Hey, guys, welcome to this week's episode, and I'm so excited for today's guest, she is the creator of Don't Waste the Crumbs, a website devoted to helping others eat real food on a real budget. And she's the creator of an amazing video bootcamp called Grocery Budget Boot Camp. Welcome, Tiffany, to Tiffany. How do you say your last name, sir? Zach TERs Activity Tercek. Welcome. Thank you for having me. So this is such an exciting episode for me because I will tell you right now, my husband. So we spend I'm embarrassed to say how much money we spend, but we spend about anywhere from six hundred to eight hundred, sometimes a thousand dollars a week on groceries for our family. And we have a family of four and we go out to eat. So and we play with me. So we buy organic. We do buy everything like really, really clean. And we do have people over a lot. And I do like I always have somebody who like, you know, is having a baby or making meals for. So it's we have a lot where we're giving food to people. I'm making meals. So that equates some of that to that. But still, it's astronomical. So I'm so excited about you helping us try to reduce the cost of everyone's budget. We can do it. So I know that you took an interesting path to real food. Can you tell the listeners how your journey started and with you just trying to save money on your own natural living for your family?
Yeah. So when my husband and I first got married, we both brought a lot of debt to the table. And when we realized we were going to have a baby, we looked at the numbers and the numbers don't lie. And we had to figure out how to save some money in case I didn't go back to work. And our grocery budget was the only budget line item that had any wiggle room. We couldn't change the mortgage. You couldn't change a car payment. And I know you can do some creative financing nowadays, but at the time they such. And so we looked to our budget and it started out with just saying, OK, this is what we spent last month, let's see if we can go over. And that worked for a long time until we had baby number two. At that point, my husband spoke up and said, hey, can we eat real food? And I'm like, well, you know, what do you mean, we're eating real food? And he's like, No, no, no, we're eating food out of boxes. And it never really clicked what he was talking about, because I grew up with my mom making spaghetti from a box, had the seasoning packet, and you just add a can of tomato paste or whatever. Almost everything we ate came from a box. So I didn't know any different than on the other hand, grew up on five acres, half of which was farm. So he had like tons of fresh produce. And for him real food were carrots that were growing out of the ground. So in order to make our budget work, we had to cut back on tons and tons of things. And he said, Do you think we can eat this real food without making the budget go up? Because we were doing really good, paying off our debt and racking up a savings account. And I was like, well, I don't know about that. I actually was probably not quite that nice salad would I replied back to him with everything I had read, talked about real food being expensive. So I was thinking, you know, like, this is never going to happen. But the words that came out of my mouth were sure, I'll try it. And lo and behold, a few months into it, making it work, we were eating real food that came from the ground like produce, fruits, vegetables, healthier meats. And we eliminated, I would say at the time, about eighty percent of the boxes in our pantry, which was huge for us. And then we so we got that under control, we started living that way and it became easier. The longer you do it, the easier it becomes. And then I realized about maybe a year later or so that once you start reading the labels on food, you start reading the labels on everything. And so I remember being in the shower, washing my hair, you know, putting the conditioner in it says Lieben one to two minutes and like, I got nothing to do. So I'm going to read the labels on the shampoo and conditioner bottles. And I am looking at these labels.
I have no idea how to pronounce this. I don't know what this is.
And if this was something I was going to eat, I would not eat this. Like if I can't pronounce it, we don't know what it is, we wouldn't eat it. Yeah, I'm putting it on my skin, which absorbs its largest organ in your body. It absorbs all the toxins that are in whatever you put on it. I'm going to give to my baby skin. And that was the first time it clicked for a healthy living as a whole and not just food.
Awesome. I love your story because I hear so many people complain that they can't afford real food. They say I can't afford to buy organic products or clean products or eating real food that are organic. And I feel like you're living proof that it's possible. So if you had to pick your top three tips for listeners on a budget who are trying to switch to natural living, what would it be and why?
