_http://paleodietlifestyle.com/paleo-on-a-budget/
Buy in bulk
For a lot of items, you can save a lot by buying in bulk. One of them is olive oil. Buy those big 1 gallon or more instead of the smaller fancy glass bottles. As an extra, it has less chance of being oxidized because it’s not exposed to sunlight. I recommend you keep the gallon in the refrigerator and pour a smaller quantity in a jar you’ll keep handy so this way the bulk of your olive oil stays fresh longer.
The other area where you can save big bucks, and this is probably the most significant savings you can make, is buying your meat in bulk direct from the farmer. You’ll literally pay pennies on the dollar for your investment and you’ll get the best meat money can buy. What you want to do is buy a half or quarter of either a beef, a lamb, a pork, a bison or any other animal that might be available at one of your local farmers. You’ll need a chest freezer big enough for the meat, but I’m sure you can find a used one for very cheap. When buying meat in bulk like that, you’ll often have portions of all the cuts available so you can vary your meals and use different cooking methods. You’ll have to learn how to cook those cuts, but the resulting dishes will be very rewarding.
When you buy your meat like that you can often visit the farm and see the animals so you know for sure that they are well-treated, have free access to pasture and eat grass.
I highly recommend you buy your meat in bulk if you want to save and have access the best meat, but I’ll also show you tricks when you don’t.
Choose cheap cuts and buy bone-in
Most people choose tender cuts that they can cook and eat right away. This is why the tender cuts are more expensive. Choose cuts like the shoulder, hocks or shanks that are much cheaper and slow cook them in a liquid for a delicious and easy to prepare meal. It takes longer to cook, but no more investment on your part. After cooking those cuts of meat you also have a delicious free stock for soups, stews and sauces.
If you always chose your meat bone-in, you’ll have a steady flow of bones to make stocks all the time. Same thing for chicken. Whole chickens end up being much cheaper, are easy to roast and will leave you bones for a wonderful stock. I much prefer roasting a whole chicken and munching on it than cooking individual parts.
Having stock as the basis of most of your meals won’t just cut your bill, it’s also very healthy. Stocks are full of nutrients that we only find in good quantity in bones. In fact, eating only muscle meat is not optimal and one should always try to have bone broths and organs incorporated in their diet regularly.
Some of the extremely healthy traditional communities studied by Weston A. Price always drank broths instead of water. It’s no wonder they have strong bones!
Another good replacement for tender cuts is ground meat. A lot of people think they have to buy those fancy schmancy cuts, but ground beef is cheap and perfectly fine when it comes from a healthy pasture-raised and grass-fed animal. Don’t be scared to go with the fatty kind either. [...]
So next time you shop at your butcher’s, choose tough, bone-in cuts, whole chickens and ground beef instead of tender cuts, steaks and roasts.
Eat organs regularly
Organ meat like liver, kidneys, heart or brain are not only very cheap, but are also a nutrition powerhouse. They should be part of a healthy paleo diet and traditional cultures always preferred them over muscle meat, showing that they really are the important parts.
It’s definitely an acquired taste and not everybody has an easy time learning to love them, but there are plenty of ways to prepare them so they end up being absolutely delicious. Liver pâté is one such example. Who doesn’t like liver pâté?
Render your own tallow or lard
The paleo diet should really be high fat, moderate protein and low to moderate carbs so if you can save on the fat portion, it’ll make a good difference. It turns out I was able to make significant savings with fat. Butter and coconut oil are all fine and tasty, but not very cheap, especially when having huge quantities. If you change your main fat source from butter and coconut oil to tallow and lard, you’ll save so much money you won’t believe it.
You’ll have to do a little more work though to render it. Your butcher or local farmer will sell you a hard white piece of fat with all the connective tissues. Back home, cut out any remaining meat or blood vessel and cut out the piece of fat very finely (you can use a food processor). You can then put those pieces in a pot or crock-pot on low heat and let the pure fat get extracted for a couple of hours. You then remove the small browned hard parts to get the pure rendered beef tallow or pork lard. It will harden at room temperature and can be used everywhere. Don’t be scared to cook with it, it’s highly saturated and won’t burn, even at high temperature.
Just to give you an example of the kind of savings possible, a local farmer recently sold me a piece of pasture-raised heritage pork fat for $2 that lasted me about 2 weeks once rendered into lard. That’s a dollar a week for my main macronutrient intake, fat. If coming from a well-treated and well-fed animal, those fats will also contain plenty of fat-soluble vitamins.
Buy whole or canned wild fish
With this tip, you’ll never have to buy farmed fish. I find that Alaskan wild canned salmon is very affordable while being the best source of salmon possible. Compared to that, fresh wild salmon will cost you your bank account. Canned sardines are also very affordable.
Those canned products are also often on sale so make sure to buy a huge quantity when they are.
Another great technique with fish is to buy it whole from your fishmonger. It’s really not that hard to prepare whole fish, it will taste fabulous, thanks to the skin and bones and it’s cheaper. As an added bonus, the nutrient value is much higher when you eat the skin and when the fish cooks with its bones and whole fishes tend to be fresher and have less exposure to bacteria. You can at least get a better idea of their freshness by the way they look, which you can’t with fillets. Even if you buy whole fish, your fishmonger will still gut it, remove the gills and scale it so you save all this work and only need to cook it. Make sure the fish you buy is wild caught and don’t be scared to try new things.
Fresh mussels can also often be bought for a very reasonable price and are delicious.
Participate in farm shares and CSA programs
This way of encouraging local farmers and getting fresh produce has become very popular over the last few years. The way it works is that you buy a share of the farm’s production before the season starts and you then get a steady flow of very fresh, seasonal and natural produce as the farming season progresses. This is either delivered in a box right at your door or at a nearby pick-up location. This is a very good way to get close to the farm and to get fresh, local and seasonal produce for a fraction of the regular price. Like with buying your meat in bulk, you pay a higher fee up-front, but save a lot down the road. If you do both, you’ll end up with almost zero weekly expenses once the initial investment is made.
Grow and pick your own produce
Growing your own small garden can be a very therapeutic and rewarding experience. You get to spend time outdoors, exercise, get fresh air and sunshine and get really close to the earth all at the same time. You’ll also learn a lot about food by growing it yourself. Some vegetables are so easy to grow that you won’t even have to think about them.
If you don’t have access to a yard where you can start a small garden, your county might offer a community program where you can get a small piece of soil to grow your own vegetables.
If those two options are off limits for you, something you can almost always do is grow your own fresh herbs indoors. Some of them are really easy to grow given some sunlight and will be a perfect addition to make your meals taste fantastic. Growing your own herbs can also be a great experience for kids. It’s very enjoyable for them to see a plant grow from the fruit of their labor and they learn skills that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.[...]
