Day 36: Eating Well, Spending Less - part 1

I am experimenting in the month of October, with attempting to only spend $100 on groceries. You may ask "how is that possible?" but just know that I have a chest-freezer chock-full of meat, frozen fruit and frozen veggies- and I am trying to use it all up! If I buy anything from the store, I get fresh fruits, veggies and dairy items. If you have read the blog at all, you'd know I like to prep meat in marinades and then freeze them - so there are lots of those. And then I make big batches of soups (like my skinny soup and my beef stew). 

Tip of the Day
When going to the grocery store, always make a list to stick to, and always bring a snack, just in case you get hungry. There is NOTHING worse than going grocery shopping while starving. It makes for a very full basket of impulse choices.

So, this is what I bought on shopping trip #1:

Frozen peaches

Shredded cheese

A bag of gala apples

Shredded cabbage 

Tomatoes

Mango

Pears

Strawberries

Snow peas

Zucchini

Yogurt - 8 pack

Total spent $23.33

Budget remaining: $76.67

So, what are my intentions for my groceries? The idea is to only purchase fresh produce (and emergency perishables that I'm running low on), to shop often, but to buy in smaller amounts each time I go to the store, so there is less spoilage. The fresh fruits and veggies will be eaten as-is (raw) with the exception of the zucchini, which I plan to make Zucchini lasagna with, the cabbage and tomatoes are for my veggie sandwiches, and the peaches are for smoothies.

The mango in going into tomorrows dinner dish Jamacian Jerk Tilapia, with cinnamon black-beans and mint-mango chutney! Yumm! Stay tuned for the recipe!

As for the yogurt, normally I would buy plain Greek yogurt, but I saw they had Pumpkin Pie flavored yogurt, and since it is fall and I don't plan on actually eating any pumpkin pie, I had to give it a try :). It's really good actually. I added 1/8 tsp of cinnamon, and about a TBS of granola for some pie-crust-like crunch! Yum!!

And as for my daily-do??

FOOD

Breakfast: I ate the last of the chocolate zucchini bread, a cup of Earl Grey tea, and a pear (not a great start, I know)

Snack: a Pumpkin-pie Yopliat yogurt! Yumm!

Lunch: Veggie sandwich and 2 HBE

Snack: Apple and Luna Bar

Dinner: 1 cup of beef stew

EXERCISE
Insantiy!! It was a yoga-style recovery & stretching routine today. Still challenging, but less cardio :)



Thanks for reading everybody!!