Steps To Healthier Living

I hate grocery shopping! Especially the checking out part when I get stuck with a $400 bill for two weeks worth of groceries. I have friends who are coupon gods, saving boatloads of money on groceries. I have not seen one coupon for any items typically on our grocery list except for cereal. "They" (whoever they are) say you should only shop the outer edges of your grocery store: dairy, meat, produce. "They" fail to print coupons for such things! The majority of ourbill is meat+produce. It used to be meat+produce+diapers but since we switched to cloth we're saving at least $25-$50 a week! Woo! I wish I did cloth with Charlotte because the way I figure it we spent at least $1000 on diapers for her in just one year. So in an effort to start saving money on our bill we've been taking steps to eliminate items on our list which is helping us live a healthier lifestyle simultaneously.

Obviously step 1 was cloth diapers

Step 2 was eliminating red meat from our diet, turkey and chicken only for us! We were buying boneless skinless breasts but Travis happened to befriend a dietitian who told us they are filled with preservatives and more sodium than you could possibly ever need. So now we've switched to buying whole chickens and cutting them up ourselves. We really need to go price what they have at Central Meats and maybe we can go free range, yum! Eventually we might take step 2 a bit further and go meatless for good but I like eating meat so we'll see, that'll be like step 101.

Step 3 making our own bread products. Biscuits, pancakes, cakes, loaves, anything bread! It is so easy it's ridiculous that I haven't been doing it for longer. The last recipe I made gave me two loaves, so I figured a 5lb bag of flour will give me at least 7 loaves of bread. The flour costs about $4 the bread we usually buy costs about $3.50 a loaf. I have been looking through my cookbooks for the most nutritious bread recipe but think I may have to get an actual bread

cookbook to find the kind of recipe I'm looking for. Another plus to this step is Charlotte loves to help me cook, she's a great stirrer!

Step ? vegetable garden. I've been saying for almost 2 years I'm going to plant a garden. The first time I was planning I was pregnant with Alexis and that fell through, this past year I just got lazy and the upfront finances got in the way. I have been reading a book about square foot gardening for 2 years now, this upcoming spring is the damn year! If it doesn't happen this year I think I will make the effort to join a co-op, there is a farm right up the street from us that does it. I'm not quite sure what step this will end up being because we might come up with something else in between now and spring when we start the garden.

So far I like the way the steps are going and I like how healthy we feel knowing we are eating what we are actually eating and not some hidden junk.

I'd love to hear some ways my readers are leading healthier lifestyles!