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How to Save Money While Going SANE


Jonathan: Hey everyone, Jonathan Bailor and Carrie Brown back with another Living the Smarter Science of Slim show. Carrie, you just got done dining on some SANEity.

Carrie: Yes I did and it was yum, yum, yummy.

Jonathan: She was dinging her bowl, it was like click-click. I was like Carrie you have to finish eating before we start the show but I gave her time to finish eating because what she was eating was so SANE and awesome that I could not interfere. Tell us about your sweet, sweet SANEity.

Carrie: It was SANE chili, lovely people. I made you SANE chili and it is so good and this is from the girl who’s never eaten regular chili.

Jonathan: Again like most things Carrie does this chili is extremely SANE and is shocking — the ingredients are a bit shocking. Carrie give us an overview of this chili.

Carrie: It is probably 75 percent vegetables but you would never know it from eating it. The texture and the flavor are just like… I hesitate to say the real thing because actually mine is real-er in terms of real food than regular chili. But you know what I mean. It tastes exactly the same, the texture’s the same, consistency’s the same and it’s so good for you, you won’t even believe it.

Jonathan: Carrie actually has transformed my life in yet another way. She’s already done this in many wonderful ways but culinarily her most recent transformation is… chili is not generally thought of as a soup, but chili-like, soup-like substances. You know I’m a fan of the Vitamix so I cannot believe it has taken me this long to get a little bit more savory and soupy with the Vitamix but Carrie’s converted me and I’m never going back.

Carrie: Yay!

Jonathan: Yay! Carrie that is a great segue into the topic of today’s show which is ways to save money while going SANE and getting eccentric. The reason I said that’s a good segue is I have found some, using your soup recipes as a base, some wonderful ways to consume more affordable sources of SANE protein which if you just try to eat them plain are disgusting.

Carrie: I love saving money.

Jonathan: Side note?

Carrie: It’s one of my favorite things. It’s a very, very favorite topic of mine.

Jonathan: So let me give one concrete example of why this will make Carrie and hopefully all of you lovely listeners happy and what I was talking about earlier in terms of saving money with these SANE soups. Tuna fish is wonderfully SANE and is incredibly affordable. You can get one can of tuna packed in water, dolphin safe, non-toxic, is somewhere between $0.50 and $1.00 depending on where you buy it and that’s approximately 35 grams of the most robust, SANE protein you could ever ask for.

Carrie: Love that.

Jonathan: So love that… but here’s what’s even better. So those are those little cans we usually think of and they’re not really little they’re… most people can’t eat an entire can of tuna, but I can.

Carrie: Really? I can eat two. Oops.

Jonathan: But they also sell at places like Costco or Sam’s Club or any kind of bulk retailer these giant cans of tuna. Have you seen the giant cans of tuna?

Carrie: I’ve seen them in your pantry Bailor.

Jonathan: Well what’s cool is…

Carrie: They’re bigger than Jonathan’s head.

Jonathan: What’s amazing is if you thought tuna was affordable before, buying this one giant can of tuna drops the cost by nearly 50 percent.

Carrie: Which is a lot.

Jonathan: Which is a lot. But what the heck are you going to do with this giant can of tuna?

Carrie: I have six cats I have no problem with that.

Jonathan: Well what you can do is you can come up with for example, this SANE chili base that Carrie’s come up with or she’s also come up with these wonderful bases and then the protein is just this giant vat of tuna fish and add it. Tuna’s like chicken it takes on the flavor of whatever you put it in, so now you’ve got your soup savory goodness saturated with vegetables, SANE goodness, saturated with awesome SANE protein which was extremely affordable and you have a bowl of five star, piping hot, delicious SANEity that will fill you up and heal your metabolism for maybe a dollar or two per serving. McDonald’s can’t even touch that.

Carrie: And then you get yourself lots of Pyrex glass dishes and you pack that sucker into dishes and you freeze it and then you’ve got lunches or dinners ready to re-heat at the touch of a button.

Jonathan: To make that even better like Carrie said you freeze it and then if you’re traveling or if you’re on the road, you just take the literally the frozen dish and you let it thaw out. It’s going to take a long time for it to thaw out so you basically have your refrigeration on the go with you because the thing’s frozen.

