Happy (Belated) Gathering Day!

I think I made a huge mistake. I thought it would be a good idea to add my work email to my phone so I could stay on top of things when I'm not there. Well, I just took a peek at my inbox and my mind is racing. Maybe it really is better to completely disconnect from work at the end of the day...I'm not going to delete the email window, but keep it just to see how full it is.  I still would like to know how busy I'm going to be tomorrow.

Since Monday was Tom's birthday I missed my shopping day as it is normally planned. But I made up for it today! I only needed a fraction of what I normally do since I will be back to Monday shopping next week. With my shiny new phone at the ready I snapped some photos to summarize my Gathering Day excursion.

Cuties mandarins and the produce section. Love. Not a ton of organic produce here but good 'clean' foods like pineapple, mango, grapefruit, onions...sometimes strawberries, but I don't count on it.

I get my carrots here. There are two options for organic carrots: whole or baby peeled. I get the baby carrots because they do double duty with juicing and snacks. However, the babies are twice as expensive.  The price is justified in that they are truly ready to eat: no washing, cutting, peeling, time.  I buy two each week.

The worst part of Costco: the bakery section. So many temptations and smells abound.  Damn you, pastries!

Found these tasty morsels. All real ingredients, no sugar. 100 calories a link. Very tasty! Not organic, but neither is the bacon I get at Safeway.  These will take bacon's place for the week. Man, that was hard to say...

Found this. Going to make my own mayo and make tuna salad!

Tabasco. Enough said.

Loving macadamia nuts at the moment. A little goes long way - only a tiny cup gives you tons of calories, but also hold off my hunger for a long time.  I find these to be quite salty, so a nice side of fresh fruit serves to dampen the salt and fill me up until my next meal!  Highly suggest this little bit of decadence in you day.

All done!

Had to hit Safeway on the way home. $50! Didn't keep the receipt for some reason. Sorry.

And finally dinner of those sausages with sweet potato with Stubbs Natural BBQ sauce (contains sugar, but a girls gotta do...) and fresh pineapple.

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Gathering Day

I wanted to start sharing my Monday shopping hauls, costs, and weekly meal plans.  When we first decided to go paleo I thought I new what I was doing.  But knowing and doing are totally different things and I searched the internet high and low for shopping lists and budget-friendly grocery stores and found very little.  So now I want to pass on my knowledge of where and what to buy and any tips I've learned along the way along with anything new that will help anyone who is just starting out with paleo or who needs fresh ideas.

Every Monday I meet with my Mom and we hit up Costco. I think I'm addicted to that place.  For reals. These days I have been trying to keep to organic and 'clean 15' foods and  avoid the 'dirty dozen'.  This means I often shop at a variety of stores to complete my shopping list.  It's a bit of extra work, but worth it to know that my food is as close to 'natural' as it can be.

I must mention that I have an extremely lazy high-tech system for determining our weekly meals that involves picking 5 popsicle sticks each out of two jars; one filled with entrees the other with side dishes (only 5 meals  are pulled because Friday is Date Night where we eat out and Sunday is leftover day).  Genius, right?! I loathe meal planning, so I took all my favorite recipes from my brain and Pinterest page and put them on sticks in a jar.  Now fate chooses dinner for me. Boom.  Thinking is for losers. Just kidding. Sort of.

Up this week:
Pork Loin w/ wilted greens
Mini Meatloaves w/sauteed mushrooms & onion
Brinner! w/sliced baked potatoes
Kebabs w/mashed potatoes
Grilled chicken thighs w/ sweet potato fries

Some of the ingredients I already had, but the following is what I gathered yesterday to make the plan happen!

Costco:

Purchased:  2 bottles of wine (don't judge me), maple syrup, chicken thighs, pineapple, spinach, 2 bags of baby carrots.  Not pictured: Bag each of clementines and grapefruit.

Spent: $81.96 ($59.02 without the wine, but what fun is that?)

Fred Meyer:

Purchased:  dill, bananas (gotta get that potassium), sweet potatoes, red and yellow pepper, metal kebab skewers.

Spent: $18.83 ($15.84 without the skewers)

Whole Foods:

Purchased: 1lb dry rub bacon, 1 pork tenderloin, 9 kiwis, cantaloupe, 2 1lb containers of strawberries. (And, yes, that is a giant vase full of wine corks in the background. Again, no judging.)

