What does your grocery list look like when you’re eating healthy?

I’m on Weight Watchers again, and I’m working on my grocery list.  I was talking to a couple of Facebook friends earlier about the types of healthy foods we try to keep on hand when trying to eat healthy.  I shared a few things that I’ve come up with, but I’d love to hear other people’s suggestions!

Here are some of mine:

I hate to admit it, because I seriously do try to avoid processed foods when I can, but it’s a lot harder when you’re dieting or doing Weight Watchers.  I tend to keep a few Lean Cuisines or Lean Pockets in the freezer for emergencies or when I’m just feeling extremely lazy–they’re easy and don’t have a lot of points.  I also tend to keep a can of milk chocolate Slimfast powder in the cupboard for the same reason.  While I’m doing true confessions, I also use butter sprinkles or butter spray when I’m doing Weight Watchers.  Yes I know it’s like one molecule away from being plastic, but I still do it.  (There, I admitted it.)

Other than those seriously processed things…

I try to buy a lot of produce, then wash and chop it the next day so it’s easy to grab at a moment’s notice.  (Grocery shopping can be exhausting, so I usually never do it right when I get home from the store.)

I buy romaine & other lettuces, spinach, radishes, carrots, sprouts, and any other salad-bar things that would be low or no points.  I also get some slightly higher cal/higher protein items  like sunflower seeds, garbanzo beans, olives,  and 2% cheese–but I try to make sure to weigh those things before putting on my salad because they can rack up points quickly.  I keep all of it–chopped, washed and ready to eat–in small containers in the fridge.  (My own little instant salad bar!) I also keep low cal salad dressing, which I also try to remember to measure when I use it when I’m counting points.  I try to make my own salad dressings because it’s hard to find dressings that don’t have HFCS.  The Annie’s dressings don’t, but I’m just not crazy about bottled dressings to begin with.

I also try to get stuff like zucchini, summer squash, fresh mushrooms, onions, eggplant, red peppers, and other similar veggies that I’ll chop up and saute in a small amount of olive oil while I’m prepping all my produce. (I usually saute them one at a time, then throw it all in together.  I just keep a big container of cooked veggies in the fridge so I can warm some in the microwave to go into my Egg Beaters omlet in the morning with a couple of Tbs. of 2% cheese.  It’s a fast, healthy, and fairly quick breakfast.

The other day, I figured out that I can peel and chop up an apple, throw it together with a little sweetener, pinch of salt, butter spray, cinnamon and nutmeg; and then nuke it until it’s soft.  It’s awesome on a toasted whole grain English Muffin when I’m craving a pastry.

When I buy any bread product, I check the label to make sure there’s no HFCS, then I check to make sure it says “Whole Wheat” or “Whole Grain”.  After that, I check the nutrition label to figure out which one has the most fiber and the fewest calories.  If there’s more than one that fits that criteria, I get the one that feels softer.

In the summer, we love frozen grapes.  I’ll buy a bunch of grapes, wash them really well and cut the stems so that when you grab them you’ll get a proper serving size.  Then I just throw them in the freezer.  They work really well when you want something cold and sweet like a Popsicle.  (They don’t satisfy a chocolate craving though.  I’ve been known to keep the fat free Fudgesicles on hand for that purpose.  Only one point each!)

My doctor suggested another one to me.  He’s completely against all sweeteners.  (He prefers sugar or honey to HFCS, but would prefer we avoid all of them with the history of diabetes in our family.) He suggested that a calorie free, yet refreshing drink is flavored water.  He told me to take a pitcher of water and put in sliced lemons, limes, even cucumber.  Throw it in the fridge overnight, and it makes a really good drink.  I’ve tried cucumber water at a spa, but I keep meaning to do this at home.  I love to put water in the fridge anyway.  It’s handy to have cold water, and I swear it tastes better after the chlorine has had a chance to evaporate away.

We also love to make 5-minute tomato soup.  I’m pretty sure I’ve posted it on here before, but all you do is put a small amount of olive oil in the bottom of a saucepan, warm it a little and then throw in a little fresh garlic.  (Roasted garlic is even better!) Then you let that sizzle for less than a minute before you add a can of crushed tomatoes and a little dried basil.  You let that simmer for about 5 minutes, then either take a stick blender to it, throw it in your regular blender, or leave it slightly chunky.  We love it, and it’s almost point free!

