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The Frugal Life โ€“ Eating Healthier For Less

Eating Healthier For Less

Consumers over recent years have expressed through their buying habits a desire for more healthy foods, stores and food manufacturers have begun to listen, giving us more health focused options. However, it sometimes seems that in order to eat healthy also means paying more for those foods.

Here are a few tips which can help lower your bill while still managing to make good and healthy choices for you and your family.

Avoid Greasy Pizzas by Making Your Own

For many families, Friday nights are considered pizza night. Simply pick up a phone and dial your local pizza delivery company. However, it is still possible to have a pizza night, but without all the greasy oils and unnecessary fats. Instead, learn to make a basic homemade pizza dough from scratch. When you find a recipe you like, make a few batches and freeze them individually. Take one out each Friday morning and leave in the refrigerator to thaw. By the time you are home from work, take out the dough and let it rest for about 10 minutes on a floured surface. While it is resting, prepare your toppings from pepperoni slices to red onion, sliced tomatoes, black olives and anything else you desire. Roll out the dough and layer on the toppings. Bake according to your pizza recipe’s instructions. The entire process should take less than 15 minutes not including the cooking time.

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Make Homemade Waffles in Large Batches

Similar to the homemade pizza, this tip has to do making and freezing multiple batches. Choose a weekend to make a nice batch of waffles. Except this time double the batch and plan for allowing extra time to cook. Let each waffle cool, and then wrap in plastic wrap or wax paper. Then wrap in foil making sure all edges are sealed tightly. Place in large freezer bags and label the contents and the date. Now, for many future mornings you will have your own premade waffles ready to go directly into the toaster oven.

Use Frozen Fruits vs. Fresh Fruits

Eating fresh fruits is always a good idea. Unfortunately unless they are on sale, they can be rather expensive – especially when off season and when buying large amounts for healthy homemade fruit shakes and juices. Take advantage of buying bags of frozen fruit for these purposes. The cost of the bag might be a higher upfront cost, but the amount of servings and quantity will cause it to go a lot further – allowing for more shakes and drinks.

Make Your Own Flavored Yogurts

If you enjoy eating flavored yogurts for breakfast, consider purchasing a large container of plain non-fat yogurt. Then purchase a few jams without any preservatives and you can easily make your own flavored yogurts. It does not take much jam to flavor a big bowl of plain yogurt, perhaps just a 1/2 of a Tablespoon.

Search Out Clearance Items Regularly

Make it a habit to not only walk through the clearance sections of your grocery store, but also the organic section. Many items are frequently marked down in these specialty sections because stores are frequently trying to determine which items sell the best. Those that don’t tend to sell as quickly (perhaps simply a result of poor package marketing) will be reduced in price – sometimes by over 50%. This is a great way to include organic products such as cereals, broths, soups and even canned goods into your eating regiment without having to pay the typically higher prices. It is important to always check these sections which can be hit or miss, because when you hit – you generally hit big.

Go For Lower Calorie Desserts

For those looking to cut back on calories, giving up sweets is one of the harder tasks to do successfully. However there are alternatives which allow you to still eat your late night snack such as ice cream without the extra fat and calories. For example, if you enjoy your ice creams, consider buying gelato which is the Italian version of ice cream. Gelato consists of less fat and cholesterol due to the ingredients used. For example, ice cream uses cream, however gelato uses whole milk or even 2% milk. In recent years, companies have begun competing to develop the best gelato machine which produces the best Italian ice cream at home. You can make multiple batches and freeze them in pint size plastic containers for enjoyment when those sweet cravings come around.

By following these steps you will find yourself eating healthier while still keeping your bills under control.

This article was offered by SimpleItalianCooking.com an Italian cooking website specializing in easy to make recipes.

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