FYI – the “Real Food On A Budget” posts will go up Wednesday morning (or late Tuesday night) from now on and will include a Linky for you to link up to your posts.  There may be additional posts throughout the week as the mood strikes me, but for now, you can count on Wednesdays at a bare minimum!

So this whole “switching to Real Food” is a process.  I would love to tell you that we woke up one morning and started eating homemade granola with kefir instead of <insert name of sugary cereal here>, but that would just be too easy.  I didn’t come to the realization that we needed to make this change overnight and the changes in our house aren’t going to happen overnight.

So let’s take this one meal at a time, shall we?

First – let’s look at the foods that are being eliminated for breakfast (with the occasional “special treat” because I don’t want my children to slit my throat while I sleep)

• Packaged cereals that contain High Fructose Corn Syrup or GMO (more on GMO later)
• Prepackaged oatmeal with brown sugar
• Toast and jelly (meaning commercial white bread toast and “jelly jelly”..the kind that is mainly sugar with a trace of fruit)
• Premade “convenience breakfast foods” (waffles, pancakes, french toast sticks, etc)
• Donuts (actually not a problem in our house, but I thought I would include it)

And here are the things that we WILL be having on our breakfast menu:

• Yogurt with fruit and honey or homemade granola
• Orange juice
• Whole Wheat or Banana pancakes
• Breakfast casserole (for weekends)
• Oatmeal with honey or pure maple syrup
• Eggs fried in butter or coconut oil, toast (made with whole wheat sandwich bread) or homemade English Muffins with butter and/or honey or peanut butter (no-sugar added peanut butter)
• Baked oatmeal

As you can see, by making a pledge to eat healthier, we are opening up many more options for breakfast than we had before.  Sure, the extra work of baking is a consideration, but the payoff (in terms of having a healthier family) is worth it!

What are your Real Food morning solutions for breakfast?  Post them in the comments!  If you are a blogger, be sure to use the Simply Linked so that we can all enjoy your posts!

So if you haven’t noticed lately, I’ve been posting more deals about organic foods.  It’s something that has been on my mind for about a year, and then I became friends with this woman and finally subscribed to her feed.  Then I watched this movie and it was completely over.  My family now hates me.

This has been part of an overall effort in our home to move away from processed foods and towards more whole foods and organics.  However, I have to say that this transition (that has been going on for about 2 months now) has not been completely well-received in my house.  While my children love the whole-wheat pancakes, they aren’t too thrilled about giving up their Kraft Mac & Cheese (we actually had a fight/me-stomping-out-of-the-kitchen-in-tears episode a few weeks ago.  I went to the trouble of making homemade mac & cheese and they complained that it wasn’t “orange enough”)

So what does a Frugal Mom do, when she has 4 other people in the house who are resisting the idea of eating healthier?

1.  Understand that change is gradual:  Both my children and my husband have been used to eating a certain way for many years.  I need to find healthier “copycat recipes” of their favorites….and then I can scale those back to be even healthier.

2.  There is nothing wrong with using up the stockpile:  If you have seen my TV spots, you know I have an obscene stockpile of processed foods.  Am I throwing it away?  No…I was taught that wasting food is a sin.  Am I donating it?  No.  It seems hypocritical to donate it…as if those foods aren’t “good enough” for my family, but they are for an in-need family?  We will be using up the stockpile of processed foods, but we will be mixing them with a much more healthy menu and being way more conscious of the foods we buy in the future.

3.   Find healthy alternatives for the children:  Jonathan laid out what was a very well-rehearsed and compelling argument last night as to why he should get back his Cocoa Puffs and Goober Grape.  It actually broke my heart to say “it’s not going to happen!”.  Finding naturally sweet non-processed alternatives is at the top of my list.  I’ll worry about scaling the sugar back later.

4. One organic product doesn’t mean that all organics are bad: Brad still hasn’t forgiven me for (what we call) “the Muir Glen Salsa Incident”.  Does that mean that we are giving up on organic salsa?  No – it means that we will try other products until we find ones that we like (or until tomatoes are dirt-cheap and I can make-and-can my own salsa…I’ve done it before and it was the best salsa we have ever had)

5.  Bake from scratch:  one of my childrens favorite meals is whole wheat pancakes.  I make them with King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour and whenever I do, I make a quadruple batch and freeze them in individual portions.  The kids LOVE them.  Before the pumpkin shortage, pumpkin muffins were an every day after school snack.  I can make amazing bread from scratch for less than $1 per loaf.  It’s a worthy endeavor!

6.  Scale back on the meat: I have switched to organic meats and it is a KILLER on the budget.  We are finding less-expensive alternatives for our proteins.

7.  Drink water: giving up soda, flavored waters, etc frees up more money in the budget for nutrient-dense foods.  There was a line in Food, Inc that really drove that point home for me:  “People are complaining about $3 for a dozen of good eggs, but they’re holding a $0.75 soda while they are doing it!”.  Think about it:  a dozen eggs provides much more goodness than the 4 sodas for the same price do!

Do you have any “Real Food On A Budget” tips?  Any “Real Food On A Budget” recipes?  Post them in the comments!  If you are a blogger, make sure that you use the Simply Linked to link up your posts so we can all enjoy them!