I strive to feed my family a real food diet, which for us is defined as food that is made with actual food ingredients, not food dyes, MSG, BHA/BHT/TBHQ, artificial sweeteners, HFCS, or weird chemicals. Our family further defines real food as antibiotic, hormone, and GMO free meat and ingredients, and as food that could be made at home in the kitchen.
But I do compromise. My husband works 70-80 hours a week, and I work, too, writing online.
Why? Compromising on making everything from scratch saves us money, and that’s a major consideration for our real food lifestyle, too.
We have to eat, and it is so helpful to be prepared with something that can be whipped up quickly for crazy nights, days when the meat doesn’t thaw in time (or when I forget to take it out entirely), or times when there’s a disaster of some sort (recently our disposal broke, leaving the entire kitchen sink useless). Otherwise, we’ll end up ordering pizza or out at a restaurant, which is fun and tasty but is definitely not frugal or real food.
So I make allowances and stretch the rules a little, which keeps us from breaking them altogether.
Food is such a personal thing, especially when you start talking about real food and unprocessed foods. What does “from scratch” mean, for example, in making a cake? Does it mean you baked it in your oven (even if you used a mix), that you made it from ingredients (all of which from the flour to the eggs were bought at the store), that you threshed the wheat and gathered the eggs on your own land?
A few compromises our family makes (which may not be compromises for other families, at all), and why:
Jarred spaghetti sauce:
Why do I have that? Because I’ve stopped buying canned tomatoes, as I am trying to avoid BPA and tomato cans, even organic brands, are lined with it. So it’s fresh tomatoes or glass-packaged for me, and jarred spaghetti sauce is less expensive than buying imported fresh tomatoes in the fall and winter.
Plus, it’s easier. As a homeschool mom of many, I am a de facto working mother and sometimes when we hit the end of the day, there are just not enough reserves left to whip up a big pot of homemade, fresh marinara. Sorry to burst anyone’s bubble; homeschooling is work. I make it fit our real food diet by buying a brand that doesn’t contain sugar, HFCS, or soybean oil, and that contains tomatoes, water, and spices.
I keep these around for when friends are over or I need something quick and kid friendly. Yes, they are processed, but not in any way that I couldn’t do at home – and they are all natural, don’t contain soybean oil or trans fats, and are food color and BHA/BHT free. Plus, the vitamins and fiber. Keeping all natural fries in my freezer keeps me (and, ahem, hubs) from running out for a bag of tator tots to fill out a meal.
Jarred garlic:
It’s just as good as fresh, but I don’t have to wash the garlic press every time I need garlic (which is every night, around here!) Sure, it only saves 5 minutes or so- but that adds up to half an hour or more in a week. Not to mention, it’s cheaper than fresh garlic which goes for 50¢ a bulb around here!
Whole wheat pasta:
Let’s just face facts. I don’t see myself making pasta for my family any time in the near future. Yes, it’s a convenience food, but the ingredients are literally “whole wheat durum flour”. One ingredient, whole wheat, and saving me an hour in the kitchen? Sign me up.
Whole wheat bread:
Another compromise, and this one’s not frugal. I’ve done the math, and making your own bread is cheaper. And my family likes it better. But at this season of my life, it doesn’t happen on a daily basis. So I compromise. I make it work with our real food lifestyle by purchasing bread made with whole wheat (not wheat colored bread), that contains at least 3 grams of fiber per slice, and doesn’t contain HFCS, soybean oil, or transfats.
I also have some ‘emergency rations’ and things my husband just likes. He has to live here, too. And when it comes to waffle mix – he doesn’t care about ‘real food’ at all (well, except for the real maple syrup part. He’s all over that.) I have canned veggies leftover from our hurricane stash, and I’ll keep those. In case of Armageddon or the Zombie Apocalypse, BPA can linings will be the least of my problems.
I buy Diet Cherry Dr. Pepper for hubs. He’s a big boy and that’s what he chooses to drink; I cook most of the food but I’m not going to stand over him and nag him about everything he puts in his mouth. I wouldn’t want him to be my food police either. Encourage and support healthy eating, yes. Condemn and annoy, no.
So tell me what food compromises do you make? How do you handle it when you want to eliminate a food for health reasons, but your husband (or wife) doesn’t agree?
Katy had a great idea in the comments – let’s all link up and learn from each other!
Do you have a great post about saving money on real food? Link up! Put a link to this post on your post, and then put your URL (to your actual post, please, not to your homepage) in the Linkytool!
Linking up!
Karen (1)
Raso @ lasagnarec... (1)
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Have you ever tried Zevia? It’s a no calorie soda sweetened with Stevia. The only flavor that has caffeine is the cola flavor. But they do have a black cherry flavor that tastes like a mix of cherry coke and cherry dr. pepper.
