Food Budget

A few months ago I sent an e-mail out to some friends around town. It was part personal growth for me, part education, part outreach and part question. I wanted to start a group called Green Salem to discuss topics regarding green living. I am in no way a "green expert," but I wanted to start a dialog between peers. Fortunately, this concept was embraced and a group formed. We are holding monthly meetings. Our current topic has been around food. At the last meeting I presented a program to eat local, organic and whole grain with a food budget of $15 per person per week. I present this to the Green Parenting class that I teach.

In order to practice what I preach, I decided to follow the program with my family. Since today is the beginning of the month, this was a good day to start. In hindsight, I should have started this with empty cupboards to properly come up with a budget. so I am going to have to approximate for the first week. Part of the plan is to avoid processed foods, canned goods and white flour/sugar. I am a bit obsessive about having stapels on hand. I always have an assortment of grains, pastas and beans on hand so I can pull together just about anything. As you can see by the first picture, our cupboards are not bare.

For this first day I made a Vegetable Quiche, Kashi Pilaf and green salad. I won't post the individual recipies, but if you ever want one of the ones I discuss, just e-mail me and I will forward it to you.

I made my own homemade whole wheat crust for the quiche. Nora Beth thought this was fun.

Here is the completed meal. It was very tasty. I just used up some leftover veggies from the fridge for the quiche. A very yummy meal.

With the leftover scraps from making the crust, I cut into rough slices, brushed with butter and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. A very yummy treat to end the meal with.