On Friday night we like to do a super healthy meal for dinner. It’s either a super large salad or what we call a “toothpick” meal because we ate it with toothpicks when I was growing up. This last time Brett said every time we sit down to it he always thinks it won’t be filling. And yet we’re always full with plenty leftover for munching through the weekend. The meals are full of colors, which is an indicator of health too.
A lot of people believe eating healthy costs more. So we did a quick comparison. When we get a $5 pizza and Italian crazy bread (yum!) from Little Caesar’s, we spend just under $10. That will give us each one meal and I generally have some leftovers from my half. So that’s about $5 per person per meal.
The last time I bought fruit and veggies for the toothpick meal I spent just under $12. However, I splurged and bought the expensive apples (they were super tasty – sweetango). And, we’ll be eating the rest of the carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumber, apple, orange, pear for the equivalent of three meals each. And that comes down to $2 per person per meal.
As an added benefit, our veggie meals don’t heat up the kitchen at all in most cases (sometimes we cook chicken for the salad if we don’t have any leftover chicken from earlier in the week and sometimes we make biscuits for the toothpick meal). And in Southern Arizona, not heating up the kitchen is always a good thing.
I am an educator and PhD. I quilt, belly dance, run, read, and try to grow things. I am a Mormon. I am infertile. I am a daughter, sister, aunt, grand-daughter, friend, wife, and mom.
Brett L. Dennis
Mama g
Giggles
AmandaStretch
But did you factor in the price of the chicken? How much your time that you took to make your meal “costs”? 😉
Really, I think you eat healthy or unhealthy as cheaply or as expensively if you want. Let’s say you eat ramen for every meal (blech), that’s what 20 cents a package? That’s crazy cheap compared to eating real food. But pizza and fast food adds up way more than healthy stuff does, especially if you consider all the damage you’re doing to your body that will incur medical costs sooner or later.
Those who say eating healthy is too expensive are just making excuses. 🙂
There wasn’t any chicken last week and it took about 15 minutes prep (washing and cutting). And the prep only needed to be done the one time, for the leftovers it was already done. So still a real steal of a deal.
It’s an excuse a lot of people use though.
The hard part for me is that I can’t buy my own groceries. I’d love to have more vegetables and things, but when the money is all pooled for household expenses (and I have very little left, mostly enough for gas and my personal things like sunscreen) I kind of have to eat what’s in the kitchen. Fortunately, we all like relatively healthy things. 🙂