It freaks me out that you feel like you need to apologize for not making homemade pasta!
well, that wasn’t a “real” apology. Though I did make homemade ramen. Texture was a little off but it tasted good.
I have not met with the husband issue because our move to healthier foods was directly due to our kids health issues. It was eat different or have very sick kids. It was a non-issue. BUT, I do know many who did get push back. They did as you described, bought their husbands what they wanted. They are adults and can make their own health decisions.
Now, my husband does have it a bit easier. He gets to eat out 3 – 4 times a week due to his job, so he can junk it up during those times. I don’t care if he does, he doesn’t feel guilty, the kids don’t see it so we don’t have to deal with crying kids because they can’t have a french fry, life is great.
Is this a blog carnival or just your own post idea (noticed your sign at the top of the post)? If it’s a blog carnival each week, I would love to participate.
It is a series on my blog – but a carnival sounds great! I’ll add a linky and we’ll set it for Tuesdays.
I’m with you on the pasta. It’s impossible to get the whole wheat flour in the appropriate grind around here (and, right now, I don’t have my own flour mill–I’d like to, but it’s not in the budget) , and it’s actually cheaper to buy good quality whole wheat pasta than to buy the flour and pay the shipping. And, I just plain don’t have time. We do it occasionally, but it’s a treat.
Our move to real food was slow. For a time we had to do GAPS while my son was having difficulty gaining weight. However, once his gut healed and we started to introduce more foods it was slow going and with a whole lot of resistance from the in-laws.
As I eat three meals a day with Little Man and one with the hubby (hey, I’m pregnant AND nursing) we don’t have too much trouble with Hubs’ resisting eating real food. I buy the food I cook. He has ample pocket money to buy whatever he wants. This includes his fast food, his gross bottled iced tea and the garbage snacks he eats with his lunch. At home he is a good boy and eats whatever I cook without complaint, providing I don’t make things I know he hates.
My biggest problem is with his parents. When we started to reintroduce foods after GAPS they went nuts. When we added back a small amount of grains, traditionally prepared, as a SMALL part of one meal a couple times a week, they fed Little Man an adult sized meal containing 90% grains. He was sick for a week! They eat some of the most awful, fake food (where do you think my hubby learned to like such stuff?) and they feed it to Little Man whenever he is over there. I make a point not telling them how to grandparent to lessen how much they tell me how to parent. Just as with the hubs, I encourage them to feed Little Man real, healthy food. When they watch him I send enough food to feed everyone. Over the last 4.5 years of marriage Hubs has started to prefer real food over the fake stuff. Hopefully with encouragement, so will my in-laws. I don’t nag, condemn or complain, just speak positively about how much Little Man like this real food or that and let it be.
Oh, I missed the part about how to handle resistance! Fortunately, I don’t really run into this. DH is as passionate about it as I am, for the most part. About twice a year he gets a craving for Ho-Ho’s, which he indulges. Other than that, he loves real food. I think it’s because we were both really poor when we were young, and all we had was what came from our respective household farm/gardens. We also both had a lot of siblings (he is one of 3 brothers, 2 sets of twins, all over 6’5″), and often each of us went without food. Not that I am saying anyone should go without food, but I do think it gave us both a real appreciation for food of all kinds, and also made us both pretty broad eaters out of necessity.
Neither of us grew up with processed food, and just don’t like it now. I do realize this makes me very lucky, as I know how hard the transition can be for many people.
Very little processed food in this house. Hurricane foods (canned) always on the bottom shelf. Canned cannellini beans are a must in our house though. Dried are relatively expensive compared to other beans so I buy the canned and they are excellent. Most versatile bean out there–hummus, soups, stews, lasagna, even made “fudge” with them one time.
http://nourishmentforthesoul.tumblr.com/post/1319369638/sausagewhitebean
Another must is picante sauce in jar-if you find a cheaper better sauce than Pace Chunky, let me know. That’s a good one for versatility-again, soups, stews, egg dishes, taco, enchiladas, guacamole, etc.
@Diedre, that’s why I started my food stamp challenge last year. I hear a senator from OR whining and complaining that he simply couldn’t feed himself for $3 a day and all he could eat were hotdogs and pb&j. And I was just incredulous, and decided to see if I could feed my family for less than that. I STILL feed my family for less than $3 per person per day, and I buy antibiotic free poultry and grass fed meat!
@Susan
Oh, we use a lot of salsa in a jar, too. My husband’s culinary pride and joy are his pico and salsa concoctions but our everyday workhorse comes from a jar. We use it a lot! And store bought tortillas. I buy about 200 corn tortillas a month and we use them a ton!
