I may have forgotten to place my Azure Standard order, but just wait until I tell you about all the great food that has been delivered to my doorstep during the last few days!!!
I often order organic groceries from Amazon
Anyway, when I order from Amazon, I’m never quite sure when to expect the food to come in. Some of this food was ordered several weeks ago (and I’d almost forgotten about it). Isn’t God cool? Suddenly, it’s all been coming in right during my organizational hooplah…as well as right at the time I felt like I was missing out on a few item. I’ve been able to get all of these great groceries put away neatly in my “new” storage room, as well as expand our menu a bit since I have a little more to work with!
I’ve been having a great time playing with new grains like millet, and I just can’t tell you how much fun I’m having making these Coconut Flour Muffins. I have new coconut flour muffin varieties to share with you soon (because yes, I’ve been playing!). I’m excited now to have a nice supply of coconut flour on hand. A little goes a long way, which makes the investment in this healthy flour very worth it!
Here are a few snapshots of my UPS man deliveries:
Bob’s Red Mill Coconut Flour, Organic Brown Rice,
Nature’s Path Honey’d Cornflakes, 25 Pounds of Organic Millet
I’d also ordered several packages of organic nuts from Braga Farms so I can make more Larabars. LOVED it when that box came! Gluten Free Oats came in that same day from Amazon.
Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Oats, Pistachios, Almonds and Cashews from Braga Organic Farms
Here’s my syrup, along with some organic popcorn…
Arrowhead Mills Organic Popcorn and Grade B Maple Syrup
I happily used some of the freshly washed plastic containers I’d found during my clean-up in the storage room. I filled a big container with popcorn for the storage room, then filled a jar with the rest to keep in the kitchen to grab easily.
(Here’s a full post about how I store and use my bulk food purchases.)
This last picture I have is of my trip to Walmart last weekend. I usually order quite a bit of produce and frozen veggies from Azure Standard, but since I forgot to order this month, we had to have some sort of fresh fruits and veggies. I filled my cart (most of this has been eaten already!). I compromised a little bit on some of these items. I don’t normally like to feed my kids apples that aren’t organic. But, they weren’t an option this month, so I bought a couple of bags of regular ol’ apples. Better than no apples, right? I think. Maybe. What are your feelings about compromising on non-organic foods?
The grocery store run purchase included: broccoli, bananas, cantaloupe,
asparagus, pineapple, carrots, lettuce, apples, cheese sticks and Tinkyada Brown Rice Pasta.
I hope you had fun looking at my grocery pictures. I mean, it’s a total blast staring at a 25 Pounds of Organic Millet, in which you can’t even see the millet inside the bag. I’m sure you all got a big kick out of that.
Final storage room pictures are coming up Friday…can’t wait to show you the progress!
How’s your cleaning coming? Wanna tell me about any of the groceries you got this week?
My cleaning is slow going with this big belly of mine! I pick out one thing to do at a time..one shelf, one overhead light…you get the picture.
I get a thrill at looking at bulk item purchasing…so share away with me!!
I have about 50 lbs ( I don’t know what I was thinking) of organic non GMO popcorn. ha!!I have given some away though.
My chickens are producing eggs like crazy and though eggs are on the menu almost everyday, I feel blessed that we can share them with others.
Just this week I experimenting with sprouting some wheat berries (it worked) so, I am wondering if I can sprout some spelt and see if maybe just maybe I can try my hand at making sprouted bread.
“What are your feelings about compromising on non-organic foods?”
Life’s a journey. You do what you can. A friend and I were actually chatting about this today. :) I can’t afford all organic all the time, no way. There’s just not the wiggle room in our budget for that when we’re working on decimating all the student loans in the next year.
