Eat cheap food. Cook from scratch.

I get that we have a busy, fast paced culture and sometimes people are tired. So convenience food sounds like a great idea, right? Well, think again. My husband and I get pretty adequate nutrition for about 20-30 dollars a week. More like 35 or 40 if we're feeling indulgent and decide to make things like homemade hamburgers. (Do homemade hamburgers and you can feed your whole family for what it would have cost for just you and your husband!) Think about how much you spend on food. How much of it is convenience/fast food? be honest! Now convert that into hours worked. Scary, huh? So, basically, you COULD be working less, and eating better. If you wanted to.
A typically weekly grocery trip for us looks like this:
Milk
Eggs
Frozen chicken breasts
Margarine (I prefer butter because of the trans fats margarine contains, but when things are tight you gotta do what ya gotta do)
Lettuce
Squash
Tomatoes
Onions
Celery
Apples
Bananas
A couple pantry staples such as soy-sauce or lentils

We have a wheat grinder and I make all our bread 100 % whole wheat from scratch, and all our other baked goods from scratch. Buying a fifty pound bag of wheat occasionally is not very expensive at all.

Here's a typical menu for a few days with prep times:

Day one
Oatmeal with milk and banana slices: 10 min
Apple slices with peanutbutter: 2 min
Egg salad sandwich with lettuce: 5 min if eggs are already boiled and bread is already baked.
Chicken grilled with a little olive oil, green salad with homemade dressing: 45 min
1 hr two min. + 40 min active time to grind wheat and bake bread in the morning, and 10to boil the eggs. Less than two hours total.

Day two
Whole wheat pancakes with margarine and low sugar peach jam we canned in the summer: 15 min
Oatmeal cookies and a banana: 1hr, but most of that the cookies are baking and you're doing other things. So we'll call it 15 min
Leftover salad with leftover chicken and some sauteed onion added: 10 min
Homemade chicken soup with squash, onions, tomatoes, celery, carrots and anything else I have and feel like in it, and a slice of bread: 30 min, but you'll want to let it simmer for a while for the flavors to meld, so we'll call it an hour, but I bet you'll read a book and not stare at the pot.
2 hr 10 min

Day three (we'll assume I'm busy or not feeling great, so it's pretty low key)
Eggs and buttered toast with the option of jam or cinnamon sugar. (three eggs, two basted easy for him, one fried over hard for me): 10 min
Leftover cookies and carrot sticks: 5 min
Peanut butter and banana sandwich, celery sticks: 5 min
Leftover soup and bread: 10 min (to heat up the soup on the stove since we don't have a microwave)
30 min

So for about two hours a day you can eat healthy, or you can work for four hours a day or more to eat junk food and die of clogged arteries or diabetic complications. With this kind of diet you can cut out short-burst energizers like coffee, soda, or excess sugar, because you'll be eating great and working less, so you'll have WAY more energy. You can even wear the cute skinny person clothes you've always wanted to! You could eat this way, and still work the extra two hours a day, and save up for the downpayment on that house you want. You will have far fewer medical expenses in the long run, so you're saving yourself money in the future too.
When you eat this way, you don't have to worry about crash diets or anything like that. My husband has been slowly but steadily losing weight since we got married. It was a lot more at first, and now it's leveling off. He's a healthy weight now, and feels great. I'm gaining the weight I should be for our baby, but not too much. When you're eating healthy foods prepared properly, it's a lot easier to regulate your eating without even having to think about it. Convenience foods are typically overly processed foods that contain too much sugar, fake things like sucralose and trans fats, and too few nutrients. When your body isn't bombarded by pseudo-food, but real, fresh, natural ingredients, it tends to choose to eat the right amounts. And as you can see, you can still indulge in things like cookies, popcorn, etc. But when you're making them at home with real ingredients, they're better for you. Try it and see.


Tips:
1 You don't have to worry about couponing your groceries, because honestly you will hardly ever buy anything someone would bother publishing a coupon for if you live like this. (coupons are a marketing ploy to get people to buy stuff they don't really need, like name brand toilet paper or toaster strudel pastries) Sometimes you can use one to get a sweet deal on toothpaste, but usually they're not worth the trouble.
2 Avoid shortcuts. If a recipe says to use lipton onion soup mix, or condensed cream of mushroom soup, or half a bottle of salad dressing, you're not really cooking from scratch. You're assembling convenience foods with a few real ingredients to make pretend from scratch food. It takes like, TWO minutes to look up how to season a dish properly, or whip up an easy white sauce. (well, maybe five for the white sauce). And think of all the preservatives and other guck you're adding to your food!!!!
3 Shop the edges of the store. It's where they keep the real food. Avoid the middle like the plague except to dart in commando-style and grab things like molassess and oatmeal.
4 Be wary of frozen vegetables. Compare prices. Sometimes they're a better deal, but a lot of times buying fresh is best. Fresh vegetables tend to be more versatile too, because their cell walls haven't been broken down by the freezing process. And no matter what anyone tells you, you can't really make a proper stirfry from frozen veggies!!!!!!
5 If you cannot resist your children's pleas for cap'n crunch, or your husband's sneaky slip-the-chips-in-the-basket-while-she's-not-looking maneuver, don't bring them with you! I do all the shopping and cooking in my home. We eat what I make. I accomadate my husband's tastes a lot (homemade pizza anyone?), and I buy special treats for us occasionally (he likes that aerosol cheese on crackers....he'll eat a whole can in less than an hour), but our basic diet is what I buy and make. I'm not saying to deprive them of food they enjoy and make them subsist on gruel. My husband thoroughly enjoys what we eat. But if they're the ones loading the cart with too much garbage food, leave them home.
6 Don't shop hungry. I always eat right before I go, because if I don't, all those quick snacks start looking miiiiiiighty tasty!!!!!
7 Don't shop while you have to pee. My Mom told me once that I should always use the bathroom before a job interview, because when you gotta pee you talk to much. I've found a lot of other things just work better on an empty bladder. I think something about excess urine short circuits our brains.
8 Decide how much you want to spend before you go. I draw up a list of what I need to buy before I go and calculate how much it should cost. Some people keep a lot of fancy charts and lists, but I just guesstimate. I don't get specific over my produce either. I tend to just allocate a certain portion of my chosen amount for the trip. Say, five dollars for fruit and six for veggies. If I can buy what I have on my list for less than I've calculated, then I might let myself splurge on something I wouldn't normally buy. Or I put the money aside in my fun money stash.
9 What are you willing to spend? I don't usually let my weekly produce expenditure average out to more than a dollar a pound. That doesn't mean I don't occasionally buy things like strawberries or out of season peaches, but I tend to balance it by choosing things that are far less than my desired price per pound for the rest of my purchase.
10 Shop in season. A general rule of thumb is if it's cheaper than usual, it's in season. That's why you shop in season. Exploring the produce section regularly will help you learn what typical prices are, and help you notice when they've gone down.

How do you eat? What do you do to save money, eat healthier, or save time cooking? What's your favorite recipe? Let me know!