Paleo on a Budget – Episode 4: PaleOMG Uncensored Podcast

Paleo on a budget was a highly requested topic. Because, well, everyone is on some sort of budget. And that’s something to remember: make the best choices you can that fit within your budget and your lifestyle. Just because you can afford grass fed meat doesn’t mean you should be heating up a hot pocket or freezer meal or eating fast food. That’s gross. Eat real food, even if it isn’t perfect. It’s better than what most of the population are eating out there.

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Here’s a little recap from the podcast:

Places to find cheaper meats:

• Find a farmer near you
• Get a deep freezer
• Split a cow
• Freeze and thaw and eat everything you are given

Online companies for meats that can ship:

• US Wellness Meats
• Texas Grassfed

If you buy at the grocery store:

• Grassfed, if possible
• Look for what is on sale and cook that
• Use the cheaper cuts like stew meat or roasts or organ meat – learn to cook those items
• If you can’t get organic or hormone free or grassfed, remove excess or any visible fat before cooking (that’s where sketchy sh*t is stored)

When buying vegetables:

• Join a local CSA
• Eat in season – you’ll know something is in season when it’s a little cheaper, but you can also find a full list here
• Items that are less important when it comes to buying organic – Clean fifteen
• Items more important to buy organic and wash thoroughly – Dirty dozen

Pantry staples:

• Buy products from Amazon
• Buy in bulk at Costco
• Thrive Market
• Tropical traditions

Spices:

• Buy in bulk and online

Baking:

• If you’re trying to stay on budget DON’T BAKE. Baking costs so much more and it’s unneeded in our diet. You need real food, so stay away as much as you can when it comes to baked goods.
• Make your own products such as almond milk, almond flour, ghee, etc.

Start looking at what your normal expenses are:

• Are you going out to drinks every week with friends?
• Are you paying $5 every day for a coffee?
• Are you eating out on a weekly basis?
• What things can be removed so you can eat better. It’s all about choices, even on a really tight budget!

Favorite Snacks:

• Larabars
• RX Bars
• Mammoth Bars
• Plantain Chips
• Nut Butter Packets – My Favorite (doesn’t upset my stomach)

Favorite PaleOMG slow cooker recipes:

• Slow Cooker Buffalo Chicken Chili
• Slow Cooker Tomatillo Pork Chile Verde
• Crockpot Carne Asada Loaded Fries
• Easy Shredded Pork over Caramelized Mashed Plantains
• Barbacoa
• Brazilian Curry Chicken
• Crockpot Ropa Vieja with Cuban Style Rice
• Mushroom Gravy Slow Cooked Rump Roast
• Honey Ginger Apple Shredded Pork

If you have any questions or comments or ways that you save while still eating healthy, please leave your comments below to help even more people out!

Episode 4 Transcription:

This is Juli Bauer from PaleOMG and you are listening to PaleOMG Uncensored.

Juli Bauer: Well hey there guys! How’s it going today, this fine, whatever day you’re listening to do. That didn’t even make sense. Dammit, I already screwed this whole podcast up! I just gave my dog the emptiness of a yogurt, a sheep’s yogurt, so he could just chew on that a little bit; lick any little ounce of yogurt out. So if you hear slurping, some moving, it’s pretty much to get my dog to not ask me and whine to go outside so I can get this podcast done. You know, I need to get this done for you guys. Because today, we need to talk about paleo on a budget. But we’ll get there, ok.

I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts, guys, all kinds of stuff. And you know, I found that there are some really good podcasts out there, but I’m more so obsessed with the true crime ones. Am I the only person who’s obsessed with these things? I mean, other people have to be obsessed, because they’re, like; the top 100 are all true crime. Seriously. So I’ve listened to Serial, which is always the number one. Jackson, can you stop making as much noise, please?

I listened to Undisclosed, but I got a little bored so I stopped listening to that. I didn’t finish it; but I’ll get back to it. We’ll get back there. Then I listened to Accused. Someone recommended Lime Town, but it’s like fake bullsh*t. it’s like, I don’t want to listen to the fake sh*t. I want to know the real stuff. And why is it so intriguing? I feel like true crime is so intriguing when you’re a person; I could not; why am I getting into this? This is stupid. I’m going to calm my sh*t down. But, what I did get super into, I don’t know why, is My Favorite Murder. Those girls are funny. They’re just fun to listen to. They get true crime and how it’s interesting. Holy sh*t, two minutes have gone by, and I’ve talked about nothing.

