Friday Foodie: Organics on a Tight Budget

So you want to start buying organic and farm fresh food, but you're on a tight budget. Let's face it, the convenient organic foods sold at your local grocery store are typically much higher in cost than their preservative and chemical filled counterparts. This falls into one of my many conspiracy theories to keep the little and middle people down, but we won't go there right now. If you bought all organic products at your local store, it is likely that your weekly grocery bill would increase significantly - possibly by as much as 50% in some areas.

What's a poor girl to do? There are a few ways to incorporate more organics into your diet without breaking the bank. Here are a few:
Farmer's Markets: There are farmer's markets everywhere. Some even travel to a location near you! If you have no idea where to find your local market, just check out Local Harvest and Eat Wild. By entering your zip code, you can find what's available near you. If you are in Virginia or Montana, you can also take a look at Lulu's Local Food. They connect farms within a region with a customer base through online ordering. Your order (which may have items from several different farms) is picked up and delivered to one of several nearby central drop-off points. How's that for convenience!
Join a CSA: CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) is a wonderful way to begin your organic adventure! Through a search on Local Harvest, you may find that there are farms in your area (within a 30-mile radius) that are looking for loyal customers. You purchase a seasonal subscription, maybe $300-$500 for a six-month time period, usually payable in installments. That money is then held in an account in your name for you to draw upon at a local drop off point. For example, week 1 I go to the drop-off point, do a little browsing, fill up a basket, go to checkout, and (since I have a big family) $30 is deducted from my account. I've bought enough produce for a couple of weeks, so I don't need to go during week 2, and that's just fine - no penalty or lost money. Each CSA is run differently, so you'll have to check with the various ones in your area to see which one is right for you. The good news is that the pricing for produce is typically the same as or slightly less than what you are paying for non-organics in the grocery store. Your money stays local (helping the local economy); you are keeping a farmer gainfully employed doing what he loves so he doesn't have to convert his farm into an ethanol field to get government subsidies; and, you know where your food has been (many times the farmers have family parties at the farm or ask for volunteer harvest help) and that it was grown without chemicals and has not been irradiated for preservation. This is win-win-win.
Stock up: When organic dry goods or frozen foods in your grocery store go on sale, stock up. It does happen - look for it.
Read labels: If you can't buy pre-packaged organic foods, or your budget is especially tight this week. Read the labels carefully of the non-organic selections. The Kroger/Fry's family of supermarkets offers their Private Selection store brand for very reasonable pricing and many times doesn't contain some of the big no-no's. Try to avoid: high fructose corn syrup, monosodiumglutimate, carrageenan, partially hydrogenated anything, and any words that have 4+ syllables that you can't pronounce.

One important fact that you must wrap your head around, and I know it will be difficult, is that foods advertised as low fat, non fat, or diet foods will be filled with all the no-no's. I know you've been told for the last 30 years that this is the way to be healthy and lose weight. It's a lie. The human body is meant to easily process animal (butter, cream, bacon) and plant (vegetable, canola, peanut oils) fats. As a matter of fact, animal fats work in harmony with certain vegetables to bring more of their nutritional values to your blood stream. This means that bacon and spinach were meant to go together - that's why they taste so good together! The animal fat helps your body extract and keep more of the vitamin A from the spinach - it's the same with broccoli and cheese (not low or non fat).

That's enough for today, we'll talk more later. I know that's a lot for you to digest :)

Cutting the Cable - Part II - The Decision

To recap, I've been taking steps to dismantle my Verizon bundle - cut cable completely, change phone service, but keep the internet. I had purchased a Roku and tested the availability of content that my kids like and found that they were quite capable of doing without traditional cable. We had decided to go with Vonage for phone service due to Magicjack not allowing us to keep the phone number we've had for 10 years.

We are now beyond the contract expiration (April 2011) and hubby is still having trouble deciding to go completely without cable. He is a news and weather junkie, and I'm totally a football widow from August to February. So what to do, what to do... I kept saying "Cut it!!!" Of course, I get all the sci-fi and Grey's Anatomy my little heart can handle through the Roku :) While the hmmming and hawwwing was going on, I did a little more searching and found a subscription service called PlayOn.

PlayOn is an internet streaming service for devices like a PC, Wii, Xbox, iPad, Android, Roku, and many others. There are free movies, live sports, TV Shows, and much more. PlayOn supports the channels that come with their lineup, but they also have a vast community of users who write computer script to access other cable channels. They have a 14 day free trial and you don't have to buy any equipment - just have one of the supported devices, and if you're reading this - you have one! They have different tiers for subscriptions - monthly, annual, or lifetime (only $80!).

