How great was Anna’s post “What’s in My shopping Cart?”….talk about making it tangible for all of us! How many times have you gone to the grocery store, dilly-dallied in the aisles to jog your memory if you needed this or that…only to get in the checkout lane (that usually takes twice as long as the shopping itself–don’t get me started)…and you look at the conveyor belt full of food and think…geez, how come I don’t buy anything “real”? What’s wrong with me? Processed this, packaged that, imitation whatever….where is the artist formerly known as food?

So Anna, thank you. Thank you for telling us what to buy. And what did I do today? I bought…I went to my local supermarket, which is not so super by the way, and spent some quality time reading labels, lingering in produce and meat aisles, whizzing quickly by the salty snack row (though I do love me a baked chip)…and was extremely proud of the $116 worth of “real” food for the week that I bought.

What prompted this Thursday afternoon adventure? My husband was craving pizza for dinner (yikes, help) so after a 5 minute sweat and panic,  I thought I’d get in front of this ambush…deal with it, and control it. Why don’t I make the pizza, I thought.,,and I can have less fattening stuff on my section and be able to manage my calorie intake. OK…well, a 3 year old could have thought of that but of course it was an epiphany for me. SO…off I go. I bought a whole wheat thin crust (pre-made that you top yourself - 150 cals per serving…which was 1/5 of the pie) and made a turkey pepperoni pizza, light on the mozz. Doctored up with spices and it was pretty darn delicious and I stayed within about 500 cals on dinner–and got to enjoy pizza with my guy. He really liked it (I added low fat sausage on his portion) and he started to ask questions on how I made it, blah blah. Victory is mine.

So I highly recommend this as a substitute for intense calorie-laden take-out…I bought some extra crusts to have on hand for an emergency…seriously, this is the category I’ve assigned them. One other thing that I discovered as a result of a similar panic is the amazing ease of a pre-made rotisserie chicken you buy at the store. It’s already cooked and usually under $10, and you can repurpose that chicken in a million ways. Take the skin off and it’s pretty darn healthy. We’ve made chicken tacos (corn tortillas); chicken chili, chicken panini, etc. It’s so great to have it already cooked–saves about 1.5 hours end to end for the meal.

I’ll share other tidbits as I discover them. Thanks again Anna…after reading your post I realized there are a lot of little details we can all share that are extremely actionable–immediately. I encourage everyone reading to share yours as well–the more we do the better off we will all be!