Eating Healthy on a Budget–it’s Possible!

I love love love shopping at the Farmer’s Market.  It’s Saturday morning–the whole weekend is ahead of you.  You get to taste samples of the seasonal fruits, and you can buy local, mostly organic foods surrounded by like-minded people and their cute kiddos running around with apple slices clutched in their hands.   What better way to start the weekend?

But some people claim that Farmer’s Market shopping doesn’t fit into their budget.  It’s true that there’s often a markup for fresh, organic, local foods, but…that doesn’t mean that you can’t get good deals.  So I’ve decided to visit the Farmer’s Market on nice weekends (of course, it’s heading into winter, so I’m not sure how long I’ll keep this up until Spring) with a cool $20 bill in my hand and see what I can come away with.  I’ll tell you about my deals (and my plans of what to make with the goodies).  Hope you enjoy!

Here’s what I got on this crisp fall morning:

Buffalo Cranberry Wine Sausage (free-range and all natural).  4 links=$7.50

4 organic fuji apples = $3.15

3 medium red onions = $2.50

Small loaf of local artisan french bread= $2

1 bunch of organic swiss chard = $2

5 small sweet peppers, different colors = $2

2 jalapenos= 50 cents

Total=$19.65

I had 35 cents left and saw a sign for a head of garlic for exactly 35 cents! If the line for that stand hadn’t been so long, I would have hit $20 on the nose.

market pickings

I’ll use the onions in pretty much everything I make this week.   The apples I will cook with cinnamon and water to make applesauce for my 11 month old daughter.   Tonight for dinner we’ll have the sausages, simply browned on the iron skillet with a side of swiss chard sauteed in olive oil with a lot of garlic and some spices.  We’ll have the bread dipped in olive oil mixed with herbs de provence before dinner.  Oh, I’m hungry already.

I bought the jalapenos because I have some stew beef I bought last week at the market in the freezer. I want to try to cook it in the crockpot this week and I read on a crockpotting blog that if you add whole hot peppers to the stew, you get the smoky flavor, but not the spiciness. The sweet peppers we’ll cut into our salads and snack on them throughout the week.

What do you like about Farmer’s Markets?