Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
Wildly Affordable Organic: Eat Fabulous Food, Get Healthy, and Save the Planet--All on $5 a Day or Less
by
Linda Watson (Goodreads Author)
Buy Green. Eat Green. Save Green.If you’ve wanted to eat like it matters but felt you couldn’t afford it,
Wildly Affordable Organic
is for you. It’s easy to think that “organic” is a code word for “expensive,” but it doesn’t have to be. With these ingenious cooking plans and healthy, satisfying recipes, Linda Watson reveals the incredible secret of how you can eat well ev...more
Paperback, 272 pages
Published
May 31st 2011
by Da Capo Lifelong Books
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
This book is not yet featured on Listopia.
Add this book to your favorite list »
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
229)
One way to save money is not to buy this book. Bottom line, the tips offered to save money are cook your own food, don’t waste what you bought, buy in bulk, cook in bulk and then freeze, and I may have slept through the rest. The USDA, of food stamp infamy, provides more extensive tips on how to save food money than this book. The recipes and menus offered here are repetitive, boring, and oh so bean and pasta heavy and don’t particularly have much to do with buying organic. While not advertised...more
This book makes me look forward to spring and summer produce (soon!).
I liked finding out that author Linda Watson lives in Raleigh, NC. She offers some nice pointers that I'll use to help streamline our current household project, which is to cook at home with minimally processed and fresh ingredients as much as possible.
I really liked that Watson emphasized that you don't necessarily need lots of equipment to do lots of good cooking ("Whisk Bread" is fabulous). A reasonable approach to buying...more
I liked finding out that author Linda Watson lives in Raleigh, NC. She offers some nice pointers that I'll use to help streamline our current household project, which is to cook at home with minimally processed and fresh ingredients as much as possible.
I really liked that Watson emphasized that you don't necessarily need lots of equipment to do lots of good cooking ("Whisk Bread" is fabulous). A reasonable approach to buying...more
If you’ve wanted to eat like it matters but felt you couldn’t afford it, Wildly Affordable Organic is for you. It’s easy to think that “organic” is a code word for “expensive,” but it doesn’t have to be. With these ingenious cooking plans and healthy, satisfying recipes, Linda Watson reveals the incredible secret of how you can eat well every day—from blueberry pancakes for breakfast to peach pie for dessert—averaging less than two dollars a meal.
I borrowed this from the library to download on m...more
I borrowed this from the library to download on m...more
There are absolutely some great ideas in this book--like how to ask for and use fruit and veggie seconds from your farmer's market in your cooking, which I've recently become a huge proponent of doing--but at times Watson lost me with the numbers. Her insistence on weighted vs. measured ingredients and her emphasis on (overly?) planned-out, diet-focused meals was a joy kill, even as they felt apropos to the subject. I was crazy about the idea of the wildly affordable organic meals Watson propose...more
I like where this book is coming from: it was inspired by the food-stamp challenge. That is: see how well you can eat on $1 or less per meal. That being said, this book neither promises nor delivers any easy answers. If you want to eat healthy organic food on an affordable budget, you are going to have to WORK for it. Which, it should be said (but isn't in this book), is a socio-economical point in itself: low-income people don't need ANOTHER job on top of several other jobs just to be able to e...more
I loved reading this book...but as a disclaimer, I should probably add that I love the idea of this book, as I have not tried to live it out! This book was a well organized publication of Linda Watson's personal experiment on eating well on the food budget of a low income family. I personally truly appreciated her efforts in debunking the idea that eating organic costs an arm and a leg. While I learned a great deal about the pros and cons of buying in bulk and looking at your cooking as a weekly...more
I haven't spent much time looking at the recipes - they look pretty basic, and Watson eats a lot of beans (no meat). But this was a great resource, since I'm trying to get more organized about shopping and cooking. Watson's comprehensive plan considers cost, source, health, taste, time, convenience, and variety. Detailed seasonal menus and shopping lists. Cooking broken out into set times. negative: Her ideas about eating organic (literally: "save the polar bears") seem lig [review cut short by...more
This would be an ideal book for a vegaterian eater who was looking to go organic. For me this book doesn't work. I really don't like beans, I've tried to like them, I really wish I like them more. A big portion of this book is a million ways to cook and eat cheap beans. A lot of the foods also had a lot of sugar and fats, both of which I try to limit. The bottom line is it is an interesting book that will help many people.
