okay everyone, i could really use some help with this one!

this shopping trip will be the first one "raw." i ordered a lot of stuff from azure standard, a company that distributes bulk natural foods to buyer's clubs. from there i got nuts, dates, seeds, and so on. but tomorrow or the next day we'll be going to whole foods for our produce.

we don't have a car. so when we go grocery shopping, borrowing my FIL's car, it's really got to be for the full two weeks until we get paid again. we can hop on the train to pick up a few items, but if we run out of food that's basically it because we don't usually have the money to spare. with a family of 4, i REALLY don't want us to run out of food.

can you please share what you usually buy, as far as produce, to get through two weeks? we'll eat pretty much any fruits and vegetables, though we don't eat many tropical fruits because of shipping and cost. we try to buy domestic produce only, and we buy locally or at the very least regionally, from the western half of the US (we're in utah), though we make the exception for bananas. i'll have to think about coconuts; i love them, and i do buy their byproducts, but they're really expensive. i'm planning to check on some local asian grocers to see if they're cheaper. the farmer's market isn't open yet and CSAs generally will not work for us, because we're a low-income family and we can't afford the initial investment. half of our income goes to rent, another third goes to food, and the rest goes to utilities; we really don't have anything to spare. so i have to be really careful about stretching our food budget. but again, running out of food is a serious concern for us, especially with two small children.

if you could please share your average shopping list, i would be so grateful to have SOME idea of how much to buy!

thanks,
chandelle

Opinion: For those that can only shop once every couple of weeks....eating fresh produce becomes more difficult. Look for local sources whenever possible....and sprout your own sprouts. Eat what is available locally...and don't sweat the rest too much. No one is telling you that you HAVE to buy expensive imported organic produce! (well...not me anyhow).

-You'll have to experiment to see how much to buy. Some things will go bad quicker than others...while some things (like apples, organges, etc.) can keep for weeks in the refrigerator. Using those green fresh bags for leafy greens, lettuce, spinach and other vegetables seems to work very well. I'm sure some others can give you the links to that product.

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

as i said, i don't buy imported food except for bananas; i do, however, buy predominantly organic food. i notice a difference in my health, and definitely in taste, when i can't buy organic. since going vegan and cutting out processed food i feel very sensitive to pollutants. i know not everybody responds this way, and that's okay, but that's how i feel about it. i actually don't spend much more on organic than i did on conventional; there are a lot of ways to save money with it, and i've made it a priority for my family by eliminating luxuries in other areas. eating locally or at least regionally is also very important to us; i can't wait for the farmer's market! sadly in utah there is no way i could survive on a raw diet, or even a whole-food vegan diet, if i was only eating food produced within 100 miles. someday i want to farm for myself, but for right now i have to make do.

sprouting is awesome! i'm definitely enjoying it and i'm seeing how important it will be in the winter. we've always eaten an abundance of fruits and vegetables, but the vegetables were usually cooked.

are the green bags plastic? i think i've seen those in whole foods, but we don't use plastic when we can avoid it. i use the cotton or hemp produce bags and they keep food fresh very well!

thanks for the suggestions!

I shop every few days, I wouldn't like to be able to go shopping only once every two weeks. But if I had too do this, I would buy a lot of fruit and when it gets ripe all at once, like bananas do, I would freeze them. I love eating frozen fruit, so that would suit me. I also buy frozen fruit, like blueberries and rasberries. I would also consider buying, brown rice or something similar that's cheap and relatively healthy to have in case you run out of food or just get that cooked food feeling.

I don't really know what you are doing but, from my experience with people taking a whole family raw, I get the impression that you might be going raw too fast. and if you are going to take a whole family down the road to raw they might not like it if you go too fast. You've got one chance to make a good raw diet impression on them and then they might rebel against it. I know a family who went raw too fast, they were awesome for a few months, and then went back to cooked and now it's mutch, mutch harder to get them to even consider raw, they got burned out, they should have transitioned over 3-6 months IMHO.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/14/2008 04:44PM by Lillianswan.

