Before the holiday season arrives and everyone self-sabotages their healthy eating habits and goes outside their food budget, let me share with you our tips for healthy eating on a budget! We love eating a whole food plant-based diet, full of organic foods and I do a lot of cooking from scratch and a lot of meal prep. That being said, we do NOT sacrifice quality when we shop at Walmart with their house brands (like Great Value, Marketside, and Sam’s Choice). Making these swaps and buying these brands allowed us to get more for our money while eating delicious food and sticking to a healthy lifestyle….even during the holidays!
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{All opinions are my own.}
Tips For Healthy Eating On A Budget
- Meal planning is imperative!
- I try to plan meals that might have a crossover in ingredients so I’m not buying too many different ingredients or wasting some of what I buy.
- Prepare your food that you could eat for several days (i.e. I make a huge chopped salad with lots of ingredients twice a week and chop all my fruit and store them twice a week so they are ready to go). This also keeps you from being lazy and ordering out, when most meal prep is done.
- If something is on sale, buy more of it and store it or freeze it so that you have it for another part of your menu during a future week.
- When washing fruit, use filtered water (we have a reverse osmosis system in our home and love it) with some vinegar and baking soda. I wash my berries and dry them and put them in glass jars or glass storage containers like all my other produce/food. It helps them stay fresher longer.
A few of our favorite whole food plant-based recipes….
Baked Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Oatmeal
Fall to me means yummy pumpkin recipes, pumpkin everything! Yum!
With a hand mixer, blend: 1 1/2 cup canned pumpkin, 2 TBSP baking powder, 1 1/4 c unsweetened almond milk, 1/4 cup pure maple syrup, 1/2 c coconut sugar (we always avoid refined white sugar), 2 c organic oats, 1/2 c organic oat flour (I just put oats in a blender to make oat flour), 2 TBSP organic flax seed, 1 TBSP vanilla, 2 TBSP organic pumpkin spice, 1 TSP cinnamon, 1/2 TSP pink himalayan salt, 1/2 bag vegan chocolate chips, chopped nuts optional. Spray 9×13 glass dish with coconut oil and pour mixture in and even out. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 min. Cool for about 10 min, cut and serve! This is totally clean and good for you! See my Instagram reel to see more.
Fresh Fruit Parfait
We start with the the coconut yogurt (I prefer the unsweetened as to avoid sugar), add a little raw honey, add some clean organic granola, top with any organic fruit you choose. We love mangoes, honeydew melon, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries…it’s all so delicious!
When I always have a variety of produce cut up, it’s easy to throw them in any meal or grab it on the go as a healthy snack!
Thai Peanut Ramen Chopped Salad
So I make a huge chopped salad twice a week with organic spinach and romaine, purple and green cabbage, organic english cucumber, organic red/yellow/orange sweet pepper. onions, and diced carrots. It’s so crunchy and we use it in so many recipes.
I boil one square of the Organic Millet and Brown Rice Ramen noodles for each person for a few minute and then put it on each salad.
Next, I pour over it my yummy Thai Peanut Dressing and then sprinkle peanuts on top. I created this dressing myself and it’s super easy:
1/4 c organic coconut aminos, 1/4 c organic peanut butter, 1/4 c unsweetened almond milk, 1/4 c organic cashews (makes it creamy), 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp onion powder. I put into a little bullet blender for about 30 seconds and it’s done. Sprinkle peanuts on top! Make more if you want to eat it a few times that week and store it in a container in the fridge.
This ramen so is much healthier for you and super tasty! The price is awesome too!
Doesn’t this look yummy?! So crunchy and packed with flavor and texture!
Double Chocolate Nice Cream
Using a professional blender is absolutely necessary for this recipe to get the right consistency (like a Vitamix or Blendtec).
Blend together 6-8 frozen ripe bananas (I always keep a couple dozen frozen at a time once they have brown spots on them and are super sweet, broken up in thirds and stored in a freezer bag), a couple tablespoons of organic cocoa powder, a squirt of honey, a splash of vanilla optional, and a little almond milk. Start with a half cup and only add a little more at a time if necessary. You want it to have a soft-serve consistency and not a smoothie consistency.
I call it “Double Chocolate” because then I add a couple vegan and grain-free chocolate cookies that are just soooo yummy! You could always add sliced bananas on top and granola instead. I love hemp seeds too! Bon appetit!
See, you don’t have to sacrifice quality while enjoying healthy food that is sooo delicious….even during the holidays! Add fun variations to your favorite foods and desserts by adding pumpkin or mint to the recipes this season.
So….will you be ordering online and picking up your groceries or having Walmart deliver? Ha! Makes my life so much simpler and I just love it.
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xoxo,
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