Linda Watson cares deeply about the food she eats and where it comes from. Everything she says is sound and valuable, and there wasn't a single thing I could disagree with.
I baked two loaves of the Good Whisk Bread, and as much as I wanted to love it . . . I didn't. I enjoyed reading Watson's story and her thoughts about food, and I certainly agree with her belief that home cooking is the best, most healthful way to feed yourself, I'll keep experimenting with other cook books.
I baked two loaves of the Good Whisk Bread, and as much as I wanted to love it . . . I didn't. I enjoyed reading Watson's story and her thoughts about food, and I certainly agree with her belief that home cooking is the best, most healthful way to feed yourself, I'll keep experimenting with other cook books.
This book has been very inspiring to me. By following the menu plans and shopping lists we have saved money and have a fridge and freezer full of delicious homemade food. We gave up: juice boxes, breakfast cereal, store-bought bread, Tofurkey, and all the unpronouncable ingredients and packaging that goes with those items. I would definitely recommend WAO to all vegetarians, especially ones who already enjoy cooking.
Liked it so much, I bought it. (I usually only get my books from the library, since I go through too many to purchase and shelve at home. I only buy, when I absolutely can't fathom not placing the subject book on my over-crowded shelves.) I'm so excited to start the meal planner program!
I wanted to like this book, honestly. I've made a couple of the recipes from her site which were good, but the book reads like a Depression-era housewife's manual, aimed at wringing the most nutrients out of the least expensive amount of food. It's completely and utterly devoid of any joy in cooking.
very compelling - she sets out to prove that you can eat healthy and even organic food on a food-stamp budget. This can obviously be applied for just saving money - doesn't have to be that stringent. The menu ends up pretty limited but has a lot of good ideas. I will take from it the ideas of cooking beans and sauce in bulk and freezing, and cooking a little each day for meals that come together for the week, as well as some of the good charts, especially about what should be splurged on and wha...more
I learned how to prepare dried beans with a crockpot so I don't have to use salty squishy canned beans. I would buy the book just for that. Cuban Black Beans is a great recipe.
This was a pretty decent cookbook and reference guide. While not all of the advice is practical for my lifestyle, there's a lot of good tips in here and recipes to boot.
Such great information and practical ideas about something that is important to our family but not intuitive.
Loved this book. The author is from Raleigh where I live so that was a definite plus.
There are some great tips in here on prepping & freezing foods. However, the menus recommended are high in inflammatory grains and other ingredients that don't contribute to extraordinary health. Use the first section as a guide for money saving tips in selection, prep & storage, but find better sources for actual menus & recipes with maximized nutrition.
Terribly impractical or families.
had to BUY it :-) will use it over and over again
Good general advice on cooking in batches, freezing ingredients ahead, etc. All of the recipes are vegetarian and many are pasta.
May 09, 2013
Dianne
marked it as to-read
May 09, 2013
Tracy
is currently reading it
May 08, 2013
Melanie
marked it as to-read
Apr 15, 2013
Tawnya
marked it as to-read
Apr 14, 2013
Abby
marked it as to-read
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Linda Watson wrote Wildly Affordable Organic: Eat Fabulous Food, Get Healthy, and Save the Planet—All on $5 a Day or Less in response to the Food Stamp Challenge and to help people cook delicious, seasonal food from scratch.
Linda is the chief cook and researcher for the Cook for Good project, which she started five years ago. Before trying to make the world a better place one pot of beans at a tim...more
More about Linda Watson...
Linda is the chief cook and researcher for the Cook for Good project, which she started five years ago. Before trying to make the world a better place one pot of beans at a tim...more
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
