it's the strange little snacks...

Kevin and I love us some Trader Joe's. Both of our families have shopped there for years (my family affectionately refers to it as "TJ's"), so by now we know all the exact little products and treats that we love and that are exclusive to this awesome grocery store. In Minnesota, Trader Joe's is relatively new, and people seem to be loving it as much as Californians do (don't even think about trying to get into that teeny parking lot on a weekend - it's a zoo!). Although we also very much heart our local co-op, The Wedge, it can get a little spendy (how do you like that use of MN vernacular?!) to shop there exclusively, so we've developed a nice system that involves weekly trips to three different grocery stores: Trader Joe's for the bulk of thing (snacks, lemonade, breakfast juice, vitamins, sparkling water, hummus, cheeses, some meats, relatively healthy frozen entrees for those nights when cooking is not an option, tortillas, pizza doughs that are only $1.00, big cans of marinara sauce that are less than a $1.00, sourdough bread, peanut butter, tiny tins of smoked oysters, recycled paper towels, hand soap, shaving lotion, organic Greek yogurt, organic free-range eggs, organic milk, salsa, dried fruit, soups, polenta, nuts, frozen berries, etc.), Whole Foods (for organic grass-fed bison meat, great quality fish, free samples of fancy cheeses, and my beauty products), and The Wedge (for delicious and very fresh local produce, the gnocchi Kevin likes, some meats, some vitamins, bulk foods - especially oatmeal, quinoa, and raisins - organic non-fat frozen yogurt, and the unbelievably tasty chicken curry salad from the deli case).

Usually, on Sundays, we make a meal plan for the entire week, write out our grocery list, and then head out to Trader Joe's first (which happens to be the furthest away), hit up Whole Foods next (on the way back to our house), and then head to the Wedge for the final items. It sounds crazy, but it actually works out great and we are able to stick to our budget and still buy the type of food we love. The only little glitch in our system is that Minnesota has a very dumb (and irritatingly non-secular) law about not selling alcohol on Sundays, so, if we want to buy some of the crazy cheap and delicious beer and wine that TJ's sells, then we have to remember to make a special trip on another day. Other than that - the system works!

I used to think that I hated cooking and that making a meal plan would be a giant pain, but ever since we've started doing both, and it's become routine, I can't imagine going back to how we used to handle the food situation in our house (just sort of stroll through the grocery store and put things - usually pre-packaged, not-so-healthy things - in the cart, and hope that, somehow, you've accounted for enough meals to last the week - ack!). Making the meal plan is especially great, because it forces the two of us to only buy what we need and we get to look forward to good meals ("Ooh, falafel on Thursday!") all week, and it takes the "What the heck am I going to make for dinner?" stress away from daily life.

On that note, I thought I'd share this little love song to Trader Joe's that I recently found through another blog I read:

Love it!