So my first tip would be to focus on the big stuff. That would be the things you eat most often, the things or the products you use. Most often that's going to give you the biggest bang for your buck. So say you make. So you make chicken on a regular basis, if you focus on getting better chicken, then you're going to make a much better dent in your health than you would be if you focused on buying butter. I always use the example of soy sauce because you don't use a lot of soy sauce or very often. So even if you've got the best you could afford, you're not making that big of a dent. And you could say the same thing for maybe shampoo or your body wash or your face. So these are things you're using at least once a day, sometimes twice a day. So if you start there and just simply get the best you can afford or find a really good DIY tutorial to make it from scratch using natural ingredients like Castiel soap or olive oil and essential oils that go really far with both your actual living journey and your budget. So my second tip would be what they're making changes. Don't try to change too much at one time because you're going to get overwhelmed and you're going to get frustrated and you're going to want to quit. So for food, I recommend making about one change a week. And this doesn't have to be a big change. It could be something as simple as one that you make on the stove instead of a box of cereal. To me, like that's a change. That's a baby step. It is pointing you in the right direction of better when it comes to natural living in the stuff that you're using byproducts. I recommend one product a month, and that's simply because it takes us a little bit longer to adjust to that when you're adjusting to maybe like a homemade body wash. The consistency is different. The smell is different. We're a little bit more finicky when it comes to the body product stuff. So I recommend one change a month for those. And then tip three is plan, plan, plan, plan, which everybody needs to plan. But the longer I do this, the more I just realize how vital plan is for all of it. You have to plan the budget, plan your meals, plan your shopping trip, even start paying attention to how long something lasts you so that you can plan for that purchase in the future or plan to find a recipe to make it from scratch. Because I've learned that if you don't plan when you are in the moment of oh my goodness, I have a plan for dinner, what am I going to make you turn to your old habits? You turn to drive through, you turn to delivering takeout and you're running low on laundry detergent and you're like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do? I still have all this laundry. You're just going to send someone to the store or you're going to run out and you're going to get the stuff you used to buy that is not good for you. You're not even in the right frame of mind of what I have this recipe or I wanted to try this brand next. You're just in panic. And so planning is essential.
So am my newest edition of my book, Waste Away, I talk about how people don't have to deprive themselves when it comes to food, but everyone has to decide for themselves, what are there? Red light, yellow light and green light foods, red light meaning like I'm just not going to eat this because it is just a huge red light for me. But yellow light is like I don't have it very often, but every once in a while I will. So what are your kind of red light and yellow light foods for you?
So red light foods for us is going to be anything that has hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn sirup those. When we first started eating real food, I had to draw the line somewhere as to what was allowed in the house and what wasn't. And that was the line we drew. So by default, that means we don't drink soda, we don't do pizza delivery, we don't do fast food, we don't do candy. None of that's allowed in the house. It also means a lot of POSIX foods that you wouldn't think of containing these ingredients. But they do like peaches, has high fructose corn, sirup, boxed cereals, frozen meals and even things like popsicles. So we don't buy any of that like we do make pizza from scratch. And I do make our own popsicles. So it's not like we can't have those foods, but we don't buy them by any means. Like foods are things like cookies and cupcakes because we don't buy them, we make them from scratch. But sugar is so addictive so that even when we use a better sugar or a natural sweetener, we still want more of it. So it's our yellow white food we made from scratch of created recipes that are lower in sugar. It's kind of like the verge of a bare minimum amount of sugar. You need to make it taste rather than super, super sweet. And then we also just don't make it like a regular habit in our house. It's truly a treat in our house. And then we when we have it gone, gone.
So do you have any of your favorite recipes where you say like these are like, let's say your favorite cookies or just your favorite treat where you say, this is my favorite?
Yes, I am a huge fan of cut out sugar cookies. We make them at Christmas and I've tinkered with traditional sugar cookie recipes over the years, kind of figuring out how much sugar do I need for this to actually turn up a cookie and not just a blob of butter on a baking soda. My favorite. I also really like this peanut butter oatmeal cookie recipe I have. You take your sugar and you processed it so it becomes a super refined sugar and it's just so, so good. It totally satisfies that sweet tooth of I want something sweet. I don't want to feel bad having my something sweet. And because you're using a natural sugar, it doesn't put you in a sugar coma and you're the diction trigger, it's a little more subdued. So you're not like eating them hand over fist when you make a batch, you're like, OK, I've had a couple. The peanut butter fills me up because those healthy, healthy fats that come in legumes and and nuts. So we like to make those awesome.
