Six Food Scraps You Can Regrow in Your Kitchen and Garden

Organic romaine hearts, 3 days.

Leftovers can be handy for creating new meals and feeding hungry chickens, but if you've ever had carrots sprout little roots in the crisper tray, you've witnessed the greatest thing about fresh food: it can grow MORE fresh food.

Imagine my excitement when I found out there was a book called, “Don't Throw It, Grow It!, ” that was all about growing food from your kitchen scraps! Sadly, I checked out the book from my local library and quickly realized that it wasn't about growing food at all. It was about growing pretty plants from your food scraps, and it was geared toward people living in apartments who didn't have the money to buy house plants. I'm not opposed to sprouting a sweet potato vine, but for my purposes of stretching our food budget, I wouldn't keep that vine in a pot on a windowsill. Plant that same sweet potato in a tire, bury all but six inches of the vine as it grows (by stacking tires and adding soil), and by the first hard freeze next year you have 20 pounds of sweet potatoes in a tire tower. Now, that's a recycling plan I can get behind. Other food scraps that can turn into food are:

1. Onion root ends, including green onions or scallions. Chop the onion, plant the roots and keep moist. You will grow another. Whole. Onion. I kid you not.
2. Carrot tops. Carrots produce seed in their second year, so grow your own carrot seed by planting the tops of carrots (usually sold at a year old) and sprouting the greens. The carrots you use must be non-hybrid/open-pollenated to guarantee seed production. Try organic.
3. Lettuce and greens. Put the root ends of romaine lettuce, celery hearts, turnips and beets in a glass full of water. Grow a salad in your windowsill.
4. Kiwi vines. Kiwi is a tropical fruit and likes it hot, with some watering to help it along. The vine grows FAST, and you need a few to guarantee you get a male and female so they produce fruit (technically, berries). Plant a slice of kiwi in a pot of soil, keep it moist and wait for seedlings.
5. Sprouted garlic cloves. Plant a clove of garlic in the early spring or fall, and in a few months you've got a whole head of garlic! Talk about return on investment.
6. Sprouted potatoes. Now's the time to cut those sprouted potatoes up, roll them around in some wood ashes to prevent rot, and put them in the ground, sprout facing up. Read up on growing potatoes, because you'll be doing it!

There are lots of other fruits and veggies you can plant, and some I won't try because they won't produce anything usable. Avocado pits may grow into nice trees, but they won't produce fruit north of Brownsville, Texas, unless they're in a 40-foot-tall greenhouse. My parents are currently growing teeny orange trees from seeds that sprouted in old fruit, but since most citrus and apples are grafted, these little trees may not grow true fruit. Only time will tell. The moral is, keep a stack of small paper or plastic cups and a bin of potting soil near your cutting board, and plant those scraps to see what grows. Then tell me so I can copy you and share with the class, m'kay?

The Best Tips For Eating Healthy on a Budget

People say it all the time: "It's expensive to eat healthy." I'm gonna hafta call that for the load of bull that it is, and I'll tell you why with an example from last night.

My children attend public school, and we all know what a cesspool that place can be with all those little nose-miners sharing much more than their glue sticks. (Ack!) My punks are snotty and have persistent coughs, and Facebook is lighting up with tales of the flu, so we had an immune-boosting supper last night to load up on some of nature's simplest medicine. Let's look at the menu and break it down by food group, and you'll see just how cheap it can be to eat well.

My garden helper, cutting and washing turnip tops. Oh, my heart!

1. Beverage: Water. We drink tap water, straight up. When the kids are fighting allergies or a bug, we stay away from sweetened drinks, artificial sweeteners and dairy. Fruit juice doesn't even make the cut because of sugar content, but I will sometimes allow fruit-and-veggie drinks (limited to one a day, of course). Tap water gets a bad rap sometimes, but get a filter for your faucet or a filter pitcher, and you'll still spend less than if you bought drinks, and your kids will be healthier. Voila.

2. Garlic toast. Normally, I limit the amount of bread my family eats if at all possible, and then it's usually only homemade (less than 50 cents a loaf for whole wheat bread). Last night we had some free whole wheat hot dog buns (thanks, Mom!), so I toasted them in halves and loaded them with a smidge of butter and SIX minced garlic cloves. It's spicy, but whatever they can get down, fresh, raw garlic is magic stuff when it comes to boosting the immune system and preventing infection.

3. Salad. We're in that phase where my boys whine about veggies (totally new to me, I've been spoiled!), so I make them as colorful as possible and sweeten the deal with a favorite dressing (homemade Ranch or Italian) and a tiny amount of shredded Parmesan to "fancy" it up. The ingredients, diced small: Organic Romaine hearts (worth it to buy organic for lettuce), red bell peppers (vitamin C powerhouse!), celery, cucumbers and carrot coins. Salad fixings vary depending on what's cheap at the store, but sometimes we also include apples, mandarin orange sections, sweet peas (frozen or from our garden) and pecans from our own front yard. Make a theme, mix it up and make it fun!

4. Chili Penne. This is my least-favorite part of the meal, but it's a concession to the pasta hounds. I used whole wheat penne pasta (bought on clearance at HEB for 75 cents a box) and dressed it while it was hot with leftover beef-and-veggie chili. I was told it was "awesome!," and gratified to see that my kids actually ate very little of it after the first course. Score!

Desserts at our house are rare, but I do allow yogurt and honey (or chocolate chips) when the kids aren't sickos. Otherwise, a chopped apple (with skin!) topped with cinnamon and microwaved for a minute makes an "apple pie" dessert that won't result in a psychotic sugar rush when it's time to wind down for bed.

So, instead of bottles and bottles of cough syrup at $4-7 a pop, I feed my family real food and water. It's important to buy organic only if it's important to you, and I'll spring for an extra 50 cents for organic lettuce and carrots. I can still feed my crew for less than $5 per meal, and although that messes with my food budget, it's a worthwhile trade-off to avoid hospital co-pays, antibiotic prescriptions and kids who feel yucky. Even for cheap moms, healthy meals are not only possible -- they're the essential ingredient to keeping the family healthy and sane.