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How do we nourish ourselves and our families with real food 3x a day without getting burnt out? At Slow Living Realist, we like to be realistic about the goals we set. Eating at home the majority of the time does not have to be complicated, expensive, or feel impossible. Maybe we just need to lower the amount of pressure we put on ourselves to make it look a certain way, or stress ourselves out about being perfect. Because nothing about slow living is perfect, it’s about accepting what we have, being grateful for it, living in the moment and within all of that creating methods and systems that work for us to help our lives feel less chaotic and more peaceful.
I’m not SUPER organized, I’m mildly organized when it comes to daily life. I try my best, (like having a planner) but I’m by no means to the level of some of the people in my life (or on the internet). My method is simple: keep a well stocked pantry and freezer, use a meat bowl and have a rhythm.
How to Fill the Pantry
I actually don’t have a Costco or Sam’s club membership (although I would love one!). I have friends with them and usually they’ll ask me what my order is before they go shopping, it’s great to have great friends!
So, how do I buy bulk when I don’t actually have access to bulk pricing? Well.. I live in Ohio and there are Amish nearby, so I actually go down to Amish country for a lot of stuff – grains, meat, honey, maple syrup, and spices. The prices are RIGHT. But I can’t always find everything there, so I that’s where I place an Azure order once a month to be dropped off.
If you’ve never heard of Azure, I’m so sorry you’re missing out, because it is the absolute best. They pride themselves on clean, quality, organic (or transitioning) produce, and carry all the great brands for quality ingredients for what they don’t produce themselves. I can get sourdough noodles by the dozen there. I can get a 50 pound bag of rice. I can get a 5 gallon bucket of honey if I wanted to! The possibilities are seemingly endless! It is great and the quality is exceptional, and their customer service is delightful. I have only had to call them twice within my 3 years of ordering from them, and each time they are so nice, helpful, and understanding. Check out their website here, and see what you can find in bulk for your family.
Keeping a well stocked pantry really is key. This can be by means of shopping or home canning. I can a lot of local produce throughout the summer. I can beans throughout the winter. I buy the beans from Azure by the 50 pound bag and keep safe in food-safe 5 gallon buckets that I picked up from our local donut shop for free. I also can bone broth in the winter. I buy the bones in bulk from a farmer when I buy the meat in bulk.
I try to be as frugal as possible with being a one-income family, and I know that buying in bulk can seem super expensive and out of your budget and reality. I always thought that too, but if you focus on 1 thing a month to “stock up” on, you should be golden. Let’s say you buy a 50 pound bag of rice and that eats up about 50% of your budget for groceries for 1 week. Well, that 50 pound bag will most likely last you 3-6 months depending on how often you eat rice. Now that you’re not buying rice for awhile, you’re able to then focus on something else the following week, and so on and so forth. Or maybe one year you get money back from your taxes and you normally don’t, use that to stock up your pantry! You will be soooo glad because you really do save more money in the long run. But it IS the long run game here, we’ve got to keep our eyes on the future, which I know can be hard to do. So, if bulk shopping feels impossible, start with ONE staple at a time.
And if hard times come along, you’ll be glad you have built up a little stockpile of food and you won’t have to grocery shop for a few months. It truly is blessing your future self to the max. Or maybe a friend needs a meal, you can offer one very quickly because you have everything on hand.
Now we have a stocked pantry, and a stocked freezer full of meat, really all I need to do is buy weekly fill-in groceries, usually produce that’s on sale and milk and eggs from our local farm. That also cuts my shopping time in half, which is truly great. My phone company actually pays for Walmart+, which I use sometimes, but mainly we go to Aldi. Obviously, go wherever is convenient, sometimes that’s Trader Joe’s for us, sometimes that’s Walmart delivery, sometimes that’s whatever local grocery store happens to be the closest to me.
On top of all of this, I do have a thrive membership, and really, we just stick to the same few things from there. I wait until they’re on sale, and I buy up as many of them as I can afford to buy on our weekly budget. We love their kids beef sticks, chili powder and toothpaste.
Now, back to meal planning.
Meal planning for me is filling up what I call the “meat bowl” and whatever thaws first gets cooked. Sometimes I have no plan for that ground beef, so I look on Pinterest until I find something suitable. Sometimes I do have a plan for when the chicken thaws, I am making chicken paprikash. I also see what leftovers I’ve got in the fridge that could be given new life. If I have a bowl of rice, I can turn that into gallo pinto, fried rice, or a broccoli cheesy casserole. It really depends on the amount of energy, time and resources I have.
Sometimes my husband says “I’m making fish for dinner” and I never argue, and I gladly thaw some fish for him (which is quick!) and save my meal idea (if I have one) for another day.
Food Rhythms
I try to make a plan for 2 days at a time, minimum. But usually I plan for the whole week. I like to write down on my dry erase board on the fridge (this one) what’s for Breakfast, Lunch, and dinner. I actually created a little menu for breakfast and snacks for my kids where they can choose what they would like to eat and they can make it themselves (which you can find here). Occasionally, I do plan specific breakfasts, usually on the weekends. Lunch is almost always leftovers, or a hodgepodge of what’s in the fridge. Dinner is where I write either the meat I’m choosing (ground beef + some frozen liver cubes) or an actual meal (cabbage rolls).
Having a few days a week where you don’t need to think about food is also extremely helpful. Friday is ALWAYS pizza and chicken wings/nuggets for our family movie night, and truly I’m so thankful to never have to think about what’s for dinner at least 1 day a week. Monday or Tuesday we usually do a burrito bowl situation, where all the toppings are things I’ve canned or pre-shredded, so all I have to worry about is cooking the rice and meat, and heating up the beans I’ve canned. So all I have to do is cook the meat (usually in the Instant pot).
I also try to have my kids cook at least once a week. Sometimes that’s in a small way, like helping me peel potatoes, or in a big way, by having them cook the entire meal on their own (I’m looking at you spaghetti).
Lastly, I try to set aside 1-2 days a week where I bake or food prep. This is nothing crazy, it’s usually 4xing my bread recipe then the next day splitting it up into 4 different things. I then can freeze 2 of those baked items and have them for a week that’s way too busy to bake. Cookies, muffins, it all fits in here. What I mean by food prepping is, looking at what you have available and what you can do with that. Take the head of cabbage that’s on it’s final leg and make some sauerkraut or curtido. Take that milk that’s about to expire and make some yogurt. Take the old yogurt and make some dressing, or yogurt cheese. This all leads to less food waste and less over-spending on groceries. It leads to being more intentional with the food that you’ve worked so hard to acquire.
Last Ideas
Familiarize yourself with good cooking techniques – read blogs, books, or watch shows together as a family. Just get comfortable with winging it. The more you cook from scratch the easier it becomes. I grew up eating microwaved dinners and pre-packaged snacks, cooking was very overwhelming to me at one point. Now, it has become one of my favorite times of the day – I can be as creative or as lazy as I want to be. Cutting an onion or just using onion powder, cooking can slow you down in a powerful way and connect you to your daily meals. Keeping you grateful and aware of just how blessed you are to have a stocked pantry and the tools and time to give back to yourself and your family by means of nourishment.
We’re always pretty unorthodox over here (especially with sourdough), and so I hope this method empowers you to cook more at home. All we need are simple meals made with whole foods. That doesn’t mean always rendering our own tallow, or nixtamalizing our own masa. It CAN mean those things, and I certainly encourage them but it mainly means being intentional about what we’re doing with our time, energy and resources. At the end of the day, we should focus on putting realistic systems into place that help us get nourishment into ourselves and our children, whether that’s a meat bowl in the fridge or weekly food rhythms.
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