I probably get somewhere between 5% and 10% of my meals through shopping....not that much, but I only take the ones I enjoy and I try to offset those with healthier eats at home.
It seems like everyone in this country has their own favorite dietary fetish, the list is endless. It gets ridic.
I just try, at home, to eat unprocessed or minimally processed foods.
When you slice an apple, it goes from unprocessed to minimally processed, so we can let logic rule. Apple slices fried and dipped in sugar? you get the picture lol.
I am trying to come up with new meal ideas that fall under both easy and closer to nature.
The other day, I bought a chopped bag of salad at the store, topped it with kidney beans, dressing and shredded cheese and it was easy and tasted good. Fiber, protein, flavor
Do you have a favorite healthy meal?

[www.sheknows.com] I love this recipe.

I do something similar over bell pepper "nachos".
Can add pico de gallo or other fresh food topping that suit you.

I add Fat free Greek Yogurt instead of sour cream. I often leave out the cheesecake there's so much flavour without it.

Your salad idea sounds great too.

If ya do the grocery shops, Taylor Farms is now making bags of vegetables designed to be cooked in an air fryer, and other bags of vegetables for roasting. I got a bunch of them marked down to $1.40 per bag, and then at another store I got 5 bags of Buffalo Ranch salad kits for $1.70 each. I add some tomatoes, a package of tuna, and some pepperoncini or banana peppers and turn it into a meal salad with protein. I've tried the envelopes of chicken and salmon too, but I don't buy them as often.

We season cube steaks, then lightly dust with flour to make a crust, then cook it on the Blackstone in beef tallow, and roast some well-seasoned cauliflower and/or broccoli, or asparagus with the cover on them while the meat is cooking. Good food, very few carbs, and we use Casava flour instead of wheat flour to make it grain free, but we use wheat flour now and then too.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/02/2025 10:15PM by Morledzep.

great ideas....thanks. I don't think I've seen cube steaks in the stores in a long time....we used to love them as kids when my parents served them...will look for them! sounds good.
Recently, a friend served us grilled cauliflower "steaks" those were actually very good....with a tahini sauce on the side.
I miss the food I had in Mexico a couple months ago....wow, great eats...fish grilled whole, not fileted...tasty.

Bare, I've yet to go into a Kroger that didn't have at least one pack with 2 cube steaks in it for $5 - 6. It's still paying beef prices, but it's two portions of meat, and it makes a good light meal. That and the 10oz. shaved beef packs are about the only way I get to eat beef anymore.

I wonder if they're just less popular around here now...not sure.
I use the shaved beef whenever I make hot pot, it's great.

We like to make cheesesteak sandwiches and burritos with the shaved beef. One pack makes 2 generous cheesesteak sandwiches, or, depending on how my son fills them up, 4 good sized burritos. I hadn't thought much about asian food, I like to cook that myself, because of my son's lack of ability to follow multi-step instructions. And I haven't had a useable stove inside the house for over a year now. I've bought $$$$ worth of parts for a stove I only paid $600 for 10 years ago, but we can't find a used replacement that works better, and a new one is out of my price range.

Though I did manage to get a brand new, still in the box, Hotpoint 18.8 cu ft chest freezer last week for $419. Every time we go into Lowes we check the scratch and dents in the appliance department. That's how I found my wonderful Frigidaire stove that I had to leave behind in CA, and a few dishwashers and laundry stuff too. Gas stoves seem to be at a premium here, they are few and far between, some stores don't even have them on display because so few people use them here. I think the 240v plug for the stove doesn't work, and I hate cooking on an electric stove anyway.

Hummus. i have gastroparesis, so i HAVE to totally OVERCOOK fruits and veggies, no more wonderful fresh salads, multigrain breads. But, i will make a fresh wilted spinach salad, chicken marinated in Italian Dressing to grill, or sharwarma. I cook and bake mostly from scratch. Miss my Coke Zero!!!!

those all sound yummy. I'm a fan of hummus myself....especially like it it the summer with cucumbers and tomato salad

Gotta be careful with the "cassava" that is just pure starch. Grain free yes, but still not good. I prefer almond or coconut flour or crushed pork rinds for coating.

