Monday, March 18, 2013

Whole foods for our whole *big* family

Being on GAPS lends to eating whole foods :-)  Actually we've been eating a whole foods diet for some time now, but it had been a slow transition from SAD to whole foods.  I thought I would give you a glimpse of my grocery list.  I would have pictures, except that we had company over when I brought the groceries home and they were ever so kind to help bring it all in.  It was record speed!!  Needless to say I didn't whip out the camera...maybe next shopping trip.

Everyone does their shopping differently.  Some do a weekly shopping, or a once a month shopping (what we used to do), or something in between.  We do two big shopping trips a month.  In between shopping trips there are usually store stops for Jeremiah on his way home from work to pick up something we ran out of, forgot, or to pick up some more fresh veggies/fruit (fresh foods do not last two weeks!). 

The shopping is generally done all in one day.  Sometimes it's broken up between Jeremiah and myself, and sometimes a store needs to be done another day because we ran out of steam :-)  But generally it's done all in one day.  This saves on gas since we don't exactly live close by to any stores.  This also means that shopping takes about 5 to 6 hours to do!  Yes, it makes for some long days.

Here are my lists, in the store order that I shopped.  I tried to group like items together (all meats, veggies, non-food items, etc.).  Our grocery budget has to handle the animal feed as well, so you will see that here.  This month was a bit different as we just got done making a large bulk food order.  Because of this I used some of the money that would have been spent on some food preps to get some bulk herbs and a few add ins for our animals, which I will explain below.

This week I hit the feed stores first, actually the day before we did our food shopping.

Feed store #1
2  80# bags cow feed (used for our goats)
1 50# bag if chicken feed

Feed store #2
1 50# bag of goat feed pellets
1 50# bag of alfalfa cubes
1 50 # bag of black oil sunflower seeds
1 15# of clover seeds
1 pkg vet wrap
1 cat collar
1 cat bowl

I am going to try my hand at sprouting some seeds for our animals to boost their nutrition intake, hence the sunflower seeds and clover seeds.  I checked the prices for Probios, an animal probiotic.  Although the container was large, so was the price...$50!!!  No thank you, I think I will just give them some of our kefir!

Shopping day, our first stop:

Whole Foods
6X 1/2 oz blue glass bottles (for my homeopathy remedies)
children's sinus remedy
3 green cabbages
rainbow swiss chard
in the bulk section:
4# coconut flakes
0.62 # chia seeds
0.42 # green lentils
1# raw pumpkin seeds
0.67# mung beans
0.70# adzuki beans
0.72# mango slices
1/2# dates
.....................
hemp seeds
3 bags of beef marrow bones
small container of chicken livers
2 gallons of whole milk
1 quart plain yogurt
3 1# tubs of local pastured/cultured butter
1 bottle strawberry kombucha
2 fruit leather snacks

I was very excited to see the local pastured butter at the store!  And it didn't cost an arm and a leg :-)  The beans are for sprouting, as we can not eat the beans themselves on GAPS.  I was looking over the packages of sprouting seeds they were selling.  Each bag was only 8oz.  The cheapest price was $7.99!  I was able to get the same seeds (organic) for only $1.99-$2.99 a pound!  On top of that they had some sprouting jar tops that cost $5 a piece.  I went to Michaels and got a sheet of cross stitch mesh for $1 and will probably get at least 8 mesh covers from it!  With the greens I purchased here, and at the following stores I plan on lightly cooking, then dehydrating them.  Afterwards they will take a whirl through my blender and be made into our own homemade green powders to be added to our smoothies.  Raw spinach and kale are high in oxalates, which can actually pull out nutrients from our bodies, and cooking them is supposed to lessen those.

I made a quick trip to Micheals for the mesh and then we hit:

BJ's
5 2# bags of cubed butternut squash
large bag collard greens
large bag spinach
mushrooms
5ct bag zucchini
8ct mini cucumbers
3# bag onions
5# bag carrots
6 bags of chicken fryers (2 chickens per bag)
4 pkg of ground beef (about 5# each pkg)
1 pkg beef bones
bacon (comes with 3 packages)
1 3# jar honey
3 2ct jars of peanut butter
2 3# bags almonds
water (for the van, as we drive around)
diapers
wipes

This was a bit atypical as I would normally be buying stew meat, strawberries (to the tune of 3 6# bags), blueberries and usually cans of tomatoes and some cocoa powder.  Oh, and honey...lots of honey.  But in order for us to do GAPS intro correctly I needed these things to be out of the house!  Too many cheats when we did intro a few weeks ago.  So we are going back and doing things right.  Oh, my, how could I forget the 15-20 bunches of bananas!!!!  Yes, I didn't get those either this time around.  If it's not in the house the kids can't eat it :-)  The money I saved on those items went to some other items I bought online, which I list at the end of my shopping trips.

Our last stop of the day was to:

Walmart
1 pkg adult toothbrushes
2 pkgs kids toothbrushes
2X children's Advil (liquid)
wart remover (of fun!)
4X 5 gallon buckets, with lids
paper
colored pens
6X glass candle holders (I was going to use these as ferment weights, and they didn't fit my jars!)
wire brush (to clean our milking stand with)
tin foil
kleenex
2 bags tortilla chips
salsa (can we say....last hurrah until we start GAPS intro?)
dijon mustard
8 cans 100% pumpkin
2 cans green chilies
4 bags frozen lima beans
2 large bags frozen peas
4 bags frozen green beans
5 bags frozen broccoli
2 bags frozen spinach
1 bag kale

Online I bought:
Molly's herbal dewormer (for our animals)

from Herbalcom:
1 # each of:
spirulina
nettles
dandelion
(these will be used to make a health powder for the goats)

from Vitacost:
probiotic 15-35 (vitacost's brand)
oil of oregano
vitamin C powder
liquid vitamin D
colloidal silver

I made a quick stop to Aldi's another day, and bought 7 avocados. I was going to get apples as well, but they didn't have the ones I was looking for.

Phew!  That's all folks :-)  I will have a post up about my big cooking day I had today.  I wished I had taken pictures, but it was just cooking, cooking, cooking...oh and washing dishes, dishes, dishes!  I should be able to take all that I made and put it together to make a bunch of different soups for the next two weeks.  I have to cook up a bunch of onions, squash and bacon to make it all work out, but I should be able to get that done in the morning, leaving me the afternoon to find as many pots as I can to put together about 5 or 6 different soups.  Tomorrow evening, should I still be awake, I plan on going to my Charlotte Mason homeschool meeting.  That means I had better get to bed already!  Goodnight.




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