One of my personal resolutions for this year is to eat healthier. Not only is it better for the body, but a healthier diet is also more affordable. Last year I posted how to save money by just shopping at ethnic grocery stores instead of big supermarkets. You can buy a bag of groceries for under $6 if you know where to look. Furthermore I find that I can cut my grocery bill by 25% or more by limiting the amount of processed or refined foods when I do my shopping. Not to mention pre-packaged or prepared foods are full of empty calories. One thing I like to do at least once a week is make a smoothie.
They’re simple to prepare, extremely nutritious, and very wallet friendly. There’s literally hundreds of recipes on the internet you can find for smoothies, so I’ll just show one I made the other day as an example. I used some raspberries for their anti-oxidant properties plus they’re full of vitamins and minerals. Next I used some blueberries because they contain vitamin K, manganese, potassium, dissolves bad cholesterol, and apparently even help to reduce belly fat. The yogurt is optional, but I like it for the dairy, protein, and fiber content. And finally half a cup of juice (or water) to keep the consistency nice and smooth.
Blend everything together et voila 😀 Each serving is less than a dollar. Drink some in the morning and you won’t even need to make breakfast. You can use ingredients that’s local and cheap. For example there’s a blueberry farm literally not even 30 minutes drive from my home. You can go pick them in the field yourself in the summer for cheaper than retail prices, then freeze them and make blueberry smoothies all year round :0) Food is one of our biggest expenses next to housing. By keeping our cost for groceries down, we can very easily save a lot more money than trying to scrimp on other things like hydro, transportation, or internet. The more savings we have the more we can invest and get closer to financial freedom (^_^) Depending on where you live you can set your own budget, but in Vancouver, I eat quite comfortably on a $100 monthly grocery budget 😀
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Random Useless Fact: Near a West Vancouver elementary school a picture of a young girl chasing a ball is painted on the road. The optical illusion is being used to have drivers slow down near schools.
I’m impressed with your food budget, we are nowhere close to $100/month.
I am a huge smoothie fan, if you haven’t already you should give green smoothies a try. They take a little getting used to but then they’re great.
Not yet but that sounds like a good idea. I like how you can have the choice of either sweet or savory green smoothies, and sometimes even spicy ^_^;
How good does that smoothie look! I love berries and I love smoothies so I wouldn’t mind tasting that.
I used to always have banana smoothies when I was a kid as my next door neighbor had a banana tree and always gave us bananas.
My friend used to pick bananas in Australia for a living :0) Berries and bananas are both alkaline foods, so they’re great for the body and reduce the risk of kidney stones, and maybe even some types of cancer.
We do this to use up bananas usually. Add a little ice cream and berries and its delicious.
Sounds like a great recipe idea. I’ll probably try it out in the summer. That’s what I like about smoothies, it’s very versatile.
That smoothie looks yummy!
And easy to make too. Surprisingly I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smoothie that isn’t pleasing to the eye, even the green ones. I think the natural colors in fruits and vegetables look appetizing to us as it’s nature’s way of telling us what’s good for our bodies 🙂
Magic bullet works great for single servings for smoothies! I love using Avacado/Banana in my milk induced shake. I buy a mix fruit bag from Costco for $10 and it’ll last me a long time. Beats going to bubble tea places that charges $5/drink! Maybe I’ll try a matcha shake one day!
Yeah, bubble tea stores, Orange Julius, Starbucks, and other drink shops make crazy margin on blended fruit drinks and smoothies. I can go for a matcha shake too （￣ー￣）
That smoothie does look quite good. Doing something like that is definitely something we want to be able to do more of. It can be a great way to get the kids to have their fruits.
Yup, for people who don’t like their fruits and veggies this is a great way to get it into their systems. They can just drink it like a beverage either on it’s own or during a meal ʘ‿ʘ Anything that can fill someone up with nutrients like a fruit smoothie is good because person is then less likely to snack or overeat other types of not so healthy food.
