Friesencold

Here’s a picture of the rest of our groceries for this week. I usually go to Meijer once a week and Trader Joe’s once a week, and then fill in every now and then with a few things from Whole Foods, Target, and Michael’s Fresh Market.

Here’s a list of what I got at Trader Joe’s and some notes of explanation:

-Orange Juice with Calcium – We have never been an OJ-drinking family until very recently. TJ used to get sick anytime he would drink orange juice, and I only associated orange juice with having a cold and needing to get extra Vitamin C. But lately TJ has discovered he can drink OJ just fine and now he really likes mixing it with the Peach Juice from Trader Joe’s. Cash and Bauer will have a cup of OJ every now and then, but I still don’t really ever drink it. I just buy it.
-Organic Tomato and Roasted Red Pepper Soup (regular version)
-Organic Tomato and Roasted Red Pepper Soup (low-sodium version) – I like to mix the 2 versions of this soup together so it’s neither too salty nor too bland, but what I’d like even more is to make my own dairy-free version of this type of soup. I have a recipe that looks good but haven’t attempted it yet.
-Raw pecan halves – I haven’t bought these before, but plan to use them to make my own version of the Pecan Pie Larabars.
-Kalamata olives – I haven’t bought these before either. I guess you could say this was an impulse purchase today, but I really like kalamata olives and thought these would be something good to let the kids try. I enjoyed having the olives on my hummus and veggie pita today for lunch. Both Bauer and Cash tried them and neither reached for a second
-2 containers organic hummus – I used to buy the regular (non-organic) hummus from Trader Joe’s, but they stopped carrying it in the small size. I had started buying the larger size of the non-organic, but we kept having to throw out partially-used containers because it would start to go bad before we had eaten the whole thing. So I figure it’s cheaper to spend a little more on the organic small one and use it up, than to buy the larger non-organic and have to throw some away. I was making my own hummus for a very little while, but could never get it good enough that Bauer would happily eat it. I may try again in the future. I still have some frozen chickpeas in the freezer.
-Whole wheat pita pockets – I usually buy the smaller ones, but today they were out of those. They taste the same, of course, and made a delicious lunch today.
-Flour tortillas and whole wheat tortillas - I’ll use these tomorrow night for making Super-Stuffed Tortillas, which have quickly become one of our family’s favorite recipes!
-Organic Reduced-Sugar Blackberry Preserves – This was another brand-new item for us today. We usually buy the strawberry version of this but Bauer saw the other kinds today and wanted to try blueberry. I convinced him to get blackberry just because I thought it sounded better and I know he likes fresh blackberries a lot.
-Organic Raisins – Bauer eats raisins nearly every night as part of his bedtime snack while we read books. It’s usually a banana and a little container of raisins.
-Brown Rice Bread – We mostly use this for making toast to go along with certain meals such as spaghetti.
-Grape Tomatoes – I love these! And Cash is quite fond of them too. Trader Joe’s is the cheapest place I know to get good tiny tomatoes.
-Snow Peas - Bauer is the one who loves these. They are the veggies he always picks first from the veggie tray.

We also got our usual balloons from Trader Joe’s, but today Bauer was lucky enough to get 2!

Note the Lego booklet in Bauer’s hand and his toothless grin.