Now, I know Halloween's coming up. And so, you know, the kids, they're filling up pillowcases with as much candy as possible. Do you have any tricks for the kids as Halloween is coming up for anything that would kind of lower their sugar intake?
Yes. So Halloween and any holiday that involves candy has been a work in progress over the years. My kids right now are ten and twelve. When we first started trick or treating, this would be at least five to six years ago. So I don't want anybody listening to think that you can do it without a change and not expect mutiny in your house because Halloween is synonymous with all this candy. So when we first started trick or treating, we drew a line at certain types of candy. So granted, they were little anything that was a choking hazard or that was hard. You simply cannot have that. And remember, we are the parents. We have the ability to tell our kids no. So I really want to encourage other moms who are listening, who feel bad, telling their kids, no, you have to remember that the kids don't know what's best for them. You might not be fun for a few minutes, but definitely put your foot down and say no to certain things. It would be jawbreakers, jolly ranchers and then anything that was ticking like time or attack. Because just honestly, I got stuck in their teeth and as a mom, it was awful to try to brush their teeth and get it out. So we just said we're not even going to ask them. And that really boils down to anything with chocolate. We used to have the rule of you could keep about 10 to 15 pieces of chocolate and we let them pick which ones and we would take them and turn them into cookies or turn them into some type of a dessert bar. So it wasn't what that did is it eliminated the kids thinking that this is my candy, I can go eat my candy whenever I want to have my candy. Instead, it became this is a family treat. And it also, I would say psychologically and early gave me as a parent a little bit more control because I could say, no, I'm sorry, sweetheart. We can't make cookies this weekend. So I'm not tricking the kids when it works in their favor. I mean, if you put the candy in a jar in front of their eyes, you're pretty much teasing them all the time, but out of sight. And they say mom can make cookies and you legitimately say, no, I'm sorry, we can't. Then you can't make cookies. You know, you're not depriving them, but you're also delaying it. So they're going to eat their candy. Hand over fist. And then over the years, we've reduced the amount that we actually.
Now, I like that how you had on your blog that you can buy back the Halloween candy. So talk about that for a second.
That was actually a reader suggestion. I've never actually done it myself. I've looked in my area for different dentists and organizations that will will buy back the candy. And I haven't found anybody locally. So that's out there because.
So you can do it yourself. Like you could say, I like you is the parent can say every I'll buy, you know, five cents for every lollipop and twenty five cents for every candy.
Oh yes. Absolutely. And we've done it to where the kids have to trade in the bad candy for something that's healthier, like we'll make homemade peanut butter cups and the kids have to trade in two or three of the candies or one homemade peanut butter cup. And it used to be for the moms out there, it used to be one to one. The kids traded in one piece. We gave them one peanut butter cup. But as we just gradually ate less and less sugar, I was able to say, well, now, if you really want a peanut butter cup, I need I need to so we can kind of up the ante as the kids get further in their own natural journey.
So the question I ask all my guests is take me through a normal day in the life of Tiffany. Like, what did you eat yesterday? When did you eat it? Did you work out?
Yeah. So yesterday was not a normal day. Do you want go on a normal day. Let's do both. Let's do yesterday and a normal day.
