10 Tips For Saving on Superfoods

This week I've been featuring executive fitness coach, Bonni Doherty.

Though Bonni is not a nutritionist, she does recommend her clients eat many small meals throughout the day, meals high in essential fatty acids and phytonutrients.

Bonni calls her favorites --leafy green & red vegetables, some fruits, avocados, nuts, seeds, deep-sea fish, good fats and oils--Superfoods, and when we shopped together at Whole Foods, my task was to help her locate great deals on those items.

So far this week, I've offered a number of tips for getting great deals on superfoods and to recap, those tips are as follows:

1. In the produce section look for the Good Stuff for Less, Weekly Specials, Weekly Buys signs since veggies and fruit under these signs are a great deal.
2. Leafy greens like kale, chard, spinach, and celery, often go on sale: two-bunches-for-the-price-of-one, so watch the weekly prices and buy more when the price is lower. Whatever leafy greens you don't plan to eat that week wash, saute, and freeze portions for later consumption.
3. Consider buying WFs loose braising mix. It contains all of the above leafy greens (plus other bitter leaves), but it's just the leaf -- no woody stalks. So you'll pay only for the portion of the plant you'll eat.
4. Avocados are in season now and because of their tough outer skin, it's safe to consume non-organic avocados, and the price of conventionally grown is less than organically grown. If you buy several at a time, pick firm through soft. Store the firm avocados in the fridge and eat the softer fruit first. Take the firm avocados out of the fridge a day or two in advance of eating them so they have time to soften.
   
5. Pick bunches of beets with healthy green tops. Cut the leaf from the stalk, wash it, and saute it with other leafy greens. In other words, bunches of beets are naturally a two-for-one vegetable.
6. Buy nut butters and olive oil in bulk at WFs and save on packaging by bringing your own containers.
7. Also shop the bulk aisle for seeds and whole nuts. Buying dry goods in bulk offers a great savings over brand-name packets of nuts and seeds.
   
8. Consider purchasing tinned fish, i.e. sardines, tuna, salmon by the case and receiving WFs 10% case discount. Ask a WFs associate for help, and get the best deal on deep-sea tinned fish.
   
9. Cut back on your consumption of expensive cuts of meat and consider tofu products, tinned deep-sea fish, or fresh and or fresh frozen salmon, and less expensive cuts of chicken and or turkey.
10. Because you'll save when you cut back on meat protein, buy the DHA Omega 3 eggs, they cost a bit more, but if you follow the above tips, you're still saving overall.

It's one thing to buy all these healthy superfoods, but it's another to cook them up into satisfying meals. With that in mind, and in-keeping with Bonni's counsel that her clients eat regular small meals, I'm offering two mini-meal ideas using superfoods:

Beets with Pear or Apple and Cheese
1) Cut beet bulb from stalks. Wash and gently scour beets of dirt. Add to pot of water and simmer till tender, about 45 minutes.
2) Peel beets and slice. Store in an old yogurt container or Tupperware. You can add the strained beet water from the cooking pot to the container so beets don't dry out. To the beet water, you can also add rice wine vinegar if you wish -- the vinegar off-sets the sweetness of the beets.

To Serve: Slice a pear or an apple, lay alongside sliced beets. Drizzle with lime or lemon juice. Grate or thinly slice your favorite aged Italian cheese, i.e. a Romano or Parmesan or Asiago etc. Place cheese alongside beets and fruit to create an eye-appealing superfood mini-meal.

Red Chard with Apple, Chicken and Walnuts
1) I posted a variation of this dish a couple of months ago.
2) You can swap out spinach for chard, or chard for kale, or use the WFs braising greens I mention above.
3) Then either turkey or chicken or tinned tuna or Tofurky would work with this dish, since all compliment apple well.
4) And of course walnuts are the crowning glory!

To serve: drizzle with olive oil and juice of a half lemon.

Grocery Shopping for Health & Fitness

Grocery shopping on a budget for health and fitness is this week's theme.

