When my husband and I lived in beautiful islands of Palau we did not have access to the same quality of food nor the variety that I was accustomed to having in the States. I was used to picking out a few meals I saw in a cookbook, jotting down the ingredients on a piece of paper and then going to the grocery store and getting said ingredients, and coming home and preparing the planned meal with those ingredients. In Palau-this system would NOT work. The first time I planned out my shopping trip I did what I had always done, planned the meals, wrote down the ingredients and went to the store. Store was a game changer. Nine times out of ten, the two only real supermarkets (which were right accross the street from each other oddly enough) combined, would not have at least half the items I was looking for. It took a few times for me to figure out that something was going to need to change.
The other challenging part of shopping, other than that many of the boxed items were in Japanese, or Korean was that the processed boxes of food would oftenhave bugs in them when I got home. The canned food was often expired and the chicken and beef had travled from the US and had been frozen, thawed, frozen, thawed and repeated who knew how many times in the shipping. Yogurt was often months past the expiration date and I once got a pound of butter home to open it and find that it was black. Has anyone ever seen that? So gross. I quickly became a big fan of the produce section.
It was hard, but I'm grateful now for the sink or swim learning experience. I had to learn to go to the store with a few ideas only of meal plans. I then would shop the store, mostly the produce section, for whatever looked the least bruised and beaten and then would come home and have to figure out what in the world I could make with what I had. Before anyone feels too bad for me, one saving grace was the endless supply of fresh fish at all the fresh markets. We lived in a conglomeration of 270 islands after all-there was "plenty fish", and thank goodness! Rice was also an endless commodity for which I hadn't used much before but it was now my best friend. This was a great way to learn to cook with what I had which comes in very handy in cooking tasty meals that are also affordable.
Moving back to the US was hard-I had to leave my lovely Palauan friends behind, leave the warm weather, the beaufiful scuba, snorkel, kayaking adventures, on and on. However-going into a grocery store in the states again for the first time was magical, really. It was fabulous-so many options! Too many options. I was overwhelmed. So I stuck with my new system, basing my meals around the produce section, which now felt like a security blanket.
Upon being back I learned something about US grocery stores that I hadn't known before: the fruit and vegetables in season are the ones that are usually on sale. What's great about this is that chances are the produce on sale is grown a lot closer to home than say Mangos from the phillipines, Strawberries from mexico, that one might find in a supermarket out of season.
With my "palauan system" I now knew how to look at all the produce and (at the time meat) that was on sale and make a meal from what I had rather than what I wanted or "needed".
The reason why this is such a great skill I want everyone to learn is because too many people avoid eating more produce because they think it will cost too much. I am not a "couponer" but I have price matched produce many times. Most of the supermarkets in my area that have Organic produce often advertise their organice produce sales in their weekly mailers.
The challenge: is to plan two dinners around the produce on salein your supermarket's weekly mailers. (There is no limit to the markets you can go to collect your produce, as long as the produce is on sale, it meets challenge requirements.
When going through a weekly skip through all the garbage and go straight to the produce section and think of some meals you could center around the vegetables on sale, and healthy treats around the desserts.
For example: asparagus is going to be going, I feel like asparagus is the trumpeteer anouncing the arrival of spring. I love watching the asparagus come up in our garden. Try an asparagus soup. (It is SO MUCH better than one would think-SURPRISINGLY satisfying.)
Use fruit as the center piece of a dessert if your family is accustomed to having something sweet after dinner. Baby steps like fresh fruit and cream.
These are just some baby green giant steps that will help build momentum for later, bigger, steps.
One day, I hope that fresh fruit all on its own will be enough a treat. My family loves eating a platter of fresh fruit as a treat, savoring every juicy bite.
Let me know how the challenge works for you? Tell me what you liked, didn't like, what you struggled with. I would love to hear from you!
Comment here or email me walkingwithgreengiants@gmail.com
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