Ok, there are a few of my healthy food tricks.  Now it’s your turn to comment and share some of yours!

Some Thoughts (while I still try to get my other computer up and running)

I recently discovered this site and was completely enthralled.  If I’m not mistaken, it was set up by a couple of friends who practice something called “Urban Homesteading”.  (Which is essentially just trying to be as self-sufficient as one can be without being ridiculous.)  It isn’t a survivalist mentality–they don’t have stores of provisions and guns in their larder.  It’s a very back-to-basics mentality that appeals to my nostalgic side.

Several years ago, we moved into the home that was first my husband’s grandparents, then his parents’ before we moved in.  It was built in the early 1940s, and is completely charming with it’s huge basement, arched doorways, whole-house ventilation fan, cute little porch, etc.   It has been updated over the years–the heat pump/AC unit makes the coal chute obsolete, but I love that it’s still there.

It has actually been updated a little too much if you want the truth.  When my husband’s parents moved in, they replaced a lot of the charming doorknobs, light fixtures, etc. with the finest the 1980s had to offer.  It’s sad, especially when you consider how popular the mid-century style is now.  Little by little, we’ve been replacing the peach and country blue with colors that are a little more tolerable.  We’re still discussing ripping out the carpet and uncovering the pristine oak hardwood floors; but I’m a little afraid because they’re authentic, waxed wood floors so they don’t have the protection of polyurethane.   (I have a dog, two cats, and a little boy to potentially destroy it.)

That whole tangent brings be back to the fact that I’ve always been drawn to the way my grandmother did things, and now that we live in her house–the way my husband’s grandmother did things.   As we go through the house, my husband tells me stories of the amazing gardens his grandmother kept, the fruit she grew and canned, the art she created (that is still hanging on our walls), how she always line dried her laundry, and the amazing food she created–from scratch.  (Ahhh, now we’re getting to familiar topics!)

If you’ve read my blog much at all, you know that I have a distrust for excess chemicals.  I don’t believe in the idea of “better living through modern science”.  I think a lot of the chemicals that are now in our lives came about because manufacturers just wanted to save a buck in manufacturing so they could make more money in the long run, and boy howdy did it work!  I’m firmly convinced that food that is grown from dirt that has been farmed to death is pretty much nutrition free. They use petroleum based fertilizers to force things to grow, then they spray on “nutrients” during the manufacturing process–and the efficacy of those is now being called into question.  I think that chemists are smart people, but I don’t believe that they can fully understand how nutrients work in the body.  They have recognized the very basic elements that we need, but they don’t know how all of those things work together, nor do they understand how they work within each individual’s system.  I’m finally even starting to hear reports that scientists are discovering that taking a vitamin might not be the cure-all that they once thought it was.  Now they’re starting to suggest that you’re better off to eat more healthy foods like produce to get the nutrients you need.

I also think it’s sad that so many people have no earthly clue where their food comes from, nor do they have any idea that not long ago people survived just fine without all the extra chemicals in their food, cleaning products, etc.  I am absolutely amazed at the number of friends I have who can’t make even basic recipes from scratch–or act like it takes an act of God for them to be able to.  Cooking isn’t hard, yet so many people I know are unable to feed themselves without eating out or reheating processed foods.  It makes me sad.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not judging those people.  I know I’m in the minority, and I understand that I’m in a unique situation because I have more time to cook at home.  (And trust me when I say we eat plenty of restaurant and processed foods lately.)  But most people don’t understand that cooking from scratch frequently doesn’t take any longer than making something from a packaged mix, is frequently faster than going out to eat, and is a million times healthier than pretty much any of the chemical laden processed meals that you can reheat.  Especially if you plan ahead a little–which is my downfall.

All that said, I think I might shift the focus of my site just a little bit once I’m back up and running again.  I think I was already heading that way.   Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to get rid of my TV or stop eating fake meat. We all have our things that we like.  I do want to start trying more things like canning my own food, try my hand at making soap; and I recently tried making my own ricotta cheese.  (It was really easy and good.  I’ll post it soon!)

