My Love Affair with Fresh & Easy

It wasn’t love at first sight with Fresh & Easy: Neighborhood Market. We flirted for a bit several years ago, but there was no chemistry and the relationship didn’t go anywhere. Over the past year we reconnected, I discovered some very attractive qualities and fell in love. I’ve found that Fresh & Easy has a wide variety of healthy choices, several ways to save money, and it is convenient. Since my family began eating more real food, Fresh & Easy is where I spend the most of my grocery budget.

Note: Fresh & Easy is currently only in California, Nevada and Arizona. If you live elsewhere and know of a similar type of store let me know. I think Trader Joe's is similar. We have them in Las Vegas, but it's not close enough to where I live to shop there.

Here is my rundown of why I love Fresh & Easy:

The Fresh & Easy brand – Fresh & Easy brand products do not include high fructose corn syrup, added trans-fats, or artificial coloring or flavors. This really attracted me to the store once I knew about it. Their products are clearly labeled so you don’t forget. Of course these items are all processed, packaged items, but they are a better choice than much of what is out there from other companies. Still read their labels because there may be other ingredients you are trying to avoid that are included. I really like that they are listening to what consumers want or don’t want and make better choices available at their store.

Meat – Fresh & Easy has a wide variety of meat, which I just recently discovered. I used to buy regular ground beef (no pink slime!!) and chicken because the prices were reasonable. When we decided that we wanted to go to organic chicken and grass-fed beef we found that they carried those as well. They have a few different types of seafood, pork and turkey too.  So no matter what my meat choices have been, I have found they have what I need. I have also recently discovered they have some nitrate free options for bacon, lunch meats, salami, and pepperoni. That makes me J.

Produce – They don’t have a huge selection and I don’t buy the bulk of my produce here, but when I do need something to supplement what I get from Bountiful Baskets this is a good option. They have some organic items and many conventional choices. It’s reasonably priced too. If you are looking for something unusual you might have to look elsewhere, but if you just want your usual produce choices you’ll have no problem getting what you need.

Saving Money

The Clearance Section – I found this section early on and check it every time I go. There is a refrigerated section and a non-refrigerated section.  Check here for some great deals. Just keep in mind that the items need to be used quickly. Sometimes we find our favorite pizza dough super cheap and just freeze it until we need it.

Coupons – Fresh & Easy does not accept manufacturer coupons, but who care when you can save a lot more money with their store coupons. This is my most recent discovery. I always used one of their coupons and got $3 or $5 off. However, you can use more than one of their store coupons in one transaction. For example, if I spend $100 I can use 4-$5 off $25 coupons, which takes my total from $100 to $80. Even in my short-lived couponing days I never did that well. Most manufactures coupons are for highly processed food I wouldn’t buy anyway. Win-win for me.

The Friends Card – This is a new program that I am so glad I signed up for a few months ago. For every 500 points you get $5 to use on a transaction. You don’t have to spend $500 either because they often have double and triple point items so you can accrue points very quickly. I’ve probably gotten $30 dollars back already since I got my card. You can use your $5 off from the card and coupons in the same transaction too.

Convenience – Fresh & Easy is a small store so even at their busiest times in the early evening and on weekends it’s never as busy as other grocery stores. I don’t hate grocery shopping when I go to Fresh & Easy.

I feel like Fresh & Easy has a lot to offer to anyone who is trying to make better food choices. You still need to do your homework and read labels because not everything sold in the store is a healthy option. They carry a number of the big name brand products for anyone who just wants the small store convenience. The selection on natural and organic products is not as extensive as a store like Whole Foods, but it does the job for the regular week to week shopping trips.

So if you have a Fresh & Easy in your area check it out. If you’ve already been to Fresh & Easy see if there is something about the store that you haven’t taken full advantage of in the past. You might fall in love too.

The Best Chicken Salad

I have a tendency to pull recipes out of magazines and save them for way too long before trying them. While organizing my recipes I came across a chicken salad recipe I saved out of Food Network Magazine in April 2011. Yikes! I need to be more on top of trying recipes I save. But boy I'm glad I held onto it this long. When I came home today and thought my husband finished off the leftovers I was bummed. Until he showed me a little container just for me left in the fridge for lunch tomorrow.

You've got to try Aarti Sequeira's Lady Marmalade Chicken Salad. It is so delicious and easy to make. Aarti has an Indian background so her recipes always feature some delicious spices. We ate ours with organic blue corn tortilla chips. Yum, yum!

Sorry no picture of our salad. I totally forgot so you'll have to settle for clicking on the link for a picture this time. Ours turned out a darker yellow than in the picture. I'll try to be better about getting pictures next time.

Does it qualify as real food? I say yes with the exception of the orange marmalade.

