Grocery shopping: Day 1 of new foods

So now that I've invested in this whole food adventure, I had to shop for food that I could actually eat. I have three favorite stores in my life. These are places that bring me joy even as I drive past them. In reverse order they are :
3)Barnes and Noble
2)Ann Taylor Loft
1) VONS

That's right. I love VONS more than the LOFT. Really. I love the checkers, especially Doris and Charlie. I love the flowers and produce and seeing people I know. I love that I can buy food and cleaning supplies and deodorant and videos all at the same place. Rick, my favorite neighborhood homeless man, and I have our best interactions there.

But now I cannot go to VONS. I must go to places farther away with checkers who don't know me and with aisles that I don't have memorized. It is Trader Joe's, which is an exceptional store that I do love to go to on Sundays and also Whole Foods which is featured on "Top Chef" so it has to be cool.

One of my favorite shows is "What Not to Wear". It's a show about people who don't dress well who are then given a set of rules by fashion experts which they must follow on their first day of shopping alone. Halfway through the shopping trip I realized that this is what it must feel like to be one of those shoppers. I would pick up a box and ask myself, "does this have wheat? gluten? corn?" and sometimes I would have no idea if it was ok or not.

I was able to come up with alternatives for a couple of my favorite food choices, including the idea for a mac and cheese made out of raw cheese (non-pasteurized). I just needed to find raw cream and some macaroni that was gluten free. Both of which I did not find at Trader Joe's. We did find a lot there and some other benefits included:
1) friendly workers
2) really great and inexspensive flowers
3) lots of options for our newly restricted diet
4) some prices that were comparable to what we were used to

We went to Whole Foods next to pick up some things on our list: a specific brand of lunch meat, raw milk, raw cream, gluten free pasta, and maybe some more cheese. The place is sure beautiful. It is spacious and fancy and has prices to match. I found the prettiest mushrooms I've ever seen that were also $29 a pound (which I did not buy).

We found the raw milk and cream and almost died from shock and the prices. They did come in a glass bottle and the cream was so beautiful looking. I felt like a cow named Bessie, wandering the English countryside, had relinquished this milk to a nice, lanky farmer straight into this jar. So beautiful. And now I can make ice cream and whipped cream and mac and cheese...except that one pint of the stuff is $11.99!!! So I think that the cream needed for ice cream would be basically $36. That would be some ice cream. Maybe I should just buy a cow, does that fit in our housing rules? The milk was good and did taste a little like grass as the surfer dude in front of us in line mentioned...what kind of grass did he mean?



I cooked two meals today from our newly acquired food. The first was a tangerine chicken on a bed of whole brown rice with a side of green beans. The second was steak fajitas with my own fajita seasoning, black beans, two kinds of cheddar cheese, tomatoes, and carmelized onions, on a brown rice tortilla. I did kind of miss the sour cream and the tortilla's should have been heated so they could fold better, but all in all, not too bad.




I did also go to a wedding today where I had to search each little table to try to find things I could eat. I ended up with a plate of berries, snap peas, and a tomato and olive. It was good, but I really wanted one of those little quiches or some sherbet punch! Cake is easy for me to resist, so that wasn't a problem.

So here are the lessons I've learned today:
1) I have a newfound respect for anyone who has dieted. It is stinking hard to do and I've only been doing it for a day!
2) I will not be restricted in my creativity in some ways. Yes, I must read labels now and be more aware of what I'm putting in my body. So although I did think that some sugar in the beans would taste pretty good and I resisted and couldn't try that, I have a whole new field of ingredients to work with and understand.
3) Eating healthy is exspensive.
4) 38 pills a day is a whole lot
5) I'm hungry more often, but maybe that's because my body is actually able to digest the food I'm eating.

I'm excited about breakfast. We'll see how the shakes go tomorrow.