Ok, I just wanted to bring up the topic. Somebody emailed me; a couple of people emailed me last week and asked me why I had to cuss in my podcast, and I’d like them to notice that it says “F*cking Explicit”, what do you think? These aren’t just fairy tales and unicorns over here on PaleOMG Uncensored; this is real sh*t, ok. So sorry that these people don’t like cussing, but it’s just part of the human language, so we just have to do it, ok. It’s not hurting anybody.

I think the whole reason I like to cuss in the first place is because my mother hates it. Yeah. I’m one of those chicks. This poor woman. My mom is such a nice person, and she was always such a great mother, and I was just a f*cking awful child. This poor woman. And she always kept her calm. She always just kept her sh*t together, and I remember this one time in the car. I was probably 15; 14/15 years old. I couldn’t drive yet. I’m in the car with her, and who knows, I was just being the biggest bitch; a normal teenager. And you could tell she was about to burst. It was about to happen. {laughs} She screeches on the brakes, pull off the side; she’s like, “Get the f*ck out of my car!” That’s the first time I saw her cuss, and I just stared at her in awe. I was like, yes, I cracked the woman who could not be cracked. I am such a bitch.

So I get out of the car, I have to walk a while by myself, and then she pulls back over, comes back to get me, and is like, “Get in the car.” Wouldn’t speak to me for a while. But that’s what’s so great about my mom. She will not cuss, so I just do all the cussing for her! That’s just all it is, guys. That poor woman; I wonder if she listens to this podcast. Love you mom!

Ok, we should get, it’s almost 5 minutes it. We should talk about paleo on a budget. This was a very requested, very asked for topic. I personally think it’s boring! Yes, I do. But it makes sense because every single person in this world is on a budget. Except if you’re Kim K, you know. But she’s probably on a budget now, because she had her f*cking $6 million ring stolen. Or 4 million; whatever. That sh*t sucks. So she’s probably on a budget even now. So, we all have a budget. Everybody’s budget is a little bit different. But paleo is possible.

I’ve heard so many people who are like, “I can’t do paleo, I can’t afford it right now.” And I just like to be known; I’ve talked about this previously, so sorry if you’re like, “We get it, you were poor.” {laughs} When I was out of college, the first couple of years out of college, I was so poor, and I was making $17,000 a year; I was still paying my rent. I didn’t do anything fun; I did not go out, I did not go to restaurants. I made all my food myself. But I did paleo. Was it perfect, you know, book whatever? I don’t know what the f*ck I’m trying to say. Was it perfect paleo? No, it was not. And is anybody perfect paleo? Those people are so annoying anyways, if they are.

But, I did it. I was very poor out of college, and I ate paleo, and I just lived off cheap meat, I lived off what was on sale. Sometimes I was buying grass-fed, sometimes I wasn’t. I bought any vegetable that was in season, or was the cheapest or on sale. I rarely ever baked, because I couldn’t afford all that sh*t. So it is completely doable. You just kind of have to change your lifestyle sometimes. If you think it’s not, you’re dumb. You’re being a liar to yourself. You know it’s possible. Everything is possible, you can do this. So let’s talk about it.

So, first, let’s talk about meat. So the goal, obviously, with paleo whether you’re new or not, you’ve probably heard that the goal is to eat pasture raised, grass-fed meats. We want to organic, hormone-free. We just want the animal taken care of eating the right foods; eating grass. We don’t want them to be fed corn or grains, whatever, because that’s what we’re getting if we’re eating it. So we’re trying to eat the cleanest meats possible, and that can be hard to find, obviously. More grocery stores are doing grass-fed; you don’t always know if they’re grass finished. Sometimes it says, sometimes it doesn’t. But more and more grocery stores are coming out with grass-fed, so it will be interesting what happens in the next 5 years, because in the last 5 years this kind of just started to come in.

So some of the goals; I just burped. I’m gross. So the goals; a good goal, and we’ll talk about all kinds of different sh*t. but if you can split a cow with someone else; not even split it. But a bunch of people go in on a cow together, you can usually get meat for about $3-4 per pound. So that’s a lot cheaper; most of the time at the grocery store it’s like $8 a pound, so you can get it almost half if you go directly to a farmer and you split that cow with a ton of other people. That being said, you’re going to have a sh*t ton of f*cking meat. A lot of times you can invest in a freezer; get something on Craigslist. Since I’ve been listening to all true crime podcasts, I would be careful about Craigslist. But that’s just my personal opinion. I’d just meet in a public area with another person; just saying.

