Grocery Shopping

I asked Jess what we could eat on this plan. She replied: "Veggies. Fruit. Beans. Whole grains. Tofu. That pretty much covers it."

Sounds easy, right? Okay, smartypants, you go to the grocery with that as a shopping list and see how far you get on buying a week's worth of food that you will actually eat! Now, I work as a freelancer so my schedule can be a little whacky, and right now I commute 2 hours a day 4 days a week to various client sites. So I need to be able to pack my food ahead and be prepared to be on the go for 10 or more hours at a time, often without access to a fridge or kitchen of any kind. While I know vegetarian/vegan eating is getting more popular, I do know that my options for quick food on the go will be limited.

So that's how I found myself in three different grocery stores AND a farm stand this weekend. I started at Nurells, the local produce stop, where I acquired black grapes, a peach, nectarines, and some fingerling potatoes. Yum. I spent $11.82, all this produce was conventional.

Then I stopped at the local King Kullen to get cheesecloth for the almond milk project (which deserves its own post!) and saw pineapples were on sale for $2. Also not organic, but they looked delicious. So by the end of the Sunday, this vegan plan looked awesome in terms of cost savings anyway! But something was missing...... protein.

Today I went over to the local "natural" grocery, Wild By Nature, to load up on beans. I like to buy the organic beans from the bulk bins here. I have a few pounds of black beans, along with some great northern beans that I'm really not sure what I'll do with yet. I got some extra firm tofu, corn chips, brown rice wraps, strawberries, vegan "Primal Strips" (surely also deserving of their own post) and some couscous. I also bought a vegan chocolate bar because chocolate is not something I do without for a week. Also in my reading I discovered that it's a good idea to supplement with flax seeds (which I already had) and B12. The attendant in the supplements aisle was very helpful and warned me to get enough protein. Total came to $36.87 for a fairly small bag of mostly organic food. Not unexpectedly, specialty processed vegan food items are a little pricey.

I also went to Stop & Shop for bread, apples, onions, a jar of marinara sauce, tomatoes, and some pretzels for munchie emergencies. $18.21, all organic.

This has me at $68.90 for groceries, which is probably pretty average for a week of food for me. I'm not at all convinced, however, that this will actually feed me until next weekend.

Black beans are soaking now, as they will definitely be a staple this week.

And here's my first vegan meal of the experiment (though I don't know if today really counts): PB&J with some of the black grapes. I supplemented this with homemade almond milk and a scoop of Metagenics UltraMeal 360.