OK, so normally I wake up at five fifteen, I get breakfast ready and I get lunch ready and usually it's already, already made muffins. I've already made homemade sábado bread or something. So get it out for the kids and I'm either in the basement or I'm outside by six o'clock because my exercise I am part of an online gym, which is a combination of body weight, weight training and hit routines. So I'll do those in the basement. But I also like to run when it's not to hold. The weather has been just really fitness lately. And I, I knew yesterday I was going to not be running, even though I would normally run on a farm on a Tuesday. But so I normally run we the school, we come back, I have a smoothie for breakfast almost every single day without fail, tons of grains, just a little bit of batteries and spinach and some protein powder for lunch. I have a really big salad. I'm really big on eating greens. Like I aim for the spinach a day and that and that's just breakfast and lunch. So between me, I'm eating a pound of produce at breakfast, a pound of produce at lunch, and then there's dinner work. I have appointments, meetings, errands. Usually during the day I try to bulk on my errands and both of my meetings so I can be productive at home. I pick my kids and as soon as we get home, it stops and it turns to homework, making sure doing their chores, getting dinner ready. It's kind of more family focused. It seems the kids are home from school. Today was just a jam packed day. So I've been experimenting with Mazetti lattes. I've been I really love my job and I usually just have it plane with water. But I was I was just in the mood for a latte, so I made my own version of a bulletproof. Tea latte was just really, really good. So I had that taking the kids to school and it was so good, I made myself a second one when I got home. But then I wasn't hungry or I was in a meeting until about two. So at two o'clock, I was like, I need to eat something for lunch. Otherwise I'm not going to make it to dinner. I'm going to make that choice is basically in the afternoon. So I had a few pieces of a new recipe that I'm working on, and it's. Whole wheat flour dough, cinnamon raisin bread with the bomb, it was so so I had that, too. And then for dinner, I had made a sheet pan, sweet potato and chickpea beautifuls.
Well, I have a great mazetti recipe that me and Mama said, you know, Mama Zimride, she said, yes, yes. I have to add that. I'll add that into the schnitz and show a great recipe that she taught me how to do. That's very low sugar. Wonderful. Yes. Her and I made it when she came down to visit. All right. Let's jump right into the listener questions. This is from Becca in Portland.
I have a two year old and a four year old, so I'm always cleaning up messes and spills. But I hate using harsh chemicals around them. I'm looking for a natural homemade alternative to disinfect any suggestions back in Portland.
Yes. So about a year ago, I did a SIDE-BY-SIDE testing using protein swab testing strips to see if vinegar actually cleans messes. Basically, I took raw chicken smeared on my countertop, which I know is really, really gross. But I did it with a vinegar solution and then I cleaned it up with a Castile's so solution. And the vinegar did not clean up the chicken mess while the Castile's so did so. I personally love essential oils, so I have essential oil based cleaner. But if you don't want to mess with that or go with that root Castiel, soap is easy. It's affordable. The only downside is that it can leave what looks like a white residue. It just means that you need when you're done cleaning, you need to wipe off with a damp cloth. But that's totally.
So when I was at Momma's House, she told me about this bottle that you can get. And it's it's so cool because it literally I think I'm going to give it away to one lucky winner.
But what it is, I bought so many of them and basically it literally tells you how much to put in. So it's like it says, put this like you have a line there and it says this much vinegar, this much Castile's, so this much essential oils. And one of the things I did was I just doubled or tripled the essential oils that you're supposed to because the problem is vinegar, like I think it says, to put twenty four drops of essential oil. But if you don't double that, then whatever spray you make, it will literally smell just like vinegar. So you need to make sure that you like double or triple the essential oils in there and then it'll smell good.
So I share a little half with you. Yeah. Smell. So if you take your citrus peels, oranges, limes, lemons, stuff them into a mason jar, something that has a lid that fits because if you collect jars you often have the ones that don't fit and then fill it to the top with vinegar and just put it in like a dark cabinet or what, just somewhere out of reach for about two to four weeks. Then vinegar will smell like the citrus that you put in there. And it's still just as powerful vinegar. But it doesn't have that that you guys know. I'm talking about the smell that comes with vinegar. It smells like lemon or it smells like.
So you. OK, so let me repeat back what you said so you can just in a jar, take the vinegar and then just put peel the orange and then just put the peel all the people inside the vinegar.
Yes, this.
I love that idea and then you get rid of that smell and then, I mean, obviously you can still use as much essential oils as you want, but you're saving money, right?
Oh, because essential oils are not cheap. They're not cheap. Do you have a certain brand that you use for essential oils that kind of helps with cost?
I use young living oils because I just really I feel like I can stand behind the quality, the to promise. I know that everyone is just not not everyone's on board with choosing certain companies and that's fine too. I just tell everybody to do your research when it comes to oils. You want to make sure you know where they're coming from because they're so concentrated that if there's pesticides or chemicals used in the harvesting process, those can end up in your oils as well, which is the purpose of using them. So.