But you can find a cheap freezer, deep freezer, on Craigslist and get a bunch of meat if you’re splitting a cow, get a bunch of meat, put it in the freezer. You can take that meat out on a regular basis; always defrost it. You’ll have a ton of meat. You’ll obviously have the same kind of meat, but you’ll have a bunch of different cuts, whether it’s steak, whether it’s ground, whether it’s the tough meat that needs to be slow cooked. But hey; you’re going to teach yourself how to cook a little bit. You’re going to cook more because you have to figure out how to use that meat. That’s the biggest thing, when I was on a tighter budget years ago, I cooked all kinds of different meats because I didn’t know how else to do it. I had to buy organ meats, I had to buy stew meat, and I learned how to cook because I had to learn to cook on a budget. So you can really teach yourself.

Jackson, stop being so loud! He’s just rolling around. He’s like; hey, can I put my eye boogers all over your f*cking carpet. Uh-huh!

Ok. So, split a cow if you can do that. You can go in with a bunch of people. If you have a gym, if you have friends that you want to go in with, talk to your friends. Look around town, see if there are farmers in the next town over or wherever you live. Obviously, everybody lives in different places. But, that’s a good goal. Online companies; there’s all kinds of different ones out there, and there might be some local ones. There’s U.S. Wellness Meats, Texas Grass-fed. You can find a bunch of different companies online that give some pretty good prices, and a lot of times they’ll have sales or whatever, so you can find those companies. And I’ll try to link a bunch in this post just to help you guys out, so if you go to my blog I’ll have some information, if you’re listening to this on iTunes.

So if you can’t buy online, or if you can’t buy local, and you have to buy the cheap sh*t, we’ve all been there, go for the cheap cuts. So whole chicken; cheap cuts of beef like stew meat, you can go for organ meats. And yeah, who likes organ meats? Weirdos. It’s the grossest. But, Diane Sanfilippo has this awesome meatloaf that has the organ meats in it; like maybe liver or something. I don’t know, gross sh*t. But she makes it taste really good. So it’s totally possible. There are so many people who are cooking paleo and sharing their recipes nowadays, there’s really no excuse. You can find all kinds of stuff; free sh*t on the internet. So if you’re like; hey, I don’t have a budget for books right now; that’s fine. I f*cking share two recipes a week; you get free sh*t all the time. So easy to find stuff.

And, a lot of times if you’re not able to buy grass-fed, grass finished, pasture raised, and you have to buy the cheaper cuts of meat, try to trim the fat as much as possible. Whether that’s beef, pork; really try to trim the fat as much as possible, because that is where a lot of the hormones and weird sh*t store is in the fat. So if you can get that off there, you’re going to get a little bit cleaner meat. And a lot of times, pork is the worst raised, so if you can stay away from pork if you’re not getting the best source of pork; stay away from that and kind of stick with the other meats and fish, that sort of thing. I think that’s helpful. I don’t know.

Ok, we’ll move on to veggies. So I am a big veggie person. I don’t eat a ton of fruit; and I get that question a lot. So I don’t eat a ton of fruit because to me, I’m like; if I’m going to waste calories on sugar, I’m going to have chocolate, I’m not going to have f*cking fruit. You can get the same vitamins, minerals in vegetables, and then you get like a cool dessert at the end. No thanks. So I stay away from fruits in general, and I stick with veggies, so that’s why I’m going to be talking about veggies.

So make sure you buy in season, more than anything. Buy in season, that’s going to give you the cheapest vegetables, that’s going to be local as well, often. Or pretty close to you. So try to buy in seasons. You can stick with the cheaper vegetables; cabbage, carrots, potatoes if you do potatoes. Don’t freak out, if you’re like, “Potatoes aren’t paleo!” Ok, whatever, don’t eat potatoes. Stop freaking. Onions. Check out the cheap ones and stick with that. Learn new ways to roast carrots or boiling them, whatever. I don’t know; what else do you do with carrots? Shred them. Whatever. Learn new ways to cook vegetables, and you can use that one vegetable that’s cheap and use it on a regular basis. So look for the cheaper vegetables.

If you can find a local CSA and can get; a lot of times you can get vegetables for super cheap through your local CSA. Just the other day, somebody at the gym was talking about how they go to this farm, I think that’s a little north of Denver, and you can get an entire basket and you can fill it up with as much sh*t as you want for like $10 or something. And it’s a ton of vegetables. So if you can find something like that around, it’s going to be awesome. If you can go to farmer’s markets, that’s going to be huge. And if you can start growing your own herbs. I think herbs is a big one, just because herbs are really easy to grow, because you can just grow them on your windowsill; and herbs are so f*cking overpriced! And they go bad; you need like 4 sprigs of rosemary, and then you’ve got like 47 more sprigs that just go back in the week; that sucks. So if you can grow your own herbs, that’s awesome.

