I’ve been wanting to write a post for a while now on my developing thoughts about eating good wholesome foods versus eating frugally.  For a long time now I have been striving to do this to some extent - I cook good meals for my family mostly from scratch, and we seldom eat out of a box or bag (frozen pizza on occasion and a couple frozen bagged items we like from Costco/Trader Joes).  But lately I’ve been reading a couple books, following a blog I enjoy a little more closely, and I went to a healthy eating class at Bread Beckers (where I get all my grains from to mill my wheat) for the past few weeks.  All this has gotten me thinking and made me realize there is so much more that I want to be doing.

Currently I regularly purchase organic apples and organic milk.  I have added in a few other things recently which are only slightly more expensive than non-organic, like carrots, potatoes, and celery.  But that’s all I have done on a regular basis up to this point.  (I occasionally would buy the Stonyfield organic yogurt when it was on sale - I’m actually making my own organic yogurt now, but that’s a story for another post!)

So I have decided to make baby steps towards my ultimate goal.  I would love to buy all organic seasonal produce (and locally, if possible - especially in the summer), buy only organic meat, eggs, and dairy, and leave out most processed food (including processed white flour and sugar) from our diets.  This is a goal, a long-term goal.  I know I can’t do all that on the budget I have and the time that I have.  But I can take baby steps in the right direction.

So, my baby step #1 is to switch over to buying organic meat.  This is actually a huge step for me, as I’m used to buying whatever is on manager’s special at Kroger, or chicken when it bottoms out at 1.99/lb.  So I don’t even buy regular meat at anywhere near full price, yet I really want to buy organic chicken (5.99/lb on sale), and grass-fed beef (4.99/lb) for our family to eat.  And I want to do this on our current budget.  I know this will mean a couple more meatless meals than normal in a month, and I will need to find ways to stretch the meat that we do have a bit further.  This is a lofty goal, but one I really want to try out.  After reading a lot on it, I really feel that consuming the right meat is the next best step for us to do.  I know I will occasionally purchase non-organic meat, but I want to start switching over as much as possible.

How will I do this?  I think that just by sticking primarily to the perimeter of the grocery store will help me out.  I also know that I purchase some things each week that are unneccessary.  So the combination of sticking to foods in their raw state (to be cooked and made at home by me) and cutting back on a couple unnessary items, I think I can do it.

I know that as I make each step my costs will increase, so at some point I will most likely need to increase our grocery budget.  However, I am coming to realize that this is something that is becoming really important to me, and where we spend our money reflects what is important to us.  I also know that eating good food pays off in the long run medically, so maybe it’s frugal in the long run?

Anyway, this is just my new journey I’m on, so thought I would share it since I regularly post about my frugal shopping.  I will probably be using less coupons, and will be making regular trips to the Dekalb County Farmers Market (which I posted about in the last post) where I can get good produce at a reasonable price.

All for now, we’ll see how this goes!