healthy grocery shopping with no money

i have limited money to spend on grocery shopping too, but i always buy fresh fruits & veggies first and use them for the bulk of my meals. and bananas are always super cheap...they're a lifesaver! i also buy frozen veggie burgers and canned soup. my personal downfall is wanting to buy stuff like nuts or trail mix...i love those things, but they are ridiculously expensive so i try not to buy them! not to mention i have a hard time limiting my portions of them!

LENTILS!!!

Use them in soups, salads, seasoned for tacos/burritoes...

very versatile, easy to prepare, come in several colors, highly nutritious and best of all, CHEAP

i need some grocery shopping advice. weve been super low on cash, and the money we do have, we spend in all the wrong places. if you have zero food (very limited condiments) and only $100, how would you spend it? (obviously we are dieting) bad food is always the cheapest food. semi vegetarian, low sugar, low sodium, high potasium diet. $100 has to last at least a week to feed 2 people.

Personally I don't agree that bad food is the cheapest. Buy in bulk: rice, so many types of beans, Quinoa, oats, wheatberry, farmers markets or on sale frozen veggies (from the States with nothing else added). Purchase eggs on sale, make your own Greek yogurt or regular (search Google, tons of ideas on making your own..pretty much whatever you're looking to make, to save loads of money). Buy in Season!

Take some beans, Quinoa etc. and sprout them for a variety, oh...the list is endless... Seek and you will find good healthy food out there for pennies! Particularly if you're semi-vegetarian as you shared, it's even easier.

Healthy food IS cheaper than buying junk, if you make the right choices, the healthy food will keep you satiated far longer and you won't waste money on sugar, preservatives, extra salt, packaging etc.

All the best!

Here in Pittsburgh (western PA) we have a lot of local farms. They sell these CSA boxes of produce .... a ton of produce for $25.00. You place an order and then pick up your box at a specific location. The boxes are overwhelming for one or two people so sometimes people share a box. I'm pretty sure you can subscribe to a CSA box/bag anywhere in the US.

Here is a little blurb I pulled from the web:

Thinking about signing up for a CSA but want to learn more about the idea before you commit? Read on.

Over the last 20 years, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has become a popular way for consumers to buy local, seasonal food directly from a farmer. Here are the basics: a farmer offers a certain number of "shares" to the public. Typically the share consists of a box of vegetables, but other farm products may be included. Interested consumers purchase a share (aka a "membership" or a "subscription") and in return receive a box (bag, basket) of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season.

Love, love, LOVE my CSA each week, it's a lifesaver!

Definitely agree with everything said here. I think you got all the answers you need!

But gotta say about that CSA...good luck. We did that one summer and our "varied" boxes were always full of eggplant and fruit flies.

I think you might need to seek out a more legit CSA as I've been using my local CSA and never ever had a problem. Ah and learn to embrace Eggplant, so ways to use it, Eggplant Lasagna, roasted eggplant, salads.. Google for a ton more ways to enjoy it, so healthy for you too!

I would buy veggies (depending on where you live..stop by and Aldi's first)..then I would make soup...if using a chicken ( semi vegitarian u list so idk) make chicken soup..buy noodles etc on the cheap. Use the legs etc in the soup. Save the chicken breast for another dinner. Buy 10 lbs of potatoes for like $1.50. Have baked potatoes one day..potatoe soup one day ..buy two bread bowls to put it in..I would buy beans to make bean burgers (recipes on net) cheapy buns at aldi's..yogurts, salads, fruits for lunches..You get the idea. I think in order to get by, you have to cook for a day for the week and you will be fine. Tuna salads...etc. Onc enight maybe have breakfast for dinner...banana pancakes with maple syrup I love sometimes!

I don't spend much over $100/week for four of us (teenage kids), I'm not particularly shopping for cheap food, and we don't use the cheapest supermarket. We just tend to eat cheap things and we buy hardly any processed food. MFP is a great help because of portion control. I do have a freezer.

-- meat in big chunks, on the bone where possible. You eat it once when you cook it; once using the leftover cooked meat, and once when you boil up the bones for stock to make soup. A decent sized chicken feeds four adults three times each, as does a half shoulder of lamb or pork or a beef joint. We also use a lot of ground meat, particularly beef and lamb. -- Edit I've just seen you don't eat any meat... but this still might apply to your husband and I bet you can still eat soups made with meat stock.

-- if you work in offices with a microwave, get into the habit of taking smaller portions of your dinner for lunch two days later. It's so much cheaper than buying lunch and it can be really delicious.

-- leftovers are always useful, even odd little things like two carrots or half a cup of gravy.

-- fish is expensive but you should have it once a week; coley and hake are cheaper, as are squid and mussels. Budget for it -- and maybe skip it the first week when you're building up your storecupboard.

-- eggs are super cheap, incredibly nourishing, and you can make dinner out of them once a week or so.

-- beans and lentils are your friend; you can eat vegetarian, or you can add them to meat stocks or bulk out ground meat. Dried beans are much cheaper than tinned beans and taste better.

-- lots of fresh fruit and vegetables; get them from a market and buy what is cheap and in season. Learn to like whatever that is. We also sometimes get a veg box; the company we get them from tell us in advance what's in them, so I plan meals that use those veg. Like this week we've got two celeriac; one of them is being mixed 50/50 with mashed potato to top a fish pie, and the other is getting turned into remoulade to have with lamb chops.

-- lots of tinned and frozen fruit and vegetables; that's how you cope when you don't get to the market or when you don't have a lot of time. Look for ones in water (veg) or fruit juice (fruit), rather than brine or syrup.

-- baking your own bread doesn't save much per loaf, but it adds up and it means that you can have bread without having to run to the store for it, or having to guess how much bread you'll need. When I do buy bread, I often freeze half the loaf so that there's no risk of it going off.

-- by comparison, baking your own cookies, cakes, breakfast bars and so on saves a fortune, and you can keep an eye on exactly what goes in them. If your husband like granola bars, we make Nigella Lawson's breakfast bars regularly.

-- local ethnic grocers are much cheaper for beans and carb staples like rice, pasta, couscous, bulgar wheat, as well as all spices.

-- Popcorn is the best and cheapest snack. The cheapest brand (ethnic grocer again) is very nearly as good as gourmet popcorn.

-- If you don't have all the herbs and spices recipes ask for, then in the first week get a pot of dried mixed herbs and use a teaspoon of dried mixed herbs in everything instead of what the recipe asks for; it won't be perfect but it will be better than not seasoning. Second week, medium curry powder and you can cook curries. After that plan to buy one herb or spice each week until you've built them up.

When I was short of time I used meal planning websites -- sites like The Resourceful Cook or Menu Mailer. Lots of those have costed plans for a week. Like everyone else, I can't stress meal planning too highly. I'm in the UK, and the website Money Saving Expert has an fantastic forum devoted to thrift and saving money on groceries. There's probably similar things in the US.

Good luck!