And the person I took grocery shopping with me at Whole Foods recently is all about health and fitness.

Bonni Doherty is an executive fitness coach and she wanted budget-wise tips for her clients whom she encourages to eat small, highly nourishing meals throughout the day -- in fact, as many as eight small meals per day!

Eight small meals a day adds up to a lot of food each week, so obviously tips for finding the best deals at WFs is of great use to Bonni and her clients.

We started in WFs fresh produce section, where I recommend everyone start their shopping. If you're on a budget, and if you have dietary concerns such as ...

• you're on a weight-loss diet
• you're gluten-sensitive or intolerant
• you're doing a spring cleanse
• you're on a fitness program
• you want to eat healthily
  

then the bulk of your groceries should be fresh vegetables and some fruits.

I pointed out the fresh produce on sale to Bonni. What's on Sale is clearly marked in WFs and depending where you are in the U.S. your store will mark it with the following signs:

• Good Stuff for Less
  
• Weekly Specials
• Weekly Buys
  

And because we're well into the growing season, fresh produce is plentiful now. Therefore, every week lots of vegetables and fruits are on sale making them a healthy buy at a great price.

Bonni made a beeline for the leafy greens: kale, chard, spinach, and mustard greens. Because dark leafy greens are a super-food full of antioxidants, B encourages all her clients to consume plenty of greens, and also beets for their nutrient content.

There are a number of different varieties of beets, the most obvious are red and golden beets. Because of their color, red beets have a high iron content, which B particularly likes, given the importance of feeding a highly active body iron.

I sometimes enjoy golden beets. A couple of weeks ago I was down to an empty fridge bar a golden beet and a few other items. I challenged myself to come up with several meal ideas with the golden beet and here's what I made.

Most people overlook the fact that beets are like two vegetables in one, the bulbous root and the leafy green tops. In that regard, they're not only a great vegetable for health and vitality; they're also a two-for-one vegetable for people shopping on a budget.

Tips on Purchasing and Cooking Leafy Greens:

• Always buy organic leafy greens; they grow low to the ground and thus are more likely to contain a high level of pesticide residue if not organic.
  
• Buy beet bunches with healthy looking green tops or leaves. Wash and remove the green leaves from the stalks and eat them as you would any leafy green.
  
• WFs often has braising greens in their bins of loose greens. Their braising greens are mixed leaves of kale, chard, beet leaves, radicchio, mustard greens. And for around $6.99 lb it's a great deal since you're buying the edible leaf only, not the inedible woody stalks.
  
• Braising greens are best when braised, either tossed gently in a pan with olive oil, or sauteed with a little butter and garlic.
  

Next, B headed for the celery. "A great snack food," she said. I agree, and often organic celery (and the leafy greens) come on sale at WFs for under $2.99 a bunch, so be on the look out.

Tips on Incorporating Celery into Your Meals:

• Wash stalks and cut into chunks for dipping or for a raw snack as is.
• Celery is a great, slightly bitter juice for those on a spring-cleanse diet. If you have a juicer, try it plain, or juiced with carrots and or apples to sweeten it slightly.
• Because celery is most often eaten raw, we don't think to cook it, but it's delicious tossed in with say, braising greens, or sauteed with other vegetables in stir fry.
• Add celery to casseroles with onions and carrots and other root vegetables.
• Bake fish on top of a bed of chopped celery, carrots, onions, garlic and dill with a little white wine drizzled over the lot.
  
• Celeriac is a kind of celery grown as a root vegetable. Best cooked like a root vegetable, it makes the most delicious creamed soup.

Bonni isn't a big proponent of sweet fruits because of the simple sugar content. Her clients are generally working toward optimum fitness and health and for that reason she steers them away from simple sugars and toward vegetables which offer phytonutrients plus fiber.

Tomorrow, I'll post more on my shopping trip around Whole Foods with Bonni, sharing what I learned from her, regarding the kind of diet she recommends to her clients, and the tips I shared with her for finding the food she recommends at the best price.