Anne and Donna of Fab Frugal Food and Alisa of Alisa Cooks (formerly One Frugal Foodie) and author of the Go Dairy Free book and website all know the challenges of creating flavorful and healthy meals on a budget.

That’s why we’ve teamed up to offer the Naturally Frugal Challenge blog event!

The Naturally Frugal Challenge invites you to create economic, flavorful entrees and submit them. There will be five challenges each year – one for each season and an extra holiday challenge. We will post the challenge the first month of each season. Holiday: November; Winter: January; Spring: April; Summer: June. And Fall: September.

At the end of the month, we will gather all the submissions and post them in a roundup on both our blogs—so your recipe will get double the exposure! The resulting roundup will offer a single stop where health-conscious readers can find a collection of fabulous and frugal seasonal entrees to try.

There will be one Grand Prize Winner for each challenge, as well as two Honorable Mentions. Prizes will be awarded to each winner. The prizes will be announced at the time the challenge is posted.

Help us showcase how tantalizing and delectable healthy frugal foods can be!

Here is the Holiday Frugal Foods Challenge:

Create an entree based on whole, healthy ingredients and at least one Holiday seasonal ingredient, ie., cranberries, eggnog, etc. Your entree must feed four adults with a maximum cost of $10.00.

The grand prize for this Holiday edition of the new Naturally Frugal challenge is . . .

A set of holiday bakeware from Cooking.com!

How fun are those? I can definitely say from experience that a snazzy cake pan is a great was to make a dazzling dessert when you’re running short on time and resources.

How Can You Participate?

Simply cook up an entree–whether yours or someone else’s with credit to them. Your recipe must be made for this event, within the month of the challenge–no old posts are accepted.

Then, post the recipe to your blog (if you don’t have a blog, see instructions below). Be sure to mention the event on your post and link to this post. Feel free to use the Naturally Frugal Challenge logo in your post to help promote the event (though this is not required).

General Guidelines for all the Challenges:

• In general, please use only whole foods ingredients (minimally processed with no artificial flavors, colors, prepackaged sauces, etc.)
• Use whole grains and whole grain flours only; no refined white flours or sugar.
• Include only natural sweeteners (no white sugar, nothing that requires a laboratory to create–such as splenda, aspartame etc.). Rather, use maple syrup, agave nectar, brown rice syrup, coconut sugar, dates, yacon syrup, stevia, etc.
• Entries must be dairy-free; eggs are fine.
• Feel free to use the event logo on your blog to help promote the event
• Be sure to include a link to the Naturally Frugal Challenge post
• Have fun and let your creativity shine!

You may enter as many times as you like, but please submit a separate entry for each recipe.

Send your submissions to fabfrugalfoodie[at]gmail[dot]com or to alisa[at]godairyfree[dot]com  or to with the subject line, “Naturally Frugal Challenge” and the following information:

• Your name
• Your location
• Your blog URL
• Your recipe name
• Your recipe link (the URL of the blog page on which it’s posted)
• A copy of the photo that is no more than 400 pixels wide.

Note: If you don’t have a blog, you can still participate!  Simply email your recipe, or recipe and a photo. We’ll post it for you.

The deadline for submission is the 30th of each month in which the challenge takes place (you may start submitting recipes anytime).  So this Holiday challenge will close on November 30th. We will post the roundup within 2 weeks.

We look forward to sharing yummy, healthy holiday recipes with you!

— Donna, Anne and Alisa