At first I was worried that people would think that I’m becoming very “crunchy granola”.  I’m not trading in my sneakers for some Birkenstocks.  But the more I think about it, the more it makes sense now that more and more people are looking into saving money and being more environmentally friendly.

Feel free to play along with me, live vicariously through me, or just laugh at me–it’s all good.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter in comments though.

Menu Mondays

I’ve heard from several sources that you can save a lot of money by planning your meals in advance.  You buy only what you really need at the store, and waste a lot less food.

I’ve been trying really hard to come up with a menu for at least a few days at a time, so I don’t just run to the store and grab whatever looks easy.  (If you’re a friend I talk to on any kind of regular basis, you know that I’ve asked you at least once what you’re having for dinner because I’m always looking for inspiration.)

I needed a place to keep my menus so I could go back and find them later, and I figured they might give other people ideas for what they could make for dinner.  So I’m going to try to start a new blob feature–Menu Mondays.

I’m starting with Thursday since I already know what we had from Thursday until today.  I know it’s technically cheating since I’m not planning my meals for the end of the week today, but I don’t think you really care that much.

Weekly Menu:

Thursday- Homemade Pizza

Friday- We went to a party that was a cook-out/pitch-in.  We gave up meat for Lent, so we took Boca Burgers and baked mac & cheese.  (We usually have pizza on Friday nights.)

Saturday- I made spaghetti, threw on some Quorn chik’n patties, threw a little more sauce and pizza cheese on top, and called it Chik’n Parm.

Sunday- We had a pitch-in at church.

Monday- We had carry out.  (Steve had a meeting at school that I had forgotten about, so I didn’t have time to make the pot pie I’d planned to make.)

Tuesday- I’m thinking tofu stir fry.

Wednesday- I’m going to try a recipe for a pot pie with a polenta crust . (I’ll post if it’s good.)

So there’s what I have so far.  At first glance, I realize that the first few days were really heavy with highly processed faux-meat.  That’s mostly because (A) I had a cold midweek and (B) we gave up meat for Lent and I hadn’t really started thinking meat-free yet.   I’ve finally got some good produce in the fridge, so the menu’s looking up!

I made Steve and Simon help me come up with some ideas for this week, but for a while now I’ve been kicking around the idea of having a theme for each night of the week.  We always make pizza on Friday nights, so that makes Fridays easy.   Maybe I should designate one night as pasta night, one night for ethnic meals, Wednesday seems like a good day for soup/salad because Steve only has about an hour home after work before he has to go to the church.  For the next few weeks, our church will be having a pitch-in each Sunday night, so that will make the weekends a little bit easier.

So here’s my question for you–do you plan your meals in advance?  (Not judging if you don’t since I sure don’t do it consistantly!)  How do you go about planning them?  Have you ever tried theme nights? Do you plan for meals that just use what the groceries have in their sale fliers?  Do you just go with what sounds good?

Pleeeeeeeease share in comments!

Miscellanea

So it’s fairly early on a Saturday morning, and I’m the first one up.  Of course the first thing I did was to try to catch up on reading some of my favorite blogs that I’ve been too busy to read lately.  (I’ll be sad when school starts back up because I’ll be lonely and I’ll miss my boys, but my consolation is that I’ll have a lot more time for keeping up with my blog reading!)

My first random thought involves this blog.  I’m kind of a newcomer to the whole food blogging thing, so I’m always trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing.  For instance, have you ever noticed that I comment on your blog all the time, but I don’t have you on my blogroll?  And a lot of the people I *do* have on my blogroll haven’t updated their blogs in months?  That, my friends, is a pretty good indication that I can’t remember how to update my blogroll.  I’m sure I could figure it out if I played around for a while, but that would cut into my precious blog reading time.  (Heck, I just figured out how to set up a reader so I no longer have to go through my bookmarks and click on each blog that I like.)  I promise that as soon as the boys are back in school, I’ll figure it out and fix it.  I’m also trying to figure out how to better organize my recipes on here so you can find them if you ever come back and want one.  That would be yet another one of those things that will require me to spend quality time poking around the WordPress site, which isn’t my favorite thing to do when I have internet time.

