Organic Meals

[theycallmetaytor]

I try to feed myself and my family as organically as possible but in the past have fed my daycare kids mostly conventional (non-organic) food as they are much cheaper. I plan to reopen my daycare with a fully organic menu. Does anyone else do organic only meals? How do you make the extra cost work? I'm on the fence about the food program and feeding my family organic isn't a huge expense as it's only 3 of us. I guess I'm mostly looking for advice. Anything helps! TIA 🙂

[CityGarden]

Our home is all real foods and 95% organic. We use lots of local farmers who cannot always afford the high cost of becoming certified organic but I do ask questions and some times visit farms, etc.

I do most of my shopping at the Farmer's Market and the rest at Whole Foods and Trader Joes. I do drive 20 minutes away to an affordable Farmer's Market as the one walking distance to me does not suite itself to grocery shopping (lots of prepared food, high prices, etc.)....

I also co-authored an Organic Baby Food Cookbook published by Rodale so I am very passionate.

I am open to sharing ideas.

[Blackcat31]

Other threads with helpful tips and ideas in regards to organic meals

https://www.daycare.com/forum/tags.php?tag=organic+food

[daycarediva]

I do MOSTLY organic. Very little processed food here. I find it cheaper, imho. Processed is scary expensive!

I also do meat free 2-3x/week. I am adding in fish on fridays and would love to go meat free other than the fish.

We do yogurt, cottage cheese, eggs, beans for proteins for lunch often.

Organic rice and pasta are inexpensive. I also do farmers market, a farm co-op, and if I can't get it there, we use frozen organic fruits and veggies.

Today we had homemade spanish rice & beans, carrots, blueberries
org rice ($3.99) but I used two cups out of the box
beans (.99/can)
smoothies(1.99 blueberries)
yogurt (2.99, I used 1/4 of the tub)
baby carrots ($1.19).

The entire meal probably cost me $5-6

We have organic cereal (2.49-I use about 1/2 a box each meal) and org bananas (.79/lb) once a week for breakfast. Under $2 to feed 6 kids an organic breakfast? Sure beats donuts!

I am part of food program......well worth as I'm on higher tier.

I'm about 90% organic.

Flour, oats, rice, crackers, frozen veggies I get at my local food co-op.

During summer/fall I too shop farmer's markets.

I get quite a bit of my organic sat Aldi's-frozen and fresh fruit and other things. They sometimes have organic cheese.

I get some items at Wal-mart-canned beans, cereal, yogurt, pasta, pasta sauce, etc.-Organic Valley headquarters is only about 30 miles from me. I can get their butter and milk at a decent price at WM.

No Trader Zoe's or Costco near me.
I don't buy organic bananas or watermelon...I guess all other fruit I buy is organic. I use traditional cottage cheese and other cheeses. That gets really expensive.

I'm a vegetarian and serve meat once or twice a week.