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I Just Spent $150 on Groceries and Then Ordered Take Out

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$150 groceries

“I just bought $150 worth of groceries and then ordered takeout because I couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of deciding what to cook.”

Having just heard this from a dear friend, I am wondering, has this ever happened to you?

Don’t fall victim to ordering high calorie takeout while you have a fridge full of perfectly good food!

Planning is the key to staying on track with your chosen lifestyle of eating a diet rich in whole foods. In a world full of fast food options and busy schedules, it is easy to get distracted from eating well. I have outlined some tips and tricks to stick to help us all stick to a healthy diet.

Half the battle of making nutritious meals is having all of the ingredients stocked in your pantry or refrigerator. Before you do your weekly grocery shop, sit down and make a meal plan for the week. At the same time, create your shopping list to reflect the ingredients that you will need for your week’s meals.

Remember that flyers are your friend. Not only are flyers meant to point out the weekly sales, but they can also act as an inspiration for your meal planning. Flyers generally feature fruits and vegetables that are in season or are at least readily available and cost effective. Use the flyers to choose a star ingredient for each meal and then develop your meal plan around those star ingredients.

Leftovers are a time saver. Batch cooking is an easy way to ensure that you have leftovers on hand, so that on nights that time doesn’t allow you to be in the kitchen to prepare a meal from scratch, you have something to easily heat up and have on the table in minutes. Try making a large pot of soup, stew or chilli to have in the fridge or freezer for quick, easy meals.

Try adding the following recipe to your meal plan next week.

loaded sweet potatoes

Loaded sweet potatoes

2 large sweet potatoes
1 small sweet onion, diced
1 jalapeño pepper (remove seeds for less spice)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tsp garlic powder
sea salt

Guacamole Topping

1 avocado
1 roma tomato
1/4 sweet onion, diced
1 jalapeño pepper, finely chopped (optional)
sea salt
juice of one lime

Preheat oven to 375ªF. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Cut sweet potatoes lengthwise and then thinly slice. Dice onion and jalapeño pepper. Add sweet potatoes, onion and jalapeño pepper to a bowl. Toss with olive oil, garlic powder and sea salt to taste. Bake sweet potatoes until tender.

While sweet potatoes are baking, prepare guacamole topping. Cut avocado in half and remove the large seed. Using a spoon, scoop out the flesh of the avocado into a bowl and chop into small pieces. Dice tomato, onion and jalapeño and add to the bowl. Add a pinch of sea salt to the avocado mixture and add the juice of one lime.  Mix well.

Serve the sweet potatoes and top with guacamole.

Serve the loaded sweet potatoes with a garden salad, and a protein of your choice (free-range chicken, wild-caught cold water fish, grass fed beef). Enjoy!

Recipes Volume 2 – Hearty and Healthy

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Recipes Volume 2 - Hearty and Healthy

It’s time for another volume of recipes! We always focus on finding ways to eat higher quantities of fruits and vegetables. There are thousands of phytonutrients in just one piece of fruit or one vegetable, and the best part is that we haven’t even scientifically identified them all yet, nor do we fully understand how they work synergistically together! But we do know that they are the foods with the densest quantities of vitamins, nutrients and antioxidants, so we try to eat as many servings of F+V as we can every day!

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DINNER:

Easy Slow Cooker Sweet Potato Black Bean Quinoa Soup

It’s still winter up here in the northern hemisphere, so we’ll share a delicious, hearty slow cooker soup that you can start in the morning and enjoy at dinner!

3 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 large sweet onion, diced
3 cups diced tomatoes
2 cups chopped carrots
1 cup chopped apple (remove skins)
3 tablespoons tomato paste
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp chili flakes
1 cup finely chopped kale
1 cup finely chopped spinach
3/4 tsp salt and pepper
5 cups water
1.5 cups cooked quinoa
1.5 cups cooked black beans

Place sweet potatoes, onion, tomatoes, carrots, tomato paste, apple, garlic, cumin, chill flakes, kale, spinach and salt and pepper into slow cooker with water. Cook on high for 4 hours and then add cooked quinoa and black beans and cook for 1 more hour. Enjoy!

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LUNCH:

Jo-Anne’s Amazing (almost) Raw Pad Thai

This is one of my most favourite raw lunch options. It’s so easy to throw everything into the blender, and mandolin/chop up your veggies! (Be careful with the mandolin, those things are dangerous!)

To make the sauce, In a high speed blender, add:
4 pitted dates
3 basil leaves
1 roma tomato
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp sesame seeds
1 tbsp coconut aminos (or soy sauce if you don’t have aminos)
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 shakes ginger powder
5 shakes Himalayan sea salt
1 tbsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp garlic powder

For the Noodles:

Chop 6-7 large leaves of romaine or leaf lettuce
Mandolin slice 1-2 carrots into match sticks
Mandolin slice 1/2 a cucumber into match sticks
Mandolin slice 1 stalk celery into match sticks
Mandolin slice 2 peppers into slices (choose yellow, orange or red!)

(or you can use your spiralizer for the carrots and cucumber)

Drizzle the sauce over your veggies and enjoy!

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BREAKFAST:

Cherry Berry Smoothie

This is a delicious smoothie to kick start your morning! You’ll love the bursts of flavour to awaken your taste buds and rev up your day! Filled with healthy fats and antioxidants, this one is a keeper!

To your high speed blender, add:

1/2 cup frozen cherries
1/2 cup frozen blueberries
1 frozen banana
1 handful spinach
2 tbsp raw cacao powder
2 tbsp chia seeds
5 ice cubes
1.5 cups unsweetened almond milk

Blend until smooth and enjoy!! Recipe can easily be doubled to feed the rest of your family!

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Is Eating Healthy More Expensive Than Junk Food?

