Check out this article from Minnesota.

The goal is to provide financial assistance for up to 75% of the costs of implementation of conservation practices, and if you are a beginning farmer or fall under certain other widely defined categories you can get up to 90%. The program focuses specifically on water reduction and soil conservation.

You can learn more at the Natural Resources Conservation Service and at the State by State application guide.

For information on CSA’s in your own city, do a search at LocalHarvest.org.

- I’m planning a “Thirty Days of Mindful Eating” in cooperation with other site and real-world organizations – 30 days of ideas on how to become more in touch with why food matters. Keep an eye out for this spring. This promises to be a fun, delicious, transformational experience.

- The Three Dollar Dinner Recipe Contest. Coming later this winter, we’ll be having a recipe-off. You will be invited to post your own “real food” recipes that can be made for three dollars a serving or less,  and other readers will be invited to prepare and vote.  The winner will be receiving a cash prize plus the top recipes will be included in a new version of Three Dollar Dinner.

- More recipes will be given out as well as more news about eating healthy on a budget.

And for the next 3 days, Three Dollar Dinner is on sale for $3.00 off the regular price of $9.00.  It’s a great gift for anyone who wants to eat right on a budget, or anyone who is making a New Year resolution to cook at home more or eat healthier. You can download instantly or print out (digital preferred to save a tree, but print if you must). 

To get the special price go to checkout here and enter promo code HOLIDAY – offer expires December 18.

With some minor tweaks, these can easily be organic and about a dollar each. Either way, they are a healthy, balanced delicious (and fast) way to start the day.

Check out the Bulk Breakfast Burrito.

However, I love meat. There I said it.  I don’t cook it much at home, but I love it. I’ve tried being vegan and vegetarian, and while they were appropriate ways for me to eat at certain points in my life, I just love meat and so does my body (yeah yeah, I know, you’ve got proof I’m wrong, buzzkill!).  So, when I come across a fantastic recipe for a meat dish that can be made at home, organically, quickly, I’m in. 

This one requires a slow cooker. Slow cookers in the four quart size can be had for under $20 new, and I’ve used mine enough to more than make it a worthwhile investment. I’m not saying go out and buy a slow cooker to make this meat (that would make it more than a three dollar dinner) but then again…  I will tell you this – as winter goes on, you’ll be hearing a lot more about slow cookers from me.  And if you check out that link above, make sure to eyeball that sweet little CrockPot travel bag – you’ll be the talk of the function if you show up with your slow cooker all nestled in that black matte finish nylon goodness.

And if you want me to pretend to be a 70’s housewife instead of a 00’s dude, I’ll call it a freakin’ Crock Pot. There I said it (shout out to Craig Shepherd and Mom) it’s a freakin’ Crock Pot! You can get one of these bad boys (Crock Pot aka Slow Cooker) for $10 used if you look around.

Sorry vegans, this is one of the few Three Dollar Dinner situations you are just going to have to watch from the sidelines. You could do this with Gimme Lean I suppose for a sort of BBQ sloppy joe thing, but I don’t think you’d need to bother slow cooking that. Unless you just want the full carnivore experience.

Here’s how you turn this one out Three Dollar Dinner style.  First of all, use about one to one and a half pounds organic butt pork roast. This should run you about eight bucks max, or get all natural if you can’t find organic.

You’ll need a little thing of Liquid Smoke (NOT toxic, as you’ll learn in the article below – totally natural), and a bag of organic hamburger buns (three bucks). Some spices you should already have on hand or can get cheap if you don’t.  Done.

Get some pickles if you want – but not required.  I am the lucky one who lives one block from the Lower East Side Pickle Guys, so sue me if this turns into a four dollar dinner courtesy of a big fat sliced up gherkin.

Courtesy of The Splendid Table, here’s the recipe so you can Pork it Out.

And a smoky tip o’ the hat to Boing Boing writer Maggie Koerth-Baker (twitter @maggiekb1) for turning us onto the truth about Liquid Smoke and this great recipe.

Coming up in January I’ll be running a program called 30 Days of Three Dollar Dinner, which will take us through January as Mindful Eating Month. I’ve drawn a lot of inspiration over the years from the Slow Food Movement, and our friend Leo Babauta over at his always inspiring blog Zen Habits wrote a great article this weekend, drawing on his own experience with Slow Food.

He offers his interpretation of a life built on respect for food and the power it has to effect our lives. I quote:

“This is the Anti-Fast Food Diet — a way to not only lose weight and get healthier, but to change your life to one of simplicity, moderation, and joy.

Abandon fast food, and all the values it brings: mass consumption, mass production, the exploitation of workers, the destruction of the environment, the destruction of small local businesses, the corporatization of our culture.

Instead, embrace Slow Food.”

The fact that he bookends his article with short quotes from two of my favorite Buddhist writers just makes me love Leo even more.  Check out his whole article The Anti-Fast Food Diet. It’s a quick read and implementing even one of the ideas he suggests will take you that much closer to a Three Dollar Dinner lifestyle in which you begin to enjoy the process of mindfully purchasing, preparing, and eating your food.

I’ll add one more thought to what Leo proposes -

“Recognize that eating mindfully, and eating non-processed foods, is not a luxury or lifestyle accessory – it should be the basic foundation of how we are all able to eat.  It does not have to cost a lot of money to eat food that comes free of chemical baggage.”

That’s the whole mission of Three Dollar Dinner in a nutshell (an organic, fair trade nutshell) and I’m grateful to Leo for helping to spread the food love.