And really, fresh (ish) non-organic carrots are likely still going to be better for your body than fruit loops. ;) But I’m a weird hybrid – my little small-time farmers aren’t certified organic, but I’ve met and chatted with them for hours over the years, am okay with their growing practices and what they *do* use, and I’ve been known to wander off with 10 gallons of picked green beans or 400+lbs of apples after a visit with them. Ah, growing season, how I missed it. :D
the way i feel about compromising on organic produce . . . . “it is what we do most of the time not some of the time that matters.” that is the philosophy i stick to when it comes to food and our household schedule (naps, bedtime, etc.).
when i learned that phrase – i felt like a new person. i had been really rigid about everything and it was surely annoying. then someone said that to me (it is what we do most of the time, not some of the time that matters) – and i’ve been living by that ever since.
we buy almost all of our produce organically – through a local produce co-op. most of our other food is organic too. but quite often, the organic peanut butter (or whatever) is replaced with conventional because it doesn’t fit the grocery budget.
WOW, what a GREAT post! I had no idea of all the awesome deals you can get on Amazon! Wow! Thanks so much for sharing!! And yes, God is SO AWESOME and SO GOOD! What a blessing all this was perfectly timed. Blessings, Kelly
Wow!!! I am so glad you shared this beautiful info with all of us!! I have a family of 4 and we eat mostly Organic. We have no choice but to shop at Whole Foods since we have no car. Don’t get me wrong, I love WF!! It’s just I had no idea we could buy food from Amazon!! I am going to check it out right now. Thanks!!
I enjoyed my experiment with millet, but did not get more of it when it ran out. I liked the birdseed odor when I toasted it before cooking it in stews, but it isn’t any more nutritious than whole wheat and it costs more than wheat.
You want to keep an eye on WalMart these days. We do most of our in-store shopping at Sam’s Club, with the items that we cannot find in Sam’s Club being bought at the WalMart which is in the same parking lot as the Sam’s Club. The two companies are owned by the same people, and the store brand items are packaged at the same plant. Store-brand instant nonfat milk at Sam’s Club makes 22 quarts and costs about $12. Store-brand instant nonfat milk at WalMart makes 20 quarts and costs about $15.50. Another grocery chain here sells the same volume of instant non-fat milk for about $14. WalMart is not only no longer the lowest price anywhere, but often not even a very good price when compared to a normal grocery store chain.
We buy our fresh vegetables at WalMart because we figure their turnover is probably better than the turnover for those items at Sam’s Club, but two days ago some pre-packaged tomatoes at WalMart were not only shriveled but also had large patches of mold on them. It was gross. We got good ones sold loose, but I thought it was nearly a crime to be offering those moldy ones for sale.
That’s gross! Return them!! Walmart will take nearly anything back!!
We did better than return them. We didn’t buy them in the first place (“got good ones sold loose”). ;)
I usually try to buy organic for the “dirty dozen” produce list…like apples and celery. But sometimes, the budget just can’t do it. And that’s when the split second prayers occur – why do I have to make these decisions? why do I have to buy apples that I know have pesticides in them?….to….please take care of my family and don’t let the non-organic apples hurt us. And then I don’t worry about it. But as soon as I can buy the organic again, I do.
We can’t afford to buy organic 100% of the time. So we stick with items that we use most and items off the dirty dozen. For example, all the beef, pork, chicken that comes into the house is organic/ veggie fed/etc. This weekend we are going to BBQ and bringing turkey burgers, which are non-organic. I don’t feel too bad as we are only eating these once or twice a year. If we ate a fast food diet regularly we would be much worse off.
it’s an off week for shopping over here (I shop and menu plan in four week cycles), so no new groceries coming in-though I did just order some Ecos laundry detergent off of Amazon, to try. Love Amazon :)
As for organics-we’ve recently made the switch, and I do try really hard to only buy organic produce, but I’m fortunate that Meijer has a really good selection of reasonably priced organic fruits and veggies. Having said that though, I did buy several bowls of pre-cut fruit last week that wasn’t organic. I have a broke hand right now, and it makes cutting/dicing almost impossible. It’s great to be able to buy pre-cut pineapple and cantaloupe right now!
