Homemade, soaked pasta, healthy and frugal!
Like anything in life, you can start drifting in a direction that you never meant to go. I feel like in small ways that has happened to my blog. When I first started this blog, I intended just to show my daily food, share my own recipes, and talk about how I eat healthy food on a budget.
Somewhere along the line, I got worried about sharing our daily fare, it just didn’t seem fancy enough to share on a food blog! So I tried to share more of my nicer fare. Yet, I do want my blog to be a resource of frugal meal ideas, even if they are simple sometimes. So I decided it was time to be a bit more intentional with my blog! So along with my own personal goals for the summer, I am going to share some new features for this blog that I’ve spent a long time thinking about.
Pennywise Platter Thursday, Where Nourishing Food is Frugal Too
First a new weekly carnival! I hope you will participate, as we all need to band together and share our ideas and recipes! I named this carnival the Pennywise Platter Carnival because I wanted to give the idea of being frugal (pennywise) yet filling (platter, not small little salad plate). This will be the carnival to share your tips, your best shopping tricks, and, of course, your recipes. And since it’s on the Nourishing Gourmet, stick to real food!
We all know that we can coupon shop, get food for free, and start with a cake mix and eat cheap. Let’s show the world we can eat frugally and nourishing. It’s a different, more rewarding way to be frugal. June 25th will be our first one, and after that, they will run weekly! Stay tuned for more information!
Five Dollar Dishes
Along those same lines, I decided it would be a fun challenge to start calculating how much I spend on certain dishes. This is going to be a stretch for me because I don’t always enjoy figuring out math problems in my head while I cook, like how much a tablespoon of honey costs and all of that. But not only will it help me keep track of how much I am spending on what, but I hope it also translates into helping you too! I won’t do this for every meal I make, that’s just too much work and goes against my overall eating and shopping philosophy. But I will try to feature one dish a week (which could be a dessert, salad, main dish, anything!) that I spend five dollars or less making. We will see how it goes! I may also do a Ten Dollar Main Dish feature as well.
Lessons from History
I read a lot and I am continually coming across interesting “lessons” from history that help me be a better cook, help me concentrate on healthy food, and give me tips on frugal living. I would like to share them with you too! I really enjoyed being able to share some of them in my classes, it’s time I took them to my blog too.
So there are some of my upcoming new features. What do you think? Any that you especially like the sound of? Have any other suggestions?
{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow, Kimi, these look like they’ll be fantastic! I’m really looking forward to letting YOU do the math (that’s one of my weak points too) on how much each meal figures out to be.
Sounds good to me. We are frugal here since we have a very small budget and try to eat REAL. WHOLE. FOODS. Can you post some icecream recipies that include real milk and cream. Or can all of your recipies exchange coconut milk for dairy?
Sounds great! We have been getting some vegetables out of our garden which helps in the frugal department, but I am breastfeeding and my son tends to be really gassy I am interested in frugal, healthy meals that don’t contain as many gas causing veggies. I was told to avoid onions, garlic, asparagus and of course raw broccoli. All things I really love! Any suggestions??
Kimi, you are an inspiration – I can’t wait to see these features, especially $5 dishes
Sounds great! I’m always looking for frugal, healthy things to feed my hungry family! My nine year old son has started out eating his Dad…so I’ve got to be even more creative in the kitchen.
Meg,
Yes, well wish me luck.
Kate,
You can definitely use dairy products in all of my ice cream recipes. Maybe two cups of cream to one cup of whole milk? I think that’s what I used to do.
Jessica,
I also had a very colicky baby. There are so many things that could be causing it. Dairy seemed to bother Elena, for example. Cabbage did seem to a little too. But I’ve read that taking a high quality probiotic and then giving a little to baby too will almost always cure it. Wish I had tried it! Definitely will next time around. If you need any advice on probiotics send me an email. kimi(dot)harris(at)gmail.com. If you go that route, make sure you use one that doesn’t have high allergens in it.
This is a creative challenge. I look forward to reading more — esp. $5 meals!
