Frugal Tip Friday

http://kaysvillemomma.blogspot.com/2008/08/frugal-tip-friday-8108.html

Here's my tip:
Budget friendly ways to buy organic for your family.
Stick to what is in season and available locally for produce. That will be the cheapest. Look for co-ops, farmer's markets or local stands and see what you find. Buy daily to capitalize on the very ripe items that get marked down. -Reduce the amount of meat and cheese you eat. Cheaper to toss a small package of organic beef in with a lot of pasta sauce than it is to make a meatloaf. Cheaper to make turkey soup using a breast rather than roasting up a whole breast and getting 1-2 meals vs. 4-5 soup meals. Cheaper to buy a tiny bit of wild Alaskan smoked salmon as a side to rice and veggies than a whole filet of wild salmon. Eating less meat is healthier anyways so it is an added bonus. -Replace one type of conventionally grown food with an organic variety at a time. Switching to all organic in 1 week is going to strain the budget drastically but gradually getting used to the increased costs a little by little gives you time to adjust in other areas. NOW I don't feel like I am spending extra on many things because I am used to that price point. But when I started, the extra $$ on meat etc was really noticable. We are just now switching to organic cheese, which was the last thing I committed to getting organic. -Use information like this: http://www.foodnews.org/pdf/EWG_pesticide.pdf to decide what is worth it to you to buy organic and what you can skip. For example, I never bother with organic onions, avocado, bananas or cabbage- I just buy whatever is cheapest. I find that organic grapes and berries are mostly too $$ to bother getting so I eat them less often as a treat rather than daily in season. But I have found that if I shop carefully organic apples, peppers, pears, spinach, lettuce and potatoes are not very much more than the conventionally grown counterparts. -Look at buying near organic products. Things that are grown without the use of pesticides but that are not yet certified organic. Or milk and eggs that are hormone free but not certified organic.