Beginning a Healthy Lifestyle

I have been reading a lot about eating healthier by buying whole organic foods and making food from scratch. I'd say the majority of the time when I am at the store, I tend to buy the cheapest foods reguardless of their nutritional value. My husband works part time (as he is in school full time) and I am a stay-at-home Mom. As you can imagine, our income is not very much. My goal each month has been to spend $200 or less on groceries. This can be extremely difficult to do if you want to buy nutritious foods!

Today was a start, and I'd say we did very well! We spent $145.00 at the grocery store today on a month's worth of food. (Well, almost. In a couple weeks I'll return to the store to stock up again on fruits & veggies and dairy products.) It was not nearly all organic or even natural (*gasp* yes... I did buy Spaghetti O's....hehe), but we did significantly increase the amount of nutritious foods in the basket and it did include some organic things. I don't know that we'll ever get to a point where we only buy whole organic foods, but I definitely do want to get us to a point where we are eating nutritionally on a regular basis.

A few of my other goals:

• We are unable to afford it now, but at some point I'd love for us to be able to get our eggs, milk, beef, pork, and chicken all from local farmers.
• I'd also love to look into buying whole foods in bulk from something similar to Azure Standard.
• Learn how to garden so that we can make our own veggies.
• Learn how to do canning!
• Make just about everything from scratch.

For some good reading on nutritional foods, check out the following blogs:

Getting Real with Food. This is a series that Laura from Heavenly Homemakers wrote. She gives excellent advice on what whole (real) food is, how to buy nutritious foods on a budget, and more. Just search for "Part 1" and go from there. She's quite an entertaining writer!

Natural Living 101 - Lindsay from Passionate Homemaking has compiled a list of articles, books, and resources on all topics related to extablishing a nourishing kitchen and home.