that's very good advice. and we aren't actually going 100%. we'll continue to eat a few cooked foods while we transition. we're also not transitioning from a SAD. we've been vegan for three years, and it was plant-based in the truest sense of the word - not "junk food veg." we've eaten only unprocessed organic homemade food for most of that period. we're not going into this with dogma. we're not going to burn out because we're well aware of the necessity for personalization and tweaking. i'm studying to be a holistic nutritionist so i'm steeped in this stuff every day. our kids are 18 months and 3 years. my son, at 3, will eat anything, he's not picky at all and he loves veggies more than anything. my daughter has oral-motor problems so it will be more tricky with her, but again - not dogma - if she needs cooked food or something else, she'll get it rather than go hungry. my husband already eats raw food because at the waldorf school where he teaches, all of the food is raw; his assistant is a raw-foodist and makes all of the food served there, so he's used to juices, raw pies, flax crackers, and so on. we love to sprout and we've already made a habit of soaking and sometimes sprouting a lot of the foods we use, like quinoa. and i'm studying this thing to death. thank you so much for your concern and good suggestions! i do want to take it easy because this is about health after all; it's not like when we went vegan for ethical reasons, where we felt like we couldn't budge on it because of the guilt. with this, it's for health, so we can be gentle with ourselves.

chandelle

I forgot that your kids are little ones, you should have no problem then because they will hardly know what you are doing, and your husband is commited too. It's so awesome that you are getting your kids started on the right diet so young!

I couldn't only go shopping once every two weeks! I buy fresh fruit at least twice a week, sometimes 3 or 4 times a week.

For greens, look out for local wild greens. Greens don't keep fresh very long - I go out every day and pick fresh wild greens. If that's not possible, maybe you could grow some.

Rob

--
Rob Hull - Funky Raw
My blog: [www.rawrob.com]

I used to take giant trips to an Asian market out of town where the deals were wickedly cheap... but since it was so far, I only went once a week.

After a few months of being 100% raw, I started to notice a serious decline in flavor, texture, and appeal of fruits. I was feeling pretty grossed out by my stash of foods come 6-7 days.

Organic foods also tend to spoil a little more quickly.

I would say, figure out what you can keep for longer periods of time in the fridge, and figure out what needs to be eaten ASAP. Right now, I have some AMAZING organic peaches that always go to mush by 2-3 days, they just have to be eaten right away. Berries must go. A good hearty pineapple, however, I've kept in mint condition for as much as 2 weeks already, so I always eat those last before shopping again. Get certain fruits green, so they're only beginning to ripen by the end of the week (like mangos). Apples keep pretty well, oranges take their sweet time in the fridge for me, and organic bosc pears take at LEAST a week to ripen! >.<

You'll have to figure out how to strike a balance, for sure, but I think with some strategy, it can be accomplished. >8)

I wonder if you could make soups and smoothies and freeze them. I think they would be good after thawing out. My greens last over a week if I wash and dry them as soon as I get home and put them in a loose container with a tight lid and a paper towel under them. Carrots and celery last a long time too. Fermenting foods will make them last also. We fermented cucumbers, green beans and carrots and they were so good. We gobbled a huge gallon jar in less than a day. So many foods are good fermented, like cabbage of course. Sun dried tomatoes and other dried fruits are good. When my bananas are getting really ripe I make fruit leather.

It sounds like you are prepared to do this and will make it work no matter the obstacles.

Good luck!

If you were cooked vegan, one trip every two weeks would be no prob. But if you are doing raw with mostly produce rather than nuts/seeds/dried fruit/prepared specialty foods it can be very very difficult unless you are growing your own.

4 people times an average of 3 kg/day is like 12 kg of produce per day or about 26 lbs. For 14 days this would be about 370 lbs. It would have to be mostly bananas, oranges, apples, things like that that keep longer. I'd get greens, too but eat them all the first 3 days. And then wait 11 days before eating greens again.

I'd invest in a nice sprouter, that way you can have something green every day.

In My Opinion the closer a food is to its growing point the more nutritious the food will be. For example a tomato ripened and picked while still attached to the vine which is planted in the ground and is a healthy, beautiful plant. Or a pineapple bush in a field that is still growing and perfectly ripe and ready to pick. Food that is live, growing, fresh and still growing in the garden and ready to harvest and then eaten in its fresh, whole, natural, ripe raw food form is best. I realize that is not always possible so just do the best you can.