10 Ways to Save Money on the Paleo Diet
1. Have a cow, man!
We have done this several times and it is the best way I have found to save money! We found a farmer in a farming town about an hour north and we go quarterly to get our share of a cow, sheep or goat. Sometimes we find other friends to go in on it or the farmer will hook us up with another family. Grass fed beef this way is about $3 a lb for awesome cuts like tenderloin and ribeye. Also he throws in some extras like a tongue and organ meat no charge! Tip: A regular freezer can easily fit a quarter of a cow.
Find a grass fed farmer in your area at Eatwild.com
You can also get great grass fed beef here
The sign of great chef is taking a cut of an animal that many would throw away and make it into something delicious. -Anthony Bourdain
2. Eat organs
If you really want to save money on paleo you will need to get over your fear of organ meats (from grass fed or pastured animals). Liver especially is nature’s multivitamin so it is important to eat it weekly. I have several easy liver recipes such as duck pate and chopped liver. The tongue and oxtail are two more cuts that are usually cheaper. Check out my pate recipe and chopped liver with eggs.
Where to buy: Get quality organs here or in the Bay Area from BackYard CSA, tell Tiffany I sent you!
3. Eat more fat
Grass fed butter, ghee and coconut oil are usually cheaper than meat. For example, when I eat 4 oz of meat with 2 Tbsp of butter, I get full way faster. Sometimes grass fed beef is cheaper when it has a higher fat percentage and this fat is the best kind to be eating because it is full of the fat burner called called CLA that is often sold as an expensive supplement.
You can also save money by making our own grass fed beef tallow because many farmers will give the fat for free. Try my recipe here.
4. Go to the farmers market
Grocery stores have a lot of overhead, employees, rent and advertising which is reflected in the price. Not to mention the cost of flying food that is out of season from Chile or New Zealand, for example. Buying direct from a farmer at an outdoor market a consumer sidesteps many of these costs.
5. Clean out that freezer
I see people doing this all the time: their fridge is full but they go out to eat because they are just tired of cooking or cleaning up. Another issue is that people forget what they have in the freezer because they are just not motivated to thaw it out.
Easy Tip: One thing I do is move meat from the freezer to the refrigerator then in the morning it will be ready to throw in a crock pot or just make burgers for an easy dinner.
6. Do a pantry double take
I have ton of cans of sardines and salmon in my pantry that are begging to be eaten. Sardines are great on a salad and cans of salmon can be made into an easy salmon cake recipe in a jiffy. I bet you have a lot of cans of meat sitting around too. Make a easy dinner and save a few bucks tonight! I get great sustainable sardines and salmon here.
I also find I can make endless meals with cans of coconut milk. Try my easy coconut curry recipe here.
7. Eat with the seasons
Apples in the fall are cheaper than in the middle of summer, same goes with strawberries in the middle of summer. Try to tune in with what is in season in your area or at least your country and it will save tons of dough.
8. Be like the French: use broth to stretch protein
In times of great hardship many cultures used broth to make their meat go further. I have read tales that this is how the French survived the revolution. By making a small amount of meat into a soup with lots of bone broth and veggies, a little can seem like a lot.
Get my easy broth recipe here
Or buy some already made here but please avoid store-bought because of MSG and other dangerous additives.
9. Use Gelatin
Gelatin has 12 grams of protein in two tablespoons! I eat it in smoothies, puddings, jello, and pies. I have even heard people putting it in their coffee. It helps with arthritis, preventing wrinkles, liver detox, cellulite and so much more. It is so cheap to buy when you think about the cost per serving. You can also just congeal your bone broth for extra savings.
Find Grass fed Kosher gelatin here from Amazon
Or find another brand I like here.
10. Shop at warehouse stores
Buying clubs like Costco and Sam’s have amazing deals on many great Paleo food items. Costco even have started having Kerrygold grass fed butter at my Costco year round. They have organic lettuce, carrots and broccoli at the one here in San Francisco. Also they have great deals on frozen organic berries and organic green beans at Costco (Sorry we do not have a Sam’s club here).
Buyer beware: I do not tend to buy my meat here because it is not grass fed, only organic meaning cows will be fed an natural diet of corn which creates a poor fatty acid ratio. Watch out too for farmed fish that is fed corn and soy also ruining the omega’s 3 balance. Chicken from buying clubs has issues even if it is organic. Read more about my guide to good chicken/ eggs here.
