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Book Outline*
*Updated as of 12/20/10
Forward
Preface
Section 1: Introduction
Chapter 1: My journey on raw foods
Chapter 2: Eating raw foods on a budget: An introduction Released
Section 5: Recipes
Juices, smoothies, and nut milks
Breakfast
Entrees and sides
Soups, salads, dressings, and dips
Breads and crackers
Desserts
Preparing dried and frozen foods
INDEX
Section 1
Introduction
Raw Foods on a Budget: An Introduction
You may be asking yourself, “Can I really eat a raw foods diet while living on a tight budget?” The answer
is YES! It’s a myth that most people cannot afford a raw foods diet; instead, the reality is that most people just
don’t know how to do it while on a tight budget. Many of the raw foodists I know struggle with their grocery
bills, and most raw food newbies have trouble buying the fruits, vegetables, nuts, raw food products, and equip-
ment required by most raw food cookbooks. In fact, the high costs of the raw foods lifestyle is a topic that many
raw food enthusiasts brush to the side until they realize that by ignoring this issue, they have led themselves into
debt. But, here is the great news…eating raw foods on a budget is simple, and this book will show you how!
Raw Foods on a Budget was designed for readers like you to provide the first comprehensive guide to eat-
ing raw foods on a budget. Designed as a workbook, this book goes beyond just listing the various ways to find
low-cost raw foods and, instead, takes a more holistic approach. Learning to eat raw foods while on a budget is
about changing how and where you buy food; how you eat, prepare, and store food; and your overall relation-
ship with food. This book provides strategies and hands-on activities to help you master these dimensions of
eating raw foods while on a budget, a detailed guide to help you create your own raw foods budget, and over 75
delicious, low-cost recipes to get you started. There is even a chapter about growing your own food!
In the next section, “Strategies for Eating Raw Foods on a Budget” (section 2), I will present over 40 de-
tailed strategies and plenty of fun activities to help you learn how to eat raw foods while on a budget. Chapter 3,
the first chapter in section 2, shows you how small changes in how you buy food can significantly reduce your
grocery bills. In fact, this is probably the most important chapter in the whole book because changing how you
buy food will allow you to take advantage of the low-cost food sources provided in the following chapter. In
chapter 4, we will journey through all the different ways you can access high-quality, low-cost fruits and veg-
etables from farms, health food and grocery stores, the Internet, and other unexpected sources. These strategies
will help you lower your grocery bills while supporting your local farms and community.
Chapters 5, 6, and 7 teach you how to get the most out of the fruits and vegetables you purchased. Chapter
5 shows you how to store produce, nuts, and seeds to keep them fresh longer. Chapter 6 presents innovative
ways for substituting low-cost ingredients for more expensive ingredients in your raw food recipes. Lastly,
chapter 7 shows you how small changes in the way you eat can lower your grocery bills and maximize the ben-
efits of a raw foods diet.
Chapter 2: Raw Foods on a Budget: An Introduction 1
In chapters 8 and 9, you will learn strategies to help you change the way you think about budgeting and
enhance your overall relationship with food. It’s a common response for people to feel restricted and constrained
when they are on a budget; however, it doesn’t have to be this way. Chapter 8 will show you how to feel good
about your budget. In chapter 9, you will learn all the ways you can start growing your own food right now. In
today’s world, there are so many ways for people to garden that don’t require a backyard or access to a plot of
land. Gardening will not only provide you with high-quality, low-cost fruits and vegetables, it will also enhance
your understanding, appreciation, and love of food.
In section 3, “Raw Food Start-Up Costs”, chapters 10 and 11 provide a comprehensive overview of the
equipment and food start-up costs associated with the raw foods diet. This is an overlooked topic that really does
impact your budget, and if you are not careful, you could end up with a lot of expensive equipment and raw food
products sitting on the shelf gathering dust (I know I did!).
Section 4, “Creating Your Raw Foods Budget”, brings together what you learned in chapters 3-11 and helps
you create your own monthly raw food budget. In chapter 12, you will set realistic spending goals and create
the foundations of your raw foods budget, using my own food budget as an example. In chapter 13, you will
finalize your budget by choosing from the strategies presented in section 2 and creating a reasonable plan to
implement them. Because so many strategies are presented in this book, picking and practicing the ones that fit
your lifestyle is a strategy within itself, and this chapter will show you how.
Section 5, the final section in the book, presents over 75 tested, low-cost, delicious raw food recipes for
juices, smoothies, nut milks, breakfast, entrees and sides, soups, salads, dressings, dips, breads and crackers,
pies, ice cream, sorbets, cookies, and even recipes for preparing your own dried and frozen foods. These reci-
pes are simple and don’t rely on many fancy raw food products, because I truly believe that the best raw food
ingredients are the ones you already have access to through local farms and health food stores. In addition, each
recipe includes detailed instructions, recipe cost estimates that can also be used as a shopping list, nutrition
information based on the United States Department of Agriculture nutrition database, and tips for reducing the
costs of the recipes even more!
