Stick with Veggie Virtue and Your Budget with These Smart Shopping Tips

You walk into the grocery store, armed with your virtuous veggie-filled shopping list. And then you stare at the prices: is that the cost of cabbage -- or caviar? Winter's weather wrath has resulted in vegetable costs that are making many of us want to eliminate the produce section from our shopping lists. As one woman recently told me, "I feel like I have a choice: I can send my first-born to college -- or buy lettuce. I always felt good about serving an assortment of different vegetables - but it looks as if French fries, baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, and potato salad are going to provide the variety for now!"

I've noticed many shoppers limiting their vegetable choices to potatoes and carrots. While both of these vegetables are healthy, eliminating green vegetables from your diet means that you and your family are missing out on the vitamins, minerals, and fiber that your bodies need to function properly.

For those of us on diets, coping with the high price of vegetables is especially challenging. For example, when I'm trying to lose a few pounds but don't want to feel hungry, I love making a huge bowl of celery, Romaine lettuce, zucchini, sliced tomatoes, and mushrooms topped with lean white turkey meat. It's filling yet low in calories. Given the cost of buying those ingredients right now, though, that lunch would "consume" my grocery budget for the week!

Here are the secrets I've discovered to maintaining veggie virtue without going over your budget:

1. Shop early and often. I asked at a few different grocery stores and discovered one that marks down packaged vegetables on alternate days before 8 am. What that means: this morning I bought a package of fresh zucchini and yellow squash, already cut up. Normally priced at $4.99, because the expiration date is tomorrow, it was reduced to fifty cents. I bought an exotic packaged salad of fresh baby greens, regularly priced at $3.99, for nineteen cents. I found some similar options in the marked-down section, all containing fresh vegetables, pre-washed, with expiration dates ranging between today to two days from now. My total bill for a big bag of vegetables: $2.29.

2. Don't be afraid of canned vegetables. Many shoppers try to be healthy by skipping canned vegetables. In reality: an entire can of no-salt-added fresh cut green beans contains just 70 calories. The ingredients are just green beans and water. Tossed with garlic wine vinegar, a quarter of a tomato, a few black olives, and some herbs, it's a great base for cold cut-up chicken. Just make sure to read the ingredients and check for added ingredients, such as sugar or salt. I bought several cans of salt-free green beans on sale for fifty cents each, so do check for sales.

3. Frozen vegetables also can provide great and inexpensive sources of low-calorie vegetables. Keep an eye out for coupons in the newspaper and again, look at the ingredients. Fresh frozen cauliflower, for example, can be even better quality than a head of cauliflower that's been sitting in the store for days. Moreover, you can just use half a cup and then put the rest back in your freezer. Just be sure to keep it frozen until you're ready to use it.

4. Experiment with vegetables that are on sale that you don't normally use. Purple cabbage, turnips, and bok choy all were on sale at one of the stores where I shop, for example. I cut up the cabbage and turnips and steamed them until tender, then served them as a side vegetable dish with herbs and light Italian salad dressing. Bok choy is wonderful in a stir fry with sliced chicken, sprinkled with soy sauce.

5. Ask about the days and times of local farmers' markets, and then go at the end of the day. Many vendors do not want to take home their vegetables, and if you ask, they'll mark them down as much as 75 percent of the original cost.