Bonus Tip: Buy meat/fish on special or marked down then put it in the freezer to stop time. I often see things marked down on Friday sales at Whole Foods then I stock up and put them in the freezer. Sell by dates are just that and things can last a lot longer when frozen.
Wanting to get started on Paleo?
Not sure where to start?
I recommend this great little guide with over 90 full color recipes, shopping lists and more!
Get this great e-book for getting started on a grain free lifestyle!
Benefits of Gelatin with Paleo and Low Carb Ambrosia Mold
I loved my grandma’s Ambrosia salad as a kid at family reunions but I am sure it had crazy stuff in it like marshmallows and duke’s mayo. This is my attempt to recreate those flavors and warm memories with this rejuvenating spring recipe.
I am obsessed with Gelatin as many of you know because of it’s amazing healing benefits. Read all about it’s health promoting properties and see my great Ambrosia recipe here.
I was honored to post on my friend Karen’s Living Low Carb One Day at a Time Blog while she is on the Low carb Cruise.
My Husband’s 30 Day Paleo Challenge Results
A little background about my husband
My husband has always been an athlete and hasn’t had to worry too much about his weight. He was an award-winning swimmer in high school and also excelled at track and field (throwing a discus). He is also a good soccer player and has a game every week with a group of friends.
He is 6’2, he’s naturally muscular and he has always subscribed to the theory that exercising more is all that matters when it comes to weight loss. But a few years ago his “run more” approach was no longer working. Plus he had some injuries that kept bothering him no matter how long he rested between work outs.
When we went on a trip to San Diego in Fall of 2011 I took a bunch of photos (as usual) and my husband did not like what he saw. He had gained about 15 pounds above his normal weight of 210-215. He was feeling a little uncomfortable at 232 lbs when we went on the trip, but you would never know it since he is always smiling and confident.
Trying a 30 Day Paleo challenge: (aka life without bread)
I convinced my husband to try Paleo in October 2011 (over a year after I started) and he saw some great improvements in his body composition. He felt more energetic after his 30 day trial and he never turned back to his old bread-gorging ways. The best part was that he convinced himself by trying the diet and experiencing the benefits first hand. I was excited that he let me take a before and after photo but he has not let me share it….until now!
He found that nagging aches and pains went away, not to mention 15 pounds of extra weight!! He even found that he had more focus at his demanding day job where he works hard as chef at a busy hotel in downtown San Francisco, CA.
Meeting like minded people
My husband attended to the Low Carb Cruise in 2012 and that experience really bonded us. Plus it was good for him to meet a lot of other people living a Paleo lifestyle, with whom he had things in common. Read all about the cruise here.
My Chef cooking up a Paleo feast!
We were inspired to write a cookbook!
After seeing results in his own health my husband decided to help me teach a Paleo cooking class in the summer of 2012. See some photos of the cooking class here.
That was such a success we decided to write our own cookbook incorporating both of our backgrounds.
Read the full post about our cookbook
Read the full post about our cookbook and see sneak peak photos here:
Big News: Our New Mediterranean Paleo Cookbook!
A bit of background
If you read my blog or follow my Facebook page you know I love to eat nourishing traditional foods that heal from the inside out. Being on the Paleo diet since summer 2010 has helped me a lot with my health. When I started back then I had adrenal fatigue so bad I could barely get out of bed. I had driven myself to exhaustion on a low fat diet full of tofu and fake foods. I ran two half marathons in 2010 which basically flat lined my cortisol. I had always pushed myself with exercise or extreme diets since I was 15 years old. I constantly thought I was lazy or unmotivated if I was not suffering on a treadmill or starving on low calorie meal plan.
Learning the hard way
I also found out in spring 2010 that I had Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and that really put a cramp in my style. I found a Weston A Price nutritionist who taught me that I could eat a wonderful diet full of fat and grass fed protein while healing myself. This discovery brought amazing, like-minded nutrition friends (such as Balanced Bites) into my life and I have been hooked on Paleo ever since.
Slow and steady wins the race
I have been on the mend for the past three years even though the process is slower than I had hoped. Stress management, proper nutrition, and sleep are always the on the front burner. I even got the news on a few days ago that my thyroid antibodies are 1/3 of what they were when I was first diagnosed. They went from 600 to 200, which means my immune system is healing and the attack on my thyroid is slowing down. I feel like I am on the right track!
My husband tries a Paleo challenge
I convinced my husband to try Paleo in October 2011 (over a year after I started) and he saw some great improvements in his body composition. He felt more energetic after his 30 day trial and he never turned back to his old bread gorging ways. The best part was that he convinced himself by trying it and experiencing the benefits firsthand.
