I did one of these “What I Buy When I Grocery Shop” posts a couple years ago and it was a big hit, so I thought I would do another one! We didn’t have much food in the fridge yesterday because we were gone all weekend in NC, so I hit Whole Foods hard.
First up – fruit! Oranges, grapefruit, and a billion bananas because I want to do some baking:
Plus some grape tomatoes (yes, they are fruit!), strawberries, and kiwi.
Next up – dairy (and dairy alternatives)!
- Stonyfield Greek yogurt for breakfasts and to mix into things like chicken/tuna salad
- Organic Valley cottage cheese – my favorite – great with fruit for breakfast or a snack!
- Organic Valley 1% organic milk – because you just can’t beat real milk in lattes, in my opinion
- Blue Diamond Almond Breeze almondmilk – love this for recipes/baking
- Organic eggs
I also stocked up on ground flaxseed (for my Flour Free Breakfast Pancake – still obsessed), bought an organic rotisserie chicken so we’d have some pre-cooked meat on hand for easy dinners and lunches, and bought the most enormous bag ever of raw almonds. I wasn’t intending to buy the entire world’s supply of almonds, but I held my bag under the bulk bin and before I knew it I had a billion almonds. Oops! Oh well, we’ll eat them eventually. Good for snacks, paired with a piece of fruit!
Next up – veggies! Organic spinach for sautéing with dinners and throwing in smoothies, baby arugula and baby kale for salads, steam in the bag green beans (these are the BEST – so easy), bell peppers, mushrooms, and sweet potatoes!
And finally, some hummus, guacamole (Whole Foods guacamole rocks), and two impulse purchases – Columbia Gorge Organic juice (I’m obsessed with the Carrot Leafy Greens one, which is juice carrots, kale, spinach, and other greens pressed together. Sounds disgusting but it’s SO good if you like carrots), and Tessemae’s cracked pepper salad dressing. Whole Foods was doing salad tastings using the dressing and it was so good I bought some! The ingredients are: Olive Oil, Organic Lemons, Organic Garlic, Mustard, Sea Salt, Cracked Pepper. Pretty much exactly what I use when I make my own dressing, and nothing weird in there at all! This is by far the best dressing I’ve found at a store. Apparently it’s a good meat marinade, too!
And that was that! It’s ironic because I’m an RD but I don’t usually do specific meal planning – I find that what works best for us is to just have healthy stuff on hand and then wing it come dinnertime. Obviously I’ll sometimes pick out a specific new recipe I want to try and have to pick up stuff for that, but for the most part my fly by the seat of my pants approach works well. 🙂 As long as I have some basic staples on hand, we can usually come up with something good!
Other things I often buy but didn’t yesterday because I already have them on hand are:
- Oats
- Avocados
- Canned tuna/salmon/sardines
- Tomato sauce/salsa
- Grains (brown rice, quinoa, pasta)
- Canned beans (kidney, black, cannellini, etc.)
- Canned beets (so delicious and so easy)
- Olive or hemp oil, garlic, lemons (for juice), etc!
- Baking stuff (whole wheat pastry flour, almond flour, quinoa flour, chickpea flour, coconut flour, honey or maple syrup, brown rice syrup, etc.)
- Chia seeds
- Almond or peanut butter
- Ezekiel bread and wraps (found in the frozen section)
Are you a meal planner or do you just aim to have healthy ingredients on hand and then come up with recipes as you go?
