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Can you eat paleo healthily on a budget finances-min

Can you eat healthily on a budget?

I wrote the other day about my $50 weekly food budget – and how hyper aware I've become about how much food costs.  I'm only shopping for one, I work from home, love cooking and have time to shop around. How hard must if be for families on tight budgets to eat well?

Can you eat paleo healthily on a budget finances-min

I really struck me how difficult it must be for families when I saw this in my local Aldi store:

Aldi-cheap-pizza-paleo-network-food
That's just $3 for a big pizza. Assuming you'd need two to feed a family of four that's $1.50 per person for dinner. Preparation time is zero and cooking time less than 20 minutes.

Contrast this with a healthy paleo meal? Let's say a large free range chicken: $12, some steamed kale $5 and spinach $3 and some $4 cauliflower made into rice. That's $24 – so $6 a head. For families living on tight budgets there's a huge difference between spending $6 on dinner and spending $24.

And how about lunch? You can buy an entire loaf of bread for about 85 cents and some cheap processed meat for about $3. That's a cheap lunch, well under a dollar a head. Contrast that with a typical paleo lunch – that wouldn't even cover a decent cut of meat, never mind salad or veggies.

As for breakfast I doubt anyone could make an free-range egg and veggie omelette for less than the $2.2o an entire box of cornflakes costs.

So what's the answer?

Wouldn't it be good if fresh whole food could be subsidised? Unfortunately I can't see how that could ever be implemented, since everyone has such wildly different ideas about exactly what is healthy and what isn't.

Do you think families struggling to make ends meet are priced out of eating healthily? What do you think the answer is?

Paleo diet primal weekly planning meal planning recipes-min

What Sundays Are All About

With a bit of planning and organisation at the weekend, the entire week of Paleo meals can be planned, ingredients bought and almost all of the cooking done, leaving your weekdays easy and stress free.

Being organised like this is not only a far cheaper way of following your Paleo diet, but it also ensures you won’t come unstuck in the week – when a lack of time and imagination would otherwise make it far harder to make the right food choices.

Step One: The Weekly Planner

Are you going to be home every evening? Do you have friends over? Have you been invited out to dinner? Write out a plan of the upcoming week and work out how many breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks you will need.

Now it’s time to hit the recipe books for inspiration and decide what you would like to eat everyday! Bear in mind if you cook a large portion of a dinner recipe, you can either freeze the remainder to enjoy another day, or you can use it for lunch, or breakfast the following day.

If you have cooking facilities at lunchtimes, it’s a great idea to do some batch cooking, so you can have a quick, hot Paleo meal every lunchtime – with no cooking required

Paleo diet primal weekly planning meal planning recipes-min

Step Two: The Ingredients

Once you’ve decided on your weekly Paleo meal planner, you can make a list of all of the ingredients you need to buy and head to your local farmers market, butchers and grocery store/ supermarket to buy everything you need. No more shopping required for another week or two! It’s good to be flexible and prepared to swap ingredients, for example where certain vegetables are in season or on sale.

Step Three: Cooking & Preparation

Once you have your Paleo ingredients, recipes and weekly planner on hand, it’s time to get cooking! You can cook up big batches of one-pot recipes, such as soups, stews, casseroles and curries as these will freeze easily, ready to be reheated when you need them for lunches or dinners.

Many breakfasts, such as egg muffins can be cooked in advance and stored in the fridge for a quick grab and go breakfast.

You can also prepare vegetables in advance, ready to blanch, eat raw or throw in the steamer for the week’s dinners.

Step Four: Overcoming Potential Difficulties

This is also a good opportunity to call ahead any restaurants you may be visiting next week – or looking up their menu online. This way you can work out which Paleo options are available, or contact the restaurant directly and see how they can help.

What is your weekly routine? Do you spend time at the weekend planning for the week ahead?

7-Day Paleo Diet Menu Plan-min

7-Day Paleo Diet Menu Plan

I've got a friend coming to stay next week, so I've planned a 7-day Paleo Menu Plan to showcase my Paleo diet. It’s all too easy to eat similar meals over and over, so I'm looking forward to a week of lots of variety. I'm going to over-make everything, so I have lots of left-overs to freeze and enjoy again later.

I've just written my first recipe book on Paleo Breakfasts, so will be showcasing some fantastic, but also quick and easy breakfast recipes on my menu plan!

So this is my Menu Plan for my week of Paleo meals:

Monday

Breakfast: 

Paleo Salmon Burgers

Lunch:

Blanched veggies with guacamole and nut butter dips

Dinner:

Chicken and Vegetable Kebabs

Snack:

Macadamia Nuts

 

Tuesday

Breakfast:

NoOatmeal

Lunch:

Big Salad with tuna, eggs, nuts, leaves, tomatos, olives, avocado, capsicum and extra virgin olive oil

Dinner:

Lamb-chops, Roasted Parsnips, Onions and pumpkin

Wednesday

Breakfast:

Bacon, Eggs and Avocado

Lunch:

Turkey Nori-wraps

 

Dinner:

Porterhouse Steak, Egg, Mushrooms and greens

Dessert:

Paleo Ice Cream

Thursday

Breakfast:

Egg Muffins

Lunch:

Capsicum ham sandwiches (using flat-cut capsicum for the “bread”)

Dinner:

Tuna, Asparagus and Cauliflower Rice

Snack:

Jerky

7-Day Paleo Diet Menu Plan-min

Friday

Breakfast:

Red onion, ham and mushroom omelette

Lunch:

Paleo chilli with zucchini noodles

Dinner:

Paleo Pizza

Dessert:

Strawberries dipped in dark chocolate

Saturday

Breakfast:

Paleo Pancakes with Berry Sauce

Lunch:

Chicken Soup with side salad

Dinner:

Barbecue with selection of meats and salads

Drink:

Glass of red wine

Sunday

Brunch:

Full English Breakfast (eggs, bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms, sautéed sweet potato, home-made tomato relish, Paleo sausages)

Dinner:

Sunday Roast; Roast beef, sweet potatoes, home-made gravy, broccoli and carrots

Dessert:

Coconut Yoghurt

What do you think of my proposed Menu Plan? I’d love to hear your favourite Paleo dishes! Do you create a weekly Paleo meal Plan?