What if I told you you could feed a family of 4 the freshest, organic ingredient meal, and it would cost you less than $1 per person?

One of the simplest ways to eat healthy organic food and not break the bank, in fact, SAVE money, is to simply grow your own food – even if it’s just a single garden pot.  I’m going to show you how I created a delicious organic garden frittata for less than $1 a person using a bunch of fresh, organic vegetables from the garden and the finest quality pastured, organic eggs.  A buck!  You can’t even get a fast food (aka dead food, aka fast “product”) hamburger on sale for that much.

This particular frittata I used what I had on hand…and what I mean by that is, you know that feeling when you open the fridge and it’s almost empty and you think “what am I going to eat”?  That was me.  I basically had some pastured eggs left so I had to get creative – what better way than popping out to the garden. 

This particular frittata is an ovo-vegetarian version, but in this post I also talk about a great way to make this using pastured bacon for my paleo-loving carnivores.  Let’s dig in..

Fresh Garden Haul

Ingredients:

• 8 pastured, organic eggs
• 1 small bunch of kale:  4 big leaves (I used each purple kale, green kale), chopped
• 1 small bunch of rainbow chard – 4 big leaves, chopped
• 1 small bunch of mixed herbs (sage, thyme, basil, dill, cilantro), chopped
• 1 large green onion, chopped
• 2 tbsp coconut oil  (you can also use ghee if you prefer, or combo of both)
  
• Sea salt or pink salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Heat your oven to 375 F and mise en place (prepare) your ingredients first and foremost–Chop your kale, chard, herbs and onion.  Crack your eggs in a bowl too.

Begin by sauteing the onion in a tablespoon of coconut oil on low-medium heat until they start to get translucent.  Once they’re cooked to your liking, turn the heat down to low and add your chopped chard and kale and let sizzle for about a minute (we don’t want to destroy it, but lightly saute).  Add another tablespoon of coconut oil.   Mix your eggs in a bowl and add to the pan.  Add about 3/4 of your chopped herbs.  Add your sea salt and pepper.  I like to take a fork and mix the egg around evenly.  From here, add a lid to your pan and place in your oven for 10 minutes (I usually check it around 8 minute mark).  Keep checking it thereafter until the egg on the top looks done.

Use a spatula around the edges of the pan and slice triangle pieces to serve.

Optional:  You can start the dish by cooking some pastured nitrate-free bacon, removing from pan when cooked to your liking, and cooking your onions in the bacon fat instead of coconut oil.  Follow same steps above from there, only chop your bacon up and add back to pan with the eggs before adding to oven.

I had some kalamata olives and I shaved one of the beets from the garden with a mandolin and came up with a relish for the top (remember, empty fridge, had to improvise).  This relish is optional of course and would have been really good with some avocado mixed with it.  I simply mixed all in a bowl with my left over herbs, sliced olive and beets to make the relish pictured above.   If you don’t want to do that, when your frittata is done sprinkle entire frittata with your left over herbs.  This is also great served with some avocado slices on top.

Serves:  4 big quadrant pieces

Total Cost:  of the main ingredients, 8 eggs (about $3 worth of pastured eggs).  The kale, chard, and herbs all came from the garden.  Coconut oil, salt & pepper I’m not counting since minimal use.

Total Cost Per Person:  Less than $1.  Even if you added the optional avocado and bacon to this dish, we’re probably hovering around $1.50 per person.

Although you can really put what you want in a frittata, the main message for this post is that growing your own food can be fun, give you pride of ownership, can be the freshest ingredients possible (true FAST FOOD when coming straight from garden to table), and can save you a lot of money.  Don’t have a garden yet?  Limited on space?  Start small.  I came up with the 1-1-1 rule:  1 pot, 1 bag of organic soil, 1 packet of seeds (or organic plants from your local nursery).  Plant what you would use the most and fits your lifestyle.

If you were to buy all of the organic ingredients in this meal it would obviously cost you a lot more than about $1 a person, and if you were to take your family to a restaurant and order four dishes it would cost you considerably more.  To feed your family the highest quality organic, home cooked food for less than a $1 each, really exposes the misnomer that organic food costs more that conventional food.  

Buon Appetito!

What are some tips you like to use for saving money in the kitchen?