Good grief, first it was yesterday’s cereal confession, today it is not ideal grocery purchases, lol! I think God has made me more accountable in my food choices in the last two days than in the last two weeks. I posted yesterday about this very topic and what happened when I tried to “save” money while shopping. Unlike you, we are blessed to have an organic grocery store here in town that I can visit every day if I need to. Here is my confession… http://granolagirlatheart.blogspot.com/2011/04/why-coupons-are-good-thing-sometimes.html
I don’t buy organic at all. I use Liquid Detox to soak everything when I bring it home from the store which removes enough to keep me okay with regular produce. Apples smell like chemicals to me when I buy them but just smell like apples after soaking them in the Liquid Detox. I got this from my kinesiologist and do not know where to obtain it otherwise. Her testing shows that most of the pesticides and herbicides are neutralized and this is how she feeds her own family. I took some organic peppers along one time for food allergy testing and her testing showed they were full of pesticides. This did not make me feel very confident about buying organic produce from the grocery store. I know this sounds crazy but if you could smell the difference in the produce before and after and see the scum on top of the water after soaking you would be a believer. Everything tastes better and keeps better too.
I have eaten yeast free millet and brown rice flour bread for about 15 years because of my food allergies. It is alot of fiber and can takes some adjusting to if you eat alot of it!
Here is the only reference I could find online for a Liquid Detox used for washing anything, as opposed to a one-week liquid diet for weight loss.
http://www.hcmionline.com/getwellstaywell/liquid_detox.htm
Earlier this morning their website was down and the only way I could see it was through the Google cache, so here is that link also in case their server goes offline again.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Y_0BIegrav4J:www.hcmionline.com/getwellstaywell/liquid_detox.htm+%22liquid+detox%22&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com
Is this the stuff?
That stuff sounds neat, but $40 for 4 ounces?!
How much fruit can you wash with that?
We eat a lot of fresh produce over here, and I can’t imagine 4 ounces would last very long.
I wash our produce, even the organic ones, in diluted Dr. Bronners castile soap. I have a foaming soap dispenser at my kitchen sink, to wash our hands, so I just squirt a bit on our produce, gently scrub and then rinse with water. Love Dr. Bronners-it’s good for everything :)
To wash produce I use 5 drops in a gallon of water and let it soak for 10 minutes. Others who have used this tell me that they can get 4-5 years out of one bottle. Compare that to buying organic since this cost less than $1 a month. When I come home from the store I wash my kitchen sink well and just start dumping all my produce in the sink. I fill it up and use 15 drops for the sink full as I have a big sink. That will usually soak everything I bring home. I REALLY did not believe in this stuff until I saw the results. My kinesiologist is very picky about what she feeds her family and if this is good enough for her then it is good enough for me. My 20 yr old daughter was allergic to many fruits and veg and it turns out she was allergic to the pesticides and not the food. She can eat these things after I soak them.
I think your castile soap is a much better bet than what was advertised on that web page. Speaking as a trained chemist, the product description at the bottom of the ad reads as gibberish. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if it was actually just softened water containing something very like castile soap.
Yes it is. We are only using this for a produce wash right now and have not tried the things talked about on that website.
I was replying to Sandra in the above comment!
How do you make popcorn? Just curious… I want to not buy pre-packaged microwave popcorn, but want to know the best way to make it without!
When I buy in bulk, I buy organic, but in terms of fruits and vegetables, so far Azure has not worked for me. In order to get enough food for my kids, so far I haven’t figured out a way to budget organic and enough. We’re working on it.
We have an Air Popper which we use to pop the corn, then we stir coconut oil and sea salt into it. Or, sometimes we make it on the stove in a big pot with a little oil in the bottom. It’s very easy!
That’s the way we did it when I was younger… in a pan on the stove!
We use an air popper, too. But then I make this caramel for over the top, SMILE.
http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com/2009/10/old-fashioned-caramel-corn-using-only-unrefined-sweeteners.html
Yes, I feel naughty when I make this, but the kids go nuts! It is so good. My preference is butter, though.
I’m w/Laura, you don’t need anything fancy. Just a big pot w/a lid on it! Can’t add too much tho.
