Paleo on a small budget?

[Justin Fricke]

Ideas, thoughts, I find it very expensive no matter what i get.
Is there certain menu items i should buy and leave out. I eat a lot of eggs, fruots and veggies with a prtion of meat or two a day. I am not strict paleo but i do like think of it when eating and shopping at the store.

[Grissim Connery]

i'm pretty sure there's a bunch of posts on this already, so a search would probably answer most questions.

if you need calories, use olive oil.

if you buy whole chicken broilers, then they cost a lot less per pound. plus you get to eat the bones which i love.

if debating between local or organic, i go with local. support those families

the veggies i tend to buy the most are onions, spinach, broccoli, asparagus, green beans, cabbage, carrots, and brussel sprouts. all other veggies depend on what i'm hungry for. i find that onions are my most used veggie out of anything. carrots are pretty cheap in large quantities. my food co-op sells bunched spinach that is not badly priced, especially compared to thsoe boxes you can buy. so try to avoid the box if you can

the majority of my meals involve cooking about half a chopped onion with a wad of grass fed ground beef and an assortment of spices (whatever i'm feeling like playing with at the time). i'll then pour this mixture over a bed of spinach and add some olive oil (or pesto or something spruced up). it's decently priced, very solidly filling, and is not intensive to make (depending on how much you wanna play with the spices or oil/sauce).

[Chris Salvato]

Do you have access to a stove?

I find that I can save a lot of money if I cook in bulk. As a preface note, I live alone and I'm a 23 year old male that eats a ton of food...

This past weekend (and I am going to make a habit of it...) I bought a 21# turkey. I stuffed it with veggies for a paleo stuffing and make a salad on the side with other grilled veggies. The turkey was $7. The veggies and the rest of it all cost me maybe another $20. I just finished the veggies today (4 days later) and I still have another 5 pounds of meat left. For under $30 I have supplied myself with like 6 days of food. I would say if u total it all up, its about $50 bucks for 7 days of food when u consider i need to make other veggies and whatnot since the others went pretty quick.

[Garrett Smith]

Tuna and eggs for protein.

[Darryl Shaw]

The odds are you're eating more protein than you need so if you're trying to save money it's worth calculating your exact daily protein requirment (1 - 1.8g/kilogram/day) then using www.nutritiondata.com you can calculate exactly how much meat/fish/eggs you actually need to eat per day.

[Scott Kustes]

Farmer's markets are good for saving money as well. I spend about 1/3 less at the farmer's market than I would on comparable stuff at the grocery. And if you go near the end, you can often get bulk deals as they don't want to cart it home with them.

Chris has good advice too. Along with buying in bulk, cook in bulk. Deli turkey is like $5/lb and is pretty fake. A turkey breast can probably be had for like $.99 a lb. It's not pastured and all that, but whatever. Whole chickens are cheaper and tastier than chicken parts, and you can turn the carcass into chicken broth to make soup/stew by throwing in a ton of vegetables.

Eggs are cheap.

[Mike ODonnell]

Canned salmon and sardines, Eggs, pork is usually cheaper $/lb, find a local hibachi buffet to raid once in a while (as I eat about $20 worth of steak for $6).