OK, So I Started This New Food Blog...

Food and food topics have been on my mind lately. If you look at my Twitter I have many foodie followers. I follow many foodies too. However, when I post a bread maker recipe or anything about food or cooking on my green living and home improvement blog Condo Blues, the sound of silence in the comment section of the post is deafening. 

The thing that really set my teeth on edge about food topics was watching the movie Food, Inc. on TV.  The movie featured a family who believed that it was cheaper to feed their family of four at a fast food drive through than to make a healthy meal at home. I hit the roof because no one offered to help this family or show them that you can cook a healthy meal for less quickly and from scratch. Not to mention I really doubted that most people actually believed like the example family that fast food must be healthy food because they sell it. Wha?

How do I know? Well, the example family spent over $20.00 to buy dinner for four people at fast food restaurant. The evening I watched the movie, I used a recipe from $5 Dinners to make a healthy 30 minute dinner that would feed four people for $3.83. Actually, I made it for a little less than that because I made the bread I needed for the recipe in my bread maker from basic ingredients.

I have come across the attitude lately that healthy eating has to cost a lot of extra money. It really bugs me because Husband and I cook from scratch every day with ingredients that mostly come from a grocery store that you have to put a quarter in a slot to use a shopping cart. I grocery shop at other stores for some things but price is a concern for me just as avoiding trans fats, hydrogenated oils, crazy amounts of sodium, and high fructose corn syrup in my food. It's simple to avoid those things if you take time to read the back of the ingredient label.

That's why I largely do not like legislation that bans these items from stores. To me it says, "You are too stupid to read a food label. I need to be your mom and take it away from you." I think better food education can solve a lot of these problems. I'm also sure that there are times when people knowingly eat a bad for your comfort food just because (note the brownie I decorated in my blog header.) I do sometimes. Do you?

When I started cooking from scratch even though I largely stopped using coupons, my food bill went down. My health improved. At the time, my doctor considered me healthy even though I was taking several over the counter and prescription medicines for stomach and digestion issues. Now I take none.

I do not want to give up taste in order to save money or eat healthy and quite honestly I don't.

Therefore, I started the Lazy Budget Chef because it describes my life and my kitchen to a T. I like to cook good food on a budget but I don't have hours to spend in the kitchen doing it. Fortunately, things like my bread maker, slow cooker, and stir fry pan make it easy to put a great healthy meal from scratch on the table in a short amount of time - the lazy way.

Do you have any thoughts?