$100 a month! That’s nuts! We do green smoothies in the morning, so my breakfast smoothie had spinach, parsley, a bit of banana, some berries, and some flax seed. I am sure yours definitely tasted better!
Your’s sound way healthier though. The flax seeds alone will give you lots of fiber, omega-3 fatty acids, and especially for women the lignans in them tend to balance female hormones. I saw fields of flax last time I visited the Canadian prairies. That’s another reason why I bought the farm. The nutritional value and therefore profit that crops are demanding these days is phenomenal (゜∀゜)
Looks delicious! I just got a juicer and will try vegetables, so far I only blend bananas and the like, not too worried about the virtues of each ingredient, since I don’t add sugar or anything, it should be just fine.
Good choice to not add sugar or artificial sweeteners. I just use more sweet fruits like bananas if I want a stronger taste. Have to be careful sometimes though as bananas can easily overwhelm the taste of other ingredients lol.
That smoothie looks great! I think $100 is an awesome grocery budget. In 2012 we did $190 a month for 2 and for 2013 we are at $235 a month for 2 which is reasonable and last month we were under budget by $28.05. I would love to have you join my Grocery Game Challenge now in it’s second year with some amazing fans who can shop, cook, plan that put me to shame. I’m so impressed with their grocery budget, meal planning improvements over the past year. We make smoothies with fresh berries from our garden (frozen for winter), yogurt, milk, ice, fresh orange juice and sometimes protein powder. You can’t go wrong and the price is just a fraction of the cost of what you would pay at a shop to get it made.
Your smoothies sound really interesting. I’ll look into your grocery challenge some time. I think I have it slightly easier on the budget front because I’m currently living alone so if I want to detox, fast, or try a gluten free diet, I have a little more control over what I’m buying and eating, and won’t be tempted by someone else who’s having cheesecake or something. And as I’ve posted in a previous entry my employer is nice enough to provide a basket of fruit every morning for employees to share :0) I usually go early enough to grab an orange or a banana so I don’t have to make breakfast at home.
Yum! You’ve got me hungry now!
Haha, thanks!
Great smoothie idea but I really got to challenge you on that $100/month for groceries comment… That’s less than three and a half bucks a day…. I dare you to blog the proof 🙂
Good point, a few dollars a day for food doesn’t sound like much (^_-) I use to think that too, but then I found out other finance bloggers living across the country, some also in Vancouver, are also living off $100/month grocery budgets. Last year I wrote a couple of posts about how I manage to do it. It’s pretty simple once you know how. https://www.freedomthirtyfiveblog.com/2012/06/easy-grocery-savings-part-1.html https://www.freedomthirtyfiveblog.com/2012/06/easy-grocery-savings-part-2.html The first one goes through some stuff I bought, and the second one shows what kind of dishes you can make with those ingredients. I took pictures of all the groceries, along with the receipt to show exactly how much I paid for each item. I then show photos of various meals you can make with the food I bought and broke down the cost based on how much I used for cooking. It turns out that each meal only costs about $1.00 to make, and the portions are just right for me. So you can imagine how $100 should cover 3 meals a day for the entire month. But I also eat out a few times a month, and sometimes when I’m in a hurry I skip breakfast in the morning or… Read more »
$100 per month, that’s really good! I love smoothies, I make them as often as possible, usually for breakfast. Mine typically include a banana, a hand full of spinach or greens (can’t even taste them), some frozen berries, a few spoonfuls of yogurt, some orange juice or almond milk, and a teaspoon of chia seeds. That serves two big glasses for my fiancé and I and keeps me from getting hungry until lunch.
That sounds really filling. Glad so many fellow bloggers are really conscious about their health.
Yum! We spend $100 per person per month on groceries as well, which you know. Smoothies are a great way for us to make sure we use up ripe fruit and not waste milk or yogurt! Our smoothies usually involve bananas and ice cream.
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