Sounds wonderful! I’m especially excited to “hear” more lessons from history.
May I suggest that you label the tops of your jars, etc, with the
(price +tax) / (number of servings per container). That way, if a serving is a tablespoon, and you need a 1/4 cup, it’ll be easy to figure it out. That should help with the math.
Well, I THINK it will help. LOL
Sounds great. I too have been looking for cost effective healthy eating. So I looked up what people ate during the depression. It sounds like they pretty much lived off potatoes. Too bad they didn’t think or know? about sprouting back then, what a difference that could have made.
I think it wise for anyone to have low budget meals that are still healthy. You never know when you might need them, and it would be better to find out before how to prepare them rather than after.
I look forward to seeing what you have come up with!
Oh, these are all terrific ideas, Kimi! I’ll look forward to them and think about how I can participate, too.
Shirley
Wonderful ideas, Kimi! I admire the way you are always improving and growing personally and improving and growing the Nourishing Gourmet. Even though I’ve been cooking a very long time (since before you were even born), your recipes and ideas teach me many new things and take me out of my rut. Inspiring!
Wonderful blog!!! You have inspired me to redo the whole rawmazing site!! Your recipes are inspiring. Love it!!!
I love your ideas and can’t wait to see your first posts! In this economy we all need help stretching our dollar as far as it can go. Beautiful blog!
You are always an inspiration to me, so your ideas sound perfect! I think it’s important for a lot of people especially these days, what with the economy and soaring food prices, to know that they can prepare simple, real, nourishing meals inexpensively to stretch their budget dollars.
Kudos!
P.S. …the picture at the top of the post looks sinfully delish!
I’ve already gotten so many good ideas from you and I am so excited to see what comes next. I like the idea of all of us sharing our nourishing recipes, since everytime I’ve been in a recipe exchange it was all condensed soup and stuffing mix. I think you’ve finally inspired me to figure out how much our meals cost, how much a loaf of bread costs to make, etc. Thanks for the extra time you take to share.
I’m looking forward to this challenge!
Thank you for your informative blog.
How wonderful!!! I love all three ideas! I’d love to join you on the pennywise platter carnival!
$5 per meal or per plate? If it is per meal how many people are you serving? I like the Pennywise Platter idea.
TeamBettendorf,
The idea for the 5 dollar dish is to share a single dish recipe that costs five dollars to make-main dish, or dessert, or side. Because that’s a little limiting, I will probably also do” Ten Dollar Mains” posts as well that feature main dishes that cost me ten dollars to make.
As far the servings go, that will depend. It will at least be 3-4 servings, but perhaps more. Each recipe will be different. 
Hey Everyone,
Thanks for the positive feedback! I am really looking forward to doing the Pennywise Platter Carnival with you all and the other features as well!
Great idea, Kimi! As a student, I’m always looking for frugal nourishing meal ideas. Can’t eat scrambled eggs and ground beef EVERY day.
The homemade pasta looks yummy!
I love it! Eating all natural is frugal! I can’t wait to join in on the Pennywise Thursdays.
We are struggling with eating healthy foods (and non-feedlot meat) and still keep a low food budget, so I am looking forward to the Pennywise features. I would love it if you post how you do the math to figure out 1 Tbsp of honey or whatever… if you have a 16 oz jar, how many Tbsp is that? I’ve been trying to calculate the cost of our various meals and knowing how to do the math would help a lot.
I’m also always interested to hear how/where you get things cheaply… I find often Whole Foods or Trader Joes is cheaper for specialty ingredients, food co-ops can be cheapest for some things (like coconut oil).
Can’t wait to see more! Love your blog!
Is there anyone who could do a Food Storage Carnival? I’m big on storing foods. I’m not sure how to switch over to having a year’s supply of foods with healthier foods. So far I’ve only started replacing the cereal with oatmeal and bought 1/4 beef to put in the freezer. It seems like its going to be hard to have whole foods in FS. I might be able to start canning tomatoes to make my own sauces to replace our Prego Speg Sauce this summer.
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