He found that nagging aches and pains went away, not to mention 15 pounds of extra weight!! He even had found that he had more focus at his demanding day job where he works hard as chef at a busy hotel in downtown San Francisco, CA. See his before and after photos here.
Teaching A Cooking Class
In the fall of 2012 Juliette Starette co-owner of San Francisco Crossfit asked me to lead a cooking class to teach her students about how to cook some new and interesting Paleo dishes.
I had never really thought about doing a cooking class before before but since my husband is a professional chef I asked for his help. He came up with a wonderful, meaty menu that adapted many of the dishes he grew up with to Paleo parameters.
I especially enjoyed teaching with my husband and some people said we had a banter that reminded them of Ricky and Lucy of “I Love Lucy”. The class was a big hit and all the participants loved the Mediterranean inspired cuisine.
Two schools of thought coming together
This experience of working so well together at the cooking class gave us the idea to write a cookbook melding our two styles. My cooking style focuses on the therapeutic angle emphasizing traditional grain free foods, full of nutrient dense staples like grass fed butter, liver and bone broth.
My husband draws his inspiration for his dishes from his home city of Algiers, which is on the Mediterranean Sea next to Morocco and Tunisia. He grew up eating lots of wholesome ancestral foods, including organic fruits and vegetables, wild sardines, pastured eggs/chicken, and traditional slow cooked Tagines with grass fed beef or lamb.
A variety of tasty influences:
We decided to include the healthy aspects of the Mediterranean diet in our e-book with lots of seasonal vegetables, olive oil, wild seafood, fresh fruits, raw dairy, nuts and seeds, omega 3’s from fish and grass fed animals with pastured eggs and poultry. Our book also has many anti-inflammatory herbs/spices including cinnamon, nutmeg, cilantro, ginger and saffron that will wow your palate.
The southern Mediterranean region is “melting pot” of flavors after many invasions and occupations from the north (European) and Middle East, making the food especially vibrant and exotic.
Many of the recipes my husband has learned are passed down from his hearty Berber ancestors. Many of these recipes are not written down and only known by family members. These traditional people have made their home in the mountains of Algeria and Morocco for thousands of years living off the land.
Algeria was French colony for 130 years, ending in 1962, which also influenced the food of the region. My husband also incorporates French flavors into many of our dishes including lots of rich buttery sauces, soufflés and custards.
Cooking Full Circle: our southern Mediterranean tour
Our culinary experience became full circle April 2013 when my husband took me to Algiers for two weeks. We also visited Paris for one week and I saw how popular the Magreb cuisine was there too. The food is straight form the ocean or fresh picked from the field the same day. The food was so simple yet the spice combinations took your taste buds to another world.
I was overwhelmed with amazing vegetable dishes, grilled meat skewers and slow cooked Tagines that melted in my mouth. Eating a Paleo diet in Algiers was a breeze because the people there still include traditional and ancestral foods in their diet.
I was thrilled to get authentic cooking lessons from my mother-in-law who has been preparing fresh dishes for her 9 children for over 50 years. My sisters-in-law even contributed a few recipes and showed me their personal culinary touches. I was overwhelmed with the warmth of the people there and was delighted to see how life revolves around home-cooked, nourishing family meals.
Bringing the flavors home to you:
We are putting all the fresh flavors of the Southern Mediterranean together in a wonderful new e-book!
It has all the flavors of the region without the hard to digest grains and legumes. Most recipes will work with healing lifestyles including: Paleo, Primal, Gaps, SCD and low carb diets.
If you eat grains feel free to add them to any dish for a comforting meal. These nourishing recipes will cover all the gastronomic bases with plenty of extras.
9 Benefits of Matcha Green Tea: weight loss, alzheimers prevention, blood sugar regulation and more!
From GFG: This is another great guest post by my trusty intern: Coco Noel. Be sure to like follow her smart and informative posts on Facebook! I invited her over to brunch recently and she brought some Matcha green tea. We mixed it with hot water, coconut milk and a little stevia and it was divine. I had actually never had it before and she was the first person to bring it to my attention. I hope you enjoy learning more!
9 Benefits of Matcha Green Tea
First there were pomegranates. Then came goji berries. Now, it’s matcha green tea that everyone’s fussing over. Fortunately, matcha lives up to its hype. For starters, it contains 10x the antioxidants of pomegranates and 5x the antioxidants of goji berries.