Carrie: Uh huh.

Jonathan: Which is awesome.

Carrie: Yes.

Jonathan: That is a good example of cost-effective ways to incorporate protein into our diet which is important because protein can be the most expensive element of a traditional grocery bill.

Carrie: Well and just when we’re talking about protein the thing that popped in my head was our beloved, or now beloved dried egg white powder. Because you, I think in one size ten, sorry for you non-Americans, but for one of the size ten cans, I think I worked out is like 218 eggs’ worth of egg white in there and if you buy those they’re about $25.00 a can. You work that out per egg versus what you would pay for 218 eggs and all you do is re-hydrate it with water. It’s just a phenomenal savings.

Jonathan: Yeah there’s an amazing opportunity to not only make SANEity affordable but it is a fact. It is a fact that if you do the types of things Carrie’s describing here that we’re talking about. For example, getting your egg whites in this can form, experimenting with canned tuna, there’s also things we’ll get into later, not only is it affordable but it is less expensive than going to a McDonalds and getting a fast food restaurant. Substantially McDonald’s Value Meals, I didn’t actually realize this Carrie until I did some research online before the show…

Carrie: What you mean you don’t eat at McDonald’s?

Jonathan: So a Value Meal is going to cost you between five and ten bucks. That’s not a small… that’s a family of four. You’re talking thirty to forty bucks for a lunch? That’s not a value where I’m from at least, I don’t know.

Carrie: No, no, you could make days’ worth of some of my totally delicious soups for that.

Jonathan: Absolutely, absolutely. Some other example and some foods that you may not otherwise try if you didn’t think of them in this context. One thing that I’ve really been enjoying recently are canned clams.

Carrie: I love clams. In fact I’ve never eaten clams till I came here because we’re not very clammy eaters in England but after I came here and had my first vat of clam chowder I was sold. Actually that’s on my list of things to make SANE is clam chowder. I love clams. I did actually see Jonathan’s barrel of clams that he has in his pantry.

Jonathan: Barrel of clams. That sounds like it’s the name of something. The barrel of clams, I love it. Clams, not only are they delicious when incorporated into all sorts of dishes. Again, I personally would think of clams as a bit like you would think of tuna or chicken. I’m sure Carrie will have something to say here because she knows a lot more about this than I do but they have a very mild taste but where they are different from both tuna and chicken are clams are a freaking nutritional powerhouse.

You want to talk about nutrient density. We talked a few weeks back Carrie about the amazing nutrient density of liver. A lot of people aren’t fans of liver because it has a very distinct taste.

Carrie: I’m going to change that. FYI lovely listeners there’s liver coming your way and you’re going to love it.

Jonathan: So while you’re waiting to have liver…

Carrie: Lovely liver.

Jonathan: Lovely liver, which is also hard to purchase. If you get over the taste then you have to get over the hurdle of acquiring it. But assuming you get over all of those things…

Carrie: It will be worth it.

Jonathan: Clams. If you get a chance go online and type in nutrition data on clams, a 300 calorie serving of clams — we’re talking… we’re not talking this whole you buy some engineered food product garbage and it’s like 10 percent of your recommended daily allowance of Vitamin A and 7 percent of blah, blah, blah.

Carrie: I wish you could see him right now he’s so funny.

Jonathan: Clams are coming with like 300 percent of X, 1000 percent of Vitamin B12 and these are, if you look at these five hour energies or whatever they’re just trying to give you this artificial B12. You want an energy boost? Get 2000 percent of your recommended daily allowance and we can get into what that actually means, of Vitamin B12 from a natural protein rich source like clams in a delicious, SANE soup base. That’s like 50-hour energy.

Carrie: I’m going to do SANE clam chowder now. I mean I was thinking about it anyway but now I’m there because crazy people need B12, I’m going to eat that puppy.

Jonathan: The other thing that’s interesting about clams is there are some individuals who are currently vegans or vegetarians who cannot get B12. It has to come from an animal source. There are individuals who while they morally are not fans of eating mammals for example, like it’s just not — they don’t eat a cow. They may have less issue with eating fish and even less issue with things that don’t have a central nervous system.

