10 Ways to feed your family for $100 a week!

With planning and a little more time in the kitchen, you can stick to your budget without sacrificing taste or nutrition. Here are 10 tips that can help you feed your family for about a hundred bucks a week.
1. Plan in Advance

Create the week's menu, but leave some room for flexibility. The most important step in sticking to a weekly budget is to come up with a plan for every meal, snack, and beverage you'll need for 7 days. Make sure you account for every item you put in your cart. This will keep you from adding expensive impulse buys that may go to waste.


2. Steer Clear of Convenience

Check your grocery store's weekly circular for discounts and coupons. These specials can be a starting point to plan your meals for the week. Foods packaged for convenience, such as individually boxed raisins, juice, and yogurt, are a no-no for those on a tight budget, says nutritionist Elizabeth Somer, RD, author of 10 Habits That Mess Up a Woman's Diet. Ditto for those 100-calorie packs of cookies. Marinate your own meat instead of buying the premarinated, packaged kind. Swap out those milk or juice boxes in your child's lunch for a Thermos. These options are all less expensive, and the reduction in packaging is better for the environment.


3. Be Brand Blind

If the peanut butter you usually buy is not on sale, but its competitor is, go for the cheaper one. Being flexible with brands lets you score the best deals. Be open to store brands as well. They�re typically the least expensive option for most canned, packaged, and frozen foods and usually taste just as good as their brand-name counterparts.



4. Use Coupons...Wisely - Click coupon links to the left in sidebar

Manufacturers put out 285 billion coupons last year, according to coupon processor NCH, but only a fraction of them are worth using. Many may lead you to purchase unnecessary�and often unhealthy�items loaded with artificial colors, preservatives, and sugar. Your best bet is to use coupons for household staples like beans, yogurt, spaghetti sauce, and pasta. Some of the best coupons can be found for vitamins, cleaning products, laundry detergent, and toiletries such as toothpaste, she says.



5. Consider Your Alternatives

Although that big grocery store may be the most convenient place to shop, it's not necessarily the cheapest. Check out ethnic markets, bag-your-own-warehouses, and farmers� markets, which can often yield better buys on produce, meat, eggs, milk, and fish. Don't rule out deals at a drugstore, either. With reward cards and coupons, you can often score big deals on cereal, granola bars, and beverages.



6. Don't Dismiss the Deep Freeze

When certain fruits or vegetables move out of season or go up in price, consider buying bags of inexpensive frozen produce instead. Growers flash freeze their harvest at its peak, which locks in most of the nutrients. Plus, there's the bonus of not having to wash, peel, or chop them yourself. Frozen veggies make quick, convenient additions to soups and stews, pasta, or rice dishes.



7. Put On Your Apron

One of the easiest ways to eat well on a tight budget is to make some ingredients yourself. If you have a bread maker buried at the bottom of a cabinet, haul it out, and you can cut at least $3 from your budget for each store-bought loaf. Likewise, making your own juice ice pops, salad dressing, hummus, granola, and desserts can shave money off the bottom line without making you feel deprived.



8. Become a Flexitarian

One of the healthiest ways to save money is to swap meat for beans as your protein source a few meals a week. Packed with high amounts of protein, fiber, and antioxidants, beans are one of the healthiest foods out there. They are also one of the cheapest items in the grocery store, especially if you buy them dry and soak and cook them yourself. Try them in burritos, soups, chili, and salads.

Cutting back on meat is not just good for your wallet, it's good for your health as well. Most Americans far exceed the recommended meat and protein allowances for our diet, and with that meat can come unwanted saturated fat.



9. Leftovers Again!

Use last night�s dinner to make tonight�s meal�one of the easiest ways to cut your grocery bill is simply by reducing the amount of food you throw out. Leftover meat can become a base for soup or stew for the next night's dinner. Or serve it on whole grain bread for lunch the next day. Extra vegetables can be paired with eggs to make a frittata or added to tofu for a stir-fry dinner.

Store leftovers in clear containers where you can see them to keep them top of mind�and out of the trash. If the fresh fruit or vegetables in your crisper are in danger of going bad, chop them and freeze for later.



10. Go Less and Buy More

Make fewer trips and buy more of the basics

The fewer times you go to the market, the fewer opportunities there are to fill your cart with impulse buys. Stick to your list and buy a little bit more than you think you need of the basics like milk, bread, and fruit. Most people underestimate how much they will use over the course of a week, say experts.

Ten Minutes About Pesach

Book Review: The Primal Blueprint

Mark Sisson has been a central figure in the evolutionary health community since he began his weblog Mark's Daily Apple in 2006. He and his staff have been posting daily on his blog ever since. He has also written several other books, edited the Optimum Health newsletter, competed as a high-level endurance athlete, and served on the International Triathlon Union as the anti-doping chairman, all of which you can read about on his biography page. Mark is a practice-what-you-preach kind of guy, and if physical appearance means anything, he's on to something.

In 2009, Mark published his long-awaited book The Primal Blueprint. He self-published the book, which has advantages and disadvantages. The big advantage is that you aren't subject to the sometimes onerous demands of publishers, who attempt to maximize sales at Barnes and Noble. The front cover sports a simple picture of Mark, rather than a sunbaked swimsuit model, and the back cover offers no ridiculous claims of instant beauty and fat loss.