I love the Whirley Pop!
you can also make it in a brown paper bag in the microwave! so easy!
I love your grocery posts! We do what we can in organic produce, but others are just too expensive. bananas, apples, and oranges are almost always organic, but things like berries usually are so expensive that I can’t do it. But as a result, we don’t buy berries often…I think you just do what you can and forget about it! You do awesome :)
With our huge drop in income, we simply cannot afford organics (and yes, we’ve cut back in all areas, including all entertainment). I figure we are still better off eating lots of non-organic produce than eating cheap or free-with-coupons processed stuff. I really don’t think two bags of non-organic apples is going to do too much damage to your otherwise very well fed family. :-)
Coomb’s Maple Syrup is MY FAVORITE! Yum! And we don’t buy organics much, mainly because they aren’t available to us and we have a limited budget! We have to compromise. And we do our best! :)
Here in middle tennessee where I live, a whole foods store or earthfare store are an hour away. So I have to rely on the very few items that wal-mart has or kroger. I love kroger but their organics can be expensive. when they have gala apples for 1.39 a lb that’s a good deal so I will get a big bag of them. But an organic tomato can cost 2.70 for one and a shriveled bit of organic leaf lettuce can be almost 3 dollars. I try to do what I can when I can. I have a great food co-op where I get my bulk grains and such but they don’t sell fresh produce. I would love to buy grass fed butter but again kroger’s is 5.99 for 8oz! When you go with out an income most of the winter (husband is a carpenter) things like this are not important! I’m becoming more of a seasonal eater and heavily rely on my own garden from may-october. We can tons of food and freeze as much as we can. This year I want to plan some late fall crops to extend our growing season even further.
I read an amazing book on nutrition called Anticancer. one quote has always stuck with me, “Nutrition trumps environment.” Meaning that it’s best to eat organic, stay away from chemicals, etc. but if you can’t do that but you’re feeding your body good nutrients, your body will be able to handle the toxins.
The way I see it, any fruits and veggies are better than none.
We ebb and flow with our organics. I don’t think we’ll ever be 100% or do I want to be.I feel our bodies need to be able to handle some toxins and being competely free could bring on more problems. Example: I never had a problem with the cleaning supply isle at the grocery, now that we are pretty free the scents make me sick to my stomach when I need to get borax. I like 70% to 80%. Back in the mid 90’s when we started changing our eating habits I would be so bummed that I couldn’t do it all. It seemed pointless to do some. Then I finally grabbed hold of the idea that the Lord knows every day of every minute of our lives. So I relaxed a bit. I want our’s and our children’s time here on earth to be as disease free as possible, but the Lord knows we are trying to be good stewards of all He gives us, so that doesn’t mean being 100% in our case. We don’t live in a perfect world so there’s no way to be 100% anything or in control of never getting cancer etc..
I will say that I started with the basics, meaning everything that we ate the most of and have tried to keep that up. Milk, cheese, pb&j, meat, chicken and fruits and veggies. Unfortunately I had to let cheese go this month. We usually buy hormone free or raw, but the price here is going up to $7.50 per pound(when I was buying the same cheese for $3.78 per pound last year). I buy it in 5 to 6# bulk and each brick (mozz. and chedder) last about 2 months. I hate that I have to give up some if the basics right now. This question was a good reminder that the Lord is in control and I can only be in control of so much.
Certain things I rarely buy organic because there is no need for it (they aren’t sprayed etc).
Thanks for the bucket tips and I found some neat storgage in our now “clean” garage to house my canning supplies. Goodbye Walmart bags!
Ohh like I should say any more! We have a huge drive through produce market were you MUST haggle for best price about an hour from our house. 28# of local tomatoes $8, 66# of pickling cukes $10 etc. I get there 4 times a year and do my canning that way.
