Grocery List: Buying Real Food

Grocery Shopping
This is the result of a successful shopping trip. A few items are missing that are camera shy, including liver, coconut yogurt, arrowroot powder and nutritional yeast.

Here’s the entire list:

Red Cabbage
Broccoli Rabe
Carrots
Ginger
Native Forest Coconut Milk
Native Forest Coconut Cream
Coconut Aminos
Sparkling Water
Figs
Avocados
Zucchini
Butternut Squash
Ginger Lemon Juice
Sugar Pumpkin
Turnips
Nutiva Coconut Flour 
Real Salt
Wild Caught Sardines in Olive Oil
Grass-fed Beef Liver
Coconut Yogurt
Arrowroot powder
Nutritional Yeast

There is a popular ad right now posted all over the city that says, “6pm at the grocery store is UnHappy Hour.” I strongly disagree. First, as a mostly non-drinker I realize this ad is not targeted to me. Second, grocery shopping is always my happy hour. In college, my friend and I spent hours at the grocery store, taking time to go up and down each aisle. Just for the fun of it. Now I carve out time to linger over labels. I classify it as research and inspiration time.

Companies like Fresh Direct and Amazon have made it possible to shop for any food product online. I use Amazon occasionally for specialty items I can’t find at my grocery store, although I feel guilty about the waste that delivery generates and that I’m not supporting my local businesses. Could there be a happy medium? Well it looks like Whole Foods may be on to something. They are beginning to offer personal shopping services. You can order all your groceries online and have them delivered right to your kitchen. I like that it’s my local store and I like the product selection at Whole Foods.

How do you feel about personal shoppers? Convenience is king in my lovely city. It takes too darn much time to schlep bags from one end of the city back home. I learned my lessons the hard way when I traveled downtown one day to pick-up a box bigger than me. The sucker wouldn’t budge when I tried to lift it.  Then every cab driver passed me by for twenty minutes. Fun day. Delivery isn’t such a bad option.

Broccoli Avocado Soup

Texas really did a number on me. Beef barbecue, beef burger and hearty tex-mex meals left me feeling heavy. Don’t get me wrong now, it was AH-mazing and I enjoyed every bite of that southern goodness. I can verify that every meal is definitely bigger in Texas. And some of that bigness came back with me. So this week, I’m cooking up extra vegetables and laying off the beef. It’s time for the reemergence of my favorite summer soup.

I adapted this recipe after a soup in Gwyneth Paltrow’s detox cleansing program. This was back when I thought cleansing actually provided some kind of benefit. I’m learning it’s easier to just eat real food all the time and then there is no need to rinse my body of the fake stuff.

 

Broccoli Avocado Soup
Makes 4 servings.

1 yellow onion – chopped
1 clove garlic – minced
1 tbsp butter
4 heads broccoli – chopped
2 1/2 cups water or homemade broth
2 avocados
juice of 1/2 a lime
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp fresh cilantro
1 tsp fresh mint

►Melt butter over medium heat in a large pot. Sauté the onion then the garlic for five minutes.

►Add chopped broccoli to the pot and cook for five minutes. Then add the water, salt and pepper. Cover and let cook for five more minutes.

►In a blender, add the avocado, lime, cilantro and mint. Then careful ladle in spoonfuls of the broccoli mixture. Blend until smooth, it should take a minute or two. Take time to scrap down the sides, give it a good stir and blend to make sure all is mixed.

Serve with chopped avocado and fresh mint or cilantro.

Broccoli Avocado Soup

Broccoli Avocado Soup