The United States government has a host of useful web sites. Even the IRS site is informational. I’ve written about various government resources in the past, such as:
- The U.S. Department of Labor’s statistics on minimum wage workers.
- The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s information on the cost of food.
Today I discovered another USDA site: The Food Stamp Nutrition Connection. Though ostensibly designed for low-income audiences, this site is probably worth visiting for others interested in healthful eating on a budget. At its core, the Food Stamp Nutrition Connection is a database of cheap, healthy recipes. The recipe finder allows users to search by ingredients, by recipe name, or by topic (such as “eat more fruits and vegetables”).
Recipes include nutrition information and recipe cost (as well as cost per serving). Users may rate recipes and leave reviews. Here are some sample recipes:
This isn’t gourmet food, and the recipe database only contains a few hundred items. But if your goal is cheap and healthy, this could be a fine resource. (If you want a wider selection of recipes, or if you’re not concerned with cost, check out Epicurious.)
[USDA: The Food Stamp Nutrition Connection]
This article is about Food, Frugality, Money Hacks, Tools
SEARCH FOR RECENT ARTICLES
both your links for the actual Food Stamp Nutrition site are pointing to an archived blog post of yours. just thought i’d point that out. nonetheless an obscure, good find!
loading....
Oops! And my wife caught an errant apostrophe-it’s where it should have been possessive. Not my best editing job.
loading....
Wow! Thanks for the link to Epicurious, I’ve never run into that site before in my recipe searches, but it’s an instant favorite. The links to the detailed nutrition break-down is wonderful! I will be referring to this a lot in the future
loading....
Good find – I have been looking for a site with inexpensive yet tasty recipes – I guess I will have to try them out to see how tasty they are!!
loading....
JD – This is big issue for me — the myth that it costs more to eat healthy. My contention is that a “food cost pyramid” would be the exact inverse of the USDA “food pyramid”. In other words, the foods you should consuming the least (e.g. meat, dairy, processed foods, etc), cost the most, and the other way around (e.g. beans, veggies, etc. cost the least). “Proof positive,” I say, “the if there’s an Intelligent Designer at work in the Universe, she’s a Cheapskate!”
Stay Cheap!
Jeff Yeager, The Ultimate Cheapskate (aka The Titan of Tightwads)
loading....
I can vouch for the Skillet Lasagna although I use 1/2 a spaghetti seasoning envelope in it. My kids love it and it is quick cheap and easy. Beats Hamburger helper!
It’s my first time here. I’m looking forward to digging deeper and reading some of the archives.
loading....
off-topic: anyone have any opinions on the validity of the “money as debt” video located here” “Money as Debt”.
sorry about the off-topic comment, but emails haven’t been responded to in the past and i am genuinely curious about the get rich slowly blogger and readers’ opinion on this subject.
thank you!
loading....
Creamy — this is an excellent use for the forums. I’m not intentionally ignoring you, but that’s a 47-minute video! I’ve had similar things sent me by others, as well, and I just haven’t made time to watch them. They’re on my list of things to do, though.
Seriously, though — try the forums.
loading....
The cost per serving and recipe seemed kind of low to me on the Food Stamp Nutrition Connection.
Tortilla Pizza
Ingredients:
2 small flour or corn tortillas
vegetable oil or margarine
1 can (16 ounce) refried beans
1/4 cup chopped onion
2 ounces diced fresh or canned green chili peppers
6 Tablespoons red taco sauce
3 cups chopped vegetables, such as broccoli, mushrooms, spinach, and red bell pepper
1/2 cup cheese, shredded part-skim mozzarella
1/2 cup chopped, fresh cilantro
Cost:
Per Recipe: $ 3.75
Per Serving: $ 0.62
Doesn’t that seem low?
loading....
gotcha boss, will do!
loading....
“eat more fruits and vegetables”
Always excellent advice, but the cost of doing so is rising disproportionally to inflation
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071205115240.htm
Still, eating up on the local veggies will pay you back later in better health, but some folks on food stamps are just getting by week to week. (or however often they pass out the funds)
loading....
