Eating Healthier is More Expensive...

A lot of people might say that eating healthy is too expensive and that's why they don't do it. Well, we're trying to eat healthy AND slash our grocery budget at the same time. We've found we actually save money when we eat healthier--especially when we eat vegetarian. 

I stumbled across the other day and thought I'd share: 

vs.

These graphics go along with an interesting article from the New York Times called "Is Junk Food Really Cheaper?"

Thin crust pizza dough

Making your own pizza crust is super easy. I tried several recipes to make my own healthy thin crust, and this is my favorite.

I tried mixing the ingredients with a KitchenAid mixer and also by hand. It really doesn't take much to mix and doing it by hand wasn't difficult. I found the key to kneading and rolling dough is to not skimp on the flour. As a precaution, I like to cover every flat surface in the kitchen with flour. Because it makes such a mess, it only makes sense to do several batches, one after the other and then freeze the extra. Pizza dough freezes well, just cover it in flour and put it in a large zip lock bag. Just take it out of the freezer a couple hours before you need it, or put it in the fridge the morning of.

I usually substitute 1/2 cup of wheat flour just to add some whole grain. Too much wheat flour and the crust is just too dry for my taste. Here's some other modifications I tried:

For five-grain crust:
Substitute the 1 cup of wheat flour suggested in the recipe.
Add 1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds, 1/4 cup whole oats, 1/8 cup flax seed, 1/8 cup millet.
I found it's easiest to add these ingredients in the middle of adding the flour.

For garlic crust:
Add 1 tablespoon minced garlic while you're adding the flour. Yum.

For Italian crust:
Add some Sicilian, Italian, or whatever seasoning you like while adding the flour.

After rolling the dough, I bake it for 5-10 minutes at 350 degrees. You know it's good when the dough gets a big bubble or barely starts to brown. Just don't cook it all the way yet. Pull it out of the oven and add mozzarella, veggies, mushrooms or whatever you like and drizzle some olive oil over it. Or go the Mediterranean route and use pesto, olives, sun dried tomatoes, capers and fresh mozzarella. Put it back in the oven until the cheese melts and starts to brown (about 10 minutes). I use a regular ole pizza pan. Curious how this would grill or pan fry.

Far as cost goes, homemade pizza dough is super cheap. I'd guess about 50 cents each (depending on what you add). By comparison, Publix's yummy five-grain dough is $3.50 a pound (makes one pizza). A typical freezer pizza is $5 to $8 dollars and isn't nearly as healthy. Healthy frozen pizzas are usually more expensive and taste like cardboard. No matter how you look at it, you come out ahead.

A Challenge for the New Year

The word I'd use to describe this past year is "FULL". Full of friends, full of both work and play, full of love and learning. And full of good food. We're learning to be better stewards of everything God has blessed us with. Especially our time, relationships, possessions and bodies.

Us with Tiffany's family in the Tennessee mountains

Last year, Tiff and I went vegetarian for a month and what a life-changing experience that was. We still like our meat, but that month opened up all kinds of delicious and healthy foods. It radically altered our approach to choosing what we eat, and precipitated a big shift towards eating a plant-based diet.

So this January, we're going to try another challenge. So often, I hear eating healthy costs more. This month, we're going to try to eat healthy for under $200 for the month. We typically spend $400-$500 a month on food (can you tell we like to eat and share food?), so this will take some doing. Now we aren't exactly starting from scratch, we have some canned goods, rice, beans, in our freezer are a couple frozen chickens and frozen vegetables, and in our winter garden are peas and salad greens. We have a little money for eating out, so those meals won't come from this budget.

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According to my math, spending $200/month for two people means spending an average of $1.58/meal per person. Unhealthy alternatives such as our old staple Tombstone pizzas cost about $1.50/meal per person (on sale). Ramen with an egg on top is probably less than $1. So the trick will be to eat HEALTHY for about that same amount. So the fun starts today, we'll let you know how it goes and let us know if you have any meal ideas.