Raw Foods on a Budget is a great resource for individuals who already eat raw foods, desire to eat more
raw foods, or simply want to find new ways to access high-quality, low-cost fruits and vegetables. Some of you
may be long-term raw foodists and need help in reducing your grocery bills. Others may be new to raw foods
and are struggling with the seemingly high costs of fruits and vegetables and ingredients that many raw food
books require. This book is unlike any other book out there because it was designed by readers like you who
want to enjoy the benefits of eating raw foods without breaking the bank. I am confident that you will find what
you’re looking for in this book!
2 Section 1: Introduction
Section 2
Before I reveal all the ways to access low-cost, high-quality produce, it is important that you first consider
how you buy food. In fact, how you buy food is more important than where you buy food. For example, let’s
take our friend ‘Impulsive’ Ida:
One Sunday morning before lunch, Ida goes to the grocery store and she notices that her favorite
kale is on sale. Normally, a bunch of kale costs $2.49 and now it is on sale for $1.49. Ida gets
really excited and decides to buy three bunches, costing her a total of $4.47, rather than the one
bunch she would normally buy. One kale-filled week later, Ida managed to only eat two bunches
of the kale she purchased. Sadly, the remaining bunch of kale remained in the back of the refrig-
erator for weeks and Ida eventually threw it out. In the end, Ida wasted food and money. How do
you think that she could have prevented this?
There are several strategies that Ida could have used to avoid this problem. Ida needed a better sense of
what she needed. At the grocery store, Ida ‘wanted’ three bunches of kale, but she only ‘needed’ two bunches.
This chapter will show you how to shop for the foods you need rather than the foods you want. Also, you may
have noticed that Ida went to the grocery store hungry. She went before she ate lunch and probably experienced
the “eyes are bigger than your stomach” effect. When we are hungry, we tend to buy more foods than we can
realistically eat. The end result was that Ida spent $1.49 more than she needed to. So, as you can see, the prob-
lem was the way that Ida bought the food, not the price itself. In other words, in order for Ida to take advantage
of low-cost, high-quality produce and successfully stay on budget, she needs to learn how to manage how she
shops for groceries.
This chapter will present six strategies to help you change how you buy food:
1. Buy what you need, eat all you have
2. Plan your meals
3. Use a shopping list
4. Do not shop when you are hungry
5. Buy only 3-4 days worth of food
Strategy 1
Buy what you need, eat all you have
This is the most important strategy in the whole book! If you always buy the produce you ‘want’ rather
than what you ‘need’, you will always spend more than you budget. And I know it can be difficult to resist those
immediate ‘wants’ like raw vegan chocolate, ice cream, cheesecake, and fruit and nut bars at the grocery store,
but buying these ‘wants’ can wreck your budget. Plus, you can make ice creams, pies, and cookies yourself at a
much lower price. Just take a look at the dessert recipes on pages (TBD).
The first step to buying what you ‘need’ is to figure out how much food you need. The easiest way to see
how much produce you need is to measure how long it takes you to eat a specific amount of produce. You can
do this by eating all of the produce currently in your house before buying any new produce. You might cringe at
this idea; I know I did when I first thought of it because it meant that I couldn’t make any impulsive trips to the
grocery store to buy a food I was craving. Nope, I had to eat all of my food until it ran out. Aughhh!
Though this may seem like a daunting task, you can learn so much from this exercise. This task will give
you a picture of how much food you actually need. And you will probably learn that you need a lot less food than
you originally thought. Plus, this activity can be a very creative experience. As you get down to a few foods,
you probably will have to be more creative in making recipes. One week, I was down to a few carrots, celery
stalks, and lemons. I had just returned home from the gym and was looking for something to eat. But I am not
a big carrot fan, so the thought of making a dish primarily composed of carrots was definitely not in my future.
However, I decided to try juicing the carrots with a few stalks of celery and a whole lemon. I also picked some
parsley from my garden and juiced that, too. It made a very delicious juice that I even included in the recipes
section of this book (see pages TBD). What a nice surprise! The juice was tasty and full of electrolytes from the
celery. In times like this I have created other dishes like Sweet Veggies (on page TBD), in which I cut up some
veggies (i.e. whatever I have in the refrigerator), add a little salt and rice vinegar, and sun-bake the veggies for
8 hours. I still can’t believe how sweet and tasty these veggies taste. Yet, I wouldn’t have been this creative if I
wasn’t forced into it. Allowing my food to run out forced me to experiment with new recipes.
There are other tactics you can use to help you buy what you need. You can plan your meals for 3-4 days,
use shopping lists, and/or avoid shopping when you are hungry. To provide you with more insight into these
tactics, read strategies 2-4!
