Adventures in grocery shopping

[JaneV2.0]

I consider beef one of the most nutritionally-dense foods you can eat, by far. That said, I don't like steak and haven't eaten it since I was a child. I like the Aldi steak sauce tip, but we don't have an Aldi yet, unfortunately.

[frugal-one]

Opened a jar of green olives today and had a great SURPRISE! They were stuffed with hot peppers! Guess I will have to read labels more closely from now on! Ha! We only had pimento stuffed olives in the north.

[Tradd]

It’s been so hot lately I’ve not felt like eating much when I get home from dinner. So, two packets of tuna, a bit of Miracle Whip, and some dill pickle rush for tuna salad. I eat it with some really good whole grain crackers I found on Amazon. I order tuna (lot of packets at once) from Amazon. Same with the crackers. I’m only hitting the grocery store or getting Amazon Fresh delivery every few weeks for product, yogurt, bread, and bagels. Fruit has gotten so expensive I’m generally only buying fresh bananas and Granny Smith apples. I get big bags of frozen cherries and blueberries that I eat with plain yogurt. Strawberries were 99 cents today with a digital coupon from store app (Jewel, Chicago area chain). They were $3.99 without the coupon. Yikes! I’ll eat them sliced with yogurt.

[frugal-one]

H‑E‑B grocery store has some great deals. Last week got delicious wild caught gulf shrimp for $6.99/pound. This week asked meat department about the t-bone steaks on sale for $4.99/pound and was told they have own US producers and own boats. Prices seem to good to be true. Shrimp were fantastic and will have the steaks tomorrow for DH birthday meal. Fingers crossed.

[pinkytoe]

Most Texans who move to other states miss HEB a lot. It is a very innovative privately-owned store, ie not corporate. If you find yourself in Austin, visit their store called Central Market.

[frugal-one]

Is Central Market similar to H‑E‑B Plus? See it does catering and has a cooking school!

[Yppej]

Had always been told I had to buy special eyedrops as I wear contacts but read the bottles and the active ingredients are the same. Bought the cheaper kind.

[pinkytoe]

My mother, a pharmacist, taught me how to read and decipher ingredient labels when I was young. It is amazing how many health and beauty products contain the same ingredients but marketing convinces the buyer to pay so much more for perceived value.

[jp1]

So, back in April I went for my annual "wellness" visit with the doc. My A1C has been in the low end of the prediabetic range for years. (Thanks mom! Grandma had gone blind from untreated diabetes back in the early 50's but lived another 20+ years and 5 out of 8 kids in mom's generation eventually were diagnosed with it including mom.) This visit my A1C was at 6.5, right on the cusp of a full blown diabetes diagnosis. So I decided to cut back carbs as much as possible and we'll be testing it again in 3 months. Previously breakfast was a bagel and cream cheese and lunch was normally a sandwich made with some sort of leftover from dinner the previous night or just the leftover dinner outright if it was something like pasta. Now I'm having plain yogurt with fresh fruit for breakfast and usually a salad for lunch. Dinner I'm still eating some carbs because SO just isn't willing to go full into the low carb diet thing and I'm not willing to deal with making two separate dinners every evening. We'll see how this plays out when I get my A1C checked again in early August after three months of this new diet. In the meantime it's become clear to me why a high carb diet is so common. Besides the fact that it's easy and tasty, it's also cheap. Replacing all those carb calories with non-carb stuff like cheese or meat to go on salad, or even the fresh veggies that go into salad, is more expensive than what I was eating before. I haven't gone through and tracked the numbers but I feel like my grocery budget has basically doubled because of this change. If it ends up helping my health I'm ok with that, but if I were struggling to make ends meet this would be a really tough situation.

It's been three months since my a1c test that resulted in a diabetes diagnosis. Just got the results of the a1c test I did on friday. 5.7. Between my dietary changes and the low dose metformin the doc has me taking things are going in the right direction. I've also lost 12 pounds, presumably from the diet changes.

[JaneV2.0]

It seems nearly everyone in this country lies somewhere on the metabolic syndrome continuum. It's good that you're headed in the right direction.