All right. This is from Dana in Cincinnati. I'm trying to cut down on my kids sugar intake, but they love sugary cereals for breakfast and things like fruit snacks and granola bars for snacks. Are there any lower sugar, healthier versions, or is there a way that I can make them a healthier breakfast at home?
Absolutely. So on my blog, don't waste the crumbs, Dotcom. I have a ton of recipes like granola bars and breakfast things that are family picky, eater tested and approved. And we just like our staples in our own house, so you can definitely make them from scratch. One of the first steps that I took when I was trying to wean my kids off of sugary breakfast stuff, what I didn't aim to cut back on the sugar. I just aimed to make it myself. So, for example, oatmeal, those Quaker Oats, instant oatmeal packets. My kids love the cinnamon brown sugar, which, as the name suggests, brown sugar is one of the key ingredients. And that's probably what makes it tastes so good. But I figured if I could simply take those cinnamon and brown sugar and do it myself, then I can control brown sugar. So I made that myself into the amount of brown sugar and once they liked it, then it started reducing the amount of sugar from there. So we have to remember that if our kids are used to sugary things and we want to get them off, you can't go from, you know, delicious cake, sugar laden coffee cake to that kale. It's it's too, too big of a contrast, especially for kids, because they're going to just straight up tell you this is bad, they're not going to eat it. And then they got the mommy guilt. So I don't have to meet them where they are. If they're in the sugary breakfast, just try making it yourself and then you can gradually make it with less sugar. That's so much easier than trying to find sugar alternatives that you buy because you'll inevitably it's going to cost too much or they're still going to have too much sugar and it's just not worth it. In the end, you can just you can just make a lot of these yourself some really good, solid recipes.
All right. This next one is from Mackenzie in Houston. I'm trying to cut down on sugar, but I love baking my favorite things to make our banana bread cookies and muffins. So I need a healthy but tasty sugar substitution. Any suggestions?
Yes. So I love to bake, too. For me, baking is more about actually baking than eating it. I like to eat it too, but I love to bake. So my suggestion is to cut back on the amount of sugar you're using. Usually most recipes you can easily take out a quarter cup of granulated sugar without even mixing it in the recipe. So I would start there. Next time you make it, take a cup, eat it, see how you like it, and then the next time you make it, take out half a cup. So it's like two water cups and you keep going at that rate until you get to the point where you're like, oh, I don't really like it as much. So then you go back just one baby step and and that's kind of where you settle on your recipe. So let's say, for example, the recipe calls for a cup of sugar. At that point, you can substitute honey and maple sirup and a 50 50 ratio for granulated sugar and quick breads and in muffins. Now this.
Say that one more time. What's the substitution, honey and maple sirup.
And it's a 50 50 split. You can do all maple sirup. You can do all honey. But I have found that when you do all honey, you can really taste the honey flavor and you don't necessarily want that in all of your baked goods.
So if this split works best, so you're saying if it asks for one cup of sugar. Right. Then then you could just put half a cup of honey and half a cup of maple.
Sarah, and it'll be the same, yes, in muffins and quick breads. OK, but now when it comes to cakes and cookies, those are a little bit different because sugar does have a baking property and it's really comes through in cakes and cookies. And this is where you want to still cut back on the amount of sugar you're using until you get to the point where it's like it's just sweet enough for you and then you increase the quality of your sugar. So you might go from white granulated sugar to terminate sugar. That's a baby step. And then you might go from Germanotta to coconut sugar and then you might go from coconut sugar to make sure you just kind of slowly make your sweeteners a better quality. And that is easier on the budget because you have already decided early on just to use less in the first place. So it's not like you're you're buying expensive sugar and then using a whole lot of it. You're buying the nicer sugar and using less.
And so you're saying in cakes and cookies you can't do the honey in maple sirup you just need to get a better quality of sugar instead of substituting it for the honey and maple sirup. Is that right?
Generally speaking, yes. OK, got it. If you want a cake or a cookie that does not have granulated sugar at all, you're going to have to find a recipe that was created for that because they're liquid. I mean, it's like it's like taking a cup of flour out of your cookie recipe and adding a cup of water. It's really thin and you're not going to get that cool and consistency in a cookie you want. So it's a little trickier.