We do *mostly* organic and healthy, but I have decided I can’t do it 100% ALL the time. Always buy grass-fed/organic meat, poultry, eggs, milk. We buy mostly only organic fruits and veggies (from farmers market when we can or Whole Foods). Cheese is probably one of the hardest things to do organic because it is SO expensive! And we eat a lot of cheese! We eat a lot of string cheese, and I just can’t pay $5-6 for a pack of like 8 string cheeses when I can get a HUGE pack of it at Costco for just a couple dollars more. We go through one of those HUGE packs in a week! I also compromise sometimes on cereal. Usually buy the “healthier” stuff from Whole Foods but recently Kroger had a good deal on General Mills cereals, so I bought some Chex and Cheerios. We eat a lot of cereal in this house!
Dr. Mercola states that if you can’t do both organic produce and organic grass-fed meat you should choose the organic grass-fed meat. He said that it has a higher concentration of chemicals/pesticides. So I wouldn’t obsess with conventional produce, especially since this is not the norm for you!
The only thing I got this week was 5 dozen eggs from one farm friends and three gallons of milk from another. I did not order from Azure, either, although I had to be at the drop for everyone else since it’s my drop. I plan to order on teh second drop this month (we have two per month here). But mostly I am ordering some starts for the garden then.
Like everyone else here, we compromise when we have to. We do 90% of our shopping through Azure – the rest comes from Costco. Non-organic produce is usually soaked in Bi-0-kleen produce wash or peeled. We do the best we can with what we have available – it’s not always perfect. I like the motto that someone above posted: it’s what we do most of the time that matters”.
As for millet, we love it. It’s a staple breakfast here for us. We like to alternate oats, millet, buckwheat and amaranth as our hot cereal. The price of buckwheat and amaranth has gone up so much that we now use just oats or millet. With a large family and early morning animal chores to do (we just started our mini-farm with chickens and two dairy goats) our breakfast needs to be simple and not too time consuming. Yet I want it to be filling and nutritious. We soak the millet (or oats) over night with a little buttermilk – they coook up easily in the morning and we serve with fresh raw milk, a little coconut oil, cinnomon, and a little stevia. Yummy!!! And best of all, the kids love it! We save the bigger, more labor intensive “breakfast” foods for weekends or even served for a dinner.
I think non-organic apples are better than no apples. Since they’re on the top twelve we usually buy them organic, but fresh fruits and vegetables are so good for you if that’s all that’s available (on a trip or friend’s house) we don’t turn them down :)
On the organic question: I do the best I can, forgive myself for what I can’t do, then move on. I’m headed in the right direction.
I just bought some millet and ground it into flour using my blender. It’s light and fluffy. I’m newly gluten free and experimenting. I haven’t tried coconut flour yet. I would love to try some of your recipes.
Hey Laura, this comment is just for you, thought you’d like to know that at our wal mart in York they are selling spring mix salads in a clear plastic tubs that are organic. They aren’t as good price wise as the romaine heads, but if you consider all you cut off of the romaine heads, i think it’s pretty comparable. It’s Marketside brand and it keeps really well. Just fyi, thanks for the great posts.
I think conventional fruits/veggies beats no fruit/veggies hands down. Just scrub them extra good! ;)
Isn’t God good? He always provides at just the right time!
Some of my thoughts at the moment on buying organic:
A starving child would die to eat a non-organic apple. And that child would receive nourishment from that apple! Why do we make a big deal over buying organic, aka “better foods”, when billions of people will go hungry today, starving for some “regular ol’ food” as you termed it.
I’d rather save the money from buying non-organic foods and give to an organization that helps feed the hungry.
Do you know of any studies that show that non-organic foods are harmful to the body?
This is my biggest hang up on the “whole foods” way of eating. I would really appreciate any thoughts you have on it. Thank you!
Kaylin
I have it on my list to do a post about why organic is better for us, but just haven’t had a chance to write it yet. I’ll try to move it up on my list!