Strategy 2
Plan Your Meals
Planning your meals in advance will not only tell you how much food you need to buy, but will also help
you avoid wasting money or food. Meal planning may seem like a daunting task, but it really isn’t. It is com-
monplace for people to plan their meals in advance. For example, many people prepare for the work week by
buying their breakfast and lunch foods (e.g. coffee, English muffins, bread, deli meat, cheese, mayo, etc.). This
is meal planning. Often parents buy their children’s lunch foods (juice boxes, sandwich ingredients, cookies,
chips) for the school week ahead of time. This is meal planning. Sometimes people buy ice cream and pies in
6 Section 2: Strategies for Eating Raw Foods on a Budget
advance for their after dinner dessert. This is meal planning. I think you get the point. We do meal planning all
the time. The only difference is that now the meals will be raw vegan.
Raw vegan meal planning can be time consuming the first time you do it, but when you do it more often,
it will become more automatic and natural. For example, when I go grocery shopping I have specific meals in
mind for the next few days and I shop specifically for these meals. First, I will think about the recipes I want
for lunch and dinner for the next few days (I tend to hold a lot of recipes in my head) and then I will shop spe-
cifically for those recipes. Because I love my own recipes, I will plan on making these recipes 2-3 times until
the ingredients run out. My thoughts wouldn’t be as organized if I hadn’t gone through the process of planning
my meals on paper. And I also keep my meals simple. For instance, breakfast tends to be fruit rather than an
elaborate raw vegan meal. I save the more fancy stuff or combination recipes like salads for lunch and dinner.
Snacks are whole fruits or cut-up veggies, or something I dehydrated over the weekend. Integrating simple
meals throughout the day speeds up the meal planning process.
To help you create your first raw vegan meal plan, a meal planning worksheet is provided on pages 17-18.
Strategy 3
Use a Shopping List
Using a shopping list while grocery shopping helps you stay on budget. The logic is simple, if you have a
shopping list, it is easier to resist those impulse purchases. Did you know that 60 to 70% of grocery purchases
at supermarkets are unplanned (Underhill, 2008)? That’s a lot! Just think about how much money we could be
saving if we reduced our impulse or unplanned purchases.
So, where do you start? How do you generate a shopping list? A great place to start is to figure out exactly
what you need. This brings us back to Strategy 2. Planning a menu, as described in Strategy 2, can help you
figure out exactly what you need to buy in advance for the next few days. Simply take your menu plan and list
all the ingredients required for each recipe. This will help you keep your shopping list focused; however, you
may find that a few non-menu items will creep onto the list. It is possible that these items are justified purchases;
however, you must first ask yourself “is this food a need or a want? If the food is a need then keep it on the list,
but if it’s a want then drop it like a bad habit. Once you have your shopping list, look around your kitchen to
see if you already have that item. To help you create your own shopping list, a shopping list worksheet has been
provided for you on page 18.
Strategy 4
Don’t shop when you are hungry
An easy way to prevent impulse buying is to avoid grocery shopping when you are hungry. When some
people are hungry, they tend to buy more food (Mela, Aaron, & Gatenby, 1996; Nisbett & Kanouse, 1969) and
are more likely to buy unhealthy snack foods for immediate consumption (Read & Leeuwen, 1998). For raw
vegans, this may mean that we splurge on expensive raw snack foods like cookies, chocolate, and crackers to
satisfy our immediate hunger rather than waiting to eat a delicious meal at home. If you know that you tend to
buy more food when hungry, satisfy your hunger first and then go shopping. But, if you find yourself hungry
while grocery shopping, buy a quick snack like an apple or bag of nuts from the grocery store first before you
start shopping. Although you will have to check-out twice, it will save you money in the long-run.
Strategy 6
Buy what’s in season
There are so many reasons to buy what’s in season. For one, fruits and vegetables are cheaper when they
are in season. For example, I can buy one quart (i.e. 4 cups) of blueberries for $3 when they are in season;
however, when they are not in season, ½ pint (i.e. 2 cups) will cost me $3.99 at the grocery store. Tomatoes are
another good example. I can buy 24 pounds of organic tomatoes (1/2 a bushel) through my CSA program for
$7.50; however, when tomatoes are not in season, I can only purchase 1 pound for $3.99 at the grocery store.
As you can see, it is cheaper to buy produce when it’s in season. In addition, produce tastes much better when
it is in season. Strawberries in June taste much better than strawberries in December. Just because you can buy
a strawberry in the winter doesn’t mean that it is edible or tastes good. Moreover, out-of-season produce tends
to be shipped long-distances from other states and countries. Large chain grocery stores are able to stock out-
of-season produce like strawberries, apples, and melon in the winter because they are grown in countries like
Mexico and New Zealand. Just think of how much pollution is created by shipping produce such a long distance.
