Saturday, March 27, 2010

Grocery Shopping


I think I've told you before about the conflicting dietary restrictions in our family. Low fat, low salt, low carbs, vegan, no MSG, no BHT, no hydrogenated oils. Everything my daughter is willing to eat can be written down on one side of one piece of paper. I know, because that piece of paper is hanging on my refrigerator door.

But now I have freedom. I can eat anything I want!

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, my body decided that it wanted to come up with some dietary restrictions of its own. No tea, which is a hard one for me because I really like tea. I can drink the herbal stuff though. That one has been around for a while. The new one, and it is a big one, is wheat. I think that my body is rejecting wheat. I decided to make sure it was wheat by trial and error. I am going to cut it out of my diet completely and see if that makes me feel better. I also want to try to reduce the salt in my diet without increasing the fat.

I took my coupons to the store. There was one that gave you $7 of if you buy $70 worth of groceries. I worked around the store looking at labels to avoid wheat products. You know what? I eat a LOT of wheat. I was able to find very few things that I could actually buy. Even the frozen food that didn't have noodles had wheat of some kind. I couldn't use my $7 coupon because I couldn't find $70 worth of things to buy.

My bonus buy, one I wasn't expecting, Snickers was 2 for $1.00, and I had a 50 cent coupon that was doubled, so free chocolate! Today they have triple coupons. Snickers doesn't have any wheat.

Since I need frozen foods to pack for lunch, I decided to make my own. I did buy a big family pack of chicken breasts, and cooked them all yesterday, along with four cups of rice. I only made two things - Garlic Lime Chicken and Stir Fry - I figure that I can make large batches each time I make something, I will eventually get variety. I saved a batch of each to eat, and froze the rest. I made it all at the same time, so it didn't really take much more time than it would have to just make a smaller batch.

The one thing they don't mention on the saving money blog is that you have to have organized plasticware in order to do this project. I haven't organized my plasticware for a couple of years, and somehow the matches have all walked away. I worked it out, but I didn't want to leave the food out too long, so put it in the freezer as quickly as I could find a match and wash, fill, and label it.

A picture of chocolate is better than a picture of plastic anyway. And it matches my new blog colors!

2 comments:

Paula, the quilter said...

Watch out for products containing HVP (Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein) because it could possibly be wheat. I thought I was allergic to wheat etc and pulled ALL grains from my diet and started by adding in rice. It turns out I am hyper sensitive to soy. Soy is in even more things than wheat. Bummer. Soy lecithin is in chocolate. Bummer. But one good thing is that the longer I have avoided soy the better I feel. But I can also add a bit back into my diet now and then. Good luck.

Allie said...

I'm glad to know Snicker's don't have wheat - yes, it's very difficult to find products that don't have it. I had to go on the Caveman diet once, because of a serious systemic yeast problem. Talk about HARD. Just meat and veggies - no bread, no fruit, no goodies. At the end of the month though, I felt GREAT.