Hi FitFeat Friends!

A while back, I received a suggestion to post my grocery list(s) on the blog.  Since life has been a little nuts lately, I haven’t been making a regularly-scheduled grocery trip each week and instead have been popping in to the store when I needed something.  (Which, by the way, is bad news for my checking account.  Especially if I’m swinging into Whole Foods for a quick $2 item and walk out having paid $35).  This erratic shopping hasn’t been very conducive to making a solid post about my shopping!

In light of some upcoming changes to my job life (more on that in a future post) I really need to buckle down and get more organized with my grocery planning so that in turn I can also spend less money.  Soon my FitFeat tagline might have to be “tighten your budget AND tighten your waistline”!

In our house we have MSP who eats meat, grains and occasional veggies of a small variety. Then there is me who doesn’t eat poultry, beef or pork but instead eats veggies, fruits, nuts, seeds, some grains and occasional seafood.  This leads to a little more grocery planning because now we are often making two recipes or meals instead of one at dinnertime.

Often I will plan out dinners only for a few nights of the week, knowing that we’ll either have leftovers on the other nights or inevitably something will come up (or we won’t be in the mood to cook) and we’ll be eating on the go or picking something up.

For this week, when I put together my grocery list I included a lot of my ‘standard’ list items that I get every week (like green smoothie veggies/fruits) as well as the extras that I’d need to make a few dinner recipes for my sweet hubby.  MSP’s dinners this week will consist of:

  • Sesame Stir Fry (beef for him, all veggies for me from the Eating for Life cookbook)
  • Creamy Chicken and Rice in the crockpot (this one’s a favorite of his, and I won’t be partaking… I’m going to make this for the evening when I have a “social-cizing” appointment)
  • Basil Chile Chicken (I’m not sure yet how or if I’ll veggify this one for me, possibly some tempeh for my dish)

A shot of the list:

The red dots mean that I will look for those items at Walmart first.  I often get things like baggies, canned/packaged goods and paper goods there because they are a lot less expensive.  I sometimes get a big tub of spinach there because they sell organic prewashed spinach for $4.88 as opposed to $5.99 at my regular store.

I ended up with a few things from both WalMart and King Soopers that weren’t on my list but that I figured I’d get nonetheless because they were in front of me.  Like some bamboo shoots and water chesnuts to add to the Sesame Stir Fry, a cantaloupe because it looked delicious, some clementines because they actually were in the store this week (they’d gone missing for awhile) and some whole wheat gnocchi with some marinara because that’s something we’ll both eat and I can veggify for my meal very easily.  Then there are things that I didn’t end up with like my sprouts and mushrooms because they just didn’t look too fresh.  So I didn’t want to spend on them.  And they were OUT of my Ezekial bread!  Word’s getting around!

The bounty:

Produce included:

  • Bananas
  • Basil
  • Serrano chiles
  • Cantaloupe
  • Peppers:  red and yellow
  • Napa cabbage
  • Big tub o’ spinach
  • Avocados
  • Zucchini
  • Onion
  • Limes
  • Cucumbers
  • Clementines
  • Mangoes
  • Broccoli “slaw”
  • Frozen strawberries

Plus a few things for the meat-n-dairy consumer in the house:

  • 2 large packages of chicken breast
  • Nitrate-free deli turkey
  • reduced fat pepper jack cheese

Then there are the ‘extras’ like Baked Tostitos, coffee creamer, low sodium soy sauce (to replace an empty bottle), canned diced tomatoes, quart-size ziplocs.

The total for both store stops was $86.24.  I definitely have my work cut out for me to bring down the cost.  My cousin (and FitFeat reader) Carrie told me once that she saves a bundle by shopping at an Asian market (or something along those lines).  She finds produce there for a lot less.  I’ll definitely have to see if I can find something like that.  And hit up the farmers markets more often on the weekends.  (Sometimes I wish they did farmers markets in the early evening during the work week so you can swing through on your way home from work!)  ;)

Some of the other things that regularly make it onto our list, but just didn’t happen to be this week are almond milk, Larabars (when they are on sale for $1), raw cashews or raw almonds, brown rice pastas, coffee, Amy’s soups, organic cage-free eggs, dark chocolate.  Then there are the specialty items that I get on occasion at a place like Whole Foods.  These often include things like sea veggies (dulse, nori), nutritional yeast, chia seeds, stevia packets, raw agave, raw almond butter, coconut oil, olive oil, coconut butter, pepitas, raw unpasteurized goat cheddar, and good quality fish.

There you have it – the shopping staples in the FitFeat household.  Now the goal will be to see if I can make it until at least Sunday without entering a grocery store.  Let the betting begin!  ;)

I’ll be sure to update on this topic again soon and keep you posted on how I do with minimizing my trips to the store but also trying to trim down the cost.  Maybe I’ll start to see that I always shop for the same things and need new variety.

Today’s question, if you are comfortable sharing the info, is: What do you think your average weekly expenditure is on food and for how many people in the house? I’d really be interested to know what others are spending to give me a good frame of reference. I feel comfortable spending money on high quality foods and certain organic items.  But I also know I have to rein it in some as well in the upcoming months. Prior to this shopping trip (which was on Tuesday) I’d already been to the store on Friday night to get a few things to try in our dehydrator (another upcoming topic I promise!) and then again on Saturday to get some things to put together to take to a birthday party.  So when I factor in those two stops it brings my total for the week to $136.96.  Yikes!

See you next time!  Have a SUPERB day!

– Shari B. =)

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