The drawback of self-publishing is it's more difficult to break into a wider market. That's why Mark has asked me to publish my review of his book today. He's trying to push it up in the Amazon.com rankings so that it gets a broader exposure. If you've been thinking about buying Mark's book, now is a good time to do it. If you order it from Amazon.com on March 17th, Mark is offering to sweeten the deal with some freebies on his site Mark's Daily Apple. Full disclosure: I'm not getting anything out of this, I'm simply mentioning it because I was reviewing Mark's book anyway and I thought some readers might enjoy it.

The Primal Blueprint is not a weight loss or diet book, it's a lifestyle program with an evolutionary slant. Mark uses the example of historical and contemporary hunter-gatherers as a model, and attempts to apply those lessons to life in the 21st century. He does it in a way that's empowering accessible to nearly everyone. To illustrate his points, he uses the example of an archetypal hunter-gatherer called Grok, and his 21st century mirror image, the Korg family.

The diet section will be familiar to anyone who has read about "paleolithic"-type diets. He advocates eating meats including organs, seafood, eggs, nuts, abundant vegetables, and fruit. He also suggests avoiding grains, legumes, dairy (although he's not very militant about this one), processed food in general, and reducing carbohydrate to less than 150 grams per day. I like his diet suggestions because they focus on real food. Mark is not a drill sergeant. He tries to create a plan that will be sustainable in the long run, by staying positive and allowing for cheats.

We part ways on the issue of carbohydrate. He suggests that eating more than 150 grams of carbohydrate per day leads to fat gain and disease, whereas I feel that position is untenable in light of what we know of non-industrial cultures (including some relatively high-carbohydrate hunter-gatherers). Although carbohydrate restriction (or at least wheat and sugar restriction) does have its place in treating obesity and metabolic dysfunction in modern populations, ultimately I don't think it's necessary for the prevention of those same problems, and it can even be counterproductive in some cases. Mark does acknowledge that refined carbohydrates are the main culprits.

The book's diet section also recommends nutritional supplements, including a multivitamin/mineral, antioxidant supplement, probiotics, protein powder and fish oil. I'm not a big proponent of supplementation. I'm also a bit of a hypocrite because I do take small doses of fish oil (when I haven't had seafood recently), and vitamin D in wintertime. But I can't get behind protein powders and antioxidant supplements.

Mark's suggestions for exercise, sun exposure, sleep and stress management make good sense to me. In a nutshell: do all three, but keep the exercise varied and don't overdo it. As a former high-level endurance athlete, he has a lot of credibility here. He puts everything in a format that's practical, accessible and empowering.

I think The Primal Blueprint is a useful book for a person who wants to maintain or improve her health. Although we disagree on the issue of carbohydrate, the diet and lifestyle advice is solid and will definitely be a vast improvement over what the average person is doing. The Primal Blueprint is not an academic book, nor does it attempt to be. It doesn't contain many references (although it does contain some), and it won't satisfy someone looking for an in-depth discussion of the scientific literature. However, it's perfect for someone who's getting started and needs guidance, or who simply wants a more comprehensive source than reading blog snippets. It would make a great gift for that family member or friend who's been asking how you stay in such good shape.

Chushah l�ezrati - Make haste to help me!

OFTEN THE ONLY PRAYER we have is "Help!" I use this one on a daily basis, that is, whenever I am confronted with the truth of my condition.

The word translated "hasten" comes from the Hebrew word "chush," which means to hurry,

to act quickly, or to come quickly. The Psalms often plead urgently, "hasten to help

me" (chushah l�ezrati).

An old Jewish prayer says, "O ETERNAL, I know that you will help us; but will you help us before you will help us?"

Although the ETERNAL sometime tarries, He declares, "I am SOVERIEGN; in its time I will hasten

it" (Isa. 60:22). But still the anxious heart sighs, �Is it time, ETERNAL? Will you now restore

the kingdom to Israel?� But as Yahushua said, "It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority" (Acts 1:6-7). We are left waiting for the ultimate Elohim�s answer: His glorious coming to fulfill our salvation.

Living in the �already-not-yet� state of redemption is a soul-building venture that helps us

to acquire the precious middah (quality) of patience: 

"In your patience possess ye your souls" (Luke 21:19).

Suffering produces endurance (Rom. 5:3), but the ETERNAL surely is faithful "to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding

joy" (Jude 1:24). May He come speedily, and in our day. Omein.

Morning Prayer - Modeh Ani

When we wake in the morning, YHWH graciously restores our soul (neshamah or nefesh) within us in order to experience another day of life. This awakening is an analog of the resurrection from the dead:

Just as YHWH revives us from the depths of our sleep and enables our eyes to once again receive light, so will He ultimately revive the dead from their state and bring them into the glorious presence of His Light. The Modeh Ani, one of the first blessings a Jewish child is taught, expresses gratitude to YHWH for the gift of a new day of life.

Modeh ani l�faneykha, melech chai vekaiyam,

shehechezarta bi nishmati bechemlah, rabbah emunatekha.

I thank you, living and eternal King,

for returning my soul within me in compassion,

great is your faithfulness.

Interview on Bizymoms

I recently did a written interview for the website Bizymoms.com. It was the first time I had been invited to do an interview, so I figured what the heck. They bravely posted the interview, despite the fact that my responses could be seen as controversial. You can find it here.

Shabbat Shalom Mishpochah!