I have tried them all.. I used to mix parmesan with finely ground almond flour to "bread" chicken and shrimp for frying. It works, and it's not awful, but it isn't my first choice. And what I use as "breading" is just a light coating of flour, like super thin, just to give it a bit of crunch, and make it so that I have seasoned pan drippings for gravy or pan sauce. If we don't use the drippings in the pan, we mix it into chicken feed for the ladies.

I know a lot of folks can't get past the way the food shows show to bread your meats for frying. Flour, eggs, bread crumbs.. then fry. I don't want that, I don't want thick crap on the outside of my meat. I don't like breading, I like gravy that tastes like the meat I'm cooking, and I like just a bit of crispiness on the outside that doesn't soak up oil and make the meat gross.

This is why a starch is just as good as flour made from grains.

Bare, I think I'm going to start making my own hummus, from real chickpeas. I'm so tired of reading the ingredients on the hummus at the stores only to find out that it's full of crap I either can't or don't want to eat.

I use a large ziplock bag, throw some potato starch or corn flour in it, toss the filets inside, then shake them off to get any excess- so just a thin layer for cooking....seems to work.
I've been reading about using lentil flour...may try it.
Hummus is easy! I just have to keep remembering that....
blender, can of chickpeas, olive oil, garlic, lemon...boom, done...

With respect to restricting refined starches, I look at the overall picture, not an individual meal....i.e. limiting in other ways.

My family has made so many variations of bowls. The usual spinach, cheese, black or chick pea or kidney beans, sometimes tortilla chips, salsa, tomatoes of every variety. Acai bowls with fresh fruit, granola, coconut. Today for breakfast I made egg omelets with steamed broccoli, green peppers and goat cheese for DD and me.

Guacamole is always delicious too. Add chopped tomato, minced red onion, minced garlic if you like, tiny bit of olive oil and there you have a topping for whatever you want to eat it with. , I make hummus when we have a lot of people coming over. Otherwise, I buy Sabra or some other brand.

For us, smoothies are really not cost effective or worth it to make for us. The frozen bag of organic fruits, Greek yogurt don't go very far and blender cleanup is a PITA (for me at least). It's worth it to pay $12-$15 when we want one.

Sliced strawberries or peaches added to your flavored yogurt.

Add tofu to anything. Braised or seasoned or plain. As everyone here with exception of DH are not meat fans, I have taken to making stuffed tofu (use firm or extra firm) with chopped scallions, garlic, minced ginger, soy sauce, chopped tofu from what I scrape out fried/sauteed in a little Canola oil. Serve with Jasmine rice or a nice Bok Choy. If your are a meat lover, add chopped pork. WE LOVE IT!

I hear you about the apples. I think 80% of the people we know will consider eating one only if it's stewed and sprinkled generously with cinnamon and sugar. Or in a dessert.

The glycemic load- not the same as glycemic index- might be a useful guideline for some people to consider in meal planning...

Because the doctors never took me seriously, I decided to try to figure out if I could fix what's wrong with me with diet. I quit taking all the pain meds they kept shoving in my face, I quit drinking ALL soda, I did that 22 day sugar detox, twice. When I started mystery shopping it got more and more difficult to avoid grains completely. I do eat some bread now, mostly Sourdough whenever possible. And I like to have a burrito now and then. If I can make a salad with it instead of a sandwich, I usually do. But cold cuts don't salad well, and I LOVE sub sandwiches.

The one thing I can't add back into my diet is soy. A nurse friend suggested that I take black cohosh (?) to ease my menopause symptoms. I swelled up like a balloon, and it got really hard to breath, like fluid retention, not anaphylaxis. Both my nurse friend, and the older doctor at the GYN practice that did my hysterectomy said to stop taking the suppliments, and watch my soy intake. So I don't do soy in any form anymore, and that has, by far, helped me more than any other dietary change (I never liked tofu anyway, there is a chinese place over here that make hot and sour soup without tofu in it, I'm addicted).