FOOD SHOPPING: The Healthy Way

So it begins!  I truly enjoy planning meals for myself and my family and desire to eat healthy, mostly organic meals.  I enjoy cooking, baking, eating out, and finding new ways to eat as many different foods as we can.  My friends and family always ask, "What's in that?" or "How do you cook like you do with all those kids and a full time job?".  After many times of writing down my recipes or sharing links to where I found one, and telling my story over and over again of how I plan our meals, food shop and cook in the time that I do with a house full of kids on a teacher budget...I have mustered up the courage to begin blogging and vlogging!  I have day dreamed about it for quite some time but discouraged myself thinking, what do I know about any of that health and nutrition stuff? I have always been one to desire health.  I don't care for medicines (though I am not against them all!) and aspire to find ways to eat the right kinds of foods and exercise in order to avoid health problems.  I told myself, it all begins with a desire to research and learn.  So I am going to take you along with me on my health journey and how I do it all with my busy life...that I wouldn't change for the world!

On Fridays I typically begin looking at the following week's schedule.  I see what we have planned for the kids sporting events, ballet classes, my exercise plan, my husband's work schedule, meetings after school I may have, parties, etc. From that, I determine how many nights a week I can cook a full meal or if we need to have leftovers, simple food night, or maybe even grab and go from Panera (my personal rule: if it has to be grab and go, then choose wisely and find organic food places if at all possible!).  My schedule is hand written, I need to get up to speed on my phone...but writing down is my thing.

Once the schedule is set, I begin the menu planning.  I typically write this down in a journal so I can go back to it later.  I generally write down breakfast plans, lunch plans, and dinner plans.  During the school year is a bit more aggressive than the summer months when I'm off and more relaxed with my time.  After I have planned the meals, I go through the pantry and refrigerator to see what we already have and what we need to buy.  Since I do this weekly, we are never stocked with foods, so to the normal household, our food supply may look low, but this keeps the budget in check as well as the snacking and overeating to a minimum!

Schedule in order. Menu planned.  Grocery List made.  Food shopping time!  I like to go to HEB normally for most all my major grocery shops.  However, for some items I go to Whole Foods because they have some products that you just can't get unless it's a specialty store like they are.  Since this is the summer months and our schedule isn't very full and we are a bit more scattered (kids at camp, Jordan's working, kids at grandparents, etc.) then my food shopping for this week was a bit more simple and not so much full meal deals!  I basically bought some needed essentials that should always be around the house for times when meals aren't planned and you can just grab and make.  I also bought things that we were out of for our go to meals like shakes.  

Check out my Healthy Food Haul video!  It's my first video and my goodness the editing is much harder than I expected.  Hope you enjoy it and let me know how you plan healthy meals for you and your family.