10-Day Real Food Challenge: Planning and Shopping

Since we chose September 1st as a start date for the 10-Day Real Food Pledge, we had to so some planning and shopping to prepare ourselves.

Surprisingly, Y (the boyfriend) was totally on board with this. As he pointed out, many times, this is pretty close to how we eat currently. Our meals are based around fresh meats and veggies. It just would get us to think a lot harder about the choices we make for late night snacks, convenience foods and sweeteners. Had I asked Y to do this before he moved in with me, I'm sure it would have been a much bigger struggle as he subsisted on his so-called "bachelor's diet" of subs, frozen pasta meals and potato chips.

As we sat down to make a plan for the next 10 days, we looked through our pantry and freezer to see what we could use and what we had to buy. I have class a few nights this week so those nights won't involve such big meals, but we wanted to make sure we both had food to eat without relying on take-out or any other quick fix.

We settled on a meal plan for dinners that looks something like this:

Wednesday - fresh whole wheat pasta with ground turkey, marinara sauce and spinach
Thursday - (class night) hummus and cheese sandwiches on whole wheat bread with baby carrots and celery sticks
Friday - grilled chicken thighs with local corn on the cob, green beans and salad
Saturday - grilled swordfish with sauteed spinach and local corn on the cob

Our shopping list
Breakfast:
Agave nectar (to replace Y's sugar in his coffee)
Honey (mmm, on toast, in tea, in yogurt - Honey is LOVE!)
Almond butter
Whole wheat bread (made with honey, not sugar or corn syrup)
Pluots
Apples
Melon
Berries
Brown Cow Plain Greek Yogurt (see here for a taste test of Greek yogurts)

Lunches:
Salad greens
Slaw mix (for salad topping)
Cherry tomatoes
Alfalfa sprouts
Organic kidney beans (I love kidney beans on salad. And you should too: B-complex, niacin, folate, magnesium, omega-3, calcium, fiber. http://tinyurl.com/3sqdhd )
Cheese
Balsamic vinegar and olive oil (for dressing)

Dinners:
fresh whole wheat pasta
green beans
spinach
corn
jarred tomato sauce (normally I make my own but I didn't have time this week, it was our one "cheat"and it's was a compromise we made together. We carefully read each label and chose something with the least ingredients, no sugar and no preservatives. I'm feeling a little guilty though since it's jarred and pre-packaged so I think I'll try to find the time to make the sauce - even a quick sauce with crushed tomatoes and spices would work fine)

Snacks:
Dried figs
Raw pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
Raw almonds
Raw brazil nuts
Dates
Apples
Oranges

Everything else we already had in the pantry or freezer.

Here we go!