My only issue was having trouble finding orange marmalade that I was totally happy with so I settled. The brand I bought had corn syrup in it, which I try to avoid when I can. I'll have to check Whole Foods for a better option. Of course maybe I can work with my husband on a non-processed substitute that would still give that orange flavor. Not sure if just orange juice would do.

A few changes we made:

• I made a whole chicken in the crockpot the night before using this Chicken Recipe from Lisa Leake's 100 Days of Real Food (my new foodie hero). I used most of this chicken for the chicken salad.
• I swapped out the canola or peanut oil for coconut oil.
• We added some diced celery because we had some on hand. I love the extra crunch.

We will be making this again very soon. This would definitely be a hit at your next summertime potluck.

Note: I have to give my husband credit for putting this chicken salad together. All I did was make the chicken the day before and make sure we had the ingredients. He likes cooking much more than I do, and he's better at it so many of the things we try will be cooked by my wonderful husband with me as the sous chef. However the food gets cooked at your house, make it as real as possible.

Bountiful Baskets

April 14, 2012 Organic Basket

I've decide to start posting about what I get in my organic basket from Bountiful Baskets and post ideas and links for the recipes I make using the produce. I hope that other people will find this helpful especially when they get ingredients that they are not very familiar with like I did this week. I only get a basket every 2 weeks right now, but with the organic baskets having less than the regular ones I might start getting.

Note: The recipes are not created by me. I have gathered these from cookbooks and online and will give credit to the chef who created them. The recipes I post will typically be from scratch. So no or very few processed ingredients. We (my husband and I) are not expert chefs so these recipes are doable for people who have some basic cooking skills. Of course read the recipes to see if they fit in with what you are willing and able to do in the kitchen after a long day.

The contents of my basket include: 2 pears, 1 red apple, a bunch of bananas, 4 kiwi, 2 avocado, 3 romaine hearts, green onions, garlic, 2 small heads of broccoli, green kale, rainbow chard, 6 red beets, 1 cucumber, and fennel. (Bold type items I have never tried before.)
  

Rainbow Chard - So pretty

Apple, pears, kiwi, bananas - snacks and part of breakfast (most fruit in our house ends up being a snack or part of breakfast so you won't find as many recipes with fruit)

Garlic - Who needs a recipe for this? Not us. We probably cook with garlic at least 3-4 times a week. I did sautee some green beans and mushrooms last week in garlic butter. So yummy!

Fennel - I haven't used this very much so I searched for a new recipe. This sounds yummy.
Shaved Fennel and Green Apple Salad

Beets and Green Onions
Farfalle Pasta with Beet Vinaigrette and Parsley Pesto 

Beets - These look yummy and I have sweet potatoes left from my last basket. Hmmmm I guess I need to decide what I want to do with those beets.
Sweet Potato and Beet Chips

Rainbow Chard and Green Onions - this is a new recipe for me. I love anything with lemongrass.
Lemongrass and Ginger Egg Drop Soup

Green Kale
Kale Chips

Avocado and Romaine Hearts
Quinoa Avocado Tacos

Broccoli and Cucumber - these will just be snacks or a quick steamed side dish (broccoli)

So it looks like lots of new recipes to try this time around. Let me know if you try any of these recipes. I'll follow up later to let you know how they turned out for us.

Happy Eating!

Progress?

Okay so it's been nearly a month since I last posted. So have we gone back to the way we used to eat or have we been able to stick with it? I'm proud to say we've stuck with it. I don't think I can say we've made any big changes since last month, but we are continuing to eat as much real food as possible. We are by no means at our goal yet, but we are taking little steps.

So since last post:

• I went through our recipe book to see if there were any recipes that needed to be ditched, but I was pleased to realize that 90% of our recipes count as real food and a few could use minor substitutions to make them totally really food.
• I have been trying some new recipes with quinoa, fish, and granola.
• I made the chocolate powerballs. Hubby really liked them. I'm not a huge dark chocolate fan so I'd eat them, but I did not love the super dark chocolate flavor. However my son loved them and I'd eat them so we were all getting the benefits of 100% cacao. It's amazing what dates do as a sweetener.
• I've been reading like crazy and educating myself more on what to avoid and what to use as a substitute. I have so much to learn. I have found some fantastic blogs with great recipes and information on eating real food. Oh I wish I could blog like those ladies do. Maybe someday when I have more time and energy.
• We've been enjoying our grass-fed beef from our co-op order. What a difference in taste.

Things to try in the near future:

• Try to find more organic products at Costco. The Greenbacks Gal inspired me to scout out my Costco for yummy and healthy food.
• I got a variety pack of Naked juice from Costco. Super yummy, but expensive. I need to look into juicing at home. Not sure if I'm ready for that yet. Need to read up on it more.
• Try more new recipes and make good use of our basket ingredients. Maybe try to make some kale chips.
• Try to find a bulk source of chicken like I did with the beef.
• Read, read, read about real food lifestyles and share as much info as I can via this blog and Facebook.
• Connect with other real food foodies.