Even better if you can grow your own vegetables. Or oh my gosh; if you can raise your own chickens! People are like doing this left and right. My neighbor a couple of houses down have their own chickens. It’s like; what the f*ck is that sound? People just have chickens! I mean, I’m in Denver, it’s kind of odd to have it in Denver, but whatever. Whatever floats your boat; have your own chickens, grow your own vegetables. Be a f*cking homestead; do you. Whatever. If you can do that stuff, that’s awesome. To me, we don’t even have a bush in our yard. We don’t even have a tree. There’s nothing I would like to water, there’s nothing I would like to keep alive other than me, my husband, and my dog, so I don’t do that. But if you can do that; how awesome is that? You know exactly what’s going into the soil. You know what your plants are being sprayed with. That’s awesome.

If you can buy; people ask me this a lot. Should you be buying organic? And I’m kind of one of those people who, I don’t want to see too much where people are like, “Oh, I hate Juli.” But I’m like, into conspiracy theories, so then I make up my own conspiracy theories. And I don’t share these with the population; don’t worry. I’m not one of those. I’m not like going on Reddit to spread my unknown knowledge. But I’m like, well is organic really good the world has made it out to be? I don’t know, because who knows what the standards are. I don’t understand government sh*t, and I don’t really trust our government based on the nutritional system they gave us in the first place. But if you can buy organic, if you can afford it; awesome. If not, make sure just to thoroughly wash your vegetables. If they are like a soft skin, or you’re eating the skin, that’s often where you want to buy organic. But again, to me, I would rather someone be eating a vegetable that’s not organic versus eating pasta, or bread, or any of the packaged bullsh*t food that’s on the shelves.

So, to me, I buy organic sometimes and I don’t buy organic other times. Because I’m like; no, free spirit, man I do what I want! F*ck the government! I shouldn’t say that on a podcast, I take that back. Oh my gosh, I can’t wait for this election to be over.

So let’s talk about oils, because I think oils are really important when you’re going paleo. When you’re changing over. Because a lot of times; I don’t know, I grew up in a household of butter, Crisco, canola oil; there’s tons of vegetable oil around. And so if you can get away from those, that is best. Get away from vegetable oil; it’s f*cking so sketch. Don’t put that in your body. Go with alternatives, and they’re going to be more expensive, but if you can buy in bulk, like in a bigger huge container. You can get that at Costco; you can buy anything on Amazon for the cheap nowadays. So look at Amazon on a regular basis, really for anything, but they have a ton of great deals. Thrive Market, as well, that’s another one. I’ve done a ton of Thrive Market posts, so you can kind of read about that. I’ll link that in this post.

But if you can buy in bulk, like a huge thing of coconut oil or ghee; you could always do butter if you’re ok with butter, if you can get grass-fed butter or butter from grass-fed cows, whatever. If you can get those things, that’s going to be awesome.

So, I don’t know if that helps. Those are kind of some starting points. I’m going to look through my questions from people, just because people always have better questions. Oh yeah; ok. Let’s talk about baking stuff.

So a lot of people; one person asked, “Why can’t you sub almond flour or coconut flour for whatever flour?” And to me, I don’t know, why can’t a French bulldog be a wiener dog. I don’t know; they’re totally different! Is that a good; that’s not a good comparison. But, they’re just completely different. They’re completely different chemistry, and I’m sorry that’s just how it is. Coconut flour is completely different than almond flour, so you can’t sub them one to one. And I’ve had so many people that come on my website, and they’re like, “I made this recipe to the T, and it came out terrible. The only thing I changed was I subbed coconut flour for almond flour.” What the f*ck. No. That is not following the recipe to a T; that is changing it completely! You’re changing it 100%; so it’s not to the T at all, ma’am or sir!

But people don’t understand that. You can’t change that stuff out. Just because it says flour; it’s not like an all-purpose flour. Coconut flour, almond flour, tapioca flour, cassava flour; whatever. All those are completely different. So follow those recipes to a T. if you are trying to eat paleo on a budget; stay away from all these paleo desserts and paleo baked goods. Because they’re more expensive! When I was on a really strict budget, I would make a dessert, maybe, because I was making it for the blog a little bit. But one every, maybe every week, one every two weeks; because I have no money! Almond flour is f*cking expensive.

I remember; I’m going to tell a lie, I did. You guys, I was really poor, ok. But one time in Whole Foods, it looked like corn meal, the almond flour did, so I put the corn meal on there, because it was like $8 cheaper. But you guys, it’s fine. I’m a bad person; I lied once. OK; I just lied once. Stop thinking I’m a terrible person, because I am. But it’s fine.

