My family loves grocery shopping. We’re a grocery store family. My dad was a meat cutter at Shaw’s for years and then worked as a maintenance technician at the Shaw’s Warehouse, so it’s just normal to be aware of grocery stores.

As a kid, I remember Saturday’s consisting of dance lessons/class in the morning and then grocery shopping in the afternoon. Grocery shopping wasn’t a quick, in and out type of thing; it was a 1-2 hour ordeal. We walked up and down every aisle and filled the cart to the brim. I’ll admit: we were always the house with the good “snack closet”. Mom always had plenty of fruit snacks, crackers, granola bars and whatever else might be a “new” type of snack at the time.

The love of grocery stores and grocery shopping has stuck with both my sister and me throughout the years and we, to this day, still get excited about trying out new-to-us grocery stores (when I first moved to Eastie and realized I was close to the Chelsea Market Basket I was pumped! And then I found a Shaw’s a half a mile from my apartment and was so excited I had to find an excuse to go and I called my dad to rave about it). These days, I tend to do my shopping at Market Basket because the prices are so much better than anywhere else.

When I got home from Michigan, I got right in the car to do my grocery shopping for the week and when I got home, I thought it might be fun to share my goodies with you! I’ll admit, I don’t buy organic. Heck, I don’t even wash my fruit before I eat it (I know, I know.). But other than that, I do eat pretty healthy!

Let’s start with the produce:

Since I try to get most of my veggies for the day at lunch, I make sure to get lots of salad stuff:

• Bibb lettuce (my favorite)
• Green pepper
• Carrots
• Cucumber
• Broccoli
• Tomatoes
• Avocado
• Goat Cheese
• Chicken

My salads aren’t creative, but I try to load them up with veggies, protein (chicken or hard boiled eggs), cheese, avocado. It helps make them more interesting 🙂

Next up: Fruit, yogurt, pantry items

To accompany my salads, I always bring a Greek yogurt and berries. Chobani is usually my yogurt of choice, but I do buy other brands, too. I was SO excited to find these “value pack” Chobani yogurts. Even though I like a variety of flavors, it was a great deal to buy the value pack.

I buy whatever fruit is on sale for the week: strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries… I don’t discriminate against my berries 😉 I have a banana every morning so I always get a big bunch of them!

A treat for me this week was the Vermont Bread Cinnamon Raisin bread. The hotels we stayed at in Michigan had free continental breakfasts and they all had cinnamon raisin bread and it reminded me how much I love it! When I saw this bread (a much better brand of bread than others), I had to grab a loaf. Pair that with a small bowl of cereal and it kept me very satisfied!

As for the Stacey’s pita chips, those, paired with hummus, are a staple in my apartment 😉

Also, one tip I have for my fellow friends who live alone: cut your pizza dough in half or in thirds before you freeze it. Since it’s just me eating, it takes days and days for me to finish a whole pizza, and by that point I am so sick of it I end up throwing the remaining slices away. I decided to cut the dough into smaller pieces and freeze them in little baggies so I could pull one out and have it be “personal pan” size. I’m going to make one tonight and I’m pumped!

Now, I know this doesn’t look like a lot of groceries, but for 1 person, it is plenty. I take inventory of what I have and what I need before I go grocery shopping, as well as figure out what I am going to make for my “Sunday dinner”, so my grocery list varies by week.

Questions for you: Do you like to grocery shop? What’s your favorite grocery store? What’s a staple item in your grocery cart every week?

I hope you all have a great weekend! I have work today and then lots of errands to run this evening for my housewarming party tomorrow!

ps- I’m not sure what’s going on, but my pictures won’t get big anymore! It’s very annoying. If anyone has any idea how to fix this, let me know 🙂