Groceries and Meals

I mentioned before how much I love Awesome Note. I still love Awesome Note. I have almost perfected my lists and use them DAILY. It is really handy to have my grocery list right above my meal plan list. I generally try to shop for the week, but find that I need to go to the store a few times during the week for more fruit, milk or something that Ty has been eating a lot of.

I think that some people are really good at grocery shopping because the more I do it, the more I feel like I suck at it. I'm completely serious. Who would have thought that it takes more than a credit card to be able to grocery shop? I honestly hadn't put much thought into it until I started spending way more time at the grocery store. I had a good handle on it before Ty and when Ty was a baby. Now that he eats more and is trying new things, I feel like my brain is working overtime in the food department. Ty is a kid that is completely driven by texture. If he doesn't like the texture of something, you can guarantee that it is not going to fly with him. I refuse to cook him a separate meal from us because I don't believe that hot dogs and American Cheese slices are the greatest diet even if you throw in a banana or grapes. He has been more adventurous lately and has eaten hard-shell tacos, Indian cuisine, mashed potatoes, meats of all kinds and that's just naming a few. Because he doesn't eat pasta or potatoes, nor does he eat vegetables (bummer), we still serve them to him in hopes that he will try it along with the main dish. We usually give him some sort of cheese and fruit with his suppers, too.

When I say fruit, I mean fresh fruit. We always have fresh fruit at our house, especially when things are in season. Ty is a huge fan of just about every fruit he has been given. He prefers fruit over anything else. That makes me somewhat happy. Because of his eating fresh fruit every single day, I find myself going to the store to replenish our supply a few times a week. Same goes for the salad that I put in a bowl in the fridge and any other fresh produce needed to create the weekly meals. I don't know that there is a way to fix having to buy fresh produce fresh. You get that? Good!

I find myself a little exhausted by the grocery store trips. We go through quite a bit of milk around here, too. Ty gets chocolate milk occasionally and Brett and I drink a couple glasses each a day. Why not buy two gallons? Well, because it never fails when I do that, it happens to be the week that we don't drink as much milk and we end up throwing away about an entire gallon.

Even the best meal plans with accompanying grocery list requires me to go to the store a few days later. Why? Maybe they didn't have an ingredient or I have to go to another grocery store to get a few things that the other store didn't have. Does this happen to anyone else? I find that one store doesn't carry all the products that I need/want/purchase frequently. Of course the store that I buy meat is closed on Sundays and they are also the ones that carry my edamame in the pods. There is a third store that I have to go to to get Tyson's favorite chicken because no other store carries this particular chicken. Seriously. I'm exhausted typing this. And as I type, I realize I didn't make it to the grocery store this weekend and I am going to regret that I let it slip my mind on Saturday night when I usually go grocery shopping. Yeah, I'm that wild.

I'm finding myself more and more overwhelmed trying to balance eating healthy, making healthier meals, incorporating new foods, getting Ty to try new foods, but making them kid friendly, making sure I have all the ingredients and not being wasteful in both the food and the trips to the store. Did you get all that? Good!

If anyone has any tips and ideas for me to improve my grocery shopping experiences, I am all ears! I would love to know if there is a better time to go, when the best time to go is, how you purchase groceries, do you go every week, etc? Such a simple topic so simply overwhelming for me. Sigh.

Signing off for now, to all of you near and far and to those of you that think I am completely nuts making a whole post about grocery shopping, until next time...