A good diet is important to staying healthy.  The USDA has a fantastic collection of recipes in their recipe finder database to make healthy meals at low cost.  All recipes are submitted by nutrition and health professionals and organizations.  Nutritional quality and low cost, readily available ingredients are required components for inclusion.

In addition to the low cost and high nutritional quality of the recipes, another helpful aspect of the database is the user-friendly setup.  Here are some of the ways it can be sorted:

• Ingredients
• Recipe
• Author
• Nutritional value (more calcium, less fats, etc.)
• Time to prepare
• Ethnic recipes
• Cooking equipment required (including no cooking required option)
• Cost per recipe or by serving

Food prices are projected to climb 2.5 to 3.5% in 2010. Please take a few minutes to check the site out. It is a great resource for all of us!