You’re absolutely right! I completely agree (contrary to what many people out there are saying) that real food is frugal food. I don’t know that I would even add the word “compromises” to your article — though now that I have read your piece, I understand what you mean. We eat mostly legumes and grains which I buy in bulk for far less than packaged foods, and produce from our garden, our CSA farm share and a few additional ingredients from the local store. We have 7 hens and love having a constant source of healthy protein (and many other nutrients) from the backyard.
I’ve been feeling frustrated with what I think is an inexperienced perspective maintaining that the real food/ local food lifestyle is only available for the upper middle class. In my experience, that claim is simply not true. Very much appreciate your message which is much more in line with my experience! Many thanks and best to you!
Yes, the lowly little tortilla. LOL. Where would we be in Texas without it? Never attempted to make my own–so many good and cheap ones on the market.
This is great for those of us who are real novices on the real food journey (as in, still mostly toying with the idea and slowly trying to incorporate it into our life!). It is comforting to realize that you can make these compromises and still be a real food family!
Yikes, I am sorry. I accidentally linked to my blog page, not the post. Can you delete the first one?
All fixed!
I have the same philosophy when it comes to compromise. I confess that our pasta is not whole wheat. We have tried to like whole wheat pasta, I’ve even made it, but yuck! We eat white pasta and we enjoy it. It’s really the only white product we eat, and we eat so low carb that I really don’t feel bad about it. I spend most of our homeschool day in the kitchen preparing something or other while instructing my son sitting at the kitchen table. My husband’s compromise food is mayonnaise, of all things. He doesn’t like the homemade stuff. Must have soybean based mayo. Oh well. It’s really such a little thing.
if your family won’t eat whole wheat pasta, than it is not frugal to buy whole wheat pasta. It’s only nourishing if it actually makes it into your body! And regular noodles, cooked at home with other real food ingredients, veggies, and meat is still better than say, Chef Boyardee or Kraft.
I keep basmati rice and sushi rice around for the same reason- husband loves to make Chinese food but will not use brown rice for certain dishes. What’s the point of making onigiri or sushi if no one will eat it because it’s brown?
This was so refreshing to read!
Last year I was able to get our grocery budget down to $260 per month by making everything homemade. Unfortunately grains were the focus of our diet and I physcially didn’t do well.
Now that I’m aiming for whole foods from local sources I sometimes feel completely overwhelmed. I know I need to take babysteps through this journey, but sometimes I forget!
I loved the part about spaghetti in the jar being cheaper than buying tomatoes that aren’t in a can. I wouldn’t have considered buying ready-made spaghetti sauce just because it wasn’t homemade.
I’ll have to re-read your list and see what else I can come up with. Thanks again for the great post.
This is very interesting! I have made progress (cooking from scratch) , but no where close to where I need to be. I need training!
I am just now reading this post and i’m curious, we do almost nothing out of a can anymore, except tomatoes. I use diced tomatoes from a can in chili, chicken dishes, all kinds of stuff …
What do you do for that? Canned tomotoes may stay on my “compromise” list but if there is an alternative i’m not aware I’m all ears.
I stopped buying canned tomatoes more or less, although I still have 2 giant #10 cans in the bottom of my pantry. I use jarred spaghetti sauce or jarred salsa. The brand I buy comes in a bunch of different varieties, including a spicy arriabiata one.
Pomi makes tetra-paks, and I’ve tried those too. They’re a lot more expensive than canned. My grocery store also sells jarred tomato sauce but it’s more expensive than the marinara sauce. Watch out for a Mexican brand of tetra-pak tomatoes – it has Red #40 in it!
I’ve also heard of people making their own tomato paste powder – dehydrate some fresh tomatoes until they are brittle (in a dehydrator, sun dried, or the oven), then put in a food processor and grind up into a powder. Reconstitute into paste or sauce.
I stopped buying canned tomatoes more or less, although I still have 2 giant #10 cans in the bottom of my pantry. I use jarred spaghetti sauce or jarred salsa. The brand I buy comes in a bunch of different varieties, including a spicy arriabiata one.
Pomi makes tetra-paks, and I’ve tried those too. They’re a lot more expensive than canned. My grocery store also sells jarred tomato sauce but it’s more expensive than the marinara sauce. Watch out for a Mexican brand of tetra-pak tomatoes – it has Red #40 in it!
I’ve also heard of people making their own tomato paste powder – dehydrate some fresh tomatoes until they are brittle (in a dehydrator, sun dried, or the oven), then put in a food processor and grind up into a powder. Reconstitute into paste or sauce.
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