Going Paleo/SCD (DAMN Allergies!) Thyme chicken with Warm Beet, Turnip, Brusselsprout, Apple and pomegranate Salad

 

Now that pregnancy has come and gone, my body has reverted back to it’s former self in more ways than one. The most annoying of which is the return of my ever growing list of food allergies.

Long story short, before having our son, I ate a very strict diet gluten, dairy, soy, chickpea, casein, wheat and sesame free. It sucked, not gonna lie; however, I wasn’t feeling crappy, headachey or sick all the time, so that was good.

Anywho, we’ve made a decision as a family to go back to eating that way with a few modifications for the boy. We’ve merged several “trendy” diets from current media: Paleo, SCD (Specific Carb Diet) and veganism.

 

TOnight for dinner I pan fried heirloom beets, turnips, brusselsprouts, red onions and garlic. I sauteed all the ingredients with balsamic vinegar and smoky olive oil and S & P. I then added a green apple sliced and pomegranate seeds at the very end. We also bbq’d some chicken breasts with nothing but olive oil and thyme.

Cost wise, this meal didn’t cost us very much. We buy chickens from a local farmer a few times a year butcher it into parts and portions. We also bought most of the veggies from the market. In total, I spent approx $7.90 per person for this meal and we have left overs!

Do you have any allergy specific meals you enjoy?

Healthy Inexpensive Summer Treats!

It’s been a while since I posted on here! Sorry, everyone! I’ve been busy!

 

Here are some recipes for quick, easy, cheap and HEALTHY summer treats.

 

Frozen Nutty Banana bites:

bananas, nut butter, and Greek yogurt. Mash up a banana with the yogurt and peanut butter, and then slice the other bananas. Make little “sandwiches” by spreading the PB-banana-yogurt filling between two banana slices, and freeze for about two hours, or until semi-solid. Start nibbling!

 

 

Strawberry Greek Yogurt and Mint (or Basil) Pops:

INGREDIENTS

1 ½ cups of Greek Yogurt

1 cup fresh strawberries chopped (reserve 1/2 cup)

2 tablespoons of finely chopped mint

3 tablespoons of honey

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Mix yogurt, ½ cup of strawberries , honey and mint together in a food processor and blend – mixture will turn light pink
2. Stir in reserved berries and fill the popsicle mold until ¾ full place in freezer
3. Freeze for 1 ½ to 2 hours

Each of these treats cost me about $6 to make a batch. For reference, I got about 40 banana bites and more than enough for 8 strawberry pops! MMMMM, enjoy!

 

 

Recipe: Slow Cooker Butter Chicken

Oh man! Do I ever LOVE butter chicken! If I were to die tomorrow, I would ask for it as my final meal on earth! Here is the recipe I consistently use, but I add cloves to it 🙂 Enjoy

http://www.mealplanning101.com/2008/09/slow-cooker-butter-chicken.html

Budgeting Tip: Dirty Dozen Organic and Community Good Food Box Program

 

Last September we started getting the Community Food Box at least once a month (I’ll mention how I get more than one a month later) this brings our winter budget for groceries, per month, down to $150-$200 for 2 adults and a solid eating baby.  We get the 20lb box for $20 and we find this to be more than enough for us. The box comes in denominations of $20lbs for $20, 30lbs for $30 or 40lbs for $40. There are locations, associations, groups, etc in the city that offer to be Good Food Box “depots.” We use a few different ones per month as they have different scheduled drop off dates. For example, we may have a month where a location close to us offers an October 19th drop off and elsewhere in the city there is an October 31st drop off. This gives us 2 food boxes per month to save money with by not buying produce full price. One bummer is that they don’t do drop offs between end of June until September or in December.

I should mention that the produce in the Good Food Box is not always local nor is it organic. However, we do clean our produce with a pesticide etc cleanser. Additionally, to save money the rest of the month, we buy only dirty dozen produce organic and the rest we buy regularly and clean with a cleanser.
Here are links to the Calgary area drop off schedule:

 

A list of the dirty dozen produce. 🙂

The Dirty Dozen	Score*	% with pesticides	% with 2 or more pesticides
Peaches	100	96.6	86.6
Apples	96	93.6	82.3
Sweet bell peppers	86	81.5	62.2
Celery	85	94.1	79.8
Nectarines	84	97.3	85.3
Strawberries	83	92.3	69.2
Cherries	75	91.4	75.8
Lettuce	69	68.2	44.2
Grapes (imported)	68	84.2	53.2
Pears	65	86.2	45.7
Spinach	60	70	31.2
Potatoes	58	81	18

