making bone broths with what remains. You'll be pleasantly surprised to find several more days worth of delicious meals in a chicken carcass! Whenever possible, buy whole poultry with giblets. The most nutrient dense meats are organ means -- use this to your advantage! If you can't stomach the thought of biting into a chicken liver try grinding it raw with a good blender and adding a small amount to ground beef dishes, soups, and stews. Back to the bone broths, you should always save any meat bones you have (in the freezer until you have enough to make broth with) to make bone broths. Whether you use the broth for soups, to cook a little rice in, or just as a filling, nutrient dense hot beverage between meals, take advantage of this powerhouse food for your health! It's free medicine!
3. Don't be afraid to buy frozen. I've noticed that a lot of people seem to have some (and sometimes great!) disdain for frozen vegetables. Why is this? Frozen vegetables are not only almost always cheaper than fresh produce, but because they're frozen right after picking, they're actually picked ripe, unlike a lot of fresh produce that is picked before it is ripe in expectation of long transit times to various destinations across the country. Frozen veggies also won't rot when you forget about them for two weeks, so there's never any waste, and most vegetables need to be at least lightly cooked for the nutrients in them to become most readily available for your bodies use, anyway, so you're not losing anything by having to cook your frozen veggies a little. Much of the same applies to frozen meats. You can't accidentally push it to the back of the fridge and forget about it until it is hairy -- the worst that can happen to frozen foods is that they toughen up a little, or if poorly packaged get a little freezer burn. A little freezer burn doesn't usually affect the flavor of food too much (though a lot can be very unappetizing), either. Additionally, freezing can kill certain bacteria, making frozen meats and vegetables somewhat safer to consume than non-frozen meats and vegetables.
4. Buy local. It is true that you have to be careful when buying local. It is not always cheaper (a "local" produce stand we stopped at recently was downright exorbitant!), but careful research should help you to find some less expensive seasonal sources. A friend of mine gets eggs from a local small farm for $1.00 per dozen! So local can be better. But another problem is that not only do a lot of roadside produce stands try to deceive us into thinking their produce is locally grown when it isn't, but the truth is often times local organically grown produce is just puny. We visited our local farmer's market back in May and while I know that was early in the season, the produce was far less than impressive. The point? Buying local can be healthy and budget friendly, but shop wisely.
5. Barter! If you are blessed like we are to live in or near a farming community (and I realize not everyone is), consider bartering for fresh food. Not only can you feel more confident about the quality of food you're getting from a friend whose home, barn, and yard you probably spend time in, but you get the added benefit of blessing your friends in the process of personally benefiting. It's a win-win situation! Have chickens, but no time or desire for a garden? Consider trading your pastured eggs for organic, vine-ripened tomatoes during the summer months. Have property where men in your community could hunt for deer or foul? Find something you want from them and offer the exchange!
6. Grow something. Even if you have a small yard, or no yard at all, pretty much all of us have the space for at least one potted plant on a front porch or back patio! Planting and tending just one small tomato plant during the summer can be rewarding and help -- at least a little -- with your budget (store bought tomatoes are expensive). After you try a tomato or two, consider expanding if you have the space! It is inexpressibly satisfying to sit down and eat a salad you grew yourself, or to make a pot of tomato basil soup with only your homegrown produce. Even the stresses of trying to deal with pests, lack of rain, and other garden problems is far outweighed by the joy of harvesting a dozen gorgeous tomatoes, zucchini, or leeks (especially if you garden organically and know that your food is 100% natural and free of all pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides!). If you're a big potato fan, for example, but have limited space consider building a simple potato tower. We've started our first, hoping for a fall harvest, though we started about a month late, so we'll see what happens! But once people become familiar with the best potatoes to grow in their area, etc., many people claim to harvest around 100 lbs of potatoes from one of these small boxes!

Whether you can put all of these ideas into use, or only one of them, I'm sure you'll find that if you pay attention you'll see that your grocery bills will drop! How much depends on what you're already doing, and your determination to stick with whatever you decide to try. I hope this proves helpful to some of you. As always, I love discussion, so if you have any tips or tricks of your own, feel free to share them!