But I’m saying almond flour is so expensive; I don’t know if coconut flour is as expensive. But almond flour is really expensive, and that’s just how it is. So, what you could always do is buy your own almonds when they’re on sale, and make your own almond flour; boom, there you go. It’s just not maybe as fine as you’d like it to be, but you can always do that. But if you’re on a budget, you have to start looking at the big pictures. So are desserts really needed in your diet all the time? No. you need protein, you need carbohydrates, you need fat. Those are the important staples in your life. So maybe you don’t need those desserts. And if you’re trying to go out and make one of the desserts in my cookbook, and you’re like, “This is so expensive, and I can’t afford this!” ok, then don’t make it. Duh! F*cking use your common sense.

Make whatever; I have a bacon stew meat. And you’re like; well, ok bacon is a little expensive. Take that out. You have this amazing, delicious stew that you can put in a Crockpot and boom, it’s done. Slow cooker, whatever. There are all kinds of different things you can make out there and you can really kind of cut corners in different ways, whether that’s cutting out the baking, whether that’s cutting out bacon. And you can make a recipe still super delicious without all the added sh*t. and I know you’re like; “I want my dessert!” Well, who doesn’t? Who doesn’t, ok. It’s just real life. Everybody wants dessert. I’m going to bake cookies tonight because I really want f*cking dessert!

I forgot where I was going with that. But you cannot sub the flours; they just don’t do that. The chemistry, I don’t know. If you want to look up molecular information about it, you could. But I have no idea, exactly. That’s just how it goes.

When you’re looking at how to buy, stay away from Whole Foods sometimes. A lot of times, I would go to Whole Foods for my meats, if I just wanted a little better quality meat, and then I would go to King Supers or Sprouts; and you know, everybody has their different grocery stores across the US or wherever you’re living. But everybody has different cheaper grocery stores, and I would go there for vegetables, I would go there for canned foods. So I would take multiple grocery store trips. It wasn’t just like I went to one grocery store. I ended up going to three different grocery stores to really make my bill as small as possible. And some people don’t want to do that, and some people don’t have time for that. I get it. But if you’re really trying to cut corners, that’s perfect.

You can find stuff that’s on sale; whether you’re seeing coupons out there that you can cut. So if it’s tomato sauce or something, and you can get a couple of those and load that up in your pantry, do that. Get that pantry loaded up while things are on sale, so you’re good to go for the next few months. What do you think about that? I know, multiple grocery store trips, gross.

Did you know there’s a system where you can write, or send in what you need from the grocery store and a person goes and picks it up and delivers it to you? How crazy is that? I get it for like really busy people, but f*ck. Or really lazy; I don’t know which one it is. Grocery store is pretty much the only thing that gets me out of the house, into the real world with real human beings, not just my dog. So I haven’t gone that route; I need to get out of the house. I mean, I’m talking to myself on a podcast right now; I mean, come on.

Someone else asked what recipes are freezer friendly? Interesting question. And my answer is; aren’t all recipes freezer friendly? To me, I’m going to put it in the freezer. But I do not care what; Jackson, stop slurping! This guy. I don’t care texture afterwards. I eat salads the second day. I like soggy salads; isn’t that f*cking gross? But that’s just what I like. That’s just how I am. So anything to me is freezer friendly. Something that I love, Cassy Garcia from http://FedandFit.com. She just came out with a cookbook recently, and she has a ton of freezer friendly recipes. I think she marks almost all of them are freezer friendly in her book, but she marks the ones that are freezer friendly, and the best way to recook them is the way you cook them in the first place. So if you cooked it in the oven, let it defrost, cook it in the oven again. If you cooked it in a pan, recook it in the pan to get it fried up the exactly same way. So she just recommends cooking it the way you did in the first place. Me; I’m old-school; microwave. If it’s kind of soggy, whatever, I don’t give a f*ck. I’m getting food in my body faster, and I’m cool with that.

So, what recipes are freezer friendly? I would say most of them. You’re just going to have to defrost it the right way. The only thing I think is sketch, because I don’t know, it kind of grosses me out and nothing grosses me out; is egg casseroles. Or egg muffins or whatever that you do for breakfast. I just think that’s gross to put egg in the freezer; I don’t know if that’s just me. But maybe if you think I’m dumb and you think I’m wrong, please leave a comment. Let me know how you defrost your eggs. Gross.

