Grocery & Farmers Market Haul

This week I’m sharing all things grocery shopping, farmers market produce and eating out. I’m switching it up from the usual recipe or restaurant post and giving you a little sneak peak into my apartment and what goes through my mind as I plan my week of foodie things.

First things first let’s see what I’ve got to use for this week that I didn’t use last week or the week before.

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In the picture on the left I’ve got some leftover baby potatoes from the Mill City Farmers Market (check out that post here). I store my potatoes in a dark cool place. It’s home is in the cubbard. Next, you can see in my fridge I have eggs, cauliflower, tempeh, dates, Trader Joe’s ravioli. Some produce I forgot to photograph: red bell pepper, green cabbage, lemon, and lime. In the back I have a ton of nuts, seeds, almond flour, and maple syrup. On the door of the fridge I have pickles, olives, mayo, almond milk and other random sauces and dressings.

These past two weeks of food shopping have been sporadic. They were definitely not a couple of normal weeks. There were two farmers markets I had never been too (along with others): the Mill City and Midtown Farmers Market. I had the urge last week to try them out. Here’s what my spending on food looked like the past two weeks:

• Produce
  • 7/20 Mill City Farmer’s Market $11.50 for broccoli, kale and potatoes. Check out my blog post on this here.
  • 7/23 Midtown Farmer’s Market $12.25 for green cabbage, cauliflower, blueberries, raspberries and corn. I was excited to check out this market.
  • 7/23 Whole Foods: $7.48 for peanut butter filled pretzels and pickles. I stopped here on my bike route.
  • 7/23 Target: $3.99 for Eggs. It’s like 10 steps from my apartment.
  • 7/24 Trader Joe’s: $13.97 for croissant loaf bread, Medjool dates, and ravioli. Conveniently located by where I work so I ran in after my shift.
  • 7/28 Target: $3.08 for a white and red onion, nectarine, and an apple.
• Fast food
  • 7/20 MC farmer’s market $10.50: check out my blog post here to see the delicious pancakes, egg scramble and a donut I got!

Total grocery expense for 9 days: $52.27 (and $10.50 for fast food at the market).

Two more things: First, I get one meal when I work at my job. I usually eat meat there. Second, I went to Esker Grove for lunch on 7/25 (and I didn’t pay for it). Check out my blog post here to see the tasty Mixed Grain Salad I got!

Because of my crazy week, this week I desired structure. Structure for me means planning out my meals. In a way it’s meal prepping but I don’t designate a day to prep everything. I just make sure I buy what I need to make the recipes and I cook them when I am ready and want to. So, before I went grocery shopping for the week I went through my recipe document and picked out a few recipes that I wanted to make for the next week or so. FYI, some weeks I go to the grocery once, and others every two weeks. So, this week I decided to buy enough groceries to last me a week and a half because I move out of my apartment on Thursday 8/8. Now, this may mean I might have to stop into the Dinkytown target to get something that I run out of, which I’m cool with.

So, back to my “meal prepping” process. I then assembled my grocery list based off of what the recipes said I needed. I also added in some other things to eat throughout the week. So, these are things like apples, kiwis, sweet potatoes, and chickpeas. A week and a half ago, at the farmers market, I bought kale, broccoli and cauliflower. I still have leftover cauliflower. So this week I wanted to change it up and buy spinach and power greens.

Here are the recipes I chose:

I have Tempeh in my fridge so I want to make this a recipe. Also, I conveniently have buns in my freezer. Score!

• Tempeh Sloppy Jane’s –> here

I have cauliflower so I want to make one of these cauliflower recipes this week and the other one next week. I’ve made both of these recipes before, so I feel more prepared and confident lol.

• Spinach Cauliflower Parmesan Waffles –> here
• Cauliflower Parmesan Bake –> here

It’s zucchini season!!! I wanna bake something yummy. I’ve made these muffins before and they are very good! Then, to use up some more zucchini, I’m going to try and find or make a zucchini waffle recipe.

• Chocolate Zucchini Muffins
• Chocolate Chip Zucchini Waffles –> here

Now that you and I both know what I’m making, let me show you what I bought.

First, I went to the farmers market.

I got strawberries ($2), blueberries ($2) and zucchini ($4). I got so much bang for my buck for this produce. My guess is because it’s leftover from the weekend market so they’re trying to sell it.

Here’s my farmers market tip:

• I always come equipped with cloth bags and 4-5 tubberwares. The vendors always have plastic bags to put the produce in. If you bring tubberware a) you reduce your use of plastic products (save the turtles dudes!) and b) by putting the produce in a tubberware it is all ready to put in the fridge when you get back home!

After the market, I made my way to Fresh Thyme to get the rest of my groceries. You can see what I bought in the image below. The bill came out to $44.68.

Total for the next week and a half: $52.68

[Update: My roommate went to target on 8/3 and got me more eggs and cauliflower ($4.78). Also, I went to Trader Joe’s on 8/4 to get almonds and chocolate chips ($8.14) and 8/6 to get more greens and ice cream ($5.48)]

What wasn’t on my grocery list:

• Jicama. I’ve never tried this before. I might have to make a yummy dip for it next week.
• Jilz Crackerz. These looked really yummy, so I gave them a shot.
• Lemon. I realized I needed one to have on hand. They last a long time so I thought I might as well buy one now.

The next thing I want to learn how to do: soak all of my produce in vinegar. Apparently any bugs float to the top. I want to try. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I hope you guys enjoyed learning about how I navigate the foodie things in my life. Leave me a note in the comments if you liked it 🙂

You’re grate! (I thought this was fitting because I’ll be grating some cheese this week)

-Sho