It doesn’t always have to cost a fortune to feed your family. Pay attention to what kinds of foods are on sale at your local grocery store. You can put together a budget recipe that your family will enjoy. An easy to make fruit salad can become a quick breakfast or a healthy lunchbox snack.
The grocery store that is located the closest to my home is Vons. This store likes to start its weekly sales on Wednesdays. This means that the sales in the current weekly paper start today, Wednesday, September 14, 2011, and will end on Wednesday, September 20, 2011. It is helpful to know this when I make my grocery list, so that I can plan around the foods that are on sale.
This week, Vons has many varieties of Summer fruit on sale. This made me think of simple fruit salad, as a snack or as a breakfast. The 5.6 to 6 ounce containers of red raspberries are 2 for $5.00 right now. The 5.6 to 6 ounce containers of strawberries are also 2 for $5.00. Grapes are $0.88 a pound. Eggo frozen breakfast waffles are 2 for $4.00 (each package contains ten waffles). The four packs of Yoplait Yogurt are $2.59 this week. I believe that you have to use your club card in order to get these prices.
I found a really easy Berry Fruit Salad recipe from allrecipes.com. This one can be made very quickly. It would make a light breakfast, or a healthy lunchbox snack for your kids to take to school.
For the Berry Fruit Salad recipe, you will need:
1 cup of fresh strawberries
1 cup of fresh blueberries
1 cup of fresh blackberries
1 cup of fresh raspberries
1 teaspoon of white sugar
Step One: Wash all the fruit.
Step Two: Cut the strawberries lengthwise, into bite sized pieces
Step Three: Place all the fruit into a large bowl. Sprinkle in the sugar. Mix.
Step Four: Dish this out for breakfast, or put small portions into containers that go in lunchboxes.
I also found another fruit salad recipe from allrecipes.com that would make a great breakfast, (if you modify the original recipe). I’m not sure that it would hold up very well in a lunchbox, because it does contain dairy. It would work as a healthy snack for mom or dad to bring to work, though, (assuming their break room has a refrigerator).
For the Fast Fruit Salad recipe, you will need:
1 pint of fresh strawberries
1 pound of seedless green grapes
3 bananas
1 (eight ounce) container of strawberry yogurt. (Or, mix in the amount you prefer).
One package of frozen waffles
Step One: Wash all the fruit
Step Two: Cut the strawberries and bananas into bite sized pieces. (Obviously, remove the banana peel first!). If the grapes are really big, you may want to cut them in half.
Step Three: Put all the cut fruit into a large bowl, and mix them with the strawberry yogurt.
If you are taking this to work as a snack, then stop here, and put a small portion into a container. If, however, you are making this as breakfast, then put some of the frozen waffles into the toaster, and then serve the fruit salad over the waffle, (instead of maple syrup).
Image by A Gude on Flickr