Friday, September 23, 2011

grocery fun

Today was payday, so tonight was grocery night (apparently I MUST spend my money as fast as possible.)  I had more fun continuing my quest to improve what goes into my bod.  Thought I'd share.

Tonight I checked out Heritage Natural Foods in Moline, having discovered that Greatest Grains is not the only game in town, when it comes to shopping healthier.  It's not bad...part of me prefers Greatest Grains, but I don't know if that's just because I'm more familiar with it.  Going to go back and give it another try for sure. 

Highlights of tonight's purchases:
  • locally grown honey - I'd like to integrate it into my daily diet, as it's a hedge against allergies.  Got a nice big quart jar of the stuff.
  • cherry juice concentrate - it's supposed to help with joint and muscle pain, and as the weather gets colder, I feel it more in my joints for sure.  Hoping to get one-up on that by stirring 2 tablespoons a day into my morning fruit/kefir smoothie, along with a bit of that honey, which leads me to...
  • kefir, PLAIN this time - the stuff I bought last time around was the only kind I could find at Super Wal-Mart - strawberry/banana smoothie flavor.  I'm not messing with sweeteners and flavors in it this time - I think the honey and cherry juice should take care of that (along with the various fruits, of course)
  • cinnamon supplements - yes, cinnamon in a pill.  My reading indicates that cinnamon helps regulate blood sugar, and since diabetes runs in my family, it seems never too soon to go full metal jacket against the stuff, ya know?  An added benefit I discovered, AFTER I had decided to add this to my daily diet:  there are claims that it helps rid belly fat.  DUDE.  I'm not counting on it, but if it happens, I'll take it!
  • fresh peaches, tangerines, mandarin oranges (more properly called clementines), apples, and bananas - I intend to freeze a bunch of the peaches and tangerines and bananas, to be tossed into my smoothies...and I think the apples and oranges will go in nicely fresh.  Should be a nice change.
  • salad makin's galore - romaine lettuce, roma tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers in 4 colors, green and black olives.  I'ma feast.
  • zucchini and summer squash and broccoli and brussels sprouts - no such thing as too many veggies
  • all natural organic peanut butter and cashew butter, no sugar or salt added
  • dried cranberries and organic fair trade light brown sugar for my oatmeal (this week I intend to try the steel-cut oats I bought last time...took me 2 full weeks, even eating oatmeal daily, to work my way through 3 servings of oatmeal this last time!)
  • a bunch of kombucha (since I read up and I think I might be like 2 or more weeks from a ready-to-drink batch, even if I start tomorrow)
  • an indulgence:  izzy sodas (fruit juice, sparking water, no added sugars, good stuff) and microbrewed root beer, ginger ale, and cream soda
I also found a co-op for range-fed meat and eggs; I pick up my first month's batch in just under 2 weeks.  After reading up on the food renegade about the differences in what range-fed vs. regular supermarket meats do in my body, I'm ready to go back to what I grew up on:  something that wandered in a pasture.  And home-grown eggs...yumma!  


And I had already re-stocked my almond milk and coconut milk a couple of nights ago, and still have a ton of Genesis bread left in the freezer (along with a million green beans).


A funny thing about studying really, really hard on what's good for the body and simultaneously investing consistently in real exercise:  it causes a total shift in how I see the grocery store.  Ninety percent of the stuff I walk by, I notice, is NOT GOOD FOR ME and is often so bad for me it's basically self-destruction to put it in my mouth.  Just now I find I am not tempted to do that.

Which is pretty cool.

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