Spent: $43.67 - this place costs more than the others which is why I leave it for last to gather the remaining items on my list.

Grand Total: $118.53 (without wine or kitchen tools).

Happy gathering!!

My Refrigerator & Grocery Shopping Tips

Why can't Seattle be sunny more often?  Yesterday we had an extremely rare sunny Saturday (for March anyhow).  It was fabulous! I was able to get some pruning done in our jungle of a backyard.  It's been almost 100% neglected since we moved in in November. But yesterday I got out there with my loppers and shears and filled the yard waste bin (you know you live in the city when...) with errant branches and dead twigs.  It is interesting to think of how the back garden came to be; the previous owners (who were here since the '60s) planted the trees, bushes and flowers to their taste and bringing them back to their intended glory is my goal. I think a few of the Rhododendron's need to come out - they are just too tangled and disorderly.  It's too bad because I love Rhododendron's when they bloom.  So pretty.

Tom and I went to lunch yesterday and gave in to our cravings and had ourselves a cheat day: real pizza from Zeek's.  It was amazing.  I don't want to elaborate too much because I'll get hungry, but it was a super-fun treat.  I'm so lucky to have someone that rolls with my food choices and various kitchen experiments without complaint. We both weren't feeling well afterwards, but cheat days are needed.  I'd go nutty without them!

I love Pinterest. I get so many of my ideas from it. It's especially fun to find a recipe, tailor it to our eating habits and create something delicious.  One thing that does get to me, however, is the amount of 'diet recipe' pins that consist of ingredients that are awful for you.  Lots of non-fat dairy this, and diet soda that.  To keep my food rant to a minimum and as a rule of thumb: 'non-fat' = sugar added to make up for loss in flavor from fat and 'diet' = chemical crap-storm. Drinking diet soda is like smoking 'low tar' cigarettes: not any healthier. And like smoking, the best thing to do is quit.  Stay away from this stuff; it's not good for you and, for me, exacerbates tummy troubles.  

One thing that took me a long time to realize when we changed how we eat was this: forget about trying to find packaged or pre-made foods that fit our healthy, whole foods eating plan. And contrary to what most people think, meals made of whole foods don't take any longer to make than throwing a frozen lasagna in the oven for 45 minutes.  Many of my meals take much less time, in fact. I wanted to therefore share what my refrigerator looks like and what a typical shopping trip brings home.

My refrigerator, as I've joked before on Facebook, looks like a mini-produce stand.  I like to keep everything open and accessible.  I take baby oranges and carrots out of their bags and cut the top of the strawberry and grape clam shell packages off for easy grab-n-go snacking.  And I buy a lot of these easy snacks because, lets face it, who has become unhealthy from eating too many fruits and veggies? Plus, fruits and veggies fill you up better than any bread or cookie-based snack ever could. Win-win in my book.

I've also used clear drawer divider bins from Bed, Bath and Beyond (they are cheaper than the refrigerator ones and achieve the same result) to make everything look 'pretty'.  When things look nice and organized they also look more appetizing.  It's all about presentation folks.  Each week when I get home from shopping I toss anything that has gone off and wipe out the bottom shelves and bins.  And, yes, the bottom-most shelf is where the 'beer drawer' used to be, but I got rid of it and use it as added storage.  I don't like drawers in general - if I can't see it, I will forget about it, and forgotten fruit/veggies are not a pretty sight once they are remembered a week after they should have been. Ew.

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A typical Monday shopping 'haul'.  Very little meat protein and lots of fruits and veg. The cans in the right-hand photo are Alaskan salmon - emergency protein I take for lunches when left-overs are not available.

                                                                         

Costco is my go-to and fantastic for large packages of fruits, salads, and meats.  Not everything is available here in an organic option, however. More recently I have limited my shopping at Costco to only organics and those foods that are on the 'clean 15 list' and I get the remaining items on my list in the organic sections of either Whole Foods, Fred Meyer or my local Red Apple.

All in all my message is this: eat clean. Get it out of your mind that you are going to find packaged or processed foods taste good and are truly healthful. There are exceptions to this that are tasty, but they are expensive and hard to find.  Stick to the stuff that nature has provided, your tummy will thank you.