Organically speaking...

As part of our renewed healthy eating initiative, I'm trying to get creative with what I eat. I think part of the problem with trying to lose weight is that sometimes one can get stuck in an eating rut and then one just gets sick of eating that way. And then...back come the old eating habits. So, I am making it my goal to not only eat healthy foods but also to eat a variety of them. I'm also trying very hard to not give in to eating things like diet bars and the like. I think they are good, and do help make it easy for a meal, but they are expensive, for one, and I feel a lot better putting more organic, natural things in my body. In fact, I'm becoming a bit of an organic junky lately, for better or for worse. I have been buying and eating a lot more fresh fruits and veggies and even loaded up a little at a farm stand near where I buy bread. I just really want to be conscious of what I feed myself and my family, and I think that buying and eating fresh is the way to go. Unfortunately, this way of eating can cost a lot of money as well. In fact, there was an article in our newspaper this morning talking about a woman on food stamps trying to feed her family of five for $500 a month. She said that on this budget buying fresh veggies and fruit sometimes is out, because the cost of these items has just gone up and up. So it's a difficult quandry, I'm afraid. As much as I'd like to do all my shopping at Whole Foods, it wouldn't be good on our budget I don't think. I have thought about doing one shopping trip there and getting all the things that I would normally buy at our regular store just to compare the final outcome. Mike says it would cheaper if I just wrote down all the prices instead and compared it that way! :)

So...any tips on how to eat "organically" yet still maintain a reasonable budget?