I love grocery shopping!

On Sunday I took one of my sons to get new gym shoes, because his pair from the beginning of the year were torn, and tattered and falling apart! We went to a strip mall and as we were walking back to the car, I see a sign for a grocery store I have never seen! I knew immediately I would be coming back today since I had the day off and check it out. If I am driving anywhere and see a grocery store, no matter how big or small, ethnic, mom & pop, I am going to make it my mission to check it out. I love being introduced to new things I have never seen before, or tried. I also think smaller grocery stores tend to have better prices.

This was the name of the store. I like when stores have some of their items in front so to entice you in!

My sister taught me a trick about grocery stores. Usually they have a rack of items that are a great deal! I saw these bananas and knew there was going to be muffins or a banana bread in my future! 9 bananas for .39 cents!

And since I am a stir frying fool, I picked up some pea pods. Look at the price $1.32! I easily would have paid $3.00 or more at Jewel or Dominick’s.

I love buying new things I wouldn’t find anywhere else. Check out this guava yogurt! They also had pear flavor, mango, papaya and I bought all different flavors!

All the aisles were neat and clean. The layout of the food was comparable to Whole Foods. The best part about it was almost half the store was fruits and veggies!

This was my bounty! You can’t even see in the back, but I have ground sirloin, boneless chicken breasts and a pork tenderloin. I also got lots of veggies, cantelope, papaya, mexican mango, strawberries, milk, etc… And the total of all this:

Yep! $50.00!!! And I am making stir fry tonight, pork tenderloin one night, burgers, and I have lots of veggies and fruit to take to work, and fill the kids lunch boxes. I will definitely go here again! Right next door to this market is a Fruitful Yield. It’s a health food store. So, I had to go in and check it out.

They sell a lot of vitamins and supplements, plus have a lot of vegan items and gluten free products. I wanted to get some new flours I have been hearing/reading about

I actually didn’t know this existed until today. Quinoa contains all 9 essential amino acids your body needs. I knew I could probably add it to make muffins, pancake mix, waffles, cookies etc…

I also picked up Oat Flour. I have read a few recipes using that which I will post later

A lot of recipes for baked goods call for Whole wheat pastry flour. I’ve always used whole wheat flour and once I saw this bag, I immediately knew the difference. Whole wheat pastry flour is much softer and sifted more making a lighter bread/muffin.

I’m not sure what to do with the wheat bran yet, I have to do some more research on that. I’m assuming you can also add it to baked goods for added fiber. If someone already uses this, I would love to hear your ideas.

So after all the shopping, I came home and made banana muffins. I used the pastry flour, the oat flour, the quinoa flour, ground flax seed, honey. I will be posting the recipe tomorrow, because this is a super long post! They turned out so good!

I hope when the opportunity arises, you can check out smaller grocery stores, ethnic grocery stores, etc… and learn some new things like I did today!