My Grocery Shopping Trip's for the Week

It's true, eating healthy isn't as cheap as shopping all the sales and using all the coupons. You won't come home and be able to say. " I spent 27 dollars on 200 dollars worth of food." But the longer I am a nurse the more I believe, we are what we eat, think and do. I don't think healthy eating will save me or perhaps it won't even prevent severe illness, but it is one small thing I can do to treat my body and the earth well.



That being said here is this week's grocery results:

Fred Meyer's: Total spent $25

• 2 bunches of organic celery
• 1 bunch of organic dinasour kale
• 1 bunch of organic red kale
• 1 head of organic broccoli
• 2.25 pounds of organic grapefruits
• 3 of organic braeburn apples
• 3 pounds of organic sweet potatoes
• 3 pounds of organic potatoes (red)
• 3 pounds of organic yellow onions
• 2 organic avocados
• 1 bunch of organic carrots

Everett Natural Foods Coop a little under $20 dollars

• Raw Jersey Cow Milk (only kind that doesn't make me itchy
• Raw Jersey Cow Cream
• Several organic red beets
• a tea loaf (gluten free) for when I have friends over this week

Azure Standard (this is a bulk order that will last a long time, rebuilding my pantry's healthy staples) $153.10

I ordered this this week but it won't be delivered until after the 20th of January or paid for until then.

• Bulk Amaranth, Organic 5 lbs. $11.05
• Bulk Almonds, Raw, Organic 5 lbs .$37.50
• Eden Foods Buckwheat, Hulled, Organic, Gluten Free 16 ozs. $3.30
• Bulk Pumpkin Seeds, Organic 5 lbs.$15.50
• Bulk Oats, Rolled, Gluten Free, Organic 50 lbs.$50.70
• Bulk Black Beans, Organic 25 lbs.$35.05

Haggen $20

• 3 pounds of wild alaskan sockeye salmon
• 1 pound of Oregon shrimp meat

Our menu plan for the week includes many many shredded salads for lunch, salmon with a side of veggies, shrimp stir fry, shrimp salad, salmon patties with rice and veggies, Chicken lentil soup (chicken is in the freezer), homemade broth to freeze for the future, baking a coconut flour chocolate cake with minimal sugar, grass fed steak (also in the freezer we bought a half a cow this past fall) with a side dish of veggies.

Lunches are always left overs or salads.

Breakfast is homemade granola, fruit and peanut butter or almond butter, oatmeal.

Improving our Diet 2013

2013 Physical and Dietary Goals:  

Dietary: By the end of the year have my husband and children eating a pound of fresh fruit and raw veggies daily.

Increase our daily consumption of raw nuts, and seeds

Eliminate pre packaged and processed foods. 

Reduce our dairy intake with the goal of it 100 percent eliminated in my and my daughters diet

Physical: My husband and I have a 10 percent weight loss goal for the next 6 months

Exercise for greater than 30 minutes three times a week minimum.

Weekly Grocery Trip:

These pictures are showing you my 100 dollars worth of food for the week.

Organic napa cabbage

Organic fancy cabbage

Organic Celery

Organic Oranges

Organic banannas

Wild caught Oregon shrimp

Gluten free worchestire sauce

Gluten free muffins and tea loaf (for the hubby)

Organic leeks

Organic peanut butter

Raw sharp cheddar, Raw Jersey milk and cream

Organic sugar free plain yogurt

2 bottles of kombucha

Organic Mushrooms

Organic lettuce

Organic turnips

Organic radishes

Organic corn flakes

Organic Oats

Organic french lentils

Organic sprouted corn tortillas (2 packages)

Pastured Bacon

Pastured sausage

Organic Apples

Frozen Organic Blueberries

All shopping done at PCC and milk bought at Everett coop. I only purchased sale veggies and fruits.

What our average dinner and lunch is looking like so far this year. Below is a shredded cabbage, carrot, beet, pecan, raisin and shrimp salad with a touch of oil and lots of raw apple cider vinegar.

Menu Plan for the Week: (keep in mind we are an egg free and gluten free household, hubby and son can eat eggs...)

Snacks: Peanut Butter and Apples

Oranges

Bananas dipped in dark chocolate

Gluten free toast and almond or cashew butter

Celery and carrot slivers

Breakfast: Oatmeal with nuts, raw milk, honey

more oatmeal

Bacon 

Gluten free pancakes with maple syrup

Sausage

Gluten free granola (homemade)

Lunches: 

Typically lunches are salads and left overs, including for the hubby

Salads are whatever veggies were on sale for the week shredded..so example would be shredded cabbage, with shredded carrots, shredded beets, shredded celery and shredded turnips and radishes. I find the shredding makes the veggies palatable for everyone...something about the small size.