Just today Time magazine revealed 3 different studies that demonstrate that pregnant mothers exposed to agricultural pesticides give birth to children with lower IQ’s. It would be hard to believe that is the only side affect from these pesticides. It saddens me that as parents we have to worry about if this fruit has pesticides or if that vegetable is filled with chemicals, not to mention all of the other additives in other foods. I try to feed my family as much organic foods as possible but as it is with everyone else it’s hard on the ol’ budget. I also live in an area where organic food is not offered much. It shouldn’t be this tough to get clean fresh produce! I’ll never get past the greed of our nation, it’s clear that money is always more important than giving our people good wholesome nutritious foods. If we weren’t forced to lower our standards because quantity over quality is more important to corporate farms then we could all afford organic produce and more would be available. We have some of the lowest standards for food in the world, less than Europe and Canada. Seems like we are always hearing about some other disgusting ingredient that is added to foods, like beaver anal glands. YUCK!
Really gotta hear more about what you’re talking about with the beaver anal glands…….????
Hi Laura, Just wanted to pop in and say my little girl’s skin has really cleared up a lot over the past two weeks. We cut out dairy, gluten, soy and coconut. The real improvement began when I realized coconut was in her body wash/shampoo/lotion. Oops! Just thought I’d share! Hope Malachi is seeing improvements. -Kim
I “ditto” a lot of the other ladies – I buy organic when I can get it (since I live in the middle of nowhere) and when I can afford it. I think well washed regular ol’ fruits and veggies are better than none at all!!
For red meat, we only eat game meat my husband has shotand butchered himself, so we know where that has come from and how it has been handled. Occasionally a local rancher friend of ours (since I lie in “rancher country”, MT) will give us some of his grass fed beef – yay!
Eggs I get from a friend who has pastured chickens and has more eggs than she nows what to do with – doudle yay!!
Chickens are tough – I do not buy them from azure because they are pricey. I haven’t had luck finding local pastured meat chickens except for the Hutterites here and they are pricey also. So, when we eat chicken, it’s usually from some sort of large chain grocery store – :(
Laura, I don’t have a blog, but you have motivated me to finally clear out our dining room. Yes, dining room! It has become a dumping ground in the past several months for two reasons. 1) I unexpectedly had my son in December (the week before Christmas!) by emergency C-Section at 29 weeks, due to a placental abruption. We are both fine now, but it has taken me a LONG time to bounce back. Losing half your blood volume in one day can really knock you down for a while! 2) We have been remodeling our basement since the end of January, so a lot of things are temporarily living in my dining room that don’t belong there. My husband, 3 year old son and I eat our meals there, and it has been driving me CRAZY!
I spent several hours today sorting everything. In a few hours, after the newly placed grout on the ceramic tile floor in the basement is set, my husband is going to carry it all down for me. YAY! Then I’ll give it a good cleaning tomorrow. Thank you for the motivation just in time for our Easter dinner!
As for organics, we buy most everything organic (very little processed). It’s not always certified, like our 1/4 grass fed beef, but we know it is organic nonetheless. I buy grass fed, hormone free cheddar cheese at Trader Joe’s that is not organic. It’s from New Zealand though, and I doubt they’re spraying their pastures with poison or pumping the cows full of antibiotics there. I do feel guilty that it comes from so far away, but it’s a good price, and we too use a lot of cheese. I’ve just learned too much about the industrial food system in the past few years, and I can’t ignore it. We eat out a few times a month and enjoy occasional meals with family and friends. Those are the times that I compromise my food standards, but not in our home. Very rarely I need an ingredient for something and organic is unavailable, so I will use a non organic version after cleaning it (usually produce) very well.
As for groceries this week, my husband made a Trader Joe’s run, since it’s near his work. We’re stocked up on produce, cheese, frozen berries, and Kerrygold butter. Today I got my grocery delivery… 2 gallons of raw milk, one pound of raw butter, and pastured eggs. I do love farm fresh food! I wish we had Azure here.
After reading about the nutrients lacking in non-organic produce plus the risks of pesticides, if it’s a dirty dozen food, I get organic (or a local place not certified organic but that doesn’t use pesticides) or not at all. Esp. for apples, berries, carrots, celery