Women's Interests
How To Buy Food Cheaper And More Healthy
By MSN Money
Jan 22, 2010 - 1:34:20 AM

Cost of grocery shopping getting you down? Maybe you're buying the wrong stuff.

Lately I've seen and/or gotten killer deals on:

• Grains -- rolled oats, 2.25 cents per bowl; rice, 60 cents a pound.

• Fruit -- apples, 58 cents a pound; bananas, 59 cents a pound; grapes, 99 cents a pound; dried plums (yeah, prunes got an image makeover), about 6 cents per serving.
• Vegetables -- carrots, 59 cents a pound; frozen corn, 99 cents a pound; dry beans, 70 cents a pound.
• Protein -- eggs, $1.49 for 18; whole fryers, 69 cents a pound; ground beef, $1.66 a pound.

Most of the above deals were loss leaders, and a few required coupons. But clearly, cheap eats can be had, and they're not limited to ramen noodles. The foodstuffs I'm talking about are not only cheap, they're healthful -- to you and to your budget.

Of course, they also take a little work. You don't just rip open a container, nuke the contents and declare it dinner.

Food tends to be one of our biggest fixed expenses, but it's also the one with the most wiggle room. It's hard to renegotiate a mortgage or a car payment , but you can learn to roast a chicken or soak some beans.

Maybe you're thinking "But I don't have time to cook!" or "I don't know how to use dry beans!" Well, that's why slow cookers, foodie TV shows and food blogs were invented.

I asked a few experts for some ideas about healthful nourishment that costs less than $1 per serving. Often, that dollar will get you a lot of servings.

If you can read, you can cook. So read on.

Where to find inexpensive eats

Supermarkets are great for loss leaders. Most of the deals I mentioned were from traditional grocery stores. But, as I noted in " The dollar food pantry," it's wise to think outside the supermarket. Inexpensive and healthful food can also be found at drugstores, grocery outlets, big-box stores and dollar stores.

Yes, dollar stores . The ones near me don't have fresh or frozen items, but they do sell rice, pasta, dried fruit and canned tomatoes. I'm not as lucky as Billy Vasquez, who writes a blog called The 99 Cent Chef. His neighborhood's 99¢ Only store carries things such as potatoes, acorn and spaghetti squash, onions, dry beans, frozen tilapia filets, rice, pasta, beans and other tasty basics.

Vasquez also shops at grocery stores and ethnic markets for intriguing ingredients. "I'll go anywhere for a bargain," he says.

So will I. Two doors down from my local dollar store is a grocery outlet whose stock is ever-changing but always includes cheap basics. An Asian market in my neighborhood sells some of the cheapest produce around, plus chicken-leg quarters for 89 cents a pound. That's also where I get dry beans and rice, in 10-pound bags. (The per-pound cost tends to drop as the bags get bigger, but I don't have room to store larger quantities.)

Specialty stores such as Trader Joe's or Whole Foods can feature surprisingly low prices as well. Even drugstores offer loss leaders such as canned fish and dried fruit. Walgreens, for example, has a line of $1 raisins; dried figs, cranberries and mangos; and other shelf-stable fruits.

Take all of those foods and add cheap, healthful items like lentils, couscous, nuts, rutabagas, tofu, acorn squash and parsnips. Now imagine dishes like Moroccan lentil soup, jalapeño corn pudding, roasted winter root vegetables, lamb vindaloo and baked sweet potatoes with chilies, cumin and lime.

All can be made in a slow cooker, the most foolproof way to cook. Put in some ingredients, turn the dial on low and go to work. Dinner is ready when you get home -- and there will probably be leftovers for brown-bag lunches.

"If you're just learning to cook from scratch, there really isn't an easier way to cook," says Stephanie O'Dea, whose blog, A Year of Slow Cooking, recently morphed into a book, " Make It Fast, Cook It Slow: The Big Book of Everyday Slow Cooking."

O'Dea says she is not a "foodie" but rather a work-at-home mom looking for inexpensive and healthful dishes for her family of four. For her, and maybe for you, slow cookers are a perfect match because they don't need much attention. O'Dea says, "I'm not the best at following recipes with the stove and the oven. I tend to wander off."

For more easy recipes, try the blog Cheap Healthy Good by Kristen Swensson. She's a self-taught cook who until recently had never touched a leafy green. "I could boil pasta, and that was about it." Now she writes a mix of simple and more-challenging recipes for party foods, "one-dish meals with good leftover potential" and meals made with basic pantry staples. One of her recent posts: " A beginner's guide to beans." There -- no excuses.

Have a plan

Kelly Horton, the founder of an education and advocacy group called Connect Nutrition, knows many Americans think that cooking is hard or that it takes too much of their time. That's a point of view we've been fed, as it were, by the food industry.

"It's in their best interests that we buy all those packaged foods and (go) out to restaurants," says Horton, who has a master's degree in food policy and applied nutrition.

So start with a plan: a week's worth of menus and a shopping list of what you need to cook those meals. Stick to the list -- no impulse buys -- and you'll save money .

"I cook dinner every night, and it takes about 20 minutes," Horton says. "But that's because I spend 45 minutes planning on Sunday."

She suggests borrowing cookbooks from a library or using online search engines: "Type in ' how to cook a turnip."

Fresh food is best

Turnips? Is this sounding too healthful for you? My theory is that some people hate vegetables simply because they've never had freshly picked ones. If you have room to garden or if you live near farms or farmers markets, take advantage.

Horton does much of her shopping at farmers markets. She notes that seasonal produce is cheapest, whether it's bought at an open-air market or a grocery. So if you're on a budget, skip the supermarket's imported berries or the last of the farmers' heirloom tomatoes in favor of regionally grown apples and cheap-as-dirt root veggies.

If there's community-supported agriculture in your area, consider splitting a subscription with a friend or another family.