Last night, after a call to Verizon to verify pricing (since our latest bill was $20 higher now that we are off contract), the decision-making conversation came to a head. Verizon informed us that all pricing will go up June 1, contract or no. When I spoke with a Rep the other day, they said internet only was $50 a month, and oh by the way, your internet package is no longer being supported since our signup was 2 years ago. Apparently, they've upgraded from 10Mbps to 15Mbps as the basic package, so our service is slower than their most basic. That didn't register in my mind until the next day, so I called back. Rep #2 says, oh no internet only is $60 per month. I asked why our less than basic super slow internet wasn't upgraded when they upgraded across the board. Response: well the customer has to ask for the upgrade. We don't just do it automatically.

Please tell me how I'm supposed to ask for an upgrade that I don't know exists. So the decision to switch to Comcast was made right then and there. To make this long story short, Kevin has decided that he is not quite ready to cut the cable until he is sure this Roku/PlayOn thing will let him watch live football on the TV. So we've entered into a one year contract with Comcast for internet and TV ($80 per month). This next year we'll save only about $40 a month, but that will help a little bit. It will also be used to help him slowly upgrade his TV-watching equipment to be ready for the overhaul. We still have a standard TV downstairs that he uses, so that will need to be upgraded to a flatscreen HDMI-ready TV, and purchasing a Roku player for him.

We've subscibed to PlayOn for one month to check the streaming quality and how live is live. Right now, The Weather Channel is streaming about 2 minutes behind live - but we still have our super slow non-upgraded Verizon speed. The big test will be faster Comcast speeds and football season. Stay tuned, because we certainly will :)

Cutting the Cable

We aren't totally poor and destitute, but we are a one-income middle class family. We don't have tons of credit card debt, our cars are paid for, and we never take all-out destination vacations. But to make this homeschooling/one-income thing feasible, we do have to cut corners. Sometimes it seems those corners keep whittling away until there is only a small disc left, but that's a lament for another day (sigh!).

Like most everyone else, we have one of those lovely TV, phone, internet bundles from the local provider, in our case - Verizon. Over the years, we've played that back and forth game between Verizon and Comcast (our only choices) to get the best price on the bundle. Verizon made us do a 2 year contract this last time, which expired in April 2011. My oldest son started at an out-of-state college last summer (thank you FAFSA and Grandmas!), so I've been really watching the bundle bill and looking for a way to cut the cord.

At Christmas time, after doing a bit of research for a couple of months, I decided to purchase a Roku player, to test the waters in my home (cable dependency). If you are unfamiliar with Roku, it's a small device about the size of a slice of bread, that plugs into the wall and into your TV. It connects wirelessly to your modem and provides internet streaming directly from the modem to the TV. Some channels are free, but some like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu require a monthly subscription. Well, I'm already paying for Netflix, so that wasn't a big deal.

The Roku has really been wonderful! For a one time charge of $80, the device is mine, and my kids have found just about everything they want to watch either through Netflix or free content. I was actually quite surprised how easily they disengaged from the cable box. (I did help them along a little bit by actually disconnecting it for 2 weeks, so they would have to learn how to use the Roku and search for what they wanted to watch.)

Then I began searching telephone replacement options. I have a pay-as-you-go cell phone that I don't use often, and no one else in the family has one, so I need land line service. I checked in to Magicjack and Vonage. I have friends who've used both; they've had good and bad to say about both. My preference was to go with Magicjack since it's $40 for the first YEAR, and $20 for each YEAR after that - but they don't let you keep your number. So hubby has opted for Vonage - $16 per month - our device is due to arrive next week. I'll let you know how that goes.

So obviously we are beyond April, and we hadn't made any decision about whether or not to keep cable. Actually, I decided we should drop it, but hubby is afraid of not seeing The Weather Channel, MSNBC, and live football games. In my world, these don't matter, so I was good to go. Then I discovered PlayOn...

Stay tuned for Cutting the Cable, Part II - The Decision....

High Fructose Corn Syrup

Seriously, by now, pretty much everyone knows about the evils of HFCS. But when did they start putting it in sandwich bread?! What? Seriously?! Sugar is listed as an ingredient, but HFCS comes before it. Are they intentionally trying to kill every last person in the nation? "They" can't even use the excuse that it's just sweetening if sugar is an ingredient and the product is SANDWICH BREAD.

Not sure what I'm ranting about or why? Food for thought, click here.