Take Only What You Need

Just in from grocery shopping at Sunflower, where I bought the vast majority of this week's produce. I think most people over-buy, thinking "I'll be healthy eating fruits and vegetables this week!" and then they end up throwing a lot of it out a week later when they haven't gotten to everything they purchased.

In an ideal world, we'd all be able to stop at a green grocer (and butcher, fishmonger, etc.) walking home from work. In most communities, that just doesn't exist. Most of us are lucky to do one big shopping trip on the weekend and maybe supplement once during the week. This is generally the reality for me. If I don't buy it on Saturday or Sunday, we don't have it. Where produce is concerned, that can make for a tricky week, but soon we'll talk about the wonders of frozen produce. Promise.

The above picture is all of the fresh produce I bought for this week. We've got bananas--Nigel eats one each morning. I may have one during the week. If we have too many, they get frozen for banana bread later. The apples are for my lunches; I'll pick up another one or two during the week if I feel like it. I have one orange leftover from last week that I'll eat this weekend.

The other items:

three onions
two apples
green beans
three peppers
Italian parsley
four potatoes
green onions
zucchini
cherry tomatoes
spinach

About half of what I bought is organic, and the dinners on this week's menu are:

Shepherd's pie (onion, green beans, potatoes)
Chicken breasts, spicy orange noodles, green beans (parsley, green beans, green onions)
Orzo salad (spinach, onion)
Easy Corn Sautee (a WW recipe; zucchini, peppers, onion, tomatoes)
Potatoes and beans with cheddar (potatoes, duh.)

Anything that doesn't get used for a dinner gets incorporated into lunch (and lunch is usually comprised of leftovers, or something simple like soup or beans and rice.) I'll probably take some pepper strips this week as well as some cherry tomatoes with my lunches.

Anything that isn't used by the end of the week will become part of "Egg Night" on Thursday night, where we have the traditional pre-weigh in dinner of scrambled eggs, refried beans, salsa, and sometimes hash browns (I use frozen ones for convenience.) Everything I'm making is easily incorporated into a Weight Watchers diet--plus, it's fresh and tastes good.