Carrie: Things.

Jonathan: I didn’t know how to say it. So like a clam is — I don’t know if this makes sense but I’ve heard it described to me as…

Carrie: It’s an enormous amoeba.

Jonathan: Yes. Think of a rock on one end of the spectrum and people on the other end and sort of the closer you get to a rock the less people care if you kill it because even vegetarians are killing something. Something dies. When you eat, something dies.

Carrie: Right.

Jonathan: That’s kind of sad but that’s really how the world works. So it’s just, what are we okay with having die so that we can live. Wow that’s as morbid as heck. Something like an uplifting podcast.

Carrie: Back to the clam being close to the rock.

Jonathan: The clam is closer to a rock, it is nutritionally powerful and it has a very mild taste so you can add it to just about anything. If you get it canned, canned clams it’s just take the clams out of the can, rinse them off, done. It’s not like shuck them and trim them and pat them on the back. They’re just ready to go.

Carrie: Soon… you are funny today.

Jonathan: Shuck ‘em and trim ‘em and pat ‘em on the back, dit-dittle-dit-dit-dit-dit-do.

Carrie: Soon… lovely listeners you’ll be able to have SANE clam chowder and your mouths will be so incredibly happy and your pockets will be happy too.

Jonathan: Also money saving. So we talked about basically canned proteins. Awesome. So canned proteins, make sure you rinse them off once you get them out of the can to get any of that can residue off there. You can do canned chicken breast, you can do canned salmon, you can do canned clams, you can do canned tuna and they’re convenient because you don’t need to refrigerate them. So that’s all goodness.

The trick I found is to add them to something. That’s like your soups are so great because if you just try to eat a can of chicken breast it is not good. But if you add it to something — I don’t think it’s good. If you add it something else…

Carrie: But it’s kind of a bit hard going. I mean it’s just… you know…

Jonathan: No, no. It’s fair, It’s fair.

Carrie: Tuna, tuna’s a bit dry. If you just eat it straight out of the can — how many times have I done that? If you just eat… It’s kind of dry but if you mix it with stuff it just makes it just so much more yummy.

Jonathan: So delicious, nutritious, convenient and then when we get to vegetables… I know a lot of listeners are already familiar with this but frozen vegetables… great. Some studies actually show that they’re preferable to fresh vegetables because “fresh vegetables” may not be all that fresh. They may have sat in the truck as they were transported across the country. Whereas oftentimes, especially I love the flash frozen vegetables they sell at Costco.

You’re getting those flash frozen right at the source so it’s almost like getting them… It’s actually closer to getting them off the farm because from when they are taken from the farm to when they’re flash frozen can be a shorter period of time than if you had fresh vegetables were really weren’t that fresh. Which if you live in Ohio and the thing was grown in California, there’s some time between when that fresh vegetable is picked and when it is taken to your store 3000 miles from where it was picked or 2000 miles.

Carrie: I hear you. That’s a compelling argument.

Jonathan: Boom.

Carrie: But the foodie in me is always going to say fresh is best.

Jonathan: Yes and it depends on what you’re using them for too. I have found that if you are more of an assembler… the convenience of frozen vegetables in the sense that you can buy them in bulk and not worry about them going bad is an amazing advantage in and of itself. I don’t think it’s a right or wrong.

Carrie: Totally get it, totally get it.

Jonathan: It’s just a…

Carrie: Except when it comes to peas, frozen peas are awesome.

Jonathan: You’re a fan of frozen peas?

Carrie: I’m a huge fan of frozen peas I don’t eat them frozen Jonathan. I’m a huge fan of frozen… frozen peas, fresh, frozen, it’s all the same.

Jonathan: You know what I actually prefer frozen that I surprised myself with this week?

Carrie: I shutter to think.

Jonathan: Macadamia nuts.

Carrie: Oh, yeah no. I keep all my nuts in the freezer.

Jonathan: No but not just keeping them in the freezer. I keep them in the freezer and then I eat them from the freezer like when they’re frozen. I do not thaw them out in any way.