Let’s see, what else. What else do I have on here? I’m just going through your questions to make sure I cover everything. I don’t know if I’m even doing a good job of covering things. There are like 400 billion things of information out there for paleo on a budget. What I did when I had no money was I cooked a ton of stuff in the Crockpot, because you’re going to be able to buy stew meat, or roasts pretty cheap, but that meat is really dense and fibrous so you have to slow cook it for a long time. So Crockpot meals; do a ton of Crockpot meals with stew meat. And stew meat is so gross when you cook it quickly, because you can’t chew it. But then you put stew meat with some broth and some, I don’t know, whatever else. Spices and herbs and all this good stuff, and it’s awesome. Cook it for 8 hours and it tastes good. It needs a little bit of salt; boom. Done. Fresh herbs on top, I mean, see. It’s just so easy.

Let’s see; any more questions. Oh my god; do you hear my dog slurping this entire time. Like, come on, get your life together. So, here is a question from a reader; she says, “My boyfriend things paleo is just a marketing gimmick to buy expensive foods and brands. Do you have and tips and tricks I can finally show him that paleo doesn’t necessarily mean expensive? I’ve done a couple of paleo meals from your blog, and blah blah blah.” So your boyfriend thinks it’s a gimmick to buy expensive foods?

Well, you know what’s a gimmick? That our government recommends cereals that are full of fiber that causes leaky gut and then causes autoimmune diseases. That seems like a funny gimmick that they’re pulling. I get where he’s coming from, but I can promise him it’s not a gimmick. I don’t know what to say to that. Come on dude, don’t be a dick. Come on. Just be supportive of your girlfriend who wants to eat healthy; that’s all you’ve got to really do, you know?

I think you can show him by cooking meals that those cheaper meats that we talked about; those cheaper cuts of meat. And guys always like Crockpot meals; I’m just talking based off my husband, I don’t know if all guys do. But Crockpot meals that they come home to. You can make chilis, any of those roasts, and those are going to be cheap meals that taste really f*cking good. My cookbook has a ton of slow-cooked ones, and I have my website full of them. So I’ll link some of my favorites here. But tell him; man, lay off bro. he just doesn’t want to eat healthy, right? Am I right or am I right? Am I judging your boyfriend now? I kind of am.

Let’s see; what else. “Do you recommend buying in bulk? What freezer tips do you have?” Oh I already answered that, poorly. Recommend; yeah, definitely buy things in bulk, especially spices. A lot of times they have in the spice aisle cheaper than you buy in the little jars. So if you check those out, you can buy those in bulk and you can put them in your own jars and make it a little cheaper for yourself. So I totally recommend buying in bulk. A lot of times you’ll see different sales, and you can kind of load up on almond flour or whatever else is out there. I think that’s a great one. That’s a great question, Lindsey. Thank you so much for your time.

What foods to splurge, and what to save on? Is it worth to buy grass-fed, pasture raised, or should we prioritizing organic produce?” Personally, I say go for splurging on meats. Go a little bit more expensive with your meats, and a little cheaper with your vegetables; just thoroughly wash your vegetables beforehand, and try to just buy organic if you’re eating the skin that has the soft that will get into whatever the sh*t is they spray on f*cking crops now a days can leak into that fruit or vegetable. So I would say prioritize your meats first; try to get better quality meat, and then go a little cheaper on your veggies. That’s just my personal take’ I’m sure somebody will not like that, bite my head off for that. That’s just what people like to do sometimes.

Let’s see, buttercup baby. “I love snacks,” this person, this woman is saying. “I love snacks. What gives you the most bang for your buck in your opinion? I especially love volume because I spend a lot of time studying, so being able to pick away at something.” So large volume snacks that are cheap; she said, “Holy ramble,” don’t worry girl, my entire podcast is a ramble! I mean, it’s been 30 minutes and I’ve been sitting in my living room talking to myself.

So, I talk about this, I recently did the fitness section, part of the fitness section, to Cassy’s Fed and Fit cookbook that I talked about earlier. And we did a Project together, an online Project that you can find on her website, and we talk all about exercise, and we talk about snacking. So something that I’ve come to figure out over time is the better, the higher quality food I have at real meals, and the more food, the less I have to snack. And I think when I was in college, I snacked all the time. And snack food; you’re kind of just doing it just to, I don’t know it sounds weird to say, to have something in your mouth, but that’s what you want to do. Like you want to stay stimulated or something; oh my god, what am I saying? Jesus. So, you want, a lot of people just like to snack. Who doesn’t like to snack? It gives you endorphins, and then you’re like, “Yeah, I’m going to f*cking study! It’s going to be so awesome!”

