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.

Sweet Potato Muffins

Sweet Potato Muffins

I woke up with a burning desire to bake. On Sunday morning I literally leaped out of bed. My adrenaline was pumping in anticipation of my kitchen creation. I began throwing things out of the pantry faster than my brain could process. Since I have a tendency to create before I think, I took a step back and surveyed everything on the counter. The recipe I was dreaming up used several farm fresh eggs and it would have been tragic to waste them.

A few years ago I was having a business breakfast with a colleague and they ordered an egg white omelette. Our waiter brought it over and my colleague spotted the yellow tint before it was placed in front of him. He immediately turned it away and asked for a new one without the yolks. He wasted an entire omelette! How?! My stomach was tied in knots over this. I’ll never understand how people can throw out food.

After I’d let the recipe magic run through my brain a bit, I got to work. My goal was to create muffins with no flour whatsoever. There are so many recipes out there with flour substitutes and I wanted something that didn’t require filler. I knew there had to be a way to achieve this with the right ratio of eggs to sweet potatoes.

Now I need to rebuke the dogma around egg yolks. Eggs provide essential vitamins that are only found in the whole egg. If you take away the yolk, you’re discarding nourishment. Eggs contain Vitamins A and D and K2. K2 allows our bodies to distribute calcium throughout the body to the right places. Without it we’re in threat of calcifying arteries, which of course leads to heart disease. It’s also important to remember that K2 does not act alone. Vitamins A and D must be present so it can get the job done.* Eat your eggs and have a healthy heart.

This is my version of a protein packed muffin that will keep me full until lunch. The consistency is almost pie filling like, very moist but also light. Today I topped mine with some sunflower butter, raw cacao powder and a handful of raisins. And then I packed two more with my lunch.

Sweet Potato Muffins

Makes 1 dozen.

6 eggs
3 tbsp coconut oil – melted
+ 1 tbsp for coating muffin tins
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
3 cups mashed sweet potatoes

►Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

►Coat muffin tins with melted coconut oil

►In a large bowl, whisk the eggs thoroughly. Add the cinnamon and vanilla, mixing to incorporate. Then stir in the sweet potatoes until well combined.

►Spoon batter into prepared muffin tins. These will not rise much so fill each to the top.

►Bake for 30 minutes or until slightly browned on top. Let cool 15 minutes then move to a cooling rack. Serve slathered with salted butter.

*Reference Liz Wolfe’s Eat the Yolks for facts about cholesterol.