This is excellent! Thank you — very helpful. I went to The Recipe Finder and typed in “noodles” and up came a lot of recipes that I will be trying when I get the time. Good health is so important.
loading....
To JD: The USDA site is one I’ve always found helpful. Thanks for linking it so others can use it, too.
To Kat: It depends on where you shop, but I don’t think the cost per serving is horribly low. But maybe a little, especially since dairy prices have gone so high. The problem I see is that, unless you plan on making a double batch or using the ingredients for a different recipe, you may end up throwing perfectly good food away. For example, green chiles usually come in an a 4 oz. can, not a 2 oz. can. There are a lot more than 2 tortillas in a package. And unless you got your three cups of those 5 chopped veggies from the salad bar, you’d probably wind up with a lot of leftover veggies. If the excess isn’t used, this would be a very costly recipe, IMO.
loading....
To say that I’m a cooking novice is an understatement, but I’m looking to improve my condition, and always my waistline so I’ll check it out. Thanks!
loading....
Search recipes by price & more…
Via Get Rich Slowly: The US government’s Food Stamp Nutrition Connection has a recipe finder that lets ……
loading....
Well, it’s hard for me to say it costs more to eat healthy than not; eating out tends to be the least healthy and it’s certainly more expensive! However, I will state that organically grown products tend to cost more than their non-organically grown counterparts… my lady friend is a vegetarian, and there are lots of cost issues with that too.
loading....
Yeah, that price seems very low. Around here, refried beans are $2 to $3 a can.
loading....
At the Food 4 Less where I get my groceries every week, purchased on sale (it’s sad, I know the sale prices like I know my zip code):
Small corn tortillas – 30 pack/$1.00
Margarine – 1 lb/$0.88
Refried beans – 2 cans/$1.00
White onions – 4 lbs/$1.00
Bell peppers – 10/$10.00
Shredded cheese – 1 bag/$2.50
Cilantro – 4 bunches/$1.00
Not sure about the taco sauce or chilis, since I don’t use them. I’d probably use a pack of taco sauce mix (2/$1.00) and leave the chilis out. (Family hates spicy food.) I’m guessing they’re 2/$1 or 4/$1 on sale.
So here’s how much it would cost me to make the recipe.
Tortillas: $0.07
Margarine: $0.03
Refried beans: $0.50
Onion: $0.13
Taco sauce: $0.50
Bell pepper: $1.00
Cheese: $1.25
Cilantro: $0.13
That’s a total of $3.61, with nothing left over that isn’t already a staple for me. The chiles would probably push me over, but I could bring the price back down again by getting a large brick of cheese instead of a bag of pre-shredded.
I live just outside of Los Angeles.
loading....
Try hillbillyhousewife.com! Don’t let the name fool you. She has HUNDREDS of delicious, low cost and healthy recipes. She even has an emergency $45 and $75 per week food budget. We use the $75 version, modified for us, and eat very well. I feed myself, wife and 3 growing children on it!
loading....
I find it amazing how shrewd people are with saving money. I’m young (23) and one of my BIGGEST expenses is eating out (the gf contributes A LOT to this cost). I have come to the realization that I need to cut down on eating out and use that money for my Roth IRA. Time is really a constraint for me though, I work FT and go to school FT. My mom recommended cooking for a few days or a week, but that can really get repetitive. I find it how unhealthy it is to eat-out though. It doesn’t help that I work in SoHo, NY where food is EXTREMELY expensive…
loading....
http://www.SavingDinner.com is my saving grace.
It’s a service that provides the recipes and the shopping list all in one so that you never buy things you don’t end up using.
I used to go to the store with only a vague idea of what I wanted to cook for the week and would spend hundreds of dollars.
Now I know exactly what I need and I only buy that. That’s let me buy better quality food for the money, instead of useless groceries that go bad in the fridge waiting to be used…
You don’t have to buy their service though, a few hours a week planning menus would yield the same results. If you add thrifty recipes to menu planning – that’s where you save the most. Thanks for the recipes!
loading....