So I would first recommend that you try to eat bigger meals so you’re snacking less. That’s my first recommendation. The more you have better, high quality, dense foods that you’re not going to want those snacks as much, and drinking a ton of water is going to be helpful as well without just having random food around. For snacks; man. And I had a couple of people ask this as well, and said they snack on nuts a lot. And I always recommend people to kind of stay away from nuts; not only are they expensive, when you’re talking about paleo on a budget, but they’re just pretty extreme high in fat. You’re not getting the best ratio of omega-6 to omega-3. So it’s just not the best fat to have on a regular basis, just eating and eating and eating. And I think nuts get so out of control; at least my experience, when I first started paleo, I was eating so many nuts, and so much nut butter, and it just becomes your staple. It becomes your crutch.

So I try to recommend people staying away from nuts. If you have to have anything, have some jerky, have something that has protein and a little fat. I looked at my snacks for a while as just mini meals. So when I would make a meal to go, say I made chicken, broccoli, and avocado, I would make a smaller meal in a little container of exactly that, but it was just a snack. It was just a small meal. So stay away from snacks as much as you can; eating bigger meals, drinking a ton of water, trying to stay away from nuts, and then if you are having snacks maybe you’re doing jerky or you’re making a smaller meal. Sometimes if you’re ok with having a little higher carb, plantain chips because that’s a great crunchy snack to have around.

I do Larabars sometimes whenever I’m traveling; I’m trying to picture the things I have while I’m traveling. Larabars, Rx bars, Mammoth bars; what else do I like? What else tickles my fancy? I don’t know. That’s all I can think of right now. I like to bring some nut butter packets once in a while. I try not to eat those on a daily basis, but those just little 100-calorie little packs, just to give you the satiation that you need just to feel satisfied until your next meal. But then you’re not constantly eating like handfuls of nuts. It’s just not good. It’s not good for your bum; know what I’m saying? Know what I mean?

Let’s see, do we have any more? Oh my god, somebody said; this woman, I was mentioning how I was having night sweats, and this woman told me that she was having night sweats when she was pregnant. She’s like, “Just saying!” My womb is not with child, I can promise you that. It’s just my husband runs 1000 degrees. The other night I told him; “Don’t sleep close to me!” And I slept like a baby. You know? Just that heater. We got off topic again.

Ok, “what are your fave cheap paleo meals? Quick ones when you don’t have time or when you’re traveling.” Ok, so easy meals that I like that are quick; you can make chicken thighs. I have crispy chicken, that I’ll link in here. I have a crispy chicken recipe. I know Nom Nom Paleo has an amazing crispy chicken thighs recipe; and chicken thighs are so good. You get the skin all crispy, and then you put it in the oven and finish it off, and it’s awesome. So that’s an easy one. I get whatever vegetables are on sale, and you can just roast it in the oven. That takes no effort, so you can do all the other things that you need to get done at night. So you just put it in the oven, toss it with oil, some salt, garlic powder, whatever spices you like. Put it in the oven, and boom. You have vegetables. Easy peasy.

And then doing Crockpot stuff, like I said before. The more Crockpot the better. Because you just throw it all in there. I made a buffalo chicken chili just a couple of weeks ago; and I’ve seen you guys tag me in it, which is so cool. Please tag me in all your photos @PaleOMG or #PaleOMG. Just because I love seeing them, and seeing what you’re making, because it keeps me inspired in the kitchen when I’m feeling down in the dumps. But that one is so easy because you don’t even have to brown the meat. You literally put everything in and mix it together. And people are like, “You don’t have to brown the meat?” I said you don’t have to brown the meat. I didn’t just say that just to say it; I mean it. You just throw it in, and it cooks, and you’re like; boom, done.

So I like chicken thighs, or roasting a whole chicken. You can even roast a whole chicken in the Crockpot, that’s super easy. Tear it apart, but some honey mustard. You can just buy mustard and honey and mix it together, throw it on there. Easy peasy, live is great. Boom. How’s that?

Oh gosh, let’s see. Ok I think I pretty much got all the topics. Oh hi, doggie, you little doggie face! Oh I did get this question; I answered her already, but I want to answer that here because I think it’s really important. She was like, “What’s the difference between coconut aminos and liquid aminos; is one better than the other?” And I don’t think one is better than the other. I personally like coconut aminos, and that’s what I use. But, oh my god this is my biggest pet peeve and I’ve kind of already said this before. But, when people, they’re like; oh I made your, whatever. Let’s say my crispy orange beef. They’re like, “But it was so salty! The only thing I did different was used liquid aminos.” Ok, the only thing you did was completely change the recipe, and then you gave me a one star because you said it tastes like sh*t! Well not sh*t, because you changed it! So liquid aminos and coconut aminos are totally different. Coconut aminos are really sweet; I think it comes from coconut nectar so it’s really sweet. Liquid aminos is really salty. So do not sub them one for one on any of my recipes, because your taste buds will be pissed, and then you’ll be pissed because you just wasted a whole thing, and then you’ll be pissed at me and then you’ll hate on me over the internets. Eww.

