Adam and I are pretty habitual people. With that being said, we also never want to get bored with what we're eating, because I feel like that can lead to poor choices when you're outside your home. So I keep a pretty general grocery list, but try to change up the specifics on it. I decided to blog this because I've had a few friends and family members ask me what we've been eating since cutting out processed foods. Honestly, I feel like we eat more now. I'm full longer (obviously because I'm filling my body with nutritious foods) and our monthly spending has also gone down. How? Let me show you.
Grocery List:Whole wheat bread or pitas
Vegetables*
Fruit*
Whole milk, plain yogurt
Whole Milk
Frozen fruit*
100% Pure maple syrup*
Organic Yellow Mustard*
Raw, local honey*
Organic tomato sauce*
Organic, whole milk cheese
Lara bars (Good to keep in your purse/desk at work!)
Organic Hummus (Trader Joe's)
Quinoa
100% Organic whole wheat pasta
Wild-raised fish
Pasture-raised eggs
Organic Sunday bacon
Unsweetened cocoa powder*
I'm sure I'm missing items from that list. But the basic idea is to have staples in the house that you can use for multiple meals.
*Things like the tomato sauce, maple syrup, honey and yellow mustard are items that we only have to buy every couple months because we don't use them often. And when we do use them, it's very little at a time.
*I buy fresh, organic produce for the most part. I try to change up vegetables weekly, but our main veggies are broccoli, green beans, carrots, Brussels sprouts and peas. Our main fruits are bananas, apples, grapes, pomegranate and oranges. But
again, I try to switch it out so that we don't get bored.
I'm stressing that because as soon as you're bored with your lifestyle, you will veer off course.
*The frozen fruits are used to make a fruit syrup in our yogurt. I'll be blogging how I do that soon!
*I use the cocoa powder to make hot chocolate. Plain, it is nasty! But I use one tablespoon of the powder and one tablespoon of honey and it is so, so delicious! Sometimes I mix it in whole milk, but for the most part I just use hot water.
We've definitely been saving money, too. Our weekly grocery bill is about the same, sometimes a little higher, and sometimes a little lower. We rarely eat out now, though. That's where the most savings has come in. We definitely don't deprive ourselves from it, but we try to keep our house full of foods so that we don't want to eat out that much. Plus, we've noticed that as soon as we eat something from a restaurant, we feel very... blah. There really isn't a better word choice than that. I had a girlfriend come in town this past weekend and we had 3-4 meals out. I made really good decisions for the most part, but one night we had dessert and I just felt terrible all night. Yuck. Not worth it in my book!