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Many people think that eating healthy is more expensive than eating junk food.

While this argument could be proven true by eating very inexpensive, very bad for you junk foods, there are several tricks that you can use to eat healthy on a budget.

If you have perused the junk food aisle at the grocery store lately, a bag of potato chips can run upwards of three or four dollars. Just imagine reallocating those three dollars to the produce department to buy a bag of oranges, grapes, or even a full pineapple. Now that is a healthy (and inexpensive) snack!

If you’ve turned on the TV lately, then it’s probably safe to say that you’ve seen Tim Horton’s latest commercial introducing their “Perfect Pairings” menu which allows consumers to pick and choose what “convenience” they are craving for a quick meal.  While this concept is probably enticing to many customers with a price of only $5.99 for a lunch on the go, by the time you add a beverage and tax you are likely breaking the eight dollar mark for ‘fast food’ that is not going to fuel your body for greatness.

I’m going to show you how you can spend less than $25 at the grocery store and make five healthy and delicious lunches for the entire week.

WHICH IS DEFINITELY CHEAPER THAN SWINGING INTO TIM HORTON’S EVERY DAY!

Packing a lunch doesn’t have to be time consuming or exhausting. It is as easy as adding a few items to your weekly shopping list to have fresh vegetables and fruit on hand. If you find that you run short on time in the mornings, you could prepare your lunch the night before or even on Sunday afternoon so lunches are ready in the fridge to grab and go in the morning.

Shopping List

1 large container of organic mixed lettuce $5.99
1 bag of 5 avocados               $2.49
2 bell peppers                        $2.00
1 cucumber                            $1.49
1 sweet onion                         $0.75
1 bag of carrots                      $1.99
4 limes                                  $1.00
3 bananas                              $1.00
3 apples                                 $2.00
1 bag of clementines               $3.00
1 bag of raw sunflower seeds   $3.00

  $24.71

Using the lettuce, bell peppers, cucumber and onion, prepare 5 garden salads.
For a very basic dressing, place half a lime in your salad container to squeeze over your salad when you are ready to eat it.

Or a homemade salad dressing could also be made using extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, and your favourite herbs and spices. Just mix up the dressing at home and store it in your fridge at work. Add one avocado to each salad when you are ready to eat it (otherwise it will turn brown if exposed to the air).

Cut up carrots into carrot sticks for an afternoon snack.  Grab two pieces of fruit each day and carry the bag of sunflower seeds for snacking if you feel like your energy is dropping or you are having a craving for something crunchy.

There you have it! Five quick and easy lunches that are so easy you won’t even have to think about it! There are a plethora of healthy lunch options out there that are easy on the wallet, but more importantly, they will provide you with the nutrients and energy that you need to fuel your day.

Favourite Healthy Recipes Volume 1

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I love experimenting with new recipes, finding ideas and changing them to make them my own, and experiencing new flavours and palettes that are exciting and delicious.

The most important things to think about when you are preparing are:

  • Will this meal provide me with a broad range of vitamins, nutrients and minerals?
  • Am I eating a wide variety of colours?

It’s hard to eat a lot of colours if you have only meat and potatoes on your plate.  So this is why eating fruit and vegetables is essential to reaching all of your daily nutrient requirements.

Here are a few of my most favourite recipes that have been in my family’s meal rotation lately.

Breakfast

Breakfast is your first opportunity of the day to start consuming as many nutrients as you can, to jump start your day.  Ideally, the very first thing you should do to start your day is moving out the toxins that have accumulated overnight.  So try and drink a tall glass of water with lemon.  Then, enjoy this smoothie at least 20 minutes later.

Funky Monkey Smoothie

  • 1 frozen banana
  • 10 large frozen strawberries
  • 1 large handful of spinach
  • 1 tbsp peanut butter
  • 2-3 cups almond milk
  • 1 tbsp hemp seeds
  • 1 tbsp cocoa

Add all ingredients to a high speed blender.  Cover with almond milk, and blend until smooth.  Your children will love this smoothie and won’t even notice the greens hiding inside!  Love smoothies for breakfast??  Click here for our Breakfast On The Go – Mixed Berry Smoothie recipe.

Lunch

Lunch is best if it’s an easy salad or something that is pretty mobile.  I mean, who knows where life will take you by lunch time!!  So pack something that is easy to throw together and enjoy on the run.

Mango Salad

  • 1 ripe mango, diced
  • 1/2 head of romaine lettuce, washed and torn
  • 1/2 sweet onion, thinly sliced
  • 1 red bell pepper, diced1 roma tomato, diced
  • 1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds

Combine lettuce, vegetables and sunflower seeds.  Dice mango, being careful to save the juices.  Add the mango and juice from the mango to the salad and toss.  To learn more about why you should include mango’s in your diet click here for 10 Health Benefits of Mango’s.

Dinner

This is a great dinner option that you can enjoy at your home.  It replaces the empty nutrients in white or whole grain pasta with spaghetti squash!  Feel free to tweak the recipe with whatever vegetables you have on hand.  This recipe is also great as a left-over lunch option.

Spaghetti Squash Spaghetti

  • 1 spaghetti squash
  • 1 pound grass fed ground beef
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1 green pepper, chopped
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 8 oz mushrooms, sliced
  • 1 zucchini, chopped
  • 1 jar tomato sauce (check label for no added sugar) or use your favourite homemade spaghetti sauce recipe

Cut squash in half, scoop out seeds and place on a baking sheet face down.  Bake squash at 350 F until spaghetti-like consistency.  Scoop the flesh out of the skin with a fork.  Cook ground beef in a skillet until no longer pink.  Add garlic, green peppers, onion, zucchini and mushrooms and sauté until vegetables are tender.  Add tomato sauce and heat through. Cover spaghetti squash with sauce and enjoy!