Dinner:

Salmon patties with cabbage salad

Shrimp Salad with cabbage slaw (egg free mayo)

Chicken soup (homemade)

Cauliflower and leek soup

Lentil curry with organic brown rice

Cod and roasted root veggies

Fall 2012 Food Budget

Food prices have changed within the last two years...our food budget had gone up significantly, but we are currently working on paying down some bills so I decided to rework the food budget. My goal was a reasonable amount allowed to spend on food without sacrificing my convictions about the food that we eat. ( Organic, Grass Fed, Humanely treated and as local as possible)
Here is the breakdown:
1100 dollars for half a grass fed cow...to last us 1 year. (So a little less than 100 per month for beef) Purchased through Baron Farms.
100 dollars per month for veggies and fruit ALL organic through Klesick, Costco, farmers markets and Fred Meyers. ( I shop in season for the most part, taking advantage of the great sales Fred Meyers has on organics from time to time)
200 Dollars per month for organic coffee, occasional organic chicken, Olive Oil,  Nuts (buy in bulk and store in freezer), fish, jarred tomatoes, almond and coconut flours, pastured cultured butter, raw milk (local coop), coconut oil (buy in bulk), household cleaning items (baking soda, vinegar, laundry detergent) and animal food. Most of which is currently purchased through Azure standard and Costco.  I just made a large Azure purchase that I am hoping will last through December, we will see.
Not included here is the pastured pork I already have in my freezer from last spring. We will buy another one this coming spring for a total of around 700 dollars, so about 60 dollars per month for a year.

This brings my monthly total to a grand total of : $450 per month

We recently cut down grains, legumes and processed foods, refined sugars with the goal of cutting them completely out, so our budget may change a little as we adjust to this new life style...Perhaps more veggies...I will hopefully have time to blog soon as to why we are changing our already healthy diet even more radically.

Paleo Transition at Our House: Day 1

After reading multiple books, blogs, scientific journals and listening to podcasts on Paleo diet we have decided to "go Paleo" but still include a few of the foods on the Weston Price Diet that Paleo does not include such as white beans and some raw dairy. Today is our first day. Granted we have it fairly easy in that almost everything in our house is already healthy and organic. We do have a few things that I will phase out (included in our diet in the beginning but once I empty our pantry of these items we will no longer purchase them, example would be all my beans, rice and tortilla chips)

Miss Olive was excited to help cook lunch today. We cooked a grass fed beef, coconut oil, onion, stir fry that we put over the top of avocado in a bowl for lunch.

 As you can see I tossed some black beans into the stir fry, I have a load to use up. They are not on the Paleo diet due to their high leptin content and can pass through the gut lining into the blood stream aggravating auto immune diseases in people who have them. ( Diseases that are auto immune include but are not limited to Celiac Disease, Lupus, Diabetes, MS, Thyroid disease and so forth)

 Henry was anxious to help get dinner started in the crockpot...

I spent sometime last week chopping and freezing Paleo friendly freezer dinners. Tonight we will be having cranberry chicken over sweet potato.

More pictures of our house for sale!

This designer home is set on 1/2 acre on desirable Fobes Hill in Snohomish. It is filled with high end finishes including black walnut, ash and oak floors, 9 ft ceilings with beams and cathedral ceilings, butcher block counter, pottery barn style lighting, heated flooring under Carrara marble, all wood interior doors, lots of windows and light, Restoration hardware paint finishes, heat pump central air, marble fireplace with $5,000 wood burning fire box. 

Our House is For SALE!

Getting a house ready to put on the market is time consuming with 2 kiddos! But we have done it! It will be listed in the MLS in 2 days. We are hoping for lots of showings this coming weekend! Thought I would show you some pictures of our beautiful home. The house is staged with us living in it, so as I look at the pictures I still see some things I should pack up to have less clutter but for the most part it is ready!
Three bedroom, 2.5 bathroom, 1850 square foot house on 1/2 acre in Snohomish, built in 2009, heat pump/air conditioning, walnut and oak hardwood flooring throughout, marble bathrooms, pottery barn style lighting. All for 345K!

Life, it happens.

Over the past year, the accountant and I have had a series of epiphanies and convictions, related to how we live, what we eat, how we spend, what our priorities are and how to get to where we want to be. Since my last post in May, we have had and continue to have so much going on as we reorganize our whole lives around our convictions and new lifestyle choices. Probably our biggest decision is to spend less, so we can give more. Such a simple concept in theory, but if your spending is a lot, it takes a lot of reorganizing of your life to in the end accomplish this. Our upcoming move is part of this equation.

We don't want our financial decisions to be all for our personal gain, but for the benefit of others, we will be reaping a good reward that we can share with others. It has taken me a year of letting go, to agree with my husband that our beautiful, gorgeous house, must go. Although sad, I am now completely at peace with the idea of moving. Especially since we have found an old, (meaning much work) but gorgeous foursquare house on one acre, just a mile down the road. We will be sharing this house with my parents, who are also downsizing. We will be dividing the house, in essence making it a duplex, with separate entrances, kitchens and so forth, but shared land. We have so many plans for this house! I will be sharing before and after pictures on this blog. From the start the acquiring of this house has been a God thing. He deserves all the credit! He is in it, working it all out.

Our new house!!