Healthy-food overwhelm is real. Especially when you’re on a tight budget. There is a place for a really well-crafted meal. But for daily life, I choose simple over well-crafted – like this mashed Avocado Toast.

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The other day we ate smashed avocado on sourdough flatbread toast. The messy plate reminded me that someone told me I should have called this space the “Lazy Healthy Cook” instead of the Cheapskate Cook. They’re not wrong. I’m a real person with a life outside the kitchen.

My guess is that you have one too and that sometimes this talk about real food feels overwhelming. A hundred voices tell us different ways to eat, and our money can’t listen to them all. Nor should it.

After 10 years, I can honestly say that eating healthy on a budget is less about listening and more about choosing. We can learn as much as we want, but in the end, we have to choose where the money goes. Eating healthy and saving money is not very Instagram-worthy. It looks a lot less like zoodles with Buffalo cauliflower and a lot more like leftover soup for breakfast.

So we make sourdough, but it’s flatbread so I don’t need to fuss with a perfect rise or extra shaping. We make avocado toast, but it’s not pretty. Just mashed goodness sprinkled with salt and pepper.

There is a place for a really well-crafted meal. I love those. But for daily life, I choose simple over well-crafted.

This saving money and eating healthy thing is not a perfect process. You don’t always do x and y and get z. Each of us lives in a different place, we have different resources, and we are in different places in life.

You table will not look the same as mine, and it shouldn’t. I want to encourage you to feed your family well with what you have right now. It doesn’t have to be someone else’s idea of perfect. A meal done well is perfect enough.

You are a real person with real demands on your time. You don’t need someone telling you to do more and be better. It’s okay just smash the avocado and call it perfect.

More Notes

The sourdough recipe I used is a variation of this Sourdough Focaccia. Go here to learn more about making your own sourdough!

Got some extra avocado (because avocados are always ripe at the exact same time and go bad instantly)? Make this simple guacamole and learn how to store it for days!

What You Can Do Now:

Instead of telling yourself to do one more thing, what will you intentionally call perfect (I.e. just fine for now)?