OK, next question, Jen in Dover, I'm trying to cut down on pasta and grains, but I make a lot of pasta and white rice because they're cheap and quick and my kids are super picky. What are some other quick but quick and filling things I can cook instead of pasta that my kids will actually.
OK, so. If you ask me this question six years ago, I will do an answer and say, gee, you can do potatoes and sweet potatoes, other vegetables like carrots or quinoa, whole grains like quinoa or millet. But as I learned over the years, it's not so much things that are filling because, sure, we can give our kids white rice and white pasta, but the schools don't have a lot of nutrients. Nutrient foods is what actually fills the belly. It's not a volume, so to speak. It's it becomes a quality when they're babies and are nursing or they're on formula. It is very much volume. Babies just they go until it comes right back up because that's a volume thing. But beyond that, it becomes a quality. So if you were to feed your kids more quality foods, more fruits and vegetables, better quality meats, there you'll find that they're not asking for as much food because their bodies aren't meeting more food. They're getting satisfied on the nutrient side. Does that make sense?
Yeah, it does. So talk to us a little bit about what are some more hacks like. I love that example that you gave with the orange peels and lemon peels and putting that in the vinegar and now you're using a lot less essential oil. Give us some more hacks that are really good that people can really save money on that you you share with people.
Sure. So a really easy hack to what I call make a smoothie container and a soup container so you can take like a yogurt tub, empty yogurt tub and with a Sharpie right on their smoothie or write on their soup. One goes to the fridge, one goes in the freezer. You have anything leftover that would remotely taste good in a smoothie and is really applicable to those with little kids who, like you, give the kid a half of a banana. They take a bite and they walk away, or you have a half of an apple, half of a peach. You just seem to have all these random pieces of leftover food in your smoothie container in the next morning, blend it all up, you know, add some milk or some almond milk, maybe some greens and or other produce. You need to actually get your smoothie. But those odds and ends in your smoothie container can easily become smoothies. You can also blend them with a little bit of coconut water or almond milk. And you can make popsicles or you can make ice pops. You know, the those really bright red color like will freeze ice packs we probably all had with the kid. You can make a similar one, but all it is is, is fruits and vegetables and healthy things. And the kids love that. Now for the food that wouldn't taste good in a smoothie, like the root vegetables, broccoli, that type of thing, you put it into the soup container. And when that is full, you take chicken bones and by the way, save all your chicken bones, like even if you've eaten off of them. But trust me here, they like your chicken bones and then you take your soup bucket and you make homemade chicken stock or you can make homemade vegetable stock if you buy chicken stock. The cheapest price I've seen lately, it's like fifty for a quart. And if you're feeding a family of four, so there's four of us and my kids are in elementary school, I have to use two quarts of chicken stock every time I make a pot of soup just to feed the four of us for dinner and get lunches for the next day. So we're looking at four or five dollars of chicken stock. If I use my own chicken bones and I use all my scraps from a vegetable, I can make chicken stock and I actually make. It comes out to be about two and a half gallons of chicken stock using the scraps and the bones, so I'm saving. What does that?
That's for eight and saving a lot of money, and then they can go to twenty to thirty dollars in just chicken stock.
That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on today's show, tell listeners where they can find out more about you and follow your work.
Sure. So I blog it regularly at Don't Waste the dot com. We share family friendly, picky eater approved recipes, meal planning tips, natural living tutorials and also grocery shopping hacks there at the blog. If you need a little bit more help, like maybe you've been doing this for a little bit or you're just completely overwhelmed. I have a course called Grocery Budget, Boot Camp NetNet, grocery budget, boot camp, dot com. And we literally hold your hand from step one all the way to the end. And so you come up the other side with a strategy to go grocery shopping to to buy the food you want to eat on a budget that you can afford. We open for two times a year on that one that is so good.
Well, thank you so much for being with us. You've been an amazing guest and your website is amazing. So many great tips you just could spend hours on there. So excited to try some of your some of your amazing recipes. And we are going to give away one of those spray containers. So if you visit our Facebook page, you can visit that and maybe you can try the tip that you gave of putting those orange peels in the vinegar. Absolutely. And if you have a question that you want answered, go to questions at Chantel Ray dot com. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.