A few days ago, Cathy at Noble Pig wrote a post asking What Bothers You Most About Certain Blogs? Some of the comments she got were fascinating.  It also makes me feel a little better about my blog.  I don’t have any obnoxious music that starts playing as soon as you open my site.  It isn’t cluttered with all kinds of extra stuff.  I tell little anecdotes about my life, but if you want the long (TMI) versions you have to go to my non-food blog.  I try to post decent pictures with each of my recipes, and I try to post any extra instructions I can think of for the benefit of the people who don’t cook as much.  I don’t scream at my kids across the lawn, and I don’t leave my dog out to bark all night.  (Wait, that’s MY pet peeve about my neighbors.  Sorry.)  I do tend to rant occasionally about things like stupid people and processed food, but I try to keep it under control.  I’ll also concede that I probably use parenthesis and italics too much, but I like them and it’s my blog.    (Oh, and I use cheesy winky-faced emoticons.  At LEAST I don’t use things like lol…much.)

Did I tell you that I’ve been teaching Simon about non sequiturs?

Speaking of Simon, I’ve also been thinking a lot about upcoming school lunches.  (If you lived through the whole lunch box thing on my non-food blog last year, I’m truly sorry.  Let’s just chalk it up to the fact that I was going through a lot of stress right then.)    I’ve been the worst June-Cleaver-wannabee ever this summer.  My poor child has been forced to live on whole lot of the foods he’s able to make for breakfast and lunch.  (That includes sandwiches, cold cereal, and fresh fruit.)  One one hand, I don’t feel too guilty about it because I don’t cook breakfast for people who don’t get out of bed before 9:30.  On the other hand I feel guilty because summer is almost over and all of my grand ideas of having all kinds of great snacks on hand are out the window.  EXCEPT, for that lovely do-over we like to call the beginning of the school year!  It’s like New Year’s resolutions, only different!  And I’m much better at school-year resolutions because I actually have more free time after school starts to lovingly prepare these wonderful snacks and foods that my beloved child will consume for breakfast and lunch!  I’ve already been practicing while they’ve been at Music, Arts & Drama Camp this week.  We’ve suddenly been getting oatmeal for breakfast, and there are suddenly extra things like boiled eggs and string cheese in the fridge to grab when you want a snack!  I also pulled out the yogurt maker, and I’ve pulled out some higher protein muffin recipes to try out.  I still don’t think I’ll be one of those bento lunch making moms, but my hope is that his lunches don’t deteriorate into all pb&j all the time by the end of the year like they did last year…and the year before.

Also, Simon’s birthday is this week, so his party is next weekend.  He requested the banana cupcakes with peanut butter frosting, so I’ll actually take a real picture this time!  I might even replace the cupcake drawing I made with a picture of the real thing!

Quick Tuesday Night Dinner

So when I plan menus, I try to think about what we have going on each night before I decide what to have for dinner on any given night. I know that on Tuesday nights, Steve teaches band after school so Simon stays in childcare. Then they leave school and have to run straight over to our church for Worship Arts Club. (A program for the kids where they get dinner and then a rotation of children’s choir, children’s choir chimes, art lessons with our pastor, Bible study, and gym time.) This means that Steve and Simon have dinner at the church, and I fend for myself.

Tonight my plan was to make up a batch of ratatouille to use up some of the produce in the rotter drawer of the fridge. (I love that name. Have you ever known anything to actually get crisper in those drawers?) I like to keep ratatouille in the fridge to use for my breakfasts and lunches while Steve and Simon are at school.

For tonight, I figured I could make myself an omlette and then throw in some rehydrated, dried mushrooms that I could saute with some leftover onion I had in the fridge; and maybe make a salad to round it all out. Nothing fancy.

Then Steve called and told me that they were coming home a little early, and that they weren’t able to get to the church before all of the food was gone. That meant I was scrambling to come up with dinner for all three of us.

Here’s Steve’s dinner–

He wound up with an omlette with ratatouille and a little shredded cheddar jack cheese in it, and a salad with goat cheese and tomato dressing. (One of our favorite dressings.)

He’s my dinner–

I had the mushrooms (that I had already rehydrated) and onions with a little goat cheese in my omlette, along with ratatouille and salad on the side.