The Caruso family will be making an attempt to use only whole foods for the majority of meals and snacks. We eat well to begin with; I buy almost no frozen foods [vegetables are the notable exception - they're often better than fresh], very few prepackaged items or snacks. Since pesach forced me to clean, clean, clean, I was able to empty my fridge and both freezers of hametz, and any frozen meals I saved for after pesach. Which is what we have been eating since Thursday. I still have a brisket and 2 chickens in the freezer in the garage. We have gone through all the leftover pesach stuff, and we are down to a small package of brown rice I found in my garage freezer, some red peppers and about 2 cups of milk.
SO! Today is time to shop (considering when my kids came home from school yesterday I offered them . . . um . . . nothing).
I’ll be getting our usual staples of cheese, yogurt, milk, eggs, OJ, tofu and fruits/veggies. I usually buy a chicken or some fish for Shabbes, and our Friday night tradition has evolved to chicken soup with greens and turkey meatballs (think kosher Italian Wedding Soup – we are Carusos after all :-))
The hard part for us will be the sandwich bread and other processed food such as peanut butter, pasta and crackers. We like good crackers with our cheese here at Casa Caruso. Trader Joe’s has an excellent selection that have ingredient labels of actual food, and I think I can be guilt-free about that. So far I have not been successful in weaning the kinder off of Jiff, but I’m willing to keep trying. I’m experimenting with my own bread (thanks to the loaf pan I bought inspired by The Farmers), but there is no way I’m making my own pasta at this moment. So I’m on the hunt for good quality, fresh pasta that doesn’t cost more that the GNP of a small nation. Also, no one likes any kind of beans, so I’m going to work on changing that. Wish me luck.
The other challenge is that I have three growing children, two of whom are boys that seem to have hollow legs, the oldest of whom is hungry. all. the. time. He gets the equivelant of dinner upon his arrival home from school, and then 2 hours later eats . . . dinner.
I’ll post a menu later this week after I figure out meals and the details of the shopping.
Tags: beans, peanut butter, whole foods