Matcha is essentially very finely powdered green tea leaves that are mixed into liquid and consumed whole. Unlike regular steeped green tea, when you drink matcha, you’re ingesting the entire crushed up tea leaves rather than just the leaf-infused water.
This means you’re getting a much more concentrated dose of the myriad health benefits of green tea, some of which are listed below:
- Reduce the risk of cancer: A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that women who regularly drank green tea had a lower risk of colon, stomach and throat cancer. Other studies have shown an associated decrease in prostate cancer and found a link suggesting green tea may slow down the growth of tumors in breast cancer patients.
- Weight loss: Approximately 2 cups of green tea will speed up your metabolism by nearly 5% in a 24 hour period. This isn’t a miracle diet solution, but definitely a plus.
- Immunity: Green tea may help you fight off illness by altering the makeup of intestinal bacteria. Findings suggest that green tea can also reduce allergic responses and asthma.
- Diabetes: Not only does green tea help improve insulin sensitivity in type 2 diabetics, but one study found that drinking more than six cups of green tea per day slashed the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 33%.
- Oral health: Green tea strengthens your teeth, thus decreasing your risk of cavities. Its antibacterial properties thwart the effects of the bacteria most responsible for gum disease. And it may even help ward off bad breath!
- Liver health: Green tea prevented liver damage in rats who were kept drunk on alcohol for 4 straight weeks. (Talk about a bender!) It also destroys free radicals in people with fatty liver disease.
- Skin health: German researchers found that drinking six cups of green tea per day can help your skin be more resistant to sunburn. Some studies even suggest that components of green tea can help prevent skin cancer when applied directly to the skin.
- Alzheimer’s prevention: Although there is no known cure for Alzheimer’s disease, numerous studies suggest that green tea may effectively help to prevent the disease. A compound in green tea reduces the formation of plaque-like deposits in the brain, which are often indicative of Alzheimer’s disease.
- Relax: Green tea increases the production of alpha brain waves to calm the body.
The Matcha Advantage
Many of the studies done on the effects of green tea are based on pretty high levels of the stuff – from about 2 to 10 cups daily. Before you quit your job and commit the rest of your life solely to drinking green tea and going pee, check this out:
One cup of matcha green tea is equivalent to 10 cups of green tea in terms of antioxidant content.
But wait! There’s more. Epigallocatechin gallate (say that five times fast) is a polyphenol antioxidant found in green tea. Commonly referred to as EGCG, this is what’s considered to be responsible for nearly all the health benefits of green tea, including those listed above. I hope you’re wearing your party hat, because I’m about to give you cause to celebrate…
A study in the Journal of Chromatography found that matcha had 137 times more available anti-cancer EGCG than China Green Tips green tea.
That means that by drinking one cup of matcha green tea, you can reap the antioxidant benefits of 10 cups of traditionally steeped green tea and the EGCG benefits of 137 cups of China Green Tips.
Recommendations for incorporating matcha green tea into your diet:
- ½ teaspoon – 2 teaspoons of matcha per day
- While it’s relatively low in caffeine, avoid consuming late at night
- Note: Only drink matcha with low-protein liquids like water, coconut milk, rice milk, or almond milk. Research suggests that protein, particularly that in cow’s milk, deactivates the EGCG. This is no good! For this reason, it may be wise to drink your matcha away from meals (which is better for digestion anyway).
- Avoid commercial matcha green tea concoctions, as they are low in matcha but extremely high in calories and sugar (not to mention often mixed with dairy, thus negating their health benefits!). Peet’s Coffee has a 16 ounce matcha green tea freddo, which delivers 250 calories and 44 grams of sugar – and that’s without the whipped cream. Even worse, a 16 ounce sweetened matcha green tea latte from Starbucks has 350 calories and 55 grams of sugar! That’s very likely to do you much more harm than good.
Make your own at home for best results:
- Try a Matcha Refresher: put ¼ – ½ tsp of matcha into a 16 ounce water bottle and shake till dissolved
- Or make a Matcha Latte: Whisk ½ tsp in a pot of 2/3 cup almond or coconut milk and 1/3 cup water and bring to a simmer. Add a bit of stevia, coconut nectar or other raw honey to taste.
Where to Find a Matcha Online: click here
Thanks for reading! -Coco
Leave a comment about how you would like to use Matcha ?
http://www.naturalnews.com/037839_green_tea_cancer_prevention_cardiovascular_disease.html#ixzz2Sadr5HRY
http://www.med.nyu.edu/content?ChunkIID=21771
http://www.jbc.org/content/early/2013/02/05/jbc.M112.400358