Change is Good

We've been making some changes in our kitchen lately and surprisingly enough it's not as hard to stick to as I thought. This whole diet change is not for the purposes of dieting. The point is to eat healthier more natural food that is good for our bodies so we don't feel so tired and cruddy as often from all the stress in our lives. This is a lifestayle change, and I am so excited about it. I have found several good resources online (Real Food Blog and Organic Blog) to help me get ideas not to mention a change in where I shop and what I buy. You can't do couponing quite as much since most coupons are for processed food items, so I'm searching for good ways to keep within a budget. Not so successful yet, but working on it.

Some good things we've changed and tried:

• We ordered 35 pounds of grass-fed beef through a local co-op that orders from Utah.
• We are buying organic chicken and looking into buying in bulk through the co-op as well.
• We are getting the organic basket from Bountiful Baskets and trying to buy organic produce at the store when possible.
• We are trying to eat less processed food as snacks so less cereal, crackers, chips, etc. and replacing that with more trail mix and granola (homemade), Power Balls (sooooo yummy!), eating cheese or meat or veggies with homemade hummus.
• Eating less processed sugar (my sugar cravings disappeared very quickly and it's easy to turn down sweets when they are in front of me). Using honey to sweeten things like oatmeal, the Power Balls and other recipes that call for sugar.
• Eating more fish - salmon is Eddie's favorite and it's starting to grow on me too.
• Eating less grains overall, but especially things that aren't whole grain. I've been replacing white flour with wheat flour for ages when possible, even in my famous chocolate chip cookies.  

We still have a way to go before we are where we want to be with this, but I feel like we are off to a good start. This diet change seems doable long term and I think we will see more and more benefits as we continue.

Nate isn't hard to switch over because he eats what we eat for the most part. He loves eating trail mix with Daddy so I've been making him a trail mix in his snack cup of cheerios (until we are out), peanuts or shelled pistashios, raisins or cranberries, and unsweetened coconut.  He loves it.

My biggest challenge is when we are out running errands on the weekends that I pack lunch or snacks that are healthy so we don't have to stop and get fast food because we are hungry. It's been pretty easy.

Next on my list of things to try:

• Homemade grain-free blueberry muffins
• Another flavor of Power Balls since we are about out of the others
• I'm reading about Square-Foot Gardening. The idea of growing some of our own food appeals to me, but I do not have a green thumb. I'd love to try it though.
• Finding ways to budget while buying organic, real food
• Revamping my recipe book with more real food recipes
• Making more things from scratch and getting some use out of our 2nd freezer
• Trying some smoothie recipes like this one Smoothie

More updates to come and hopefully a success story of avoiding processed foods on our upcoming vacation to California over Spring Break. It's all about a little planning ahead and some time in the kitchen. Off to do some baking. :) Happy eating.

A Mom's Research into the U.S. Food Industry

What an amazing woman and mom. Taking the fight for healthier food for her family public.

King Corn

A few weeks ago a friend on Facebook posted about a documentary about the role of corn in our lives and diet. It sounded interested and my husband and I finally watched it tonight. King Corn was very interesting and not entirely shocking. I learned more about the role the government plays in the corn industry and about how Iowa is a huge corn producer, but the corn grown there is cheap and low in nutrition. The corn there basically turns into feed for cattle and high fructose corn syrup. It's cheap, and in turn allows companies to turn out cheap products.

Corn in some form is in so many foods that we don't even realize. An entire fast food hamburger combo meal has some form of corn in it. High fructose corn syrup is in so many different foods and things that would never occur to you like breadcrumbs. I haven't been a fan of high fructose corn syrup for a while now and have been making an effort not to buy things that contain it. There is still a huge debate about whether it is harmful or not compared to regular sugar, but it is so highly processed that I'm trying to steer clear of it. Of course trying to limit any kind of sweetener is important. I love that Fresh and Easy makes their products without HFCS or any preservatives or artificial products.

The other interesting thing was about the corn fed beef that we eat constantly. Supposedly the corn fed beef has a higher saturated fat content than grass fed beef, not to mention that the corn is horrible for the cows. But it's cheap so who cares right? I'm by no means going the vegetarian route ever, but I think I'm going to read up and look into the cost of grass fed beef as a possibility. The other thing was all of the antibiotics that they have to give the corn fed cows to keep them from dying before slaughter because of the confinement and corn diet. Yikes.

All I can say is do we really know what is going into our bodies? How is it all effecting our health? All of these chemicals can't be good.

I'm just trying to change things little by little. I'm only doing what is manageable for us at the time. Of course anyone can eat however they'd like, but this is what works for us. Like I said, I am learning as I go.