If your under the impression that eating well means forking over your Whole Paycheck or spending all day in the kitchen, then it’s time you took a look at Cook For Good. A handy and utilitarian website for simple, affordable, and healthy home-cooking, Cook For Good arms you with recipes, shopping lists, and monthly meal plans to help you stretch your food budget without compromising your taste budget. I’m not sure how much you spent on your last meal, but I imagine it was a bit more than $1.17 that the Cook For Good plan calls for, or even the $1.73 you would need for the “green” plan, which uses mostly organic or sustainably raised ingredients. The healthy and delicious meal plan even costs less than most states food stamp allotments.
A key ingredient to Cook For Good’s plan is preparation, providing you with versitle, staple ingredients that can be used for a variety of meals throughout the week. And you don’t have to hold a culinary degree or watch the Food Network religiously in order to make these essentials, like bread and yogurt, from scratch. In addition to saving you cash and time, Cook For Good also reduces on your environmental impact by lowering your food miles, eliminating packaging, eating less meat, and minimizing your trips to the grocery store. For an added bonus, you also get to spend more quality time with your friends and family as you prepare the meals. Got a healthy, low-budget recipe you’d like to share? Leave it in the comments section below.
Photo: southerntabitha’s flickr photostream (creative commons)
CATEGORIES: Culture, Environment
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Healthy, satisfying meals don’t have to be either, expensive or time consuming to make. My favorite is a bean dish that I make in my crock pot. (Crock pots. What a wonderful devise. You fill it up, plug it in– where it takes very little electricity–, and go do your other chores. Come back at dinner time, and there it is.) I get my ingredients from the local food coop where they are both cheap and healthful. I first put in a cup of black beans, not even soaked. Turn on the crock pot and leave it for two or three hours. When the beans have softened, I add a half cup of Quinoa and let that cook for half hour or so. When all is soft, I saute a crushed clove of garlic or two (depending on how bad the vampires are that night), a couple of dried and rehydrated shiitake mushrooms, green pepper slices, and half an onion in olive oil. When soft, I add a cup of my own tomato sauce from my garden and heat for a short time. Then I add a half cup of the bean/quinoa mixture and stir it all together. For spices I add salt and pepper to taste, oregano, parsley, dulce (a seaweed), and I am a turmeric fanatic, though only add if you like the strong taste. When it is sufficiently warm, I wrap the mixture in whole grain tortillas, sprinkle with rice cheese or soy cheese and serve. Total cost per tortilla is around a buck, depending on how much other stuff you use. You can add or subtract ingredients to your own liking.
Thanks for the recipe David, sounds delicious!