Also, in order to ship fruits and vegetables long distances, they are picked while they are unripe. This affects
the nutrient content of the produce. The longer fruits and vegetables are allowed to ripen on the vine, the greater
their nutrient content. Because local in-season fruits and vegetables are picked when they are ripe, they typically
have a higher nutrient content than produce shipped long distances. And lastly, when you buy what’s in season,
you support your local economy. You can support your local farmers by buying in-season produce from farmers
markets and CSA programs.
Eating by season can be a little daunting, especially when you see strawberries, blackberries, and other
8 Section 2: Strategies for Eating Raw Foods on a Budget
juicy fruits all year round in your grocery store. However, there are ways to help you adjust to eating by season.
One way is to join a CSA program. Farms only grow produce that’s in season, so it’s very unlikely that you will
receive strawberries in the winter. Another useful strategy is to taste a food like blueberries while it’s in season,
so that you can appreciate its full flavor, and then eat that same food when it’s not in season. I did this when I was
desperate for some blueberries in the winter. After tasting the out-of-season blueberries, I immediately tossed
them out because they had no flavor whatsoever. Another strategy is to gorge on a fruit or vegetable while it’s
in season. For example, when strawberries are in season, I eat pounds and pounds of them. Then at some point,
I am done with them and don’t really miss them until they come back next season.
To help you determine when specific fruits and vegetables are in season, pages 10-13 display fruit and
vegetable availability calendars for the northeast, midwest, south, and west coast regions of the United States.
You should be able to find these foods (and more) when they are in season at your local farm, farmers market,
and grocery store. Note that farms frequently store vegetables and grow leafy greens in greenhouses during the
winter, so many foods like beets, carrots, onions, potatoes, leeks, apples, and lettuce mixes will be available all
winter long.
When reviewing the produce availability calenders, there are a few things you should keep in mind. First,
these calendars are estimated timetables because weather and soil conditions can delay or speed up crop matu-
rity. Second, these calendars may not display all of the produce you have access to locally, so it is a good idea
to talk your local farmers about the produce grown in your area. Third, it was not possible to include every state
in these calendars, so you may find it useful to look up the produce availability calendar for your state at http://
www.fieldtoplate.com/guide.php or at your state’s Department of Agriculture website.
REFERENCES
Mela, D., Aaron, J., & Gatenby, S. (1996). Relationships of consumer characteristics and food deprivation
to food purchasing behavior. Physiology & Behavior, 60, 1331-1335.
Nisbett, R., & Kanouse, D. (1969). Obesity, food deprivation, and supermarket shopping behavior. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 12, 289-294.
Read, D., & van Leeuwen, B. (1998). Predicting hunger: The effects of appetite and delay on choice. Or-
ganizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 76, 189-205.
Underhill, P. (2008). Why we buy: The science of shopping--updated and revised for the Internet, the
global consumer, and beyond. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.
Activity 3: Buy 3-4 days worth of food and see how long it lasts
This is a great activity to see how long 3-4 days worth of food will actually lasts you. In my experience,
3-4 days worth of food will actually lasts me 5-6 days. That is 2 whole days longer than I expected! Typically,
the food lasts longer because I will miss a planned meal or I will eat an unplanned meal (e.g. someone treats me
to lunch, I make a different recipe, etc.).
To do this activity, simply buy 3-4 days worth of food and eat it until it runs out. It is helpful to make a list
of the foods you purchased and tape it on your refrigerator. Be sure to write down the date you purchased this
food. As you eat each the foods on the list, cross them out on the list. When you have crossed-out every food,
then simply count how many days it took you eat all of this food. Keep in mind that some foods don’t need to
be on the list like vanilla and spices because only small quantities are used in recipes and, as a result, they tend
to last a long time. In addition, you may purchase large amounts of foods in bulk like a 5 pound bag of cashews;
Peel and core all of the apples and set aside. Using a food processor or high-speed blender, blend 3 of the
apples, 3 bananas, and 1/2 cup of the raisins until liqueed. Pour over the buckwheat sprouts and mix well. Add
the almond pulp, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and green stevia powder, and mix. Add the coconut oil and
mix well.
Cut the remaining apples and bananas into ¼ inch wide slices, and add to the granola and fold into the buck-
wheat.
Pour the mixture onto two dehydrator trays and spread. The layer will be 1/2-inch thick. Dehydrate the gra-
nola at 145-degrees for 1 hour and then reduce the temperature to 105-degrees and dehydrate for 24 hours.
Desserts
Find the book, and more free recipes and articles at:
www.rawfoodsonabudget.com
And, sign up for the first FREE online television network devoted to showing
you how to live raw foods on a budget!
Enjoy!
Brandi Rollins
www.eastcoastrawvegan.com
www.rawfoodsonabudget.com