 

The Consistently Clean	Score*	% with pesticides	% with 2 or more pesticides
Onions	1	0.2	0
Avocado	1	1.4	0
Sweet corn (frozen)	2	3.8	0
Pineapples	7	7.7	0.6
Mango	9	7.1	0.5
Sweet peas (frozen)	11	22.9	2.3
Asparagus	11	6.7	0.6
Kiwi	14	15.3	3.4
Bananas	16	41.7	2.0
Cabbage	17	17.9	4.8
Broccoli	18	28.1	3.2
Egglpant	19	23.4	6.9

*Contamination was measured in six different ways and crops were ranked based on a composite score from all categories. The higher the score, the higher the pesticide load. Get the full results of the study at http://www.foodnews.org. SOURCE: ENVIRONMENTAL WORKING GROUP

Quick go to meal: Vietnamese Bun with shrimp

Not sure if it’s still considered Bun if there’s shrimp, but I was in a rush and had no time to marinade pork or beef for the satay. This is one of my go to meals if I’ve missed eating veggies in the day or if we’re short on time or have a busy evening. Also, cost effective costing less than $5 to make for 2 huge servings and left overs.

When making this meal with beef, chicken or pork, I buy in large quantities and divide or butcher my meat into “satay” strips ready to marinade. I also make the satay peanut sauce in huge amounts and freeze for easier prep.

Ingredients for bun bowl

Shrimp (I buy the rings to save money)
Iceberg lettuce
Vermicelli noodles (found at Superstore for less than a dollar)
Mint (optional, but goes really well with pork)
Carrot slaw (also found at superstore for $2 a bag and saves time on grating or cutting)

*If you’re feeling adventurous, you can grate some green apple and jicama and add that to your veggies. It creates an interesting flavour dance with the mint. However, I would only recommend using shrimp or chicken if you’re going to do that.*

Cucumber
Green onion

Sauce Ingredients

Fish sauce
Peanut butter
Rice vinegar
Minced garlic
Soy sauce
Lime juice
Sweet chili sauce
Water

I chop the lettuce and mint and set aside. Meanwhile, I put water to boil in my kettle and get the vermicelli ready in a strainer and put the strainer in a larger mixing bowl. Pour boiling water over the vermicelli and let sit for 2 minutes. Keep an eye on it as it can get mushy very quickly. Strain and then pour cold water over it to stop the cooking process.

Next I grate a cucumber and get the rest of the ingredients ready in serving bowls.

I magic bullet the crap out of all the sauce ingredients and I don’t measure, sorry lol I go by taste. I find a tablespoon of peanut for 1/2 cup of water to be more than sufficient.

I add the sauce to my bowl full of veggies, noodles and shrimp and top off with chopped green onion! Nice and quick!!!!

Making Cents in YOUR kitchen

Hi everyone!

My name is Lissette and I’m a current stay at home mom of a beautiful son. Unfortunately, I was short hours on my EI hours last year during my year of pregnancy due to complications and bed rest Boo, right? It’s turned out alright 🙂

Instead of spending wasteful time appealing my case, I did the math and realized we *could* do it. I budgeted and budgeted and I am happy to say that we live well, but very frugally. We have no credit card debt…well, we have a current car expense on there, but we never let our Visa go over $350. Our current grocery budget, per month, for 2 adults and a 10 month old varies from $200 to $300 seasonally. Summer means no Community Kitchen Good Food box, so hence, higher budget.

After realizing that I could barter this skill I’d honed, I realized that moms are struggling to keep fresh recipes in the kitchen. Or, they lack inspiration to try new things! Or, they lack time! We all need more time! I do my best to keep my meals simple! Additionally, I do my best to make sure our budget is followed. We eat very well for the limited budget we have. Sometimes, meal planning too far in advance is someone’s downfall, sometimes not planning enough is as well. It’s really up to you to customize the tools I share 🙂 I’ll do my best to share how I come up with meals on the run or how I decide which ingredients go with others.

I’ll blog a weekly budgeting tip that I’ve learned along this frugal journey and try to post a few recipes weekly and every two weeks, I’ll blog about my shopping prep and what I come back with (along with details on comparative pricing etc).

Enjoy 🙂