Healthy Eating

I miss Trader Joe's.  I seriously miss it.  Moving to a city without one made me realize how much I loved it.   This week, in particular, while shopping, I was shocked at the prices of the mediocre groceries at best.  A small jar of Almond butter was over $7 (not even organic) and a loaf of wheat bread was almost $4 (not organic either).  I would consider our family "healthy eaters" but with crazy food prices like this I feel like that's changing.  Unfortunately.  The bottom line is that it's expensive to eat healthy!  I know, I know...health food advocates love to say that eating healthy is affordable and accessible for all american families and the prices will go down the higher the demand, but what am I supposed to do until then?!  Trader Joe's made it easy to shop healthy and stay within a buget.  They claim that none of their food contains high fructose corn syrup or trans-fats, much of it is organic and it's affordable, healthy, quaint and oh so yummy.  I felt good about what I purchased there.  Even the snack foods.  Now I feel lost (and broke).  I want to feed my family healthy, nourishing foods, but feel like it gets harder and harder to do so.  We have a small health food store in town, but talk about expensive!  That same jar of almond butter was $11 (but it was organic!).  Sheesh.
Soooooo......
In an effort to save cash and eat healthy I've been trying to make as many homemade items as possible  (so I know what goes into the food) and we purchase most of our produce at the local farmers market.  I've also signed us up for a local, organic CSA program that starts this spring, which I'm really excited about!  And......
If you know me well, than you know that I eat very little meat and little to no dairy or eggs.  So, I've been doing a lot of research about "plant based eating" (veganism) and it's awesome health benefits.  I recently purchased the book Forks Over Knives which is a book, by the experts who made the original documentary and contains 125 plant-based recipes.  I've already made a few, but am super excited to try some more.  So, I plan to try it for a while and see how I like it.  Soups are very economical and not to mention, easy when it comes to meal time, so I'm sure I'll be making a lot of them.  I'll be sure to post recipes I try and like.  Also, one of my favorite blogs is about "healthy" vegan desserts - so yummy - so I'll post some of those too.  Finding a nutritional and economical balance in a new city, and part of the country, is proving to be difficult, but I'm up for the challenge!