Grocery Haul | Kitchen Casual

My love affair with Whole Foods began last year when I visited my best friend. She lives in Austin, Texas, the headquarters of Whole Foods, and the flagship store is just incredible. My office in DC was a short walk from another Whole Foods, where I would frequent the hot bar for lunch. I just love everything about Whole Foods (well, minus some of the prices of course).

I hit up my local Whole Foods last week and picked up some pretty fun things (or so I think), so I wanted to share with you what I got.

As I mentioned in last week’s Friday Five, my go to breakfast has been Greek yogurt with pumpkin spice granola. I was all out of my Chobani so I decided to pick up this Atlanta Fresh Yogurt. I love Atlanta Fresh. Their coffee flavor is probably my all time favorite yogurt. I got a big thing of the plain to mix with granola. I sweeten it up with some honey and liquid stevia. Mmm. I also picked up this fresh pressed juice. It is called the Detoxifier, but I bought it because at the time I was dealing with a tiny cold and it sounded like it would help fend of those germs. I felt much better the day after I drank it (which I’m sure was mostly a mental thing, but whatever. It was tasty.)

Working from home has turned me in to a chronic snacker. When I was at the office, I had a finite number of snacks. Now I can just head down to the pantry and grab something. I try to make sure I have some healthier options so I don’t end up grabbing some of the cookies Eric always has laying around. These cranberry and cashew quinoa bites sounded like a good sweet treat so I decided to give them a try. The anglophile in my always has at least one cup of tea during the afternoon and I like to make it a proper afternoon tea by including some sort of biscuit. These mixed berry oat cookies looked like a winner to me. The other two are salty snacks: some dry roasted edamame and pumpkin seed and cheddar crispbreads. Yes, my pumpkin obsession has yet to subside.

I love Annie Chun’s soups, so I decided to pick up this Spring Vegetable Ramen. I always love to have many soup options available for cooler days or for if I am feeling under the weather. The last thing I got was this honey almond quinoa cereal. I have been wanting to try warm quinoa cereal for awhile and am too lazy to just go ahead and make it myself. I am very excited to give this a try.

What are some of your favorite Whole Foods finds?

It took a few weeks of this blog’s existence for me to share a grocery haul. Granted, I do go to the grocery store a few times during the week, but what’s exciting about me buying bananas and sparking water? Nothing really. I figure I’ll share what I buy if I find some fun things at a specialty store.

I had to pick up an ingredient for dinner tonight and wasn’t sure my Kroger would have it. So I figured I’d go to my fail safe spot for hard-to-find ingredients — Buford Highway Farmers Market. Now this isn’t the farmers market you might be thinking of where a bunch of vendors set up shop once a week in a parking lot somewhere and sell local veggies and such. This is more of a supermarket — on steroids. It has everything you could possibly want from all over the world. They have incredible produce and meat departments as well as shelves upon shelves stocked with stuff from Asia to South America to Eastern Europe and more. And the best part is that everything is super cheap. It’s incredible. This was just a quick trip so I didn’t do as much exploring as I normally do, but next time I go, I’m going to take a bunch of pics and write up a whole post about it.

Now on to the haul.

Not the biggest haul in the world, but I did get some fun stuff.

Starting from the left, I got this pack of tofu miso soup which comes with three little individual packets inside. I love miso soup when I eat out at sushi places. In theory I would like to make it myself, but having to buy miso and tofu seems like a hassle to me. Hopefully this stuff will be delicious and I can stock up for cooler weather.

The bundle of green right there is some baby bok choy. Bok choy is Chinese cabbage and is delicious braised or roasted. I’ll probably whip this up with dinner tonight using some garlic, salt and pepper. UPDATE: The bok choy was quite tasty. I chopped up the greens and sauteed them with some coconut oil (I used the spray from Trader Joe’s), chopped garlic, ginger and soy sauce. It was great topping for the green curry.

In the center is a giant bottle of extra virgin olive oil. Like any cook from an Italian family (or any cook really) I go through EVOO like crazy. I usually get it at Trader Joe’s where it’s pretty inexpensive, but I got this one liter bottle of it for 10 bucks. And it’s imported from Italy so you know it has to be good stuff. They also had really inexpensive balsamic vinegar, which I didn’t need today, but I’ll probably get it from there next time I run out.

The next item is green curry paste. This is the reason I went to the store. Eric has been making homemade green curry for me pretty regularly in the four years we’ve been together. We ran out so we needed some more. This is a different brand from the one we normally use so hopefully the results will be just as delicious.

The last thing I picked up was this Chinese Restaurant Tea. I am obsessed with the tea you get when you eat out at a Chinese restaurant. I always thought it was just straight jasmine tea, but this blend includes some oolong. I’m very excited to try this. Side note: they had the most AMAZING tea section. I could have spent forever there looking at everything. Any flavor you could imagine was there. Vanilla chai. Raspberry white tea. Plain jasmine. The last thing I need is more tea, but whenever the time comes to restock, this is where I am going.

One thing I didn’t pick up this time that I’m going to get the next time is a soup base for pho. Whenever it is cool and rainy in Atlanta, I get a major jonesing for pho, but never want to leave the house to get some. From the looks of the container, it was basically like chicken or beef bouillon in the sense you boil some water and put the powder in there. Seems easy enough. I will probably get the pho soup base, some rice noodles, more bok choy and a variety of other ingredients for pho the next time I am there.