Ok let’s see if there are any more; because I think I have gone on and on and on and I really have to cut some of this sh*t down. 39 minutes; holy shart! No, come on guys. I asked people and I’m like; hey, ask me any questions that are paleo on a budget questions. These are all questions that aren’t paleo on a budget! Come on bros.

So I hope I answered all the questions for you. Let’s just recap, because recaps are always a good thing. So, you’re going to try to find the best quality meats you can, and I’ll put this on the blog post to help you kind of find locally sourced stuff. But you want to find the best quality you can and the best quality within your budget. And here’s the thing; if you’re like, ok, I can’t buy grass-fed meat, I can’t afford it, so I’m just going to go buy pasta. No! I don’t want you to do that. No, gross. Don’t buy pasta. Unless it’s brown rice pasta, that’s cool.

But don’t go buy some packaged sh*t; don’t go buy Lean Cuisines or these freezer meals; they’re gross. Read the ingredients; do you know how to pronounce most of that sh*t? Of course you don’t. It’s not like, “Oh, it’s peas and carrots and some beef, boom.” No, it’s not. There’s all kinds of weird sh*t in there; you don’t want to be eating those. So buy what you can afford. That’s fine. We’re trying to always get better at our health, and we’ll continually do that because we’re continually learning new things. And, who knows, if we continue this process of getting healthier and healthier, then more foods will be available at different price ranges. So buy within your budget, buy what you can, even if it’s not perfect meat. If it’s, you know, the cheaper cuts and they’re corn-fed beef; hey, that’s life. That’s fine, you know. It’s ok, it’s not the end of the world. You’re not saying, oh I hate paleo, I’m just going to go buy this ramen. Like, no. Don’t do that. Buy a can of tuna or something.

But I get it, it sucks sometimes. But don’t get down on yourself, it’s not worth it. 100% not worth it. So I hope that part helps. Buy organic if you can; if not, cool. That’s fine. Wash your vegetables. Take care of them, clean them off. Buy in bulk on Amazon, at Costco. You can check out those companies that I said like Thrive Market, they have so many things, a lot of times up to 50% off, so you’re getting all kinds of deals way cheaper than you would especially at Whole Foods or something; and I support Whole Foods. I mean, I f*cking shop there like 3 times a week. But, you can find cheaper stuff easily online. There are so many online services now, there’s really no excuse to not shop online. And don’t drones drop off sh*t at this point, so if you live in Podunk, Nowhere, you can get it even? Yeah.

Did I follow everything? I know someone is going to email me, and be like; “Hey you need to write up a script.” And I did, ok, but I get distracted. There are things I’d like to talk about; random things. Stop drinking that haterade.

So, next week, guys, I’m going to do a random question podcast. So it’s going to be all kinds of different questions. And I’ve already written down a couple; one is related to the underwear I wear while I wear workout clothes. And maybe you’re thinking; oh that’s a really f*cking weird question; but it’s honestly the most asked question I get at this point on my blog. Not joking. Or email, or whatever. So I’m going to answer that. I have questions about; what else do I have? Just kind of random questions I’ve written down over time, all kinds of different stuff. So in this blog post, if you’re listening on iTunes, just go to www.PaleOMG.com. Or, come comment on any of my social media, and just let me know what random questions you have, whether it’s kind of food prep stuff, whether it’s about fashion, workouts, personal, whatever. Please ask away. We’re just going to do a random question; like pow, pow, pow; answer all the questions you got; pow, pow, pow. That kind of night. That night? I don’t know if you’re listening at night.

But I’m just going to answer all kinds of random questions, and it’s going to be fun. And that’s all I got man. So please leave a comment on my blog; I love to hear from you guys. That’s the best way I get back to people. I don’t always see stuff on social media, especially if it’s a few posts back. But I always see my comments. So please leave a comment on www.PaleOMG.com. I love to hear from you guys. Follow along with me on social media anywhere; PaleOMG. And if you like this podcast, please leave a review, because that’s just so nice! If you don’t like this podcast, please don’t leave a review. I don’t know why you’ve been listening to me for 45 minutes; that’s weird. It’s just kind of weird.

Oh, can please talk about how fun my intro music was today? You’re going to start hearing that every time. And a little outro music. Is it called outro? I don’t know. But I love you guys. Thank you so much for listening today. I can’t wait to do a random question episode next week. That will be so much fun! So thank you so much for listening; hugs and kisses. Do awesome stuff this week guys. And we’ll listen; see you next time.