Carrie: Yeah, no I’m a huge nut freezer. It means that you can buy in bulk and keep them fresh and not have to worry about them going rancid because nuts do tend to go rancid quickly especially if they’re stored or if you live in the warm because they’re…

Jonathan: If you live in the warm…

Carrie: If you live in… what am I saying? If you live in a warm climate. They knew what I meant Jonathan.

Jonathan: If you live in the cold it’s not so bad.

Carrie: If you live in the warm you may have a problem because nuts are very oily which is good it’s why they taste so good and it’s why they’re so good for us. But they do go rancid quickly so keep them in the freezer.

Jonathan: And so… distinct from that point which is true… I think for example, eating frozen almonds to me is not good. I would much rather have my almonds not be frozen. However, macadamia nuts I don’t know why but I actually am not a huge fan of macadamia nuts but if I eat them frozen they are fabulous. Here’s why people are like, “Macadamia nuts? Aren’t those the fattiest of all the nuts?” They are.

Carrie: Yay!

Jonathan: Yay! Which is funny because people are like, “Oh my god. They’re the fattiest of all the nuts.” That’s true but they are one of, if not the richest source of the same fat which is the fat that causes people to think that olives and olive oil are so good for you. It’s this mono-unsaturated fat which is anti-inflammatory and brilliant but that which people praise avocados for and that which people praise olives for, macadamia nuts are even better at.

Of course they’re not as high in fiber as those other two substances but personally — actually at this point the only nut I eat because I try to do — I’m a little bit more hard core about the Omega-3 to Omega-6 thing which is going to make most listener’s eyes glaze over. But anyway, if you’re sensitive to that, if you’re a Paleo practitioner then macadamia nuts are your best friend and get them off of Amazon in five or ten pound bags and you will save a dramatic amount of money versus buying them at the store.

Carrie: Just don’t forget to put them in the freezer.

Jonathan: That is actually a big — Macadamia nuts are expensive even at Costco. They’re extremely expensive and again, raw. Raw, raw, raw. Not cooked, not salted, raw nuts are key.

Carrie: My freezer is full, not with macadamias. I do have some in there but my freezer is half full of nuts because they are expensive generally. Macadamias particularly so but nuts generally tend to be more expensive. So if you buy them in bulk keep them in the freezer, that’s a great way to save yourself some money and eat some fantastic nutrition.

Jonathan: This is the one time I’m going to say do not shop at Costco. Because we talked about protein, we talked about vegetables both of which Costco’s absolutely great. It’s been my experience that nuts in bulk online is absolutely the way to go. I get my coconut, I get mine… It’s the brand is Let’s Do Organic. You’re welcome Let’s Do Organic and I get it Amazon Subscribe and Save which we’ve talked about previously is amazing.

First of all Amazon has incredible prices to begin with but if you sign up for their Subscribe and Save and you get the… I get a coconut… what the heck is the box?

Carrie: Oh the creamed coconut.

Jonathan: Creamed coconut…

Carrie: He’s talking about the concentrated creamed coconut.

Jonathan: As well as shredded coconut which ironically the ingredients on both are the exact same which is coconut. It’s just… one is mashed. I get them both Subscribe and Save from Amazon which in addition to the already good price, ships to you for free and they take five to 15 percent off depending on how many other things you already have in your order. So literally folks… you can be five star SANE and spend less on food, significantly less on food, than someone who’s completely inSANE.

Carrie: Shop smarter.

Jonathan: Boom. Look at Carrie Brown dropping knowledge bombs to wrap up the podcast. Good job Carrie. You redeemed yourself from saying people who live in the warm.

Carrie: I’m the entertainment, okay?

Jonathan: I love it.

Carrie: I did a good job back there.

Jonathan: Well folks thanks for joining us this week and remember in addition to shopping smarter, as Carrie so eloquently put it, eat smarter, exercise smarter, and live better. We’ll chat with you next week.

Carrie: See ya.

Jonathan: Wait, wait! Don’t stop listening yet.

Carrie: You can get fabulous free SANE recipes over at CarrieBrown.com.

Jonathan: And don’t forget, your 100% free Eating and Exercise Quick Start Program as well as free fun daily tips delivered right into your inbox at BailorGroup.com.

This week you’ll learn exactly how to stay SANE as cost effectively as possible.