I was thinking about some earlier posts and one that stood out for me. There was a price per pound breakdown of your grocery list, with greens coming out looking very expensive per pound.
I personally like to use servings, not weight, as a guideline.
This is a good thought. Most of the food we buy, we are buying with something like that in mind. Not necessarily the price/lb, because i'll be damned if I eat a pound of spinach in a week, but more so the price/serving and even more so, the price/nutritional benefit.
Being an engineer, it would be nice to break your foods down into cost/nutritional benefit. Make a spreadsheet that could track that. It would be tough because of much of what find to be nutritionally beneficial has a hard time being proven by science... or maybe more accurately, being funded to be proven by a peer-reviewed research paper. But, when eating it as a part of our regular diet, you can
feel the results of the nutrition. You actually feel better. In a perfect world, you could do a price/hey-I-feel-better index to hold the naysayers at bay. :)
Tonight was a fresh tomato, pepper and onion stir fry (lots of garlic and fresh basil) over some black bean pasta. This was new for me, saw it in Costco last week and with its high protein content I thought it a great find. It was amazing! I HATE beans but this pasta was good and organic, about $1 a serving with 22 grams of protein and a pile of fibre....will keep this on the shelf for sure.
Sounds amazingly yummy. I've said it before... wish like hell we had a Costco nearby.
Great job on your latest trip...
Thanks! I was excited! I just talked to my wife tonight and asked her how she felt about the week. Asked whether she'll make it to Thursday, how was making meals going, etc.
She said it has been going great. :) Said it was like other aspects of our life
when we simplified (clothing, for instance), it got much easier! She said she used to open the refrigerator and be overwhelmed, stressed, and worried about what she was going to make with all the wonderful food. She was stressed she was going to let it go bad. This lead to overly involved meals with many ingredients, wasted leftovers, and increased stress around meal time. She said the last four days, that has been gone, which has allowed her extra stress-free brain space. Which in turn, allowed her to get creative and simple... like making gluten free cheese pizza with things we had right in the pantry! Kids loved it and she did not have to buy anything extra to make it. Good stuff!
She did say that she may have to hit the store Monday afternoon for bananas for my sons first day of school (he LOVES bananas and they are such an awesome healthy source of calories). We talked it over and decided that she would make oatmeal for breakfast and slice one of the 4.5 million frozen bananas into it, then for lunch, make chia pudding with a small amount of blended frozen banana for flavor. YUM!
I pay about $6 for organic free range eggs and I thought that was terrible!
Ya, we have to get that figured out... or it may figure itself out. I just found out that I may be reacting to eggs, and my wife can't eat them. I have been troubled by persistent canker sores (5 at a time!) and have been scratching my head as to what was causing them. Long story short, as a last ditch effort, I cut eggs out (I would eat five a day out here because it is one of the only lean, non-fried sources of protein available) and they started to heal that day! Wow. Then a couple days later, ate a bit of an Asian rice dish that had, unkown to me, eggs in it. That afternoon, 2 hours later, I developed another sore on my tongue. So, nothing is concrete, yet, but suffice it to say I will be avoiding eggs for a while!
Speaking of lean protein, a question for anyone who is still reading...
Where do you get bulk beans? Looking for 5+ lb bags. I looked online at Amazon and the prices are pretty good. We have the option